Great Possessions Part 15

"I thought you were to have had a flat with a dear old governess?"

"I could not get Miss Carew, the governess in question, and Adela Delaport Green pressed me to stay with her for the season."

"It does credit to the amiability of both," said Edmund.

"I don't know about that," answered Molly, "we both knew what we wanted, and that we could not easily get it unless we combined, and so we combined."

"But was it quite easy to get over the slight friction at Groombridge?"

"Oh, yes; directly we got away Adela was all right. She felt stifled by the atmosphere, and she recovered as soon as she got home."

Edmund would have been less surprised at the tone of this last remark if he had seen Lady Groombridge's exceedingly offhand way of greeting Molly this same evening. That great lady, having expected to find that Molly had, acting on her advice, abandoned Mrs. Delaport Green, was quite disappointed in the girl when she met them still together in London, and so she extended her frigidity to both of them.

"And you are enjoying yourself?" Edmund went on. "Come, let us sit behind those palms. You look as if things were going smoothly."

"It is delightful."

Molly cast her grey eyes over the moving groups that were strolling about the ballroom, and over the lights and flowers and the band preparing to begin again, and then looked up into Edmund's face. It was a slow, luxurious movement, fitted to the rather unusually developed face and expression. Most debutantes are crude in their enjoyment, but Molly was beginning London at twenty-one, not at eighteen, and circ.u.mstances made her more mature than her actual experience of society warranted. Yet it seemed to Edmund that the untamed element in her was the more striking from the contrast. Molly accepted social delights and social conventions as a young and gentle tigress might enjoy the soft turf of an English lawn.

The defiance in her tone when she alluded to Groombridge faded now.

"I have six b.a.l.l.s in the next four nights, and one opera, and we are going to Ascot, then back to London, then to Cowes, and, after that, I am going to the Italian Lakes and to Switzerland, and wherever I like."

"Is Mrs. Delaport Green so very unselfish?"

"Oh, no; I am only going to stay with Adela till the end of the season, and then I am going abroad with two girls who are quite delightful, and in October the flat and the governess are to come into existence."

"Yes; everything--everything perfect," murmured Grosse, looking at her with an expression that included her own appearance in the "everything perfect." Then, dropping his restless eyegla.s.s, he went on.

"And you are never bored?"

"Never for one single moment."

"Amazing! and what is more amazing is that possibly you never will be bored."

"Am I to die young then?" asked Molly.

"Not necessarily, but I believe you will enjoy too keenly, and probably suffer too keenly to be bored."

"Did you ever enjoy very keenly?" asked Molly, with timid interest.

"Didn't I!" cried Grosse, with unusual animation; "until the last seven or eight years I enjoyed myself hugely, but----"

"Why did it stop?" asked Molly, her large eyes straining with eagerness.

"You look like a child who must know the end of the story at once. Do you always get so eager when you are told a story? Mine is dreadfully dull. While I had plenty of work to do, and something to look forward to, I was amused, but then----"

"Then what?"

"Well, then I became rich, and I've been dawdling about ever since. At first I enjoyed it, but now I'm bored to extinction."

"I can understand," said Molly, "when anything becomes quite easy it doesn't seem worth while to do it. But isn't there anything difficult you want to do?"

"Yes," said Edmund, "there are two things; one is plainly impossible, and the other is not hopeful, and neither of them prevents my feeling bored, for unfortunately neither of them gives me enough to do."

"Couldn't you work more at them?" asked Molly, with much sympathy.

"No," he said, as if talking to himself, "no one has the power to make a woman change her nature, and the other matter needs an expert. Good Heavens!" he stopped short, in astonishment at himself.

"Why, what's the matter?" asked Molly, while a deep flush of colour rose in her dark cheeks.

"You must be a witch," he said lightly; "you make me say things I don't in the least mean to say, and that I have never said to anyone else. And here is a distracted partner, Edgar Tonmore, coming to reproach you."

"Our dance is nearly over, Miss Dexter," said a young, fresh voice, and a most pleasing specimen of well-built and well-trained manhood stood before them. "I have been looking for you everywhere."

Molly and Edmund rose.

He stood where they left him watching her whirl past. It was as he had suspected; she had the gift of perfect movement.

And Molly, as she danced past, glanced towards the tall, loose figure, dignified with all its carelessness and with some curious trick of distinction and indifference in its bearing, and twice she caught tired eyes looking very earnestly at her.

"Good Heavens! I was talking of Rose to that girl, and of my efforts to get at her mother's money, and I never speak of either to mortal man.

What made me do it?"

Slowly he turned away and left the ballroom and the house, declining with a wave of the hand various appeals to stay, and found himself in the street.

