Chapter 16

MOLLY'S NIGHT WATCH

That night Molly could write it on the tablets of her mind that she had passed a nearly perfect day. The evening had not promised to be as happy as the rest, but it had held a happy hour. Mrs. Delaport Green had made a masterly descent just in time for dinner. Molly smiled at the thought when alone in her room. A beautiful tea-gown had expressed the invalid, and was most becoming.

"Every one has been so kind, dear Lady Groombridge; really, it is a temptation to be ill in this house--everything so perfectly done."

Lady Groombridge most distinctly grunted.

"Why is toothache so peculiarly hard to bear?" She turned to Edmund Grosse.

"It wants a good deal of philosophy certainly, especially when one's face swells; but yours, fortunately, has not lost its usual outline." And he gave her a complimentary little bow.

"Oh! there you are wrong," cried the sufferer. "My face is very much swollen on one side."

But she did not mention on which side the disfigurement was to be seen, and she ate an excellent dinner and talked very brightly to her host, who could not think why his wife had taken an evident dislike to the little woman. Edmund teased her several times, and would not let her settle down into her usual state of self-content, but after dinner she wisely took refuge with the merciful Rose.

Lady Groombridge meanwhile gave Molly a dose of good advice, kindly, if a little roughly, administered.

"I was pretty and an orphan myself, and it is not very easy work; then you have money, which makes it both better and worse. Be with wise people as much as you can; if they are a little dull it is worth while. If you take up with any bright, amusing woman you meet, you will find yourself more worried in the long run;" and she glanced significantly at Mrs. Delaport Green.

The obvious nature of the advice, of which this remark is a sample, did not spoil it. Sometimes it is a comfort to have the thing said to us that we quite see for ourselves. In to-day's unwonted mood Molly was ready to receive very ordinary wisdom as golden.

And then Lady Groombridge discovered that Molly was musical, and the older woman loved music, finding in it some of the romance which was shut out by her own limitations and by a life of over great bustle and worry.

So Molly found in her music expression for her joy in the spring, and her wistful, undefined sense of hope in life.

Lady Groombridge, sitting near her, listened almost hungrily, and asked for more. She was utterly sad to-night with the "might have been" of a childless woman. The news of the final sacrifice on the part of the heir to Groombridge, of all that meant so much to herself and her husband, had made so keen to her the sense of emptiness in their old age. And the music soothed her into a deeper feeling of submission that in reality underlay the outward unrest and discontent of to-day. Submission was, at one time, the most marked virtue of every class in our country, and it may be found sometimes in those who, having lost all other conscious religion, will still say, "He knows best," revealing thereby the bed-rock of faith as the foundation of their lives. Lady Groombridge had not lost her religious beliefs, but she was more dutiful than devout, and did not herself often reflect on what strength duty depended.

And Molly, who knew nothing of submission, yet ministered to the older woman's peace by her music. When the men came out, Lord Groombridge took a chair close to his wife's as if to share in her pleasure, and Edmund moved out of Molly's sight. She sometimes heard the voice of Rose or of Billy or of Mrs. Delaport Green, but not Sir Edmund's, and she naturally thought he was listening, whereas part of the time he was reading a review. But as the ladies were going up to bed, he said, looking into the large, grey eyes:

"Who said she could do nothing but run like a deerhound and bandage like a surgeon? And now I find she can play like an artist. What next?"

And Molly, standing in her room, said to herself that it had been the happiest day of her life.

But a moment later the maid came in, and while helping to take off her dinner dress, told her mistress that the kitchenmaid in a room near hers was groaning horribly. It seemed that Lady Groombridge had given out some medicine, and Lady Rose had sent up her hot-water bottle and her spirit-lamp, and had advised that the bottle be constantly refilled during the night.

"But I'm sure, miss, she shouldn't take that medicine. I took on myself to tell her not to till I'd spoken to you, and I'm sure I don't know who is going to sit up filling bottles to-night. Lady Groombridge's maid"--in a tone of deep respect--"isn't one to be disturbed, and the scullerymaid won't get to bed till one in the morning: this girl being ill it gives her double work."

Molly instantly rose to the situation. She knew of better appliances than the softest hot-water bottles, and soon after her noiseless entrance into the housemaid's attic the pain had been relieved. But, being a little afraid that the girl was threatened with appendicitis, she knew that if that were the case the relief from the application she had used was only temporary. However, the patient rested longer than she expected. Molly sat by the open window, while behind her on the two narrow beds lay the sick girl and the now loudly-snoring scullerymaid, who had come up a little before twelve o'clock.

"Not quite six hours' sleep that girl will get to-night," mused Molly, "and then downstairs again and two hours' work before the cook comes down to scold her. What a life!"

But, after all, Molly had noticed the blush with which the girl had put a few violets in a little pot on the chimney-piece. Was it quite sure that Miss Dexter's life would be happier than that of the snorer on the bed, who smiled once or twice in her noisy sleep?

"There is happiness in this world after all," mused Molly, soothed by thoughts of the past day, by the stillness on the face of the earth, and by a certain rest that came to her with all acts of kindness--a certain lull to those activities of mind and instinct that constantly led her out of the paths of peace.

This was a sacred time of the night to Molly. It was associated in her mind with the best hours she had ever lived, hours of sick nursing and devotion, hours of real use and help. For months now she had been living entirely for herself, to fight her own battle and make her own way in a hostile world. She had had much excitement and even real pleasure. Her imagination had taken fire with the notion that she must assert herself or be crushed in the race of life. Heavy ordinary people would find it hard to understand Molly's strange idealisation of the glories of the kingdom of this world which she meant to conquer. And if she were frustrated in her passion for worldly success, there were capacities in her which she as yet hardly suspected, but she did feel at times the stirrings of evil things, cruelty, revenge, and she hardly knew what else. How could people understand her? She shrank from understanding herself.

But to-night she knew the inspiration of another ideal; she recognised the possibility of aims in which self hardly counts. There had been indeed a stir in the minds of all at Groombridge when they knew of the final step taken by the heir. Molly, looking up at the great castle, on her homeward drive, with its massive towers and its most commanding position, had felt more and more impressed by an action on so big a scale. It was impossible to be at Groombridge and not to feel the great and noble opportunities its possession must give any remarkable man; and the man who could give up such opportunities must be a very remarkable man indeed. In Molly's self-engrossed life it had something of the same effect as a great thunderstorm among mountains would have had in the physical order.

And to-night it came over her again, and she seemed to be listening to the echoes of a far vibrating sound. And might there not be happiness for Mark Molyneux? Might it not be happiness for herself to give up the wretched, uncomfortable fight that life so often seemed to be, and to let loose the Molly who could toil and go sleepless and be happy, if she could achieve any diminution of bodily pain in man or woman, child or beast?

The dawn lightened; one or two rabbits stirred in the bracken in the near park--this was peace. Then Molly smiled tenderly at the dawn. There might come another solution in which life would be unselfish without such acute sacrifice, and in which evil possibilities would be starved for lack of temptation. And all that was good would grow in the sunshine.

And the sleeping scullerymaid smiled also.