She stood talking between Molly and Mrs. Delaport Green in a voice of some impatience as she scanned the landscape in search of Rose.
"Dear me, where has Rose gone to? and she knew how much I wanted to have a talk with her before dinner. And I wanted to tell her not to let our clergyman speak about incense and candles. He was more tiresome than usual after Rose was here last time."
Mrs. Delaport Green tried to interject some civil remarks, but Lady Groombridge paid not the slightest attention. The only visitors who interested her in the least were Rose and Edmund Grosse. She could hardly remember why she had invited Mrs. Delaport Green and Molly when she met them in London, and Billy was always Lord Groombridge"s guest.
"Well, if Rose won"t come out of the wood, I suppose we may as well come in, and perhaps you would like to see your room;" and, with an air of resignation, she led the way.
She stood in the middle of a gorgeously-upholstered room of the date of George IV., and looked fretfully round.
"Of course it is hideous, but I think if you have a good thing even of the worst date it is best to leave it alone;" and then, with a gleam of humour in her eye, she turned to Molly, "and whenever you feel your taste vitiated (or whatever they call it nowadays) in your room next door, you can always look out of the window, you know." And then, speaking to Mrs. Delaport Green:
"We have no light of any sort or kind, and no bathrooms, but there are plenty of candles, and I can"t see why, with large hip baths and plenty of water, people can"t keep clean. Yes, dinner is at 8.15 sharp; I hope you have everything you want; there is no bell into your maid"s room, but the housemaid can always fetch your maid."
Then she ushered Molly into the next room and, after briefly pointing out its princ.i.p.al defects, she left her to rest her body and tire her mind on a hard but gorgeously-upholstered couch until it should be time to dress for dinner.
CHAPTER IX
A LITTLE MORE THAN KIND
Edmund Grosse felt more tolerant of Billy at Groombridge Castle than elsewhere. At Groombridge he was looked upon as a kindly weakness of Lord Groombridge"s, who consulted him about the stables and enjoyed his jokes. This position certainly made him more attractive to Edmund, but he was not sorry that Billy, who seldom troubled a church, went there on Easter Sunday morning and left him in undisturbed possession of the terrace.
The sun was just strong enough to be delightful, and, with an interesting book and an admirable cigar, it ought to have been a goodly hour for Grosse. But the fact was that he had wished to walk to church with Rose, and he had quite hoped that if it were only for his soul"s sake she would betray some wish for him to come. But if she didn"t, he wouldn"t. He knew quite well that she would be pleased if he went, but if she were so silly and self-conscious as to be afraid of appearing to want his company--well and good; she should do without it.
He had been disappointed and annoyed with Rose during their walk on the evening before. The simple, matter-of-fact way in which they had been jogging along in London was changed. At first, indeed, she had been natural enough, but then she had become silent for some moments, and afterwards had veered away from personal topics with a tiresome persistency. He half suspected the truth, that this was due to a careless word of his own which had betrayed how suddenly he had given up his intention to spend Easter on the Riviera. If she had jumped to the conclusion that this change was because Edmund had learnt at the eleventh hour that Rose would be at Groombridge, she had no right to be so quick-sighted. It was almost "Missish" of Rose, he told himself, to be so ready to think his heart in danger, and to be so unnecessarily tender of his feelings. She might wait for him to begin the attack before she began to build up fortifications.
He was at the height of his irritation against Rose, when the three other ladies came out on the terrace. Lady Groombridge instantly told Mrs. Delaport Green that she knew she wished to visit the dairy, and hustled her off through the garden. Edmund rose and smiled, with his peculiar, paternal admiration, at Molly, whose dark looks were at their very best set in the complete whiteness of her hat and dress. Then he glanced after the figures that were disappearing among the rose-bushes.
"The party is not in the least what your chaperone expected; indeed, we can hardly be dignified by the name of a party at all, but you see how happy she is. She even enjoyed dear old Groombridge"s prosing last night, and she has been very happy in church, and now she is going to see the dairy. The only thing that troubles her is that Lady Groombridge has not allowed her to change her gown, and a well-regulated mind cannot enjoy her prayers and a visit to cows in the same gown. Now suppose,"
he looked at Molly with a lazy, friendly smile, "you put on a short skirt and come for a walk."
A little later they were walking through the woods on the hills beyond the Castle. Perhaps he intended that Rose, who had stayed to speak to the vicar, should find that he had not been waiting about for her return.
"I would give a good deal to possess the cheerful philosophy of Mrs.
Delaport Green," he said, as, looking down through an opening in the trees, they could see that little woman with her skirts gracefully held up standing by while Lady Groombridge discoursed to the keeper of cows, who looked sleek and prosperous and a little sulky the while.
