Chapter 24

THE HEIRESS OF MADAME DANTERRE

For about a week after the evening on which she had received her mother's letter and Edmund Grosse had been to see her, Molly Dexter stayed at home from four o'clock till seven o'clock and wore beautiful tea-gowns. She had a very small list of people to whom she was always at home written on a slate, but one by one they had been reduced in number. Now there were five--Father Molyneux, who never came except by appointment; Sir Edmund Grosse; and three ladies who happened to be abroad for the winter.

The week was from a Friday to a Thursday, and on the Thursday several things happened to Molly. It was a brilliant day, and although those evenings from four till seven when nobody came were sorely trying, she was in very good spirits. A friend coming out of church the day before had told her that she had met Sir Edmund Grosse at a country house.

"He said such pretty things about you," purred the speaker, a nice newly "come out" girl who admired Molly very much.

But the main point to Molly had been the fact that Edmund had been away from London. Surely he would come directly now! She seemed to hear, constantly ringing in her ears, the voice in which he had asked if he might "come again very soon."

Thursday had been a good day altogether, for Molly had skated at Prince's and come home with a beautiful complexion to be "At Home" to the privileged from four till seven. She got out of her motor, and was walking to the lift when it came whizzing down from above, and the little friend who had said the nice things yesterday stepped out of it, looking very bright.

"Oh, Miss Dexter," she said, "may I come up again and tell you my good news?" Molly took her kindly by the arm and drew her into the lift again, and they went up. But she hoped the girl would not stay. She wanted to be quite alone, so that if anybody came who mattered very much they would not be disturbed.

"Well, what's the good news?"

Molly looked brilliant as she stood smiling in the middle of the room.

"Well, it isn't a bit settled yet, but I met Sir Edmund Grosse at luncheon, and he asked me if mother would let me go on his yacht to Cairo. Lady Rose Bright is going and Lady Charlton, and he said they all wanted something very young indeed to go with them, so they thought I'd better come, and his nephew Jimmy, too. Wasn't it _awfully_ kind of him?"

Molly turned and poked the fire.

"When do they go?" she asked.

"Sir Edmund starts to-morrow, but Lady Rose and Lady Charlton will follow in about ten days. They will join the yacht at Marseilles, and I should go with them. Do you think mother will let me go, Miss Dexter?"

Miss Dexter looked down.

"Why should your mother object?" she said.

"But it's so sudden."

"Yes, it's very sudden," said Molly, in a low voice.

"I can hardly keep quiet; I don't know how to get through the time till six o'clock, and mother can't be at home till then."

Molly turned back into the room; her face was very white. There were white dents in her nostrils, and there was a bitter smile on her lips. Whatever she might have said was stopped in the utterance. The parlourmaid had come into the room, and now, coming up to Molly, said in a low voice:

"There is a gentleman asking if Miss Dexter will see him on important business; he says he is a doctor, and that he has come from Italy."

Molly frowned.

"What is his name?"

"It sounded like Laccaroni, ma'am."

"Show him up."

"Well, I'm off," said the young visitor, and, still entirely absorbed in her own affairs, she took Molly's limp hand and left the room.

A spare man with a pale face and rather good eyes was announced as "Dr. Laccaroni." "Larrone," he corrected gently. He carried a small old tin despatch box, and looked extremely dusty.

"I am the bearer of sad tidings," he said in English, with a fair accent, in a dry staccato voice. "It was better not to telegraph, as I was to come at once."

"You attended my mother?"

"Yes, until two nights ago. That was the end."

"Did she suffer?"

"For a few hours, yes; and there was also some brain excitement--delirium. In an interval that appeared to be lucid (but I was not quite sure) she told me to come to you, mademoiselle, quite as soon as she was dead, and she gave me money and this little box to bring to you. She said more than once, 'It shall be her own affair.' The key is in this sealed envelope. Afterwards twice she spoke to me: 'Don't forget,' and then the rest was raving. But the last two hours were peace."

