Chapter 40

MENE THEKEL PHARES

The more Edmund reflected on the matter the more difficult he found it to decide what steps to take in order to approach Molly. In the first impulse he had thought only that here was the chance of serving her, of proving her friend in difficulty, which he had particularly wished for. It would make reparation for the past--a past he keenly defended in his own mind as he had defended it to Molly herself, but yet a past that he would wish to make fully satisfactory by reparation for what he would not confess to have been blameworthy. But when he tried to realise exactly what he should have to tell Molly it seemed impossible. For how could he meet her questions; her indignant protests? She would become more and more indignant at the plot that had been carried on against her, a plot which Edmund had started and had carried on until quite lately, and which had also until quite lately been entirely financed by him. Even if he baffled her questions, his consciousness of the facts would make it too desperately difficult a task for him to assume the _rôle_ of Molly's disinterested friend now, although in truth he felt as such, and would have done and suffered much to help her.

Edmund had by nature a considerable sympathy with success, with pluck, with men or women who did things well. There are so many bunglers in life, so few efficient characters, and he felt Molly to be entirely efficient. Even the over-emphasis of wealth in the setting of her life had been effective; it fitted too well into what the modern world wanted to be out of proportion. A thing that succeeded so very well could hardly be bad form. Hesitation, weakness, would have made it vulgar; hesitation and weakness in past days had often made vulgar emphasis on rank and power, but in the hands of the strong such emphasis had always been effective and fitting. There was a kind of artistic regret in Edmund's mind at the thought that this excellent comedy of life as played by Molly should be destroyed. And he had come to think it certainly would be destroyed.

One last piece of evidence had convinced him more than any other.

Nurse Edith had a taste for the dramatic, and enjoyed gradual developments. Therefore she had kept back as a _bonne bouche_, to be served up as an apparent after-thought, a certain half sheet of paper which she had preserved carefully in her pocket-book since the night on which she had made the copy of Sir David Bright's will. It was the actual postscript to Sir David's long letter to Rose; the long letter Nurse Edith had put back in the box and which had remained there untouched until Molly had taken it out. The postscript would not be missed, and might be useful. It was only a few lines to this effect:

"P.S.--I think it better that you should know that I am sending a few words to Madame Danterre to tell her briefly that justice must be done. Also, in case anyone, in spite of my precautions to conceal it, is aware that I possessed the very remarkable diamond ring I mention in this letter, and asks you about it, I wish you to know that I am sending it direct to Madam Danterre in my letter to her. May God forgive me, and, by His Grace, may you do likewise."

The sight of David's handwriting, the astonishing verification of his own first surmise, the vivid memory of Rose unwillingly showing him the letter and the ring and the photograph she supposed to have been intended for herself, had a very powerful effect on Edmund Grosse. The whole story was so clear, so well connected, it seemed impossible to doubt it. Yet he believed in Molly's innocence without an effort. What was there to prove that Madame Danterre had not destroyed the will after Nurse Edith copied it? She had the key and the box within reach, and the dying, again and again, have shown incalculable strength--far greater than was needed in order to get at the will and burn it while a nurse was absent or asleep.

Again, it was to Larrone's interest to destroy that will. They had only Pietrino's persuasion of Larrone's integrity to set against the possibility of his having opened the box on his long journey to England, against the possibility of his having read the will, and destroyed it, before he gave the box to Molly. He would have seen at once not only that his own legacy would be lost, but, what might have more influence with him, he must have seen what a doubtful position he must hold in public opinion if this came to light. He had been the chief friend and adviser of Madame Danterre, who had paid him lavishly for his medical services from her first coming to Florence, and who had made no secret of the legacy he was to receive at her death. He had been with her at the last, and was now actually carrying on her gigantic fraud by taking the box to her daughter. Would it not have been a great temptation to him to destroy the will while he had no fear of discovery rather than put the matter in Molly's hands? Lastly came Rose's subtle feminine suggestion that the will might be in the box but that Molly had never opened it. Some instinct, some secret fear of painful revelations, might easily have made her shrink from any disclosures as to her mother's past. Rose was so often right, and the obvious suggestion, that such a shrinking from knowledge would have been natural to Rose and unnatural to Molly, did not occur to the male mind, always inclined to think of women as mostly alike.

At the same time he was really unwilling to relinquish the _rôle_ of intermediary. His thoughts had hardly left the subject since the hour of his talk with Rose, and it was especially absorbing on the day on which Molly was to give a party, to which he was invited--and invited to meet royalty. He decided that he must that evening ask his hostess to give him an appointment for a private talk.

Edmund arrived late at Westmoreland House when the party was in full swing. He paused a moment on the wide marble steps of the well staircase as he saw a familiar face coming across the hall. It was the English Ambassador in Madrid, just arrived home on leave, as Edmund knew. He was a handsome grey-haired man of thin, nervous figure, and he sprang lightly to meet his old friend and put his hand on his arm.

"Grosse!" he cried, "well met." And then, in low, quick tones he added: "What am I going to see at the top of this ascent? This amazing young woman! What does it mean, eh? I knew the wicked old mother. Tell me, was she really married to David Bright all the time? Was it Enoch Arden the other way up? But we must go on," for other late arrivals were joining them. When they reached the landing the two men stood aside for a moment, for they saw that it was too late for them to be announced. Royalty was going in to supper.

