CHAPTER XXIX
THE RELIEF OF SPEECH
There is quite commonly a peculiar glow of sunshine just before a storm, a brightness so obviously unreliable that we are torn between enjoyment and anxiety. I have known no greater revelation of Nature"s glories, even in a sunset hour, than in one of these moments of glow before the darkness of storm. And in a man"s life there is sometimes an episode so bright, so full of promise, that we feel its perfection to be the measure of its instability.
Such a moment had come to Mark Molyneux. The time of depression and trial, the time when a vague sense of danger and a vague sense of aspiration had made him turn his eyes towards the cloister, had ended in his taking his work more and more earnestly and becoming surprisingly successful in his dealings with both rich and poor.
It seemed during the past winter that Mark would carry all before him; he had come into close contact with the poor, and in the circle in which his personal influence could be felt there was a real movement of religious earnestness and moral reform. There was a noticeable glow of zeal in the other curates and in the parish workers, who, with one or two exceptions, were enthusiastic in their devotion to him personally and to his notions of work. Even after Easter several of the recently-cured drunkards were persevering, and other notoriously bad characters seemed determined to show that the first shoots of their awakened moral life were not merely what gardeners call "flowering shoots," but steady growths giving promise of sound wood.
Mark"s sermons were becoming more and more the rage, and people were heard to say that he was the only Catholic preacher in London, excepting perhaps one or two Jesuit Fathers; while he had also the tribute of attention from the press, which he particularly disliked.
Meanwhile, the old rector was still gruff and still proffered snubs which were gratefully received, for Mark was genuinely anxious not to be misled by the atmosphere of praise and affection in which he was living.
Nothing warned him of impending danger (to use a phrase of old-fashioned romance) when he was told that Miss Dexter was asking to see him. He had not seen her for a long time, and was quite glad that she should come.
He looked young, eager, and happy as he came quickly into the parlour, but after a few minutes the simple warmth of his manner changed into a more negative politeness. There was something so gorgeous in Molly"s appearance, and so very strange in her face, that even a man who had seen less of the world than is obtained in a year on the mission in London, could not fail to be somewhat puzzled.
Molly hardly spoke for some moments, and silence was apparently inevitable. Then she burst out, without preparation, in a wild, incoherent way, with her whole life"s story. The story of a child deserted by her mother, neglected by her father, taken from the ayah who was the only person who had ever loved her, and sent like a parcel to the care of a hard and selfish aunt who was ashamed of her. It might have been horribly pathetic only that it was impossible that so much egotism and bitterness should not choke the sympathy of the listener.
But as the story came to Molly"s twenty-first year, the strange, bitter self-defence (she had not yet explained why she should defend herself at all to Father Molyneux), all the unpleasing moral side of the story became merged in the sense of its dramatic qualities.
Molly had never told it to anyone before now, and, indeed, she had not realised several features of the case until quite lately. She told well the disillusion as to her mother, her own single-handed fight with life, the double sense of shame as to her mother"s past, and her own ambiguous position. She told him how she felt at first meeting Rose Bright, of her own sense of sailing under false colours, and she actually explained, in her strange pleading for a favourable judgment, how everything that happened had naturally hardened her heart and made her feel as if she had been born an outcast. Lastly, she told how Sir Edmund Grosse had pursued her mother with detectives, and, as she had for a time believed, had pursued herself with the hypocritical appearance of friendship. She had been wrong, it seemed now, in judging him so harshly, but it had hurt terribly at the time.
Through all this Mark was struggling against the repulsion that threatened to drown the sympathy he wanted to give her. But he had, naturally, not the faintest suspicion as to what was coming or that Molly was confiding in him a story of her own wrong-doing. He was absolutely confounded when she went on, still in the tone of pa.s.sionate self-defence, to tell how she had found the will leaving the whole of Sir David"s fortune to Lady Rose. He simply stared at Molly when she said:
"Who could suppose for a single moment that I should be obliged, on account of a sc.r.a.p of paper which was evidently sent to my mother for her to dispose of as she liked, to become a pauper and to give a fortune to Lady Rose Bright?"
But although he was too astounded for speech, and his face showed strange, stern lines, it was now that there awoke in his heart the pa.s.sionate longing to help her; he saw now her whole story in the most pathetic light, from the little child deserted by her mother, to the woman scorned and suffering, left by the same mother in such a gruesome temptation. The greatness of the sin provoked the pa.s.sionate longing to save her. The man who had given up Groombridge Castle and all it entailed had not one harsh thought for the woman who had fallen into crime to avoid the poverty he had chosen for his own portion.
"It"s a hard, hard case," he murmured, to Molly"s surprise.
She had been so occupied in her own outpouring that she had hardly thought of him at first, except as a human outlet for her story made safe by the fact that he was a priest. But when he had betrayed his silent but most eloquent amazement, she had suddenly realised what the effect of her confidences might be on such a man, and half expected anathemas to thunder over her head.
