Chapter 17

SIR DAVID'S MEMORY

Lady Rose Bright was faintly disturbed on Tuesday morning, and came into Lady Groombridge's sitting-room after Mrs. Delaport Green and Molly had left the castle too preoccupied to notice the tall figure of Grosse in a far window.

This room had happily escaped all Georgian gorgeousness of decoration, and the backs of the books, a fine eighteenth-century collection, stood flush to the walls. The long room was all white except for the books, the flowered chintz covers, some fine bronze statuettes, and a few bowls of roses.

Lady Rose moved mechanically towards the empty fire-place.

It was one thing to try not to dislike Miss Dexter, and to see her in a haze of Christian love; it was another to realise that, while she herself had slept most comfortably, Molly had not been to bed at all because the little kitchenmaid was in pain. Humility and appreciation were rising in Rose's mind, as half absently she gently raised a vase from the chimney-piece, and, turning to the light to examine its mark, saw Sir Edmund looking at her from his distant window.

A little, quite a little, flush came into her cheeks; not much deeper than the soft, healthy colour usual to them. She examined the china with more attention.

The tall figure moved slowly, lazily, down the room towards her, holding the _Times_ in one hand.

"It's not Oriental," he said, "it's Lowestoft."

"Ah!" said Rose absently. She felt the eyes whose sadness had been apparent even to Mrs. Delaport Green looking her over with a quick scrutiny.

"Why, in your general scheme of benevolence, have you not thought it fit, during the last few days, to give me the chance of talking to you alone?" The tone was full of exasperation, but ironical too, as if he were faintly amused at himself for being exasperated.

"I don't know. Have I avoided being alone with you?" Rose had turned to the chimney-piece.

Edmund Grosse sank into a low chair, crossed his legs, and looked up at her defiantly, but with keen observation.

"It has been too absurd," he said, "you have hardly spoken to me, and you know, of course, that I came here to see you. I meant to go to the Riviera until I heard that you were coming here."

"But you have been quite happy, quite amused. There seemed no reason why I should interrupt. And you know, Edmund, they said that you came here every year."

"Well, I didn't come only to see you," he said, "as you like it better that way. And now, it is about Miss Molly Dexter I want to speak to you."

This time Rose gave a little ghost of a sigh, and looked at him with unutterable kindness. She was feeling that, after all, she had come second in his consciousness--after Miss Dexter, whom she could not like, but who had sat up all night with the kitchenmaid.

"Why about Miss Dexter? what can I have to do with her?" The tone was almost contemptuous--not quite, Rose was too kind.

"Do you remember that I went to Florence?"

"Yes; I did not want you to go." There was at once a distinct note of distress in her voice. It was horribly painful to her to have to think of the things she tried so hard to bury away.

"No, but I went," he said very gently; "and it was useless, as I knew it would be. But I want to tell you one thing which I have learnt, and which I think you ought to know, as it may be inconvenient if you do not. It is that Miss Dexter----" Rose interrupted him quickly.

"Is the daughter of the lady in Florence?" She gave a little hysterical laugh. He looked at her in astonishment.

"And that is why she dislikes me so much. Do you know, Edmund, I had a feeling from the moment I first saw her that there was something wrong between us. It gave me a horrible feeling, and then I asked Mary Groombridge about her, and she told me the poor girl's story; only she said the mother lived in Paris. Of course Mary does not know, or she would never have asked us here together. But that is how I knew what you were going to say; and yet I had no notion of it till a moment ago, when it came to me in a flash. Only I wish I had known sooner!"

It was not common with Rose to say so much at a time, and there had been slight breaks and gaps in her voice, pathetic sounds to the listener. She seemed a little--just a little--out of breath with past sorrow and present pain. Edmund thought he would never come to know all the inflections in that voice.

"I wish I had known sooner. I am afraid I have not been kind to her."

"And if you had known you would have cast your pearls at her feet," he said, in tender anger. "Don't make the mistake of being too kind to her, Rose. I want you to keep her at a distance. There is something all the more dangerous about her because she is distinctly attractive. She has primitive passions, and yet she is not melodramatic; it's a dangerous species."