"And where is my mother to be buried?"

"Madame will be cremated, and her ashes placed in an urn in the garden, mademoiselle, in a fine mausoleum, with just her name, 'Justine,' and the dates--no more. Madame told me that these were her wishes."

"Do you know what is in this box?"

"Not at all, and I incline to think there may be nothing: the mind was quite confused. And yet I could only calm her by promising to come at once, and so I came, and if mademoiselle will permit I should like to retire to my hotel."

"Can I be of any use to you?"

"Not at all: the money for the journey was more than enough."

Molly was left alone, and she gave orders that no one, without exception, was to be admitted. Then she walked up and down the room in a condition of semi-conscious pain.

At first it seemed as if Dr. Larrone's intelligence had not reached her brain at all. The only clear thing in her mind at that moment was the thought that Edmund was going away at once with Lady Rose Bright. The disappointment was in proportion to the wild hopes of the last week, only Molly had not quite owned to herself how intensely she had looked forward to his next coming. It was true he might still come and see her before he started, but if he came it could not be what she had meant it to be. If he had meant what Molly dreamed of, could he have gone off suddenly on this yachting expedition? She knew the yachting was not thought of when she had seen him, for he told her then that he meant to stay in London for some weeks. But as her thoughts grew clearer, what was most horrible to Molly was a gradual dawning of common daylight into the romance she had been living in for months. For, looking back now, she could not feel sure that any of her views of Edmund's feelings towards herself had been true. It was a tearing at her heart's most precious feelings to be forced to common sense, to see the past in the matter-of-fact way in which it might appear to other people. And yet, Adela Delaport Green had expected him to propose even in the season, but then, what might not the Adela Delaport Greens of life suspect and expect without the slightest foundation? Could Molly herself say firmly and without delusion that Edmund had treated her badly? How she wished she could! She would rather think that he had been charmed away by hostile influence, or even that he had deliberately played with her than feel it all to have been her own vain fancy! It was agony to her to feel that she had without any excuse, set up an idol in her sacred places, and woven about him all the dreams and loves of her youth. It must be remembered not only that it was the first time that Molly had loved in the ordinary sense of the word, but it was absolutely the first time that she had ever felt any deep affection for any human being whatever. And now a great sense of abandonment was on her; the old feeling of isolation, of being cast out, that she had had all her life, was frightfully strong. Edmund had left her; he had deceived her, played with her, she told herself, deluded her; and now her mother's death brought home all the horror, the disgrace, which that mother's life had been for Molly. An outcast whom no one cared for, no one loved, no one wanted. The new gentleness of the past weeks, the new softness, all the high and sacred thoughts that had seemed to have taken possession of her inner life, were gone at this moment. Her feeling now was that, if she were made to suffer, she could at least make others suffer too.

She had thrown off her furs in walking up and down, and they had fallen on to the box which Dr. Larrone had brought. Presently they slipped to the floor, and showed the small, black tin despatch box.

Molly broke the seal of the envelope, took out the key, and opened the box, half mechanically and half as seeking a distraction.

Inside she found two or three packets of old yellow letters, a few faded photographs, and a tiny gold watch and chain; and underneath these things a large registered envelope addressed to Madame Danterre.

Molly was not acutely excited about this box. She knew that her mother's will would be at the lawyer's. She had no anxiety on this point, but there is always a strange thrill in touching such things as the dead have kept secret. Even if they have bid us do it, it seems too bold.

Molly shrank from what that box might contain, what history of the past it might have to tell, but she did not think it would touch her own life. Therefore, thinking more of her own sorrow than anything else, Molly drew two papers out of the registered envelope, and then shrank back helplessly in her chair. She had just seen that the larger of the two enclosures was a long letter beginning: "Dearest Rose." She hesitated, but only for a moment, and then went on reading.

"I trust and hope that if I die in to-morrow's battle this will reach you safely. I have really no fear whatever of the battle, and after it is over I shall have a good opportunity of putting this paper into a lawyer's hands at Capetown."

