Chapter 14

THE PET VICE

"May I come in?"

At the same moment the door was half opened, and Lady Groombridge, in a heavy, dark-coloured gown, made her way in, with the swish of a long, silk train. She half opened the door with an air of mystery, and she closed it softly while she held her flat silver candlestick in her hand as if she wished she could conceal it, yet the oil lamps were still burning in the gallery behind her. The appearance of the wish for concealment was merely the unconscious expression of her mental condition at the moment.

Two women looked up in surprise as she made this unconsciously dramatic entrance into her guest's bedroom. Lady Rose was sitting in front of the uncurtained window in a loose, white dressing-gown, lifting a mass of her golden hair with her hair brush. She had been talking eagerly, but vaguely, before her hostess came in, in order to conceal the fact that she wished intensely to be allowed to go to bed.

Lady Rose made many such minor sacrifices on the altar of charity, and she was sorry for the tall, thin, mysterious girl who, at first almost impossibly stiff and cold, had volunteered a visit to her room to-night. It was only a very few who were ever asked to come into Rose's room, and she had hastily covered the miniature of her dead husband in his uniform with her small fan before she admitted Molly.

By some strange impulse, Molly had attached herself to Rose during the rest of that Easter Sunday. Curiosity, admiration, or jealousy might have accounted for Molly's doing this. To herself it seemed merely part of her determination to face the position without fear or fancies. If Lady Rose found out later with whom she had spent those hours, at least she should not think that Molly had been embarrassed. Perhaps, too, Sir Edmund's efforts to keep them apart made her more anxious to be with her.

Having been kindly welcomed to Rose's room, Molly found herself slightly embarrassed; they seemed to have used up all common topics during the day, and Molly was certainly not prepared to be confidential.

The entrance of the hostess came as a relief. That lady, without glancing at Rose or Molly as she came into the middle of the room, banged the candlestick down on a small table, and then threw herself into an arm-chair, which gave a creak of sympathy in response to her loud sigh.

"It is perfectly disgraceful!" she said, "and now I don't really know what has happened. On Easter Sunday night, too!"

Molly had been standing by the window, looking out on the moonlit park. She now leaned further across the wide window-seat, so that her slight, sea-green silk-clad figure might not be obtrusive, and the dark keen face was turned away for the same purpose.

"That woman has actually," Lady Groombridge went on, "been playing cards in the smoking-room on Easter Sunday night with Billy and those two boys. What Groombridge will say, I can't conceive; it is perfectly disgraceful!"

"Have they been playing for much?"

"Oh, for anything, I suppose; and Edmund Grosse says that the boy from the Parsonage has lost any amount to Billy. They have fleeced him in the most disgraceful way."

There was a long silence. Rose looked utterly distressed.

"If he had only refused to play," she said at last, as if she wished to return in imagination to a happier state of things.

"It's no use saying that now," said Lady Groombridge, with an air of ineffable wisdom.

Molly Dexter bit her tiny evening handkerchief, and her grey eyes laughed at the moonlight.

"Well, Rose, I can't say you are much comfort to me," the hostess went on presently, with a dawn of humour on her countenance as she crossed one leg over the other.

"But, my dear, what can I say?"

The tall, white figure, brush in hand, rose and stood over the elderly woman in the chair. Rose had had the healthy development of a girlhood in the country, but her regular features were more deeply marked now and there were dark lines under her clear, blue eyes.

"Do you think," said the hostess in a brooding way, "that Mrs. What's-her-name Green would tell you how much he lost, Rose, if you went to her room? Of course, I can't possibly ask her."

"Oh no; she thinks me a goody-goody old frump."

At the same moment another brush at the splendid hair betrayed a half-consciousness of the grace of her own movements.

"She wouldn't say a word to me--she is much more likely to tell one of the men. Perhaps she will tell Edmund Grosse to-morrow; he is so easy to talk to."

"But that's no use for to-night, and Groombridge will be simply furious if I ask him to interfere without telling him how much it comes to. Billy won't say a word."

"I think," said Rose very slowly, "that if we all go to bed now, we shall have some bright idea in the morning."

Before this master-stroke of suggestion had reached Lady Groombridge's brain, a very low voice came from the window.

"Would you like me to go and ask her?"

The hostess started; she had forgotten Miss Molly Dexter. A little dull blush rose to her forehead.

"Oh dear, I had forgotten you were there; but, after all, she is no relation of yours, and it isn't your fault, you know. Could you--would you really not mind asking her?"

