"When I was young I fell in love with my cousin. She has been and always will be the one woman in the world to me. She did not, does not, never will, return my feelings. She married, and before very long I was convinced she was not happy, although she only half realised it herself.
She is capable of stifling her powers of perception. Then David Bright died and left her in poverty. His will was a scandal, and the horror did not only smirch his good name, it reached to hers. I can"t and won"t try to tell you what I suffered, or how I determined to fight this hideous wrong. I went to Florence; I tried to see Madame Danterre; I engaged the detective--all before I knew of your existence. I came back to London and discovered that your father, John Dexter, had divorced his wife on account of David Bright. Still I did not know anything of you. Then, through Lady Dawning I found you out, and I made friends with Mrs.
Delaport Green in order to see more of you. Was there anything wrong in that? You did not know your mother; you did not, presumably, care very deeply about her. It was doubtful if you knew of her existence. Soon the detective in Florence faded in my mind; he discovered nothing, but I retained him in case of any change. Was I obliged, because I liked you, to give up the cause? I never found out, I never tried to find out from you anything that bore on the case. You must remember that I stopped you once in the wood at Groombridge when you wanted to tell me more about yourself, and that I again warned you when you wished to tell me about your mother"s letter to you. As to Edgar Tonmore, I knew that he was penniless, and I thought it quite possible that you might, in the end, be penniless too. It was for your own sake I wished you to make a richer marriage. For I believed--I still believe--that David Bright made a last will when going out to Africa; I believed, and still believe, that by an accident that will was not sent to Lady Rose. I thought then that your mother had, in some way, become possessed of the will, and I thought it more than likely that, when dying, she would make reparation by leaving the money where it ought to be. I meant--may I say so?--to prove myself your friend, then, if you should allow it. I know I kept in touch with you partly from curiosity as well as from natural attraction. But, if I acted for the sake of another, I acted for you also. Would it have been better or worse for you to have been friends with us if my suspicions of your mother"s conduct had proved true? But believe me, Miss Dexter, I never for one moment could have thought of you with any taint of suspicion. It is horrible to me to have it suggested."
He rose as he finished speaking, and came nearer to her.
"That you, with your youth and your innocence and your candour!--child, the very idea is impossible. I have known men and women too well to fall into such an absurdity. Send me away, if you like; I won"t intrude my friendship upon you, but look up now and let me see that you do not think this gross thing of me."
Molly raised a white face and looked into his--looked into eyes that had not at all times and in all places been sincere, but were sincere now. A great rush of warm feeling came over her; a great sore seemed healed, and then she looked at him with hungry entreaty, as if a soul, shorn of all beauty, hungry, ragged, filthy, were asking help from another. But the moment of danger, the moment of salvation pa.s.sed away.
We confess our sins to G.o.d because He knows them already, and we ask for forgiveness where we know we shall be forgiven.
Indeed, Molly knew almost at once that she had gained another motive for silence. She could not risk the loss of Edmund"s good thought of her; she cared for him too much--he had defended himself too well.
Edmund saw that she could not speak. He left her, let himself out of the house, and, forgetful of the fact that he could not possibly afford a hansom, jumped into one and drove to Mr. Murray"s house.
He had recovered his usual calmness by the time he had to speak.
"I have your note," he said, "and I came in consequence."
"Yes," said the lawyer; "I wanted to tell you----"
"Wait a moment. Do you think you need tell me? You see, my share in the thing really came to an end when I could not finance it. I have several reasons now why I should like to let it alone."
Murray was astonished. It was Sir Edmund who had started the whole thing, whose wild guess at the outset was becoming more and more likely to be proved true. It was he who had spent a quant.i.ty of money over the investigation for years past. The man of business knew how to provoke speech by silence, and so he remained silent.
"Does further action depend in any way on me?" asked Edmund at last, without, however, offering the explanation the other wanted.
"No," said Murray quite civilly, but his manner was dry. "I don"t see that it does. I think we can get on for the present."
As he spoke the door opened, and the parlourmaid showed in a tall, handsome woman in a nurse"s dress.
Murray looked from her to Sir Edmund.
"I had wanted you to hear what Nurse Edith had to tell us, but after what you have said----"
"Yes," said Edmund; "I will leave you and I will write to you to-night."
CHAPTER XXVIII
DINNER AT TWO SHILLINGS
Edmund Grosse was in great moral and great physical discomfort that evening. He dined, actually for the first time, in just such an Italian cafe as he had described to Molly. After climbing up a very narrow, dirty staircase, the hot air heavy with smells, he had emerged into a small back and front room holding some half-dozen tables, at each of which four people could be seated. Through the open windows the noises of the street below came into collision with the clatter of plates and knives and forks. The heat was intense, the cloths were not clean, neither were the hands of the two waiters who rushed about with a certain litheness and facility of motion unlike any Englishman.
Edmund sat down wearily at a table as near the window as possible, and at which several people had been dining, perhaps well, but certainly not tidily.
"Hunger alone," he thought, "could make this possible," when, looking up, he caught the face of a young man at a further table, full of enjoyment, ordering "spargetty" and half a bottle of "grayves," with a c.o.c.kney tw.a.n.g, and an unutterable air of latter-day culture.
"Mutton chops, cheese, and ale fed your forefathers," reflected Grosse.
"What will you have, sir?" in a foreign accent.
"Oh! anything; just what comes for the two shilling dinner--no, not _hors d"oeuvres_; yes, soup."