Then she hastily dropped the letter and took up a small paper that had been in the same envelope. A glance at this showed that it was the "last will and testament of Sir David Bright."

It was evidently not drawn up by a lawyer, but it seemed complete and had the two signatures of witnesses; Lord Groombridge and Sir Edmund Grosse were named as executors. It was dated on board ship only a few weeks before Sir David Bright died.

At first Molly was simply bewildered. She read, as if stupefied, the perfectly simple language in which Sir David had bequeathed all and everything he possessed to his wife, Lady Rose Bright, subject to an annual allowance of £1000 to Madame Danterre during her life-time. It was so brief and simple that, if Molly had not known how simple a will could be, she might have half doubted its legality. As it was she was not aware of the special facilities in the matter of will-making that are allowed to soldiers and sailors when on active service. The absolutely amazing thing was that the paper should have been in Madame Danterre's possession.

Molly turned to the letter, and read it with absorbed attention.

The General wrote on the eve of the battle, without the least anxiety as to the next day. But he already surmised the vast proportions that the war might assume, and he intended to send the enclosed will with this letter to the care of a lawyer in Capetown for fear of eventualities. Then, next day, as Molly knew, he had been killed.

But Molly did not know that to the brother officer who had been with him in his last moments Sir David had confided two plain envelopes, and had told him to send the first--a blue one--to his wife, and the second--a white one--to Madame Danterre, faintly murmuring the names and addresses in his dying voice. The same officer was himself killed a week later. If he had lived and had learned the disposal of Sir David's fortune, it might possibly have occurred to him that he had put the addresses on the wrong letters. But he was sure at the time that Sir David's last words had been: "Remember, the white one for my wife." And perhaps he was right, for it is not uncommon for a man even in the full possession of all his faculties (which Sir David was not) to make a mistake just because of his intense anxiety to avoid making it. As it was, knowing nothing whatever of the circumstances, the will and the letter seemed to Molly to come out of a mysterious void.

To any one with an unbiassed mind who was able to study it as a human document, the letter would have been pathetic enough. It was the revelation, the outpouring of what a man had suffered in silence for many long years. It seemed at moments hardly rational. The sort of unreasonable nervous terror in it was extraordinary. Molly read most of the real story in the letter, but not quite all. There had been a terrible sense of a spoilt life and of a horrible weakness always coming between him and happiness. The shadow of Madame Danterre had darkened his youth; a time of folly--and so little pleasure in that folly, he moaned--had been succeeded by an actual tyranny. The claim that she was his wife had begun early after her divorce from Mr. Dexter, and it seemed extraordinary that he had not denied it at once. David Bright had been taken ill with acute fever in Mrs. Dexter's house almost immediately after that event. Mrs. Dexter declared that he had gone through the form of marriage with her before witnesses, and she declared also that she had in her possession the certificate of marriage. The date she gave for the marriage was during the days when he had been down with the fever, and he never could remember what had happened.

"God knows," he wrote, "how I searched my memory hour by hour, day by day, but the blank was absolute. I don't to this hour know what passed during those days."

While still feeble from illness he had given her all the money he could spare, and for years the blackmail had continued. Then, at last, after he had been a year in England, the worm had turned.

"I dared her to do her worst. I declared, what I am absolutely convinced to have been the case, that the marriage certificate she had shown me was a forgery, and I concluded that if she proved the marriage by forgery and perjury, I should institute proceedings for divorce on the grounds of her subsequent life. I got no answer, and for three years there was total silence. Then came a letter from a friend saying that Madame Danterre, who had taken her maiden name, was dying and wished me to know that she forgave me." With this note had been sent to him a diamond ring he had given her in the first days of her influence over him. He sent it back, but months later he got it again, returned by the Post Office authorities, as no one of the name he had written to could be found.

Then came a solemn declaration that he had never doubted of Madame Danterre's death.

