Great Possessions Part 34

In the afternoon she met several of her Roman Catholic acquaintances at a charity performance in a well-known garden, and she pumped all those she could decoy in turn into a _tete-a-tete_ as to Father Molyneux. She was in reality devoured with the wish to know the truth. She had her own thin but genuine share of ideality, and she had been more impressed by Mark's renouncement of Groombridge Castle than by anything she had met with before.

But gradually, as she hunted the story, she gave him up, not because of any evidence of any kind, but because she did not find him regarded as anything very wonderful. She had need of the enthusiasms of others to make an atmosphere for her own ideals, and almost by chance she had not met anyone much interested in the young preacher. Then she had dim backwaters of anti-Popery in her mind, and they helped the reaction. She had come out, lance in rest, to defend the victim of calumny; in a very few days she had thrown him over, and was explaining pathetically to anybody who would listen that she had had a shock to her faith in humanity. And the story, starting by describing her own state of mind and being almost entirely subjective, ended in bringing home to her listeners with peculiar force the objective facts as a.s.serted by Molly.

Catholics, she found, when she came to this advanced state of propagation, were aghast at her story. They did not believe it, but they were excessively annoyed, and were, for the most part, inclined to think that Mark could not have been entirely prudent. But non-Catholics were, naturally, more credulous.

A calumny is a quick and gross feeder. It has a thousand different ways of a.s.similating things "light as air," or things dull from the ennui which produced them, or things p.r.i.c.kly with envy, or slushy, green things born of unconscious jealousy, or unpleasant things born of false pieties, or hard views born of tired experience, or worldly products of incredulity, or directly evil suggestions, or the repulsions of satiated sensuality, or the bitter fruits of melancholia, or the foreshadowings of insanity, or the mere dislike of the lower moralities for the higher, or the uneasiness felt by the ordinary in the presence of the rare, or the revolt felt by the conventional against holier bonds, or the prattle of curiosity, or the roughness of mere vitality, or the fusion of minds at a low level.

This particular calumny was well watered and manured with all these by-products of human life, and it grew to full size and height with a rapidity that could not have been attained under less favourable conditions.

BOOK IV

CHAPTER x.x.xII

ROSE SUMMONED TO LONDON

Rose was back in London the second week in July, summoned back rather imperiously by Mr. Murray, Junior. The house had been shut up since the departure of her tenants at Whitsuntide, and she had hoped not to reopen it until the autumn. She had intended to go directly to her mother's home in the country as soon as they could leave Paris. It was becoming a question whether it would be a greater risk for Lady Charlton to endure the heat in Paris or the fatigues of the long journey. Mr. Murray's letter decided them to move. Rose must go, and her mother would not stay behind alone. Lady Charlton decided to pay a month's visit to her youngest daughter in Scotland, as Rose might be kept in London.

It was a disappointment. The house in London would be nearly as stuffy as Paris. Rose disliked the season and was in no mood for the stale echoes of its dying excitements. She would not tell her friends that she was back; she would keep as quiet as she had been in Paris.

The first morning, after early service and breakfast, she went to the library to wait for the lawyer's visit. It was the only room in which to receive him; the dining-room, and drawing-room, and the little boudoir upstairs, were not opened. Rose was inclined to leave them as they were, with the furniture in brown wrappers, for the present; but she would rather have seen Mr. Murray in any room but the library.

The morning sun was full on the windows that opened to the rather dreary garden at the back. She wondered why Mr. Murray had written so urgently, and why Edmund Grosse had not written for several weeks. Up to now they had done all this horrid business between them, and she had only had occasional reports from her cousin. Now she must face the subject with the lawyer himself. She was puzzled to account for the change in the situation.

At the exact moment he had mentioned, Mr. Murray's tall person with its heavy, bent head appeared in the library. As they greeted they were both conscious that it was in this same room, seated at the wide writing-table still in the same place, and still bearing the large photograph of Sir David Bright, where he had first told her of the strange dispositions of her husband's will. He remembered vividly her look then--undaunted and confident--as she had gently but firmly a.s.serted that there must be another will. But had she not also said it would never be found?

But the present occupied the lawyer much more than the past. He was eager and a little triumphant in his story of the progress of the case, and did not notice that the sweet face opposite to him became more and more white as he went on. He told her all he had told Sir Edmund when he first got back from the yacht; he told of the mysterious visit he had received from Dr. Larrone, and how he could prove from the letters of the Florentine detective that Madame Danterre had sent the doctor to England to take a certain small, black box to Miss Dexter.

Then he paused.

"I told Sir Edmund how our Florentine detective, Pietrino, had made friends with one of the nurses, and that she described Madame Danterre ordering the box to be opened and having a seizure--a heart attack--while the letters were spread out on her bed. Nurse Edith said then that she had put them back in a hurry and locked the box, and that it had not been reopened by Madame Danterre. Some weeks later when she was near her end, Madame Danterre had a scene with Dr. Larrone which ended in his consenting to take the box to London as soon as she was dead, but the nurse was sure that the doctor was told nothing as to the contents of the box. That was as much as we knew up to Easter, and while waiting for the arrival of Akers, and Stock, the other private who had witnessed the signature. They got here in Easter week, and I saw them with Sir Edmund, and we both cross-questioned them closely. Akers's evidence is beyond suspicion, and is perfectly supported by that of Stock. He described all that happened at the witnessing of the General's signature most circ.u.mstantially, but, of course, he knew nothing of the contents of the paper. But now I have more important evidence than any we have had so far, and the extraordinary thing is that Sir Edmund does not wish to hear it. I cannot understand why!"