Then he tried to find out whether there was any kind of hope that the will had, in fact, been sent to her mother to be at her disposal. But suddenly Molly, who had herself suggested this idea, rent it to pieces and brought out the whole case against her mother (and, consequently, against herself) with a fierce logic of attack.
This was more like the Molly whom he had known before, and Mark felt the atmosphere a little clearer. Having left not the faintest shadow of a defence for her own action, she suddenly became silent. After some moments she leant forward.
"Do you know," she said, in a tone so low that he only just caught the words, "I see now what must have happened. It is strange that I never thought of it before. I see it now quite clearly. Of course the will and the letter were wrongly addressed, and probably some letter to my mother was sent to Lady Rose."
"That does not follow," said Father Molyneux.
"But it"s not unlikely," argued Molly. "It is more probable that the two letters should be put into the wrong envelopes than that one should be addressed to the wrong person. It"s a mistake that is made every day, only the results are usually of less consequence. It must have been curious reading for my mother--that letter about herself to Lady Rose Bright."
"It is so difficult," said Mark, feeling his way cautiously, "to be sure of not acting on fancied facts when there are so few to go upon. Do you suppose that the detective in Florence had any definite plan of action given to him by his employer? For just supposing that your guess is right, they may have got some clue to what happened in the letter that was sent by mistake to Lady Rose. Have you no notion at all whether they may not now have got some evidence to prove that there was another will?"
Molly shook her head.
"Do you think," she said, "they would have been quiet all this time if there had been any real evidence at all? It is three years since Sir David died, and six months since my mother died."
She did not notice how Mark started at this information. Had Miss Dexter, then, been in possession of this letter to Lady Rose and the last will for six months?
"You were not sent these papers at once?" he ventured to ask.
"Yes; Dr. Larrone, who attended my mother, brought them to me. He left Florence two hours after she died."
Another silence followed.
"It seems to me that a great deal might be done by a private arrangement. Probably their case is not strong enough, or likely to be strong enough, for them to push it through. It should be arranged that you should receive the 1000 a year that Sir David intended to give your mother."
Molly laughed scornfully.
"I"d rather beg my bread than be their pensioner. No, no; you entirely mistake the situation. I shall have no dealings with them at all--no nonsense about arbitration or private arrangements. I won"t give them any opportunity of feeling generous. It must"--she spoke very slowly and looked at him fiercely--"with me it must be all or nothing, and"--she got up suddenly and began smoothing her gloves over her wrists--"and as I don"t choose to starve it must be all. But if I can"t go through with it (which is quite possible) I shall throw up the sponge and get out of this world as quickly as possible."
"If you have made up your mind," said Mark sternly, "to defy G.o.d, in Whom I know that you believe, to defy the laws of man, whose punishment _may_ come, whereas His punishment must come, why have you told me all this?"
"I had to tell some one; I was suffocating. You don"t know"--she stood looking out of the window a strange expression of hunger and loneliness succeeding the fierceness of a few moments before--"you don"t know what it is to have in your own mind a long, long story about yourself that has never been told. To have been lonely and hardly treated and deceived and spurned, and never to have put your own case to any one human being!
To have cried from childhood till twenty-two, knowing that n.o.body really cared! There comes a time when you would rather say the worst of yourself than keep silence. To accuse yourself is the natural thing; silence is the unnatural thing."
"Good G.o.d!" said Mark, rising, "don"t stop there. If you must accuse yourself, pa.s.s judgment also. Cla.s.s yourself where you have chosen with your eyes open to stand. Would you allow any amount of provocation and unhappiness to excuse a systematic fraud? Do you think that the thief brought up to sin has less or more excuse than you have? Are you the only person who has known a lonely childhood? Can you tell me here in this room that G.o.d never showed you what love really is? He has never left you alone, and you wish in vain now that He would leave you alone.
For your present life is so unbearable that you feel that you may choose death rather than go on with it."
"I shall pay heavily for the relief of speech if I am to have a sermon preached all to myself," said Molly insolently. "I was speaking of the need of human love; I was speaking of all I had suffered, and it is easy for you to retort upon me that I might have had Divine Love only that I chose to reject it. Tell me, were you brought up without a mother"s love?"
"No; I had--I have a mother who loves me almost too much."
"Have you known real loneliness?"
"I believe every man and woman has known that the soul is alone."
Molly shook her head.
"That is a mood; mine was a permanent state. Have you ever known what it is to see G.o.d"s will on one side, and all possibilities of human happiness, glory, success, and pleasure, opposed to it?"
The young man blushed deeply.
"Yes, I have."
Molly was checked.
"I forgot," she answered; "but still you don"t understand. You were an intimate friend of G.o.d when He asked you for the sacrifice, whereas I--I had only an inkling, a suspicion of that Love. Besides, you were not asked to give all your possessions to your enemies! No; too much has been asked of me."
"Can too much be asked where all has been given?" asked Father Molyneux.
"That is an old point for a sermon," said Molly wearily. "You don"t understand; you are of no use to me. Good-bye! I don"t think I shall come again."