"I thought that to have spoilt my youth was enough; but she was yet to destroy my best years. Ah! Rose," he wrote, "if I had loved you less it would have been more bearable. I met you; I worshipped you; won you. Then, after a brief dream of joy, the cloud came down, and my evil genius was upon me. I don't think you were in love with me, my beloved, but it would have come even after you had found out what a commonplace fellow it was whom you thought a hero; it would have come. You must have loved me out of the full flow of your own nature if I had not been driven to cowardice and deception."

Evidently Madame Danterre had had a kind of almost uncanny power of terrifying the soldier. He had been a good man when she first met him, and he had been a good man after that short time of mad infatuation. He was by nature and training almost passionately respectable; he was at length happily married; but this horror of an evil incident in the past had got such a hold on his nerves that when he met Madame Danterre (whom he had believed to be dead) coming out of a theatre in London, the hero of the Victoria Cross, of three other campaigns, perhaps the bravest man in England, fainted when he saw her. Without doubt it was the publication of Mr. John Steele's will leaving his enormous fortune to Sir David Bright that had resuscitated Madame Danterre.

From the moment of that shock David Bright had probably never been entirely sane on the subject. The resurrection of Madame Danterre had seemed to him preternatural and fateful. The woman had become to him something more or something less than human, something impervious to attack that could not be dealt with in any ordinary way.

From that time there had grown up an invisible barrier between him and his wife. He found himself making silly excuses for being out at quite natural times. He found himself getting afraid of her, and building up defences, growing reserved and absurdly dignified, trying to cling to the pedestal of the elderly soldier as he could not be a companion.

Madame Danterre had gone back to Florence, fat with blackmail, and then had begun a steady course of persecution.

Step by step he had sunk lower down, knowing that he was weakening his own case most miserably if it should ever become public. Nothing satisfied her, although she received two thousand a year regularly, until the will was drawn up, which left everything to her except an allowance of £800 a year to Rose.

Once a year for three years Madame Danterre had visited London, and had generally contrived that Sir David should be conscious of the look in her astonishing eyes, which Sir Edmund had likened to extinct volcanoes, at some theatre, or in the park, once at least every season. Evidently that look had never failed. It touched the exposed nerve in his mind--exposed ever since the time of illness and strain when he was young and helpless in India. It was evident that he had felt that any agony was bearable to shield Rose from the suffering of a public scandal. If he could only have brought himself to consult one of the Murrays something might have been done. As it was, he had recourse to subterfuge. He assured Madame Danterre annually, in answer to her insisting on the point, that no other will had ever been signed by him, but he always carried a will with him ready to be signed. There was much of self-pity perhaps in the letter, there was the plaint of a wrecked life, but there was still more of real delicate feeling for Rose, of intense anxiety to shield her, of poignant regret for "what might have been" in their home life. The man had been of a wholesome nature; his great physical courage was part of a good fellow's construction. But he had been taught to worship a good name, an unsullied reputation, and to love things of good repute too much, perhaps, for the sake of their repute, as he could not venture to risk the shadow for the reality. The effect of reading Sir David's last letter to Rose on an unbiassed reader of a humane turn of mind would have been an intensity of pity, and a sigh at the sadness of life on this planet.

Molly was passionately biassed, and as much of Sir David's story as reached her through the letter was to her simply a sickening revelation from a cowardly traitor of his own treason through life, and even up to the hour of death. Her mother had been basely deceived; for his sake she had been divorced, and he had denied the marriage that followed. Of course, it was a marriage, or he would never have been so frightened. Then her mother, thus deserted, young and weak, had gone astray, and he had defended himself by threatening divorce if she proclaimed herself his wife. Every word of the history was interpreted on the same lines. And then, last of all, this will was sent to her mother. Was it a tardy repentance? Had he, perhaps when too weak for more, asked some one to send it to Madame Danterre that she might destroy it? If so, why had she not destroyed it? Why, if it might honourably have been destroyed, send to Molly now a will that, if proved, would make her an absolute pauper? In plain figures Molly's fortune could not be less than £20,000 a year if that paper did not exist, and would be under £80 a year if it were valid.