Rose remained silent. She was looking fixedly at a paper-knife which she held in her hand.

It suddenly struck the lawyer as a flash of most embarra.s.sing light that possibly there was some complication of a dangerous and tender kind between Sir Edmund and his cousin. He could not dwell on such a notion now--it might be absolute nonsense, but it made him go on hastily:

"I have had a visit from Nurse Edith, and as Pietrino suspected, she knows much more than she would allow to him. I think she was waiting to see if money would be offered for her information, but Pietrino would not fall into the risk of buying evidence. He waited; she was watched until she came to London, and she had not been here twenty-four hours before she came to me. She declares now that, as she was gathering up the papers, she had seen that the long letter Madame Danterre had been reading when she had the attack of faintness was written to some one called Rose. She knew it was that letter which had done the mischief.

She slipped it into her pocket when she put the rest away. I believe it was naughty curiosity, but she wishes us to think that she knew the whole scandal about the General's will, and did what she did from a sense of justice. When off duty she took the paper to her room, and when she opened it she found the will inside it. In her excitement she called the housemaid, an Englishwoman with whom she had made friends, and she copied the will while they were together, and the names of Akers and Stock--of whom she could not possibly have heard--are in her copy. I have seen that copy, Lady Rose, and----" He paused and glanced at her for a moment, and then his eyes sought the trees in the garden even as they had done when he had made that other and awful announcement on the day of the memorial service to Sir David. Rose flushed a little, and her breathing came quickly, but she made no sign of impatience.

"Sir David left the whole of his fortune to you subject to an annual payment of a thousand a-year to Madame Danterre during her lifetime."

Complete silence followed. Lady Rose either could not or would not speak. Out of the pale, distinguished slightly worn face the eyes looked at Mr. Murray with no surprise. Had she not always said that she did not believe the iniquitous will Mr. Murray had brought her to be the true one, but had she not also maintained that the true will would never be found? She did not say so to Mr. Murray, but in fact she shrank from making too sure of Nurse Edith's evidence. She had so long forbidden herself to believe in the return of worldly fortune or to wish for it.

Mr. Murray coughed. No words of congratulation seemed available. At last he went on:

"Nurse Edith says she did not read the letter which was with the will.

Directly she went on duty in the morning, and while Madame Danterre was asleep she put the papers back in the black box and the key of the box in its usual place in a little bag on a table standing close by the head of the bed. It was, as I have said, this same box which was put into Dr.

Larrone's care before he started on his mysterious journey to see Miss Dexter. Now our position is very strong. We have evidence of the witnessing of a paper by two men. We have the copy of the will made by the nurse and witnessed by the housemaid, and it bears the signatures of those two men. Then you must remember that, in a case of this kind, the court is much more likely to set aside a will leaving property away from the family than if the will in dispute had been an ordinary one in favour of his relations."

"Oh! it is horrible--too horrible!" cried Rose. "There must be some mistake. That young girl I met at Groombridge! Even if the poor mother were really wicked, that girl cannot have carried it on!"

Rose had leant her elbows on the table, and clasped her white hands tightly and then covered her face with them for a moment.

"I can't believe it. I feel there is some terrible mistake, and we might ruin this girl's life. It would be ill-gotten, unblest wealth."

The lawyer noted with surprise that these two--Sir Edmund and Lady Rose--were not more anxious for wealth, rather less so, since both had known comparative poverty.

"I don't believe anyone is the better for living on fraud, Lady Rose, and I don't believe you have any right to drop the case. You have to think of Sir David's good name and of his wishes. The will you are suffering from was a portentous wrong."

Rose trembled. Had she not felt it the most awful, the most portentous wrong? Had it not burnt deep miserable wounds in her soul? The whole horror of the desecration of her married life had been revealed to her in this room by this man. Did she need that he should tell her what that misery had been? The words he had used then were as well known to her as the words he had used to-day.

Rose said after a longer pause, and with slight hesitation:

"And Sir Edmund does not know what Nurse Edith told you? He has not seen the copy of the will?"

"No; I wanted him to, but he refused to hear any more on the subject. I cannot understand it at all." He spoke with considerable irritation, his big forehead contracted with a deep frown. "Sir Edmund, after making the guess on which the whole thing has turned, after discovering Akers and Stock, after spending large sums in the necessary work----"

"Has he spent much money?" Rose flushed deeply.

But Mr. Murray, who usually had more tact, was now too full of his grievance to pause.

"He spent money as long as he could, and now takes no more interest in the matter on the ground that he can no longer be of any use. Why, it was his judgment we wanted, his perceptions; no one could be of more use than Sir Edmund!"

"And who is paying the expenses now?"

"Ah! that is the reason why I wished to see you as soon as possible. I felt that I could not, without your approval, continue as we are now.

The last cheque from Sir Edmund covered all expenses to the end of the year. I have advanced what has been necessary since then, and if you really wish the thing dropped, that is entirely my own affair. But I do most earnestly hope that you will not do anything so wrong. I feel very strongly my responsibility towards Sir David's memory in this matter."

"I feel," said Rose, but her manner was irresolute, "that the scandal has been forgotten by now; things come and go so fast. He will be remembered only as a great soldier