It was amazing how easy it was to take a severe view of poor Molly after she had gone away, and how he believed what he said.

"She has never seen her mother?" asked Rose gently.

"No, but I am sure she knows about her mother," the slowness in his voice was vindictive; "and that her mother knows what we don't know about the will."

"Edmund dear," said Rose very earnestly, "do please leave that point alone; no good can come of it. I do assure you that no good, only harm, will come of it. It's bad and unwholesome for us all--mother and you and me--to dwell on it. I do really wish you would leave it alone."

Edmund frowned, though he liked that expression, "mother and you and me."

"You needn't think about it unless you wish to," he answered.

"But I wish you wouldn't!"

"If I had banished it from my thoughts up till now, I could not leave it alone now, for I have a clue."

"Oh, don't, Edmund."

"Well, it may come to nothing; only I'm glad that it makes one thing still more clear to me though it may go no further."

He told her then of what the stud-groom had said, and ended by showing her the letter. Rose read it in silence, and then, still standing with her face turned away, she said in a very low voice:

"It is a comfort as far as it goes. But I knew it was so; he never meant things to be as they are--poor David! Edmund, it is of no use to think of it. Even if the paper then witnessed were the will, it is lost now and will never be found. I would rather--I would _really_ rather not think too much about it."

"No, no," he answered soothingly, "don't dear, don't dwell on it."

"I like," she answered, "to dwell on the thought that David did think of me lovingly, and did not mean to leave me to any shame. I am sure he never meant to leave me poor, and to let me suffer all the publicity about that poor woman. I am sure he always meant to change the will in time, but, you see, all that mischief is done and can't be undone. I mean the humiliation and the idea that she was in Florence all the time during our married life, and all the talk, and my having to meet this unfortunate girl who has his money. All of them think he was unfaithful to me, and nothing can put that right. Nothing--I mean nothing of this world--can put any of that right. And I can't bear the idea of a quarrel and going to law with these people for money; it may be pride, but I simply can't bear it."

"But, don't you see," said Edmund, "that if we could prove there was another will, that would clear David's reputation."

"It won't prevent people knowing that there was the first will and all about the poor woman in Florence."

"No; but it will make people feel that he behaved properly in the end. It will alter their bad opinion of him."

"But it will also make them go on thinking and talking of the scandal, and if it is left alone they will forget. People forget so soon, because there is always something new to talk about. He will just take his place among the heroes who died for their country, and the rest will be forgotten."

Edmund looked at her quickly, as if taking stock of the delicate nature of the complex womanly materials he had to deal with, but her face was still averted.

"I think it's hard on David." He spoke as if yielding to her wish. "I do think it is hard. If he did make this will, and it is lost through chance or fraud, I think it is very hard that his last wishes should be disregarded, and his memory should suffer in all right-minded people's opinions. Of course, it is for you to decide, but I own I should otherwise feel it wrong to leave a stone unturned if anything could be done to restore his good name."

He felt that Rose was terribly troubled, but he could not quite realise what it was to her to disturb her hardly-won peace of mind and calm of conscience.

"If it were not for the money!" she faltered. "I shall get to long for that money; so many people become horrid when they have a lawsuit about a fortune. It has always seemed to me that if the money is only for one's self one might leave it alone, and then, after all, if we went to law and failed, things would be much worse than they were before."

"Well," said Edmund, slightly exasperated but controlling himself. "I don't mean to do anything definite yet, but we ought to find out if we can make a case of it. We can always stop in time if we can't get what we want, but it's worth while to try. It is not merely the money--the less you dwell on that the better. Seriously, I think it would be very wrong that, through any fastidiousness of yours, David's memory should not be cleared if it is possible to clear it."

The last shot had this time reached the mark. After a few minutes' silence Rose said in a very low voice:

"But then, what can I do about it?" He felt that she was hurt, but he knew he had gained his point.

"I don't think you can do anything at this moment but allow me a free hand; I could not do what is necessary without your permission and your trust--and, presently, let me compare notes with you freely. I know what your judgment is worth when you can get rid of those scruples."

"Very well."