"I don't mind at all. Might I take your candle?"

"Of course," said Lady Groombridge, "you won't, don't you know----"

"Say that you sent me?" The low, detached voice betrayed no sarcasm. She knew perfectly well that Lady Groombridge disliked being beholden to her at that moment. It was rather amusing to make her so.

For fifteen minutes after that the travelling clock by Lady Rose's bed ticked loudly, and drowned the faint murmur of her prayers while she knelt at the _prie-dieu_.

Lady Groombridge knew Rose too well to be surprised. But she did not, like the young widow, pass the time in prayer; she was worried--even deeply so. She was of an anxious temperament, and she was really shocked at what had happened.

Molly did not come back with any air of mystery, but with a curiously negative look.

"Thirty-five pounds," she said very quietly.

Lady Groombridge sat up, very wide awake.

"More than half his allowance for a whole year," she said with conviction.

"Oh dear, dear," said Lady Rose, rising as gracefully as a guardian angel from her _prie-dieu_.

Molly made no comment, although in her heart she was very angry with Mrs. Delaport Green. Her quick "Good-night" was very cordially returned by the other two.

"Now tell me something more about Miss Molly Dexter," said Rose, sinking on to a tiny footstool at Lady Groombridge's feet as soon as they were alone.

"I am ashamed to say that I know very little about her; I am simply furious with myself for having asked them at all. I don't often yield to kind-hearted impulses, and I'm sure I'm punished enough this time."

Lady Groombridge gave a snort.

"But who is she? Is she one of the Malcot Dexters?"

"Yes; I can tell you that much. She is the daughter of a John Dexter I used to know a little. He died many years ago, not very long after divorcing his wife, and this poor girl was brought up by an aunt, and Sir Edmund says she had a bad time of it. Then she made one of those odd arrangements people make nowadays, to be taken about by this Mrs. Delaport Green, and I met them at Aunt Emily's, and, of course, I thought they were all right and asked them to come here. After that I heard a little more about the girl from some one in London; I can't remember who it was now."

"Poor thing," said Rose; "she looks as if she had had a sad childhood. But what curious eyes; I find her looking through and through me."

"Yes; you have evidently got a marked attraction for her."

"Repulsion, I should have called it," said Rose, with her gentle laugh.

Lady Groombridge laughed too, and got up to go to bed.

"And what became of the mother?"

"She is living--" said the other; then she caught her sleeve in the table very clumsily, and was a moment or two disengaging the lace. "She is living," she then said rather slowly, "in Paris, I think it is, but this girl has never seen her."

"How dreadful!"

"Yes. Good-night, Rose; do get to bed quickly,--a wise remark when it is I who have been keeping you up!"

Lady Groombridge, when she got to her own room, murmured to herself:

"I only stopped just in time. I nearly said Florence, and that is where the other wicked woman lives. It's odd they should both live in Florence. But--how absurd, I'm half asleep--it would be much odder if there were not two wicked women in Florence."

Sir Edmund was aware as soon as he took his seat by Molly at the breakfast-table that she knew why Lady Groombridge was pouring out tea with a dark countenance. He put a plate of omelette in his own place, and then asked if Molly needed anything. As she answered in the negative he murmured as he sat down:

"Mrs. Delaport Green is not down?"

"She has a furious toothache."

Molly's look answered his.

"I suppose there is no such thing as a dentist left in London on Easter Monday?"

No more was safe just then; but by common consent they moved out on to the terrace as soon as they had finished breakfast.

"It is too tiresome, too silly, too wrong," said Molly.

"Yes; the pet vice should be left at home," said Edmund. "Many of them do it because it's fashionable, but this one must have it in the blood. I saw her begin to play, and she was a different creature when she touched the cards. What sort of repentence is there?"

"I found her crying last night like a child, but this morning I see she is going to brazen it out. But she wants to quarrel with me at once, so I don't get much confidence."

"But you don't mind that?"

"Not in the least, only--" Molly sighed, but intimate as their tone was, she did not now feel any inclination to reveal her greater troubles.

"I don't want to end up badly with my first venture, and I have nowhere else to go. For to-day I think she will talk of going to see the dentist until she finds out how she is treated here."

"Oh! that will be all right for to-day," said Edmund. "There are no possible trains on Bank holiday, and no motor. Let her get off early to-morrow."

Molly had evidently sought his opinion as decisive, and she turned as if to go and repeat it to Mrs. Delaport Green.

"But what will you do yourself?" he asked very gently.