A line of couples was crossing the nearest room, from one within. The great square drawing-room was lit entirely by candles in the sconces that were part of the permanent decoration. But the many lights hardly penetrated into the great depths of the pictures let into the walls. These big, dark canvases by some forgotten Italian of the school of Veronese, gave the room something of the rich gloom of a Venetian palace. Beyond a few stacks of lilies in the corners, Molly had done nothing to relieve its solemn dignity. As she came across it from the opposite corner, the depths of the old pictures were the background to her white figure.

She was bending her head towards the Prince who was taking her down--a tall, fair man with blue eyes and a heavy jaw. Then as she came near the doorway she raised her head and saw Edmund. There was a strange, soft light in her eyes as she looked at him. It was the touch of soul needed to give completeness to her magnificence as a human being. The white girlish figure in that room fitted the past as well as the present. The great women of the past had been splendidly young too, whereas we keep our girls as children, comparatively speaking.

Molly had that combination of youth and experience which gives a special character to beauty. There was no detailed love of fashion in her gorgeous simplicity of attire; there was rather something subtly in keeping with the house itself.

The Prince turned to speak to the Ambassador, and the little procession stopped.

Edmund was more artistic in taste than in temperament, and he was not imaginative. But he could not enjoy the full satisfaction of his fastidious tastes to-night, nor had he his usual facility for speech. He could not bring himself to utter one word to Molly. They stood for that moment close together, looking at each other in a silence that was electric. No wonder that Molly thought his incapacity to speak a wonderful thing; others, too, noticed it.

"What a bearing that girl has! What movement!" cried the Ambassador, as, after greeting the first few couples who passed him, he drew Grosse to a corner and looked at him curiously. But Edmund seemed moonstruck. Then, in a perfunctory voice, he said slowly.

"What is the writing in that picture?"

"Mene Thekel Phares," said his friend. "My dear Grosse! surely you know a picture of the 'Fall of Babylon' when you see it? Now let us go where we shall not be interrupted. Tell me all about this girl with the amazing bearing and big eyes, whom princes delight to honour, and Duchesses to dine with! How did she get dear Rose Bright's money?"

Edmund had never disliked a question more.

"I'll tell you all I know," he said unblushingly, "but not to-night, old fellow. It would take too long."

And to his joy a countess and a beauty seized upon the terribly curious diplomatist and made him take her down to supper. And they agreed while they supped exquisitely that the real job dear old Grosse ought to be given was that of husband to their hostess.

"But then there is poor Rose Bright."

"Lady Rose Bright would not have him when he was rich," he objected. "No; this will do very nicely. If I am not mistaken (and I'm pretty well read in human eyes), the lady is willing."

After supper there was dancing. Edmund did not dance. He stood in a corner, his tall form a little bent, merely watching, and presently he turned away. He had made up his mind. He would not try to speak to Molly to-night, and he would not ask her for a talk.

She was dancing as he left the room, and he turned half mechanically to watch her. It was always an exquisite pleasure to see her dance. He left her with a curious sense of farewell in his mind. Fate was coming fast, he knew; he could not doubt that for a moment. He was not the man to avert it. No one could avert it. It was part of the tragedy that, pity her as he might, he could not really wish to avert it. He would give no warning. Some other hand must write "Mene Thekel Phares" on the wall of her palace of pleasure and success.

Edmund Grosse declined the task.

Molly danced on in the long gallery between its walls of mirrors and their infinite repetitions of twinkling candles and dancing figures pleasantly confused to the eye by the delicate wreaths of gold foliage that divided their panes. In the immeasurable depths of those reflections the nearest objects melted by endless repetition into dim distances, and the present dancing figures might seem to melt into a far past where men and women were dancing also.

Gallery within gallery in that mirrored world, with very little effort of imagination, might become peopled by different generations. As the figures receded in space so they receded in time. Groups of human beings, with all the subtle ease of a decadent civilisation, ceded their place to groups of men and women who moved with more slowness and dignity in the middle distance of those endless reflections. And looking down those avenues of gilded foliage into that fancied past, the old cry might well rise to the lips: "What shadows we are, and what shadows we pursue!"

But, whether in the foreground of to-day, or in the secrets that the mirrors held of a century before, or in the indistinguishable mist of their greatest depths, wherever the imagination roamed, it found in every group of human beings a woman who was young and beautiful, and yet it could come back to the dancing figure of Molly without any shock of disappointment or disdain.

"But it is daylight!" cried two young men who paused breathless with their partners by the high narrow windows, at the end of the gallery, and they threw back the shutters. The growing dawn mingled with the lights of the decreasing candles, with the infinite repetitions of the mirror, with the soft music of the last valse.

And Molly bore the light perfectly, as the chorus of praise and thanks and "good-nights" of the late stayers echoed round her.

"Not 'good-night' but 'good-bye,'" said a very young girl, looking up at Molly with facile tears rising in her blue eyes. "We go away to-morrow, and this perfect night is the last!"