Great Possessions Part 38

Then they got back to the point.

"Well," said the Rector, "there's a lady comes here sometimes who spoke to me about this the other day. It seems she went to see John Nicholls, and the poor old blind fellow bit her head off, but she thought she ought to tell somebody who might put a stop to the talk, and so she came to me. There's some woman, a very rich Protestant, who gives out openly that she is waiting till Molyneux announces that he doesn't believe in the Church, and then they will marry and go to America. Then, another day Jim Dixon came along, and a friend of his had heard the tale from some Army man at his Club. It's exactly the way things went on about n.o.bbs, you know, beginning with talk like that. Really, if it wasn't for having seen n.o.bbs go down hill I shouldn't think anything of it. Young Molyneux is all straight so far, but so was n.o.bbs straight at first."

"A priest shouldn't be talked about," said the Monsignor.

"Of course not," said the Rector.

"He has started too young," the Monsignor went on, not unkindly; "it's all come on in such a hurry; he ought to have had a country mission first. But my predecessor thought he'd be so safe with you."

"But how can I help it?" asked the other hotly; "I'm sure I've done my best! You can ask him if I haven't warned him from his very first sermon that he'd be a popular preacher. I've even tried to teach him to preach.

I've lent him Challoner, and Hay, and Wiseman, and tried to get him out of his Oxford notions, but he's no sooner in the pulpit than he's off at a hard gallop--three hundred words to a minute, and such words!--'vitality,' 'personality,' 'development,' 'recrudescence,'

'mentality'--the Lord knows what! And there they sit and gaze at him with their mouths open drinking it in as if they'd been starved! No, no; it won't be my fault if he turns out another n.o.bbs--poor, miserable old n.o.bbs! Now his really were sermons!"

"Well," said the other, in a business-like tone, "I am inclined to think it would be best for him to take a country mission for a few years. I've no doubt he is on the square now, and that will give him time to quiet down a bit. He'll be an older and a wiser man after that, and he could do some sound, theological reading. Lord Lofton has been asking for a chaplain, and we must send him a gentleman. I could tell him that Molyneux had been a little overworked in London, and if he goes down to the Towers at the end of July, no one will suppose he is leaving for good, eh?"

"Very well," answered the Rector; "I don't want anything said against him, you know. I've had many a curate not half as ready to work as this man."

"No, no; I quite understand. Well, I'll write to him in the course of the week. And now about this point of plain chant?" And both men forgot the existence of Mark as they waxed hot on melodious questions.

I can't believe that Jonathan loved David more than the second curate had come to love Mark Molyneux in their work together. It is good to bear the yoke in youth, and it is very good to have a hero wors.h.i.+p for your yoke fellow. Father Jack Marny was a young Kelt, blue-eyed, straight-limbed, fair-haired, and very fair of soul. He would have told any sympathetic listener that he owed everything to Mark--zeal for souls, habits of self-denial, a new view of life, even enjoyment of pictures and of Browning, as well as interest in social science. All this was gross exaggeration, but in him it was quite truthful, for he really thought so. He had the run of Mark's room, and they took turns to smoke in each other's bedrooms, so as to take turns in bearing the rector's observations on the smell of smoke on the upstairs landing.

Father Marny had a subscription at Mudie's--his only extravagance--and he always ordered the books he thought Mark wished for, and Mark always ordered from the London library the books he thought would most interest Jack. Father Marny revelled in secret in the thought of all that might have belonged to Mark, and he possessed, of course most carefully concealed, a wonderful old print he had picked up on a counter, of Groombridge Castle, exalting the round towers to a preposterous height, while in the foreground strolled ladies in vast hoops, and some animals intended apparently for either cows or sheep according to the fancy of the purchaser.

But what each of the curates loved best was the goodness he discerned in the other, and the more intimate they became the more goodness they discerned. The very genuinely good see good, and provoke good by seeing it, and reflect it back again, as two looking-gla.s.ses opposite to each other repeat each other's light _ad infinitum_.

It was a Monday, and the rector had gone out to dinner, and the two young men were smoking in the general sitting-room. Father Marny was looking over the accounts of a boot club, and objurating the handwriting of the lady who kept them. Mark was in the absolutely pa.s.sive state to which some hard-working people can reduce themselves; he had hardly the energy to smoke. A loud knock produced no effect upon him.

"Lazy brute!" murmured Father Marny, in his affectionate, clear voice, "can't even fetch the letters." And a moment later he went for them himself, and having flung a dozen letters over his companion's shoulder, went back to the accounts.

Ten minutes later he looked up, and gave a little start. He was quick to see any change in Mark, and he did not like his att.i.tude. He did not know till that moment how anxious he had been as to the possibility of some change. He moved quickly forward and stood in front of the deep chair in which Mark was sitting, leaning forward with his eyes fixed on the carpet.

"Bad news?" he asked abruptly.

"Bad enough," said Mark, and, very slowly raising his head, he gave a smile that was the worst part of all the look on his face. Jack Marny put one hand on his shoulder, and a woman's touch could not have been lighter.

"It's not----?" he said, and then stopped.

"Yes, it is," Mark answered. "I am to be a domestic chaplain to that pious old a.s.s, Lord Lofton. It seems I need quiet for study--quiet to rot in! My G.o.d! is that how I am to work for souls?"

It was, perhaps, better for Mark that Jack Marny broke down completely at the news, for, by the time he had been forced into telling his friend that it was preposterous to suppose that any man was necessary for G.o.d's work, and that if they had faith at all they must believe that G.o.d allowed this to happen, light began to dawn in his own mind. But he was almost frightened at the pa.s.sionate resentment of the Kelt; he saw there was serious danger of some outbreak on his part against the authorities.

"They won't catch me staying here after you are gone!"

"Much good that would do me," said Mark. "I should get all the blame."

"They must learn that we are not slaves!" thundered the curate, his fair face absolutely black with wrath.

"We are G.o.d's slaves," said Mark, in a low voice, and then there was silence between them for the s.p.a.ce of half an hour.

The door opened and a shrill voice cried out, "There's Tom Turner at the door asking for Father Mark," and the door was banged to again.

Tom Turner was the very flower of Mark's converts to a good life.

Father Marny groaned at the name.

"Let me see him," he said. "Go out and get a walk."

"I'd rather see him; I don't know how much oftener----"

The sentence was not finished. He had left the room in two strides.

CHAPTER x.x.xVI

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 a.s.sume the _role_ 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 G.o.d forgive me, and, by His Grace, may you do likewise."

The sight of David's handwriting, the astonis.h.i.+ng 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 _role_ 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 Amba.s.sador 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 fas.h.i.+on in her gorgeous simplicity of attire; there was rather something subtly in keeping with the house itself.