Chapter 32

DINNER AT TWO SHILLINGS

Edmund Grosse was in great moral and great physical discomfort that evening. He dined, actually for the first time, in just such an Italian café as he had described to Molly. After climbing up a very narrow, dirty staircase, the hot air heavy with smells, he had emerged into a small back and front room holding some half-dozen tables, at each of which four people could be seated. Through the open windows the noises of the street below came into collision with the clatter of plates and knives and forks. The heat was intense, the cloths were not clean, neither were the hands of the two waiters who rushed about with a certain litheness and facility of motion unlike any Englishman.

Edmund sat down wearily at a table as near the window as possible, and at which several people had been dining, perhaps well, but certainly not tidily.

"Hunger alone," he thought, "could make this possible," when, looking up, he caught the face of a young man at a further table, full of enjoyment, ordering "spargetty" and half a bottle of "grayves," with a cockney twang, and an unutterable air of latter-day culture.

"Mutton chops, cheese, and ale fed your forefathers," reflected Grosse.

"What will you have, sir?" in a foreign accent.

"Oh! anything; just what comes for the two shilling dinner--no, not _hors d'oeuvres_; yes, soup."

Edmund had turned with ill-restrained disgust from the sardines, tomatoes, and other oily horrors. But there was no denying the qualities of the soup: the most experienced and cultivated palate and stomach must be soothed by it, and in a moment of greater cheerfulness Edmund turned his attention to three young men close to him who were talking French. Their hands were clean and their collars, but poverty was writ large on their spare faces and well-brushed clothes. One was olive-complexioned, one quite fair, but with olive tints in the shadows round the eyes, and the third grey, old, and purple-cheeked from shaving. They ate little, but they talked much. The talked of literature and art with fierce dogmatism, and they seemed frequently on the verge of a quarrel, but the storm each time sank quite suddenly without the least consciousness of the danger passed. They looked at the food as critics, and acknowledged it to be eatable, with the faint air of an exile's sadness.

Edmund wished to think that he was amused by their talk, but the distraction did not last. His thoughts would have their way, and he was soon trying to defend his defence of himself to Molly. All he said had seemed so obviously true as the words poured out, but there had been fatal reservations. He had spoken as if all suspicions, all proceedings as to discovering the will were past. He had felt he had no right to give away secrets that were not his own. But had he not produced a false impression? What would Molly have thought of him as he passionately rejected the notion of suspecting her if she had seen the letter from Murray in his pocket? It was true that he no longer financed any of the proceedings against her, but they had all been set on foot by him. He was in the plot that was thickening, and he had won the confidence of the victim! He had no doubt that Molly was innocent, and he was ashamed of the pitiful confidence he had read in her eyes when he left her. But he still believed that her mother had been guilty, and that Molly's wealth was the result of that guilt. It was true that he wanted to be her friend, but it was also true that he would rejoice if Rose came into her own and the gross injustice were righted. But, after all, what absolute evidence had they got, as yet, as to the contents of this last will, or what proof even of its existence? He felt almost glad for the fraction of a moment that Molly might remain the gorgeous mistress of the old house in Park Lane uninjured by anything he had done against her. "How absurd," he thought, "how drivelling! The fact is that girl impressed me enough to-day, to make me see myself from her point of view, or what would be her point of view if she knew all!"

He refused coffee--the cab fare had prevented that. He quite emptied his pocket, gave the waiter sixpence, and, rising, strolled across the floor of the small room exactly the same man to the outward eye he had been for years past. But before he reached the door he caught the glance of a little, round, elderly woman at a table close to him, and he stopped. She had a faded, showy bonnet, and she carried her worn clothes with an air. He recognised the companion and friend of a famous prima donna whom he had not seen for years.

"You've forgotten me, but I've not forgotten you."

It was a cherry, Irish voice.

"I get coffee and a roll, and you have the _diner à prix fixe_. And you have given me a champagne supper in your day! Well! and how are you?"

"Nicely, thank you, Miss O'Meara; you see I have not forgotten!" Then in a lower voice, "But I thought the Signora left you money?"

"She did, bless her; but it was here one day and gone the next! Good-night, and good luck to you," she laughed.

The little duenna of a dead genius evidently did not want him to stay, and he felt his way down the pitch dark stairs, and emerged on the street. A very small, brown hand was held out for a penny, and for the first time in his life he refused a street beggar with real regret.

"'Here one moment, and gone the next,'" he muttered, looking down the brilliantly lighted street to where the motors, carriages, and cabs crowded round the doors of a great theatre. "It's the history of the whole show in a nutshell."

If Sir Edmund was troubled at the thought that Molly believed in him, Molly was infinitely more troubled at his belief in her.

After he left her she went to her room. She had to dine out and she must get some rest first. As in most of the late eighteenth century houses in London, the bedrooms had been sacrificed to the rooms below. But Molly had the one very large room that looked over the park. She threw herself down on a wide sofa close to the silk-curtained bed. The sun glinted still on the silver backs of the brushes and teased her eyes, and she got up and drew down the blinds. The dressing-table was large and its glass top was covered with a great weight of old gilt bottles and boxes.

Miss Carew had once been amused by the comment of a young manicurist who, after expressing enthusiastic admiration of the table, had concluded with the words:

"But what I often say to myself is that it's only so much more to leave in the end."

But Molly had not laughed when the words were repeated; they gave expression to a feeling with which she sometimes looked at many things besides her dressing-table--they might all prove only so much more to leave in the end!

She sank exhausted again onto the sofa. Why had he come? Why could he not leave her alone? Did she want his friendship, his pity, his confidence? Why look at her so kindly when he must know how he hurt her? She had felt such joy when she saw that he believed in her. The idea that she was still innocent and unblemished in his eyes was just for the moment an unutterable relief. An unutterable relief, too, it had felt at the moment, to be able to accept his defence of himself. That he was still lovable, and that he had no dark thoughts of her, had been such joy, but only a passing joy. Had he not told her in horribly plain speech that he loved Lady Rose, and would love her to the end? All this, which was so vital to Molly, was but an episode in a friendship that was a detail in his life!

But now, alone, trying to see clearly through the confusion, how unbearable it had been to hear him say, "That you with your youth and your innocence and your candour...." He had thought it too horrible to suspect her, and by that confidence he made her load of guilt almost unendurable.

She could not go on like this, could not live like this. The silence was far more unbearable now that a human voice had broken into it, a voice she loved repudiating with indignant scorn the possibility of suspecting her! She must go somewhere, she must speak to some one. But at this moment it was also evident that she must dress for dinner.