Molly next seized on one of the old packets of letters in trembling hope of some further light being thrown on the situation, but in them was evidence impossible to deny that her mother had invented the whole story of the marriage. Why Madame Danterre had not destroyed these letters was a further mystery, except that, time after time, it has been proved that people have carefully preserved evidence of their own crimes. Fighting against it, almost crying out in agonised protest, Molly was forced to realise the slow persevering cunning and unflinching cruelty with which her mother had pursued her victim. It was an ugly story for any girl to read if the woman had had no connection with her. It seemed to cut away from Molly all shreds of self-respect as she read it. She felt that the daughter of such a woman must have a heritage of evil in her nature.

The packet of old letters finished, there was yet something more to find. Next came a packet of prescriptions and some receipts from shops. Under these were the faded photographs of several men and women of whom she knew nothing. Lastly, there was half a letter written to Molly dated in August and left unfinished and without a signature:

"CARISSIMA:

"I am far from well, but I believe Dr. Larrone has found out the cause and will soon put things right again. If you ever hear anything about me from Dr. Larrone you can put entire confidence in him. I have found out now why Sir Edmund Grosse has tried to see me. He is possessed with the absurd idea that I have no right to Sir David Bright's fortune, although he does not venture to call in question the validity of the will which left that fortune to me. Dr. Larrone has certain proof that Grosse employs a detective here to watch this house. I have also heard that he is in love with poor David's widow, and hence I suppose this _trop de zèle_ on her behalf. As he cannot get at me he is likely to try to become intimate with you, so I warn you to avoid him now and in future."

That was all.

Molly sat staring vacantly in front of her, almost unconscious of her surroundings from the intensity of pain. Each item in the horror of the situation told on her separately, but in no sequence--with no coherence. Shame, "hopes early blighted, love scorned," kindness proved treason, the prospect of complete and dishonourable poverty, a poverty which would enrich her foes. And all this was mixed in her mind with the dreadful words from the old letters that seemed to be shouted at her.

Miss Carew, coming in at dinner-time, was horror-struck by what she saw. Molly was sitting on the floor surrounded by letters and papers, moaning and biting her hand. The gong sounded, the parlourmaid announced dinner, and Molly gathered up her papers, locked them in the box, fastened the key on to her chain--all in complete silence--and got up from the floor. She then walked straight into the dining-room in her large hat and outdoor clothes without speaking.

And without a word the terrified Miss Carew went with her, and tried to eat her dinner.

Molly ate a very little of each thing that was offered to her, taking a few mouthfuls voraciously, and then quite suddenly, as she was offered a dish of forced asparagus, she went into peal after peal of ringing, resounding laughter. "I should like you to have asparagus at every meal," she said, and then again came peal after peal--each a quite distinct sound. It was dreadful to hear, and Miss Carew and the servant were terrified. It was the laughter, not of a maniac, not of pure unreasoning hysteria, not quite of a lost soul. It suggested these elements, perhaps, but it was chiefly a nervous convulsion at an overpowering perception of the irony in the heart of things.

The hysterical fit lasted long enough for Miss Carew to insist on a doctor, and Molly did not resist. When he came she implored him to give her a strong sleeping-draught. She kept Miss Carew and the maid fussing about her, in a terror of being alone, until the draught was at last sent in by a dilatory chemist. She then hurried them away, drank the medicine, and set herself to go to sleep. The draught acted soon, as Miss Carew learnt by listening at the door and hearing the deep, regular breathing. But the effects passed off, and Molly sat up absolutely awake at one o'clock in the morning. She lay down again and tried to force herself to sleep by sheer will power, but she soon realised the awful impotence of desire in forcing sleep.