But still she did not turn round. Indeed, the wounds in her mind were too deep and too fresh to make the subject give her anything but quivering pain. It was impossible that Edmund should suspect half of what she felt. He naturally concluded that much of her present suffering showed how unconquerably Rose's love for Sir David had outlived the strain put on it. To Rose it would have been much simpler if it had been so. But in fact part of the trial to Rose was the doubt of her own past love, and of her own present loyalty. Had she ever truly loved David while he was still her hero "_sans peur et sans reproche_," could that love have been killed at all? So much anxiety to be sure of having forgiven, so much self-reproach for the failure of her marriage, such an acute, overwhelming sense of shame, and such shrinking from all that was ugly and low, were intermixed and confused in poor Rose's mind that it was no wonder even Edmund, with all his tact and his tenderness, blundered at times.

They were quite silent for some moments. Edmund wanted to see her face but he could not. Presently she looked into the glass over the chimney-piece, and in the glass he saw with remorse a little tear about to fall.

"I think I've caught cold," she murmured to herself. Producing a tiny handkerchief she seemed to apply it to her nose, and so caught that one little tear. Her movements were wonderfully graceful, but the man looking at her did not think of that. What he thought was:--How exactly she was herself and no one else. How could she have that child's simplicity of hers, and her amazing power of seeing through a stone wall? How could she be a saint and have all a woman's faults? How could she live half in another world and yet with all her absurd unworldliness be so eminently a woman of this one? She was twenty-six, but she knew what many women of fifty never learn; she was twenty-six, yet she was more innocent than many a child of thirteen. What a contrast to Molly's crude ignorance and hankering after success!

All the time he looked at her in silence and she did not seem to realise it. She put her handkerchief into her belt and took it out again; she touched her hair, seeing in the glass that it was untidy. Then she sat down on a low stool, and her soft, fluffy black draperies fell round her. She pressed her elbows on her knees, and sank her face in her hands. She might have been alone; he was not quite sure she was not praying. There were some moments of silence. At last she moved, raised her head, and looked him gently full in the face.

"And you--you never talk about yourself," she said, with a thrill in her voice that he had known so long. "I always talk so much of myself when I am alone with you."

"No," he said, with a touch of lazy anger, "I'm not worth talking about, not worth thinking of, and you know it!"

For a moment she flushed.

"You always have abused yourself."

"Because I know what's in your thoughts, and when I am with you I can't help expressing them--there!" he concluded defiantly, and crossed and uncrossed his legs again.

"Edmund, that isn't one bit, one little bit true. But I do wish you were happier."

"Yes, of course," he went on sardonically, "you know that too. You know that I loathe and detest life--that I hate the morning because it begins a new day. Oh, I am bored to extinction, you know all that, you most exasperating woman. I hate"--he suddenly seemed to see that he was giving her pain, and the next words were muttered to himself--"no, I love the pity in your eyes."

The graceful figure sitting there trembled a little, and the white hands covered the eyes again.

"But," he went on quickly in a louder voice, "the pity's no good. You might as well expect me to command an army to-morrow, or become an efficient Prime Minister, or an Archbishop of Canterbury, or a Roman Catholic Cardinal, or anything else that is impossible, as become the sort of man you would like me to be. You know so perfectly well," he laughed, "how rotten I am; you are astonished if you find me do any sort of good--you can't help it, how can you, when it's just and true? Do you know I sometimes have had absurd dreams of what I might have been if you had not been so terribly clear-sighted. You stood in your white frock under the old mulberry tree--your first long skirt--and you saw that I was no good, and you were perfectly right, but, after all, what is your life to be now?"

Rose got up from the stool and rested one hand on the marble mantelpiece. She needed some help, some physical support.

"Edmund," she said, "I don't think I dwell much on the future; I leave all in God's hands. I have been through a good deal now, you must not expect too much of me." She paused. "But what you have said to me about yourself is nonsense; I wish you would not talk like that. You are only forty. You are very clever, very rich, you have the right sort of ambition although you won't say so, and you are, oh! so kind. Couldn't you do something, have some real interest?" He growled inarticulately. "Is it of no use to ask you just to think it over?"

"None whatever," he said firmly and cheerfully.

The gong sounded in the hall for luncheon.