"Sympathies and affinities be hanged!" He said it aloud. "She isn't even really beautiful, and I'll be hanged, too, if I'll talk to her any more."

But, alack for Molly, he did talk to her on almost every occasion on which they met. It was from no conscious lack of royalty to Rose; it was largely because he was so full of her and her affairs that he would in an a.s.sembly of indifferent people drift towards one who was in any way connected with those affairs. Then one word or two, the merest "how d'ye do?" seemed to develop instantly into talk, and shortly the talk turned to intimate things. And for him Molly was always at her best. Many people did not like her, yet admired her, and admitted her into their houses half unwillingly. Her speech was not often kindly, and there was an element of defiance even in her quietness, for her unmistakable social ease was distinctly negative. Molly was rich and dressed well, and Mrs. Delaport Green was a very clever woman, whose blunders were rare and whose pet vice was not unfas.h.i.+onable. There was nothing in this life to soften and ripen the best side of Molly. But Edmund drew out whatever she had in her that was gentle and kindly.

It does not need the experience of many London seasons in order to realise that it is a condition of things in which many of the faculties of our nature are suspended. It is not as a Puritan moralist might put it, that the atmosphere of a whirlpool of carnal vice chokes higher things, for the amus.e.m.e.nts may be perfectly innocent. Only for a time the people who are engaged in them don't happen to think, or to pity, or to pray, or to condemn, or often, I believe, to love, though it may seem absurd to say so. It may, therefore, be called a rest cure for aspirations and higher ambitions and anxieties and all the n.o.bler discontents. To Molly it was youth and fun and brightness and forgetfulness. There was no leisure to be morbid, no occasion to be bitter or combative. The game of life was too bright and smooth, above all too incessant not to suffice.

Mrs. Delaport Green might be outside the circle in which Lady Groombridge disported herself with more dignity than gaiety, but she had the _entree_ to some houses almost as good, if not as exclusive, and she had also a large number of acquaintances who entertained systematically and extravagantly. That the Delaport Greens were very rich, or lived as if they were very rich, had from the first surprised the "paying guest."

Lately it had become evident to her that if Adela had not been addicted to cards, Molly would never have been established in her house. She had found out by now that Mr. Delaport Green was a man of very good repute in the financial world as being distinctly successful on the Stock Exchange. He struck Molly as a st.u.r.dy type of Englishman, rather determined on complete independence, and liking to pay his way in a large free fas.h.i.+on. She rather wondered at his having consented to the plan of the "paying guest," but he seemed quite genial when he came across her and inquired with sympathy after her amus.e.m.e.nts, and evidently wished that she should enjoy herself.

Many girls whose position was undoubtedly secure, whom no one disliked and everybody was willing to amuse, had a much less amusing summer than Molly. And Edmund Grosse, most unconsciously to himself, was a leading figure in the warm dream of delight in which Molly lived from the middle of May till the end of June. They did not meet often at dances, but at stiffer functions, at the Opera, and also twice in the country--once on the river on a Sunday afternoon, and once for a whole week-end party, which last days deserve to be treated in more detail.

The group who met under the deep shade of some historic cedars, on a hot Sat.u.r.day afternoon, to spend together a Sat.u.r.day to Monday with a notably pleasant host and hostess, had carried with them the electric atmosphere of the season that so fascinated Molly's inexperience, to perfume it further with the June roses and light it with the romance of summer moonlight. Of the party were Molly and her chaperone and Sir Edmund Grosse.

By this time Mrs. Delaport Green had made up her mind that Molly had decidedly better become Lady Grosse, and she felt that it would be a pleasing and honourable conclusion to the season if the engagement were announced before she and Molly parted. She had fleeced Molly very considerably, but she wanted her to have her money's worth, and go away content.

It would take long to carry conviction as to the actual good and the possibility of further good there was in Mrs. Delaport Green. Out of reach of certain temptations she might have been quoted as a positive model of goodness and unselfish brightness. If her imitative gift had found only the highest models, she might have been a happy nun, or a quiet, stay-at-home wife and mother. But she was tossed into a social whirlpool where her instincts and her ambitions and her perceptions were all confused, and out of the depths of her little spoiled soul, had crawled a vice--probably hereditary--which might otherwise have slept.

It was fast becoming known that Molly's chaperone was a thorough gambler.

Sir Edmund Grosse was not unwilling to dawdle under the shade of an old wall with Mrs. Delaport Green that Sat.u.r.day evening in the country.

"I feel terribly responsible," she said, in her thin eager little voice; "I am sure that boy is going to propose to my protege!"