Chapter 31

MOLLY'S APPEAL

Edmund, it seemed, was in no hurry to see his Florentine looking-glasses again. Ten days passed before he called on Molly, and on the eleventh day Mr. Murray, Junior, wrote to say that he had some fresh and important intelligence to give him, and asked if Sir Edmund would call, not at his office, but at his own house.

Edmund flung the letter down impatiently. The situation was really a very trying one. He did not believe--he could not and would not believe--that Molly was carrying on a gigantic fraud. Murray was a lawyer, and did not know Miss Dexter; his suspicions were inhuman and absurd. From the day on which she had spoken to him about her mother's reply to her offer to go to Florence, Edmund had in his masculine way ranged her once for all among good and nice women. He had felt touched and guilty at a suspicion that he had been to blame in playing his paternal _rôle_ too zealously. Until then he had at times had hard thoughts of her; after that time he was a little ashamed of himself, and he believed in her simplicity and goodness. He was sorry and disappointed now that she was making quite so much effect in this London world. There was something disquieting in Molly's success, and he could appraise better than any one what a remarkable success it was. But he felt that she was going the pace, and he would not have liked his daughter to go the pace, unmarried and at twenty-two. She needed friendship and advice. But the pinch came from the fact that the wealth he could have advised her to use wisely ought to be Rose's, and that he was resolved, in the depths of his soul, to regain that wealth for his cousin--for that "_belle dame sans merci_" who wrote him such pretty letters about his troubles.

Edmund put Murray's letter in his pocket, and immediately went out. He was living in a small, but clean, lodging in Fulham, kept by a former housemaid and a former footman of his own, now Mr. and Mrs. Tart, kindly souls who were proud to receive him. He gave no trouble, and the preparation of his coffee and boiled egg was all the cooking he had done for him. Mrs. Tart would have felt strangely upset had she known that the said coffee and egg were, on some days, his only food till tea-time; she was under the impression that he lunched at his club when not engaged to friends. Both she and Mr. Tart took immense pains with his clothes, and he would rather have been well valeted than eat luxurious luncheons every day.

He went out at once after getting Murray's letter, because he wanted to call on Molly before he heard any more of the important intelligence.

Molly was alone when he was announced. She had told the butler she was "not at home," but somehow the man decided to show Sir Edmund up because he saw that he wished to be shown up. Edmund had always had an odd influence below stairs, partly because he never forgot a servant's face.

Molly coloured deeply when she saw her visitor. She was annoyed to think that he would make her talk against her will--and they would not be interrupted. She could have used strong language to the butler, but she did not dare tell him that she would now see visitors. It would look to Edmund as if she were afraid of a _tête-à-tête_.

Almost as soon as he was in the room she had an impression that he was quite at home, curiously at his ease.

"I am glad the house is so little changed. I came to my first dance here. You have done wonderfully well, and all on the old lines. A friend told me it was the hugest success."

A remembrance of past jokes as to Edmund's second-hand compliments and his friend "Mr. Harris" came into Molly's mind, but she only felt angry at the remembrance.

He talked on about the pictures and the furniture until she became more natural. It was impossible not to be interested in her work, and the decoration and furnishing of the whole house was her own doing, not that of any hireling adviser. Then, too, he knew its history, and she became keenly interested. She had at times a strong feeling of the past life still in possession of the house, into which her own strangely fated life had intruded. She wanted, half-consciously, to know if her guilty secret was a desecration or only a continuance of something that had gone before.

Suddenly she leant forward with the crude simplicity he was glad to see again.

"Have there been any wicked people here?" Her voice was low and young.

"'All houses in which men have lived and died are haunted houses,'" he quoted. "It's not very cynical to suppose that there has been sin and sorrow here before now."

"I think," said Molly quickly, "there was a wicked woman who used the little dining-room; perhaps she was only a guest. I don't think she went upstairs often."

"Perhaps she came in with my looking-glasses," suggested Edmund. "I have often wished I could see what they have seen."

Molly was now quite off her guard.

Edmund rose and examined some china on a table near him.

"Why are you so displeased with me?" he said, without any change of voice.

Molly sprang to her feet, careless whether her unguarded vehemence might betray her to his observation.

"I shall not answer that question," she said; but he knew that she would answer it.

"You cut me at the Court; you were displeased at having to sit by me at dinner; you have pretended not to see me at least four times since then, and your butler showed me up by mistake."

Molly had moved away from him to the window. She knew she must speak or her conduct would look too like wounded love--a thing quite unbearable. She knew, too, that his influence would make her speak, and, besides that, something in her cried for the relief of speech. She needed a fight although she did not know it; an open fight with an enemy she could see would distract her from the incessant fight with an enemy she did not see.

"You are a strange man!" she cried, holding the curtain behind her lightly as she turned towards him. "You could make friends with me so that all the world might see you, and meanwhile, at the very same time, you were paying a low Italian scoundrel to produce lies against my sick and lonely mother! You could watch me and get out of me all you wanted to know because I was ignorant of the world. You could use the horrible influence you had gained over me by your experience of many women, to manage me as you liked. You told me not to marry Edgar Tonmore for some reason of your own; you told me to go and stay with my aunt; you came to see me one night in London, and wormed out of me my relations with my unfortunate mother. With all your knowledge of the world, with all your experience, did you never think I might come to find you out?"

Molly paused for a moment. She held herself erect, her white gown crushed against the rich, dark curtain, her great eyes searching the trees in the park below as if she sought there for the soul of her enemy. She did not know that she pulled hard at the curtain behind her with both hands; it could not have held out much longer, strong though it was.