Edmund had turned with ill-restrained disgust from the sardines, tomatoes, and other oily horrors. But there was no denying the qualities of the soup: the most experienced and cultivated palate and stomach must be soothed by it, and in a moment of greater cheerfulness Edmund turned his attention to three young men close to him who were talking French.
Their hands were clean and their collars, but poverty was writ large on their spare faces and well-brushed clothes. One was olive-complexioned, one quite fair, but with olive tints in the shadows round the eyes, and the third grey, old, and purple-cheeked from shaving. They ate little, but they talked much. The talked of literature and art with fierce dogmatism, and they seemed frequently on the verge of a quarrel, but the storm each time sank quite suddenly without the least consciousness of the danger pa.s.sed. They looked at the food as critics, and acknowledged it to be eatable, with the faint air of an exile"s sadness.
Edmund wished to think that he was amused by their talk, but the distraction did not last. His thoughts would have their way, and he was soon trying to defend his defence of himself to Molly. All he said had seemed so obviously true as the words poured out, but there had been fatal reservations. He had spoken as if all suspicions, all proceedings as to discovering the will were past. He had felt he had no right to give away secrets that were not his own. But had he not produced a false impression? What would Molly have thought of him as he pa.s.sionately rejected the notion of suspecting her if she had seen the letter from Murray in his pocket? It was true that he no longer financed any of the proceedings against her, but they had all been set on foot by him. He was in the plot that was thickening, and he had won the confidence of the victim! He had no doubt that Molly was innocent, and he was ashamed of the pitiful confidence he had read in her eyes when he left her. But he still believed that her mother had been guilty, and that Molly"s wealth was the result of that guilt. It was true that he wanted to be her friend, but it was also true that he would rejoice if Rose came into her own and the gross injustice were righted. But, after all, what absolute evidence had they got, as yet, as to the contents of this last will, or what proof even of its existence? He felt almost glad for the fraction of a moment that Molly might remain the gorgeous mistress of the old house in Park Lane uninjured by anything he had done against her. "How absurd," he thought, "how drivelling! The fact is that girl impressed me enough to-day, to make me see myself from her point of view, or what would be her point of view if she knew all!"
He refused coffee--the cab fare had prevented that. He quite emptied his pocket, gave the waiter sixpence, and, rising, strolled across the floor of the small room exactly the same man to the outward eye he had been for years past. But before he reached the door he caught the glance of a little, round, elderly woman at a table close to him, and he stopped.
She had a faded, showy bonnet, and she carried her worn clothes with an air. He recognised the companion and friend of a famous prima donna whom he had not seen for years.
"You"ve forgotten me, but I"ve not forgotten you."
It was a cherry, Irish voice.
"I get coffee and a roll, and you have the _diner a prix fixe_. And you have given me a champagne supper in your day! Well! and how are you?"
"Nicely, thank you, Miss O"Meara; you see I have not forgotten!" Then in a lower voice, "But I thought the Signora left you money?"
"She did, bless her; but it was here one day and gone the next!
Good-night, and good luck to you," she laughed.
The little duenna of a dead genius evidently did not want him to stay, and he felt his way down the pitch dark stairs, and emerged on the street. A very small, brown hand was held out for a penny, and for the first time in his life he refused a street beggar with real regret.
""Here one moment, and gone the next,"" he muttered, looking down the brilliantly lighted street to where the motors, carriages, and cabs crowded round the doors of a great theatre. "It"s the history of the whole show in a nutsh.e.l.l."
If Sir Edmund was troubled at the thought that Molly believed in him, Molly was infinitely more troubled at his belief in her.
After he left her she went to her room. She had to dine out and she must get some rest first. As in most of the late eighteenth century houses in London, the bedrooms had been sacrificed to the rooms below. But Molly had the one very large room that looked over the park. She threw herself down on a wide sofa close to the silk-curtained bed. The sun glinted still on the silver backs of the brushes and teased her eyes, and she got up and drew down the blinds. The dressing-table was large and its gla.s.s top was covered with a great weight of old gilt bottles and boxes.
Miss Carew had once been amused by the comment of a young manicurist who, after expressing enthusiastic admiration of the table, had concluded with the words:
"But what I often say to myself is that it"s only so much more to leave in the end."
But Molly had not laughed when the words were repeated; they gave expression to a feeling with which she sometimes looked at many things besides her dressing-table--they might all prove only so much more to leave in the end!
She sank exhausted again onto the sofa. Why had he come? Why could he not leave her alone? Did she want his friendship, his pity, his confidence? Why look at her so kindly when he must know how he hurt her?
She had felt such joy when she saw that he believed in her. The idea that she was still innocent and unblemished in his eyes was just for the moment an unutterable relief. An unutterable relief, too, it had felt at the moment, to be able to accept his defence of himself. That he was still lovable, and that he had no dark thoughts of her, had been such joy, but only a pa.s.sing joy. Had he not told her in horribly plain speech that he loved Lady Rose, and would love her to the end? All this, which was so vital to Molly, was but an episode in a friendship that was a detail in his life!
But now, alone, trying to see clearly through the confusion, how unbearable it had been to hear him say, "That you with your youth and your innocence and your candour...." He had thought it too horrible to suspect her, and by that confidence he made her load of guilt almost unendurable.
She could not go on like this, could not live like this. The silence was far more unbearable now that a human voice had broken into it, a voice she loved repudiating with indignant scorn the possibility of suspecting her! She must go somewhere, she must speak to some one. But at this moment it was also evident that she must dress for dinner.