At last, horror of her own intensely alert faculties, blinded by darkness, made her turn up the light. Instantly the sight of the familiar room seemed unbearable, and she turned it down again. But again the darkness was quite intolerable, and seemed to have a hideous life of its own which held in it presences of evil. At one moment she breathed in the air of the winter's night, shivering with cold; at the next she was stifled for want of breath. So the light by the bed was turned on again, and to get a little further from it Molly got up and slowly and carefully put on her stockings and fur slippers, then opened a cupboard and took out a magnificent fur cloak and wrapped herself in it. Then suddenly one aspect of the position became concrete to her imagination. She knew that the cloak was bought with ill-gotten money. Her enormous allowance after she came of age, even the expenses of her education--Miss Carew's salary among other things--had been won by fraud. And now, oh! why, why had not her miserable mother spoken the truth when she got the will, or why had she not destroyed it? Why had she left it to Molly to put right all this long, long imposture, and to reveal to the world the story of her mother's crime? It seemed to Molly as if she were looking on at some other girl's life, and as if she were considering it from an external point of view. The sleeping-draught had, no doubt, excited still further the terrible agitation of her nerves, and ideas came to her as if they had no connection with her own personality.

Wicked old woman, dying in Florence! How cruel those words were: "Let it be her own affair"! Her last act to send those papers to the poor girl she had deserted as a baby, and refused even to see as a woman. "Let it be her own affair." Her own affair to choose actual poverty and a terrible publicity as to the past instead of a great fortune and silence as to her mother's guilt. "Let it be her own affair" to enrich her enemies, to give a fortune to the woman who would scorn her! Would the man who had pretended to be her friend, and who had been pursuing her mother with detectives all the time, would he some day talk pityingly of her with his wife, and say she "had really behaved very well, poor thing"?

Suddenly Molly stopped, full of horror at a new thought. Oh! she must make things safe and sure, or--good God!--what might not her mother's daughter be tempted to do? A deep blush spread over her face and neck. She moved hastily to the door, and in a moment she was in Miss Carew's room.

"I want to speak to you; I want to tell you something," said Molly, turning up the electric light as she spoke.

Miss Carew was startled out of a sweet sleep, and her first thought was the one which haunted her whenever she was awakened at an untimely hour. Her carefully-curled fringe was lying in the dressing-table drawer, and Molly had never seen her without it!

"Yes, yes; in one moment," she answered fussily. "I will come to your room in one minute."

Molly felt checked, and there had been something strange and unfamiliar in Miss Carew's face. Suddenly she felt what it would be to tell Miss Carew the truth--Miss Carew, who was now her dependent, receiving from her £100 a year, would be shocked and startled out of her senses, and might not take these horrible revelations at all kindly. It would, anyhow, be such a reversal of their mutual positions as Molly could not face. And by the time the chestnut hair tinged with grey had been pinned a little crooked on Miss Carew's head, and she had knocked timidly at Molly's door, she was startled and offended by the impatient, overbearing tone of the voice that asked her to "go back to bed and not to bother; it was nothing that mattered."

The night had got on further than Molly knew by that time, and she was relieved to hear it strike four o'clock. She was astonished at noticing that, while she had been walking up and down, up and down her room, she had never heard the clock strike two or three. The fact of having spoken to Miss Carew had brought her for the moment out of the inferno of the last few hours, and the time from four o'clock to six was less utterly miserable because worse had gone before it.

At six she called the housemaid, and kept her fussing about the room, lighting the fire, and getting tea, so as not to be alone again. At eight o'clock she sent for coffee and eggs, and the coffee had to be made twice before she was satisfied with it. Then she suddenly said she felt much better, and, having dressed much more quickly than usual, she went out.

Molly had determined to confide the position to Father Molyneux. When she got to the church in Kensington it was only to find that Father Molyneux had gone away for some days.

That evening the doctor was again summoned, and told Miss Carew that he had now no doubt that Miss Dexter was suffering from influenza, with acute cerebral excitement, and the case was decidedly anxious.

"He might have found out that it was influenza last night," said Miss Carew indignantly, "and I even told him the housemaid had just had influenza! Molly simply caught it from her, as I always thought she would."