Chapter 30

EDMUND IS NO LONGER BORED

As the season went on Edmund Grosse did not understand himself. Everything had gone against him, his fortune had melted, his easy-going luxurious life was at an end. He had no delusions; he knew perfectly well the value of money in his world. His position in that world was gone in fact, if not quite in seeming. The sort of conversation that went on about him in his own circles had the sympathy, but would soon have also the finality, of a funeral oration. There would soon be a tone of reminiscence in those who spoke of him. It would be as if they said gently: "Oh, yes! dear old Grosse, we knew him well at one time, don't you know; it's a sad story." He could have told you not only the words, but even the inflection of the voices of his friends in discussing his affairs. He did not mean that there were no kindly faithful hearts among them. Several might emerge as kind, as friendly as ever. But the monster of human society would behave as it always does in self-defence. It would shake itself, dislodge Edmund from its back, and then say quite kindly that it was a sad pity that he had fallen off. Every organism must reject what it can no longer assimilate, and a rich society by the law of its being rejects a poor man.

And yet the idea that poor Grosse must be half crushed, horribly cut up and done for, was not in the least true. This was what he did not understand himself. It is well known that some people bear great trials almost lightly who take small ones very heavily. Grosse certainly rose to the occasion. But that a great trial had aroused great courage was not the whole explanation by any means. Curiously enough ill-fortune with drastic severity had done for him what he had impotently wished to do for himself. It had made impossible the life which, in his heart, he had despised; it absolutely forced him to use powers of which he was perfectly conscious, and which had been rusting simply for want of employment. It is doubtful whether he could have roused himself for any other motive whatever. Certainly love of Rose had been unable to do it. The will might seem to will what he wished to do, but the effort to will strongly enough was absent. Now all the soft, padded things between him and the depths of life had been struck away at one rude blow; he _must_ swim or sink. And so he began to swim, and the exercise restored his circulation and braced his whole being.

It was not, perhaps, heroic exertion that he was roused into making. But it wanted courage in a man of Edmund's age to begin to work for six hours or more a day at journalism. He also produced two articles on foreign politics for the reviews, which made a considerable impression. It was important now that Edmund had read and watched, and, even more important, listened very attentively to what busier men than himself had to say during twenty years of life spent in the world. Years afterwards, when Grosse had in the second half of his life done as much work as many men would think a good record for their whole lives, people were surprised to read his age in the obituary notices. They had rightly dated the beginning of his career from his first appearance as an authority on foreign politics, but they had not realised that Grosse had begun to work only in the midstream of life. Many brilliant springs are delusive in their promise, but rarely is there such achievement after an unprofitable youth.

Love is not the whole life of a man, but, in spite of new activities, in spite of a renewed sense of self-respect, Edmund had time and space enough for much pain in his heart.

Rose was still in Paris taking care of her mother, who was very unwell. Edmund had hinted at the possibility of going over to see them at Easter, but the suggestion had met with no encouragement. He had felt rebuffed, and was in no mood to be smoothed or melted by Rose's written sympathy. He was, no doubt, harder as well as stronger than before his financial troubles. He let Rose see that he could stand on his feet, and was not disposed to whine. Meanwhile Molly had provoked him to single combat. The decided cut she gave him at the Court was not to be permitted; he was too old a hand to allow anything so crude. He meant to be at her parties; he meant to keep in touch; indeed he meant to see this thing out.

"Sir Edmund, will you take Miss Dexter in to dinner?"

Edmund looked fairly surprised and very respectful as Mrs. Delaport Green spoke to him. Molly's bearing was, he could see, defiant, but she was clearly quite conscious of having to submit and anxious to do nothing absurd.

They ate their soup in silence, for Molly's other neighbour had shown an unflattering eagerness to be absorbed by the lady he had taken down. Edmund turned to her with exactly his old shade of manner, very paternal, intimate and gentle.

"And you are not bored yet?"

Molly could have sworn deep and long had it been possible.

"No; why should I be?"

She stared at him for a moment indifferently, as at a stranger, but he could see the nervous movement of her fingers as she crumbed her bread.

"It is more likely," he answered, "that I should remember what I allude to than that you should. We once had a talk about being bored. I said I had never been bored while I was poor. Now I am poor again, so I naturally remember, and, as you are trying the experience of being very rich, I should really like to know if you are bored yet."

Molly might have kept silent, but she did not want Adela, who was certainly watching them, to think her embarrassed.

"I suppose every one has moments of being bored."

Edmund leant back and turned round so as to allow of his looking fully at her. He muttered to himself: "Young, beautiful, wealthy beyond the dreams of avarice--and bored! What flattering unction that is to the soul of a ruined man."

In spite of her anger, her indignation, her hurt pride, Molly was softened. She writhed under the caress of his voice; it had power still.

"Are you not bored any more?" She spoke unwillingly.

"No," he said, "suffering does not bore; discomfort does not bore; knowledge of your fellow-creatures does not bore. But, of course, I am tasting the pleasures of novelty. And I have not disappeared yet. I think a boarding-house in Bloomsbury may prove boring. How prettily our hostess will pity me, then. But I don't think I shall meet you here at dinner, and have the comfort of seeing for myself that you, too, are bored."

Molly felt that he was putting her hopelessly in the wrong. She was the one bitterly aggrieved and deeply injured. But he made her feel as if coldness on her part would be just the conduct of any rich heartless woman to a ruined man.

"I calculate," he said, "on about fifty more good dinners which I shall not pay for, and then, of course, I shall think myself well fed at my own expense in an Italian café somewhere. I think Italian, don't you? Dinner at two shillings! There is an air of _spagghetti_ and onions that conceals the nature or age of the meat; and the coffee is amazingly good. One might be able to find one with a clean cloth."

Most of these remarks were made almost to himself.

"You know it isn't true," Molly said angrily; "you know you will get a good post. Men like you are always given things."

Edmund helped himself very carefully to exactly the right amount of melted butter. "Don't you eat asparagus?" he interjected, and, without waiting for an answer, went on:

"I thought so too, but I can't hear of a job. There are too many of the unemployed just now. However, no doubt, as you say, I shall soon be made absolute ruler of some province twice the size of England."

He laughed and smoothed his moustache with one hand.

"Down with dull care, Miss Dexter; let us make a pact never to be bored--in Bloomsbury, or West Africa, or Park Lane. I suppose you found a great deal to do to that dear old house?"

After that their other neighbours claimed them both; but during dessert Molly, against her will, lost hold of the talk on her right, and had to listen to Edmund again.

"I hear that you have got the old Florentine looking-glasses from my sale."

"I don't think they were from your sale," said Molly hastily.

"Well, Perks told me so."

"Perks never told me," muttered Molly.

"I should think they must suit the house to perfection. Where have you put them?"

"In the small dining-room."

"Yes; they must do admirably there. I should like to see them again." He looked at her with a faintly sarcastic smile. She knew what he intended her to say, and, against her will, she said hastily:

"Won't you come and see them?"

"With great pleasure."

Molly saw that Adela had risen, and sprang up and turned away in one sudden movement. She was very angry with him for forcing her to say that, and she could not conceive what had made her yield.

"'The teeth that bite; the claws that scratch,'" he thought to himself, "but safely chained up--and the movements are beautiful." He stood looking after her.

"I did as you told me," said the hostess, pausing for a moment as she followed her guests to the door. "If Molly blames me, shall I say that you asked to take her in?"

"Say just what you like; I trust you entirely." He did not attempt to speak to Molly after dinner, or when they met again at a ball that same night. All her burning wish to snub him could not be gratified. He seemed not to know shat she was still in the room. But she knew instinctively that he watched her, and she was not sorry he should see her in the crowd, and be witness, however unwillingly, to her position in the world he knew so well. It added to the sense of intoxication that often possessed her now. "Be drunken," says Baudelaire, "be drunken with wine, with poetry, with virtue, with what you will, only be drunken." And that Molly could be drunken with flattery, with luxury, with movement, with music, with a sense of danger that gave a strong and subtle flavour to her pleasures, was the explanation (and the only one) of how she bore the hours of reaction, of the nausea experienced by that spiritual nature of hers which she had been so surprised to discover. It was not the half-shrinking, half-defiant Molly Edmund had talked to in the woods of Groombridge, whom he watched now. That Molly was gone, and he regretted her.