"I shall go away with her, and then--I wonder--" She hesitated, and looked full into his face. "Would you be shocked if I took a flat by myself? I don't want to hunt for another Mrs. Delaport Green just now."

Sir Edmund paused. It struck him for a moment as very tiresome that he should be falling into the position of counsellor and guide to this girl, while he had anything but her prosperity at heart. He looked at her, and there was in her attitude a pathetic confidence in his judgment.

"I don't want," she went on, holding her head very straight and looking away to the wooded hills, "I don't want to do anything unconventional."

A deep blush overspread the dark face--a blush of shame and hesitation, for the words, "your mother's daughter ought to be more careful than other girls," so often in poor Molly's mind, were repeated there now.

"If there were an old governess, or some one of that sort," suggested Sir Edmund, with hesitation.

"Oh yes, yes!" cried Molly eagerly; "there is one, if I could only get her. Oh, thank you, yes! I wonder I did not think of that before." And she gave a happy, youthful laugh at this solution.

"Is it some one you really care for?" asked Edmund, with growing interest.

"I don't know about really caring"--Molly looked puzzled--"but she would do. There is one thing more I wanted to ask you. About the silly boy last night: whom does he owe the money to? I know nothing about bridge."

"He owes it to Billy."

Molly looked sorry.

"I thought, if it were to Mrs. Delaport Green----"

"You might have paid the money?" Edmund smiled kindly at her. "No, no, Miss Dexter, that will be all right."

She turned from him, laughing, and went indoors to Mrs. Delaport Green's room.

She found that lady writing letters, and the floor was scattered with them, six deep round the table. She put her hand to her face as Molly came in.

"There are no possible trains," said Molly, "so I'm afraid you must bear it. Sir Edmund advises us to go by an early train to-morrow: he thinks to-day you would be better here, as there won't be a dentist left in London."

"I am very brave at bearing pain, fortunately," was the answer, "and I am trying, even now, to get on with my letters. I think I shall go to Eastbourne to-morrow; there are always good dentists in those places. I love the churches there, and the air will brace my nerves. I might have gone to Brighton only Tim is there. Will you"--she paused a moment--"will you come to Eastbourne too?"

Mrs. Delaport Green was not disposed to have Molly with her. She was exceedingly annoyed at the _débâcle_ of her visit to Groombridge--a visit which she was describing in glowing terms in her letters to all her particular friends. It would be unpleasant to have Molly's critical eyes upon her; she liked, and was accustomed to, people with a very different expression.

Molly, however, ignoring very patent hints with great calmness and firmness, told her that she intended to stay with her for just as long as it was necessary before finding some one to live with in a little flat in London. She felt the possibility, at first, of Mrs. Delaport Green's becoming insolent, but she was presently convinced that she had mastered the situation. They agreed to go to Eastbourne together next day, and then to look for a flat for Molly in London. The suggestion that Mrs. Delaport Green might help Molly to choose the furniture proved very soothing indeed.

Molly went down-stairs again to let Sir Edmund know they were not going to leave till next morning, and to find out if he had succeeded in speaking to Lady Groombridge.

As she passed through the hall, she saw that he was sitting with Lady Rose by a window opening on to the terrace. She was passing on, being anxious not to interrupt them, but Rose held out her hand.

"I've hardly seen you this morning. Do come and sit with us." And then, as Molly rather shyly sat down by her side on a low sofa, Lady Rose went on:

"I was just telling Sir Edmund a very beautiful thing that has happened, only it is very sad for dear Lord Groombridge and for her. They have only had the news this morning, but it is not a secret, and it is very wonderful. You know that this place was to go to a cousin, quite a young man, and they liked him very much. They did mind his being a Roman Catholic, but they were very good about it, and now he has written that he has actually been ordained a priest, and that he will not have the property or the Castle as he is going to be just an ordinary parish priest working amongst the poor. It is wonderful, isn't it? They say the next brother is a very ordinary young man--not like this wonderful one--and so they are very much upset to-day, poor dears. They knew he was studying for the priesthood, but they did not realise that the time for his Ordination had really come."

Molly murmured shyly something that sounded sympathetic, and then, looking at Sir Edmund, ventured to say:

"Mrs. Delaport Green would like to stay till the early train to-morrow. But have you seen Lady Groombridge?"

"Yes; it's all right--or rather, it's all wrong--but she won't tell Groombridge to-day, and she will be quite fairly civil, I think."

"And this news," said Rose gently, "will make them both think less of that unfortunate affair last night."

Molly rose and moved off with an unusually genial smile.