"You would be wise to learn some of it from her," Edmund went on. "Isn"t this nice? Let us sit upon the ground, as it is dry, and feel how good everything is. You like this sort of thing, don"t you?"
Molly murmured "Yes," and sat down on a mossy bank and looked up into the glorious blue sky and then at a tuft of large, pale primroses in the midst of dark ground ivy, then far down to the fields where a group of brown cows, rich in colour, stood lazily content by a blue stream that sparkled in the sunlight. Edmund was not hard-hearted, and Molly looked very young, and a pathetic trouble underlay the sense of pleasure in her face. There was no peace in Molly"s eyes, only the quick alternations of acute enjoyment and the revolt against pain and a child"s resentment at supposed blame.
Pleasure was uppermost at this moment, for so many slight, easy, human pleasures were new to her. She sat curved on the ground, with the ease and suppleness of a greyhound ready to spring, whereas Sir Edmund was forty and a little more stiff than his age warranted.
"But when you do enjoy yourself I imagine it"s worth a good many hours of our friend"s sunny existence. Oh, dear, dear!" For at that moment the dairy was a scene of some confusion; two enormous dogs from the Castle had bounded up to Lady Groombridge, barking outrageously, and one of them had covered her companion with mud.
"She is saying that it does not matter in the least, and that the gown is an old rag, but I"m sure it"s new on to-day, and it"s impossible to say how much has not been paid for it."
Molly laughed; she felt as sure that Sir Edmund was right as if she could hear every word the little woman was saying.
"Well, _that_ you will allow is humbug!"
"Yes, I think I will this time, and I believe, too, that the philosophy has collapsed. I"m sure she"s a ma.s.s of ruffled feathers, and her mind is full of things that she will hurl at the devoted head of her maid when she gets in. You can only really wound that type of woman to the quick by touching her clothes. There now, is that severe enough?"
"Why do we always talk of Mrs. Delaport Green?" asked Molly.
"Because she is on trial in your mind and you are not quite sure whether she suits."
"I might go further and fare worse," said Molly.
"Is there no one you would naturally go to?" asked Edmund.
"There is the aunt who brought me up, Mrs. Carteret, and I"d rather--"
She paused. "There is nothing in this world I would not rather do than go back to her."
Molly"s face was completely overcast; it was threatening and angry.
"Poor child!" said Edmund gently.
"I wonder," said Molly, "if anybody used to say "poor child" when I was small. There must have been some one who pitied an orphan, even in the cheerful, open-air system of Aunt Anne"s house, where no one ever thought of feelings, or fancies, or frights at night, or loneliness."
Edmund looked at her with a sympathy that tried to conceal his curiosity.
"Was it possible," he wondered, "that she really thought she was an orphan?"
"It"s dreadful to think of a very lonely child," he said.
"But some people have to be lonely all their lives," said Molly.
Sir Edmund was touched. She had raised her head and looked at him with a pleading confidence. Then, with one swift movement, she was suddenly kneeling and tearing to pieces two or three primroses in succession.
"Some people have to say things that can never be really said, or else keep everything shut up."
"Don"t you think they may make a mistake, and that the things can be said--" He hesitated; he did not want to press her unfairly into confidence; "to the right person?" he concluded rather lamely.
"Who is to find the right person?" said Molly bitterly; "the right person is easy to find for people who have just ordinary cares and difficulties, but the people who are in real difficulties don"t easily find the right person. I doubt if he or she exists myself!"
She turned to find Edmund Grosse looking at her with far too much meaning in his face; there was a degree and intensity of interest in his look that might be read in more than one way.
Molly blushed with the simplicity suited to seventeen rather than to twenty-one. She was very near to the first outpouring in her life, the torrent of her pent-up thoughts and feelings was pressing against the flood-gates. It seemed to her that she had never known true and real sympathy before she felt that look. She held out her hands towards him with a little unconscious gesture of appeal.
"I have had a strange life," she said; "I am in very strange circ.u.mstances now."
But Edmund suddenly got up, and before she could speak again a slight sound on the path showed her that some one was coming.
Rose, finding every one dispersed, had taken a walk by herself in the wood. She was glad to be alone; she felt the presence of G.o.d in the woods as very near and intimate. Her mind had one of those moments of complete rest and feeding on beautiful things which come to those who have known great mental suffering in their lives, and to whom the world is not giving its gaudy preoccupations. So, walking amidst the glory of spring lit by a spiritual sunshine, Rose came round a little stunted yew-tree to find Molly kneeling on the ground ivy, and Edmund standing by her. Molly rose in one movement to her full height, as if her legs possessed no jointed impediments, and a fiercely negative expression filled the grey eyes. Rose"s kind hand had unwittingly slammed the flood-gates in the moment they had opened; and Edmund, seeing that look, and feeling the air electric, suddenly reverted to a belief in Molly"s sense of guilt towards Rose.