"No; you knew life too well not to know that you might be found out, but the truth was that you did not care. It was so little a thing to you that, when you saw that I knew the truth, you could go on just the same, quite unabashed. You could force yourself on me by playing on your poverty; you, who had tried to ruin my mother! Well, she is out of your reach, and perhaps you have shifted your foul suspicions on to me. Perhaps it is from me you hope to get the fortune that you mean to share. You drive me mad! I say things I don't want to say; you force me to lower myself, but----" She turned now and faced Edmund, who watched her, himself absolutely motionless. "Now that you have forced yourself on me again you shall answer me. Do you believe that I, Molly Dexter, have concealed or abetted in concealing or destroying any will in favour of Lady Rose Bright?"

There is a moment when passion is astonishingly inventive. Molly had had no intention of saying anything of the kind, but the heat of passion had produced a stroke of policy that no colder moment could have produced. She was suddenly dumb with astonishment at her own words, and she dimly recognised that this represented a distinct crisis in her own mind. Passion and excitement had dissipated the last mists of self-deception.

Edmund waited till there could be no faint suspicion of his trying to interrupt her, and then said from his heart, in a voice she had never heard from him before:

"No, I swear to you I don't."

Molly had been deeply flushed. At these words she turned very white, and her hands let go the curtains. She put them out before her and seemed to grope her way to a stiff, high-backed chair near to her. She sat down in it and clasped her hands to her forehead.

"Now you must hear me," said Edmund. "I don't say I am blameless: in part of this I have done wrong, but not as wrong as you think. I must tell you my story; although perhaps it may seem blacker as I tell it, even to myself."

He sat down and bent forward a little.

"When I was young I fell in love with my cousin. She has been and always will be the one woman in the world to me. She did not, does not, never will, return my feelings. She married, and before very long I was convinced she was not happy, although she only half realised it herself. She is capable of stifling her powers of perception. Then David Bright died and left her in poverty. His will was a scandal, and the horror did not only smirch his good name, it reached to hers. I can't and won't try to tell you what I suffered, or how I determined to fight this hideous wrong. I went to Florence; I tried to see Madame Danterre; I engaged the detective--all before I knew of your existence. I came back to London and discovered that your father, John Dexter, had divorced his wife on account of David Bright. Still I did not know anything of you. Then, through Lady Dawning I found you out, and I made friends with Mrs. Delaport Green in order to see more of you. Was there anything wrong in that? You did not know your mother; you did not, presumably, care very deeply about her. It was doubtful if you knew of her existence. Soon the detective in Florence faded in my mind; he discovered nothing, but I retained him in case of any change. Was I obliged, because I liked you, to give up the cause? I never found out, I never tried to find out from you anything that bore on the case. You must remember that I stopped you once in the wood at Groombridge when you wanted to tell me more about yourself, and that I again warned you when you wished to tell me about your mother's letter to you. As to Edgar Tonmore, I knew that he was penniless, and I thought it quite possible that you might, in the end, be penniless too. It was for your own sake I wished you to make a richer marriage. For I believed--I still believe--that David Bright made a last will when going out to Africa; I believed, and still believe, that by an accident that will was not sent to Lady Rose. I thought then that your mother had, in some way, become possessed of the will, and I thought it more than likely that, when dying, she would make reparation by leaving the money where it ought to be. I meant--may I say so?--to prove myself your friend, then, if you should allow it. I know I kept in touch with you partly from curiosity as well as from natural attraction. But, if I acted for the sake of another, I acted for you also. Would it have been better or worse for you to have been friends with us if my suspicions of your mother's conduct had proved true? But believe me, Miss Dexter, I never for one moment could have thought of you with any taint of suspicion. It is horrible to me to have it suggested."

He rose as he finished speaking, and came nearer to her.

"That you, with your youth and your innocence and your candour!--child, the very idea is impossible. I have known men and women too well to fall into such an absurdity. Send me away, if you like; I won't intrude my friendship upon you, but look up now and let me see that you do not think this gross thing of me."

Molly raised a white face and looked into his--looked into eyes that had not at all times and in all places been sincere, but were sincere now. A great rush of warm feeling came over her; a great sore seemed healed, and then she looked at him with hungry entreaty, as if a soul, shorn of all beauty, hungry, ragged, filthy, were asking help from another. But the moment of danger, the moment of salvation passed away.

We confess our sins to God because He knows them already, and we ask for forgiveness where we know we shall be forgiven.

Indeed, Molly knew almost at once that she had gained another motive for silence. She could not risk the loss of Edmund's good thought of her; she cared for him too much--he had defended himself too well.

Edmund saw that she could not speak. He left her, let himself out of the house, and, forgetful of the fact that he could not possibly afford a hansom, jumped into one and drove to Mr. Murray's house.

He had recovered his usual calmness by the time he had to speak.

"I have your note," he said, "and I came in consequence."

"Yes," said the lawyer; "I wanted to tell you----"

"Wait a moment. Do you think you need tell me? You see, my share in the thing really came to an end when I could not finance it. I have several reasons now why I should like to let it alone."

Murray was astonished. It was Sir Edmund who had started the whole thing, whose wild guess at the outset was becoming more and more likely to be proved true. It was he who had spent a quantity of money over the investigation for years past. The man of business knew how to provoke speech by silence, and so he remained silent.

"Does further action depend in any way on me?" asked Edmund at last, without, however, offering the explanation the other wanted.

"No," said Murray quite civilly, but his manner was dry. "I don't see that it does. I think we can get on for the present."

As he spoke the door opened, and the parlourmaid showed in a tall, handsome woman in a nurse's dress.

Murray looked from her to Sir Edmund.

"I had wanted you to hear what Nurse Edith had to tell us, but after what you have said----"

"Yes," said Edmund; "I will leave you and I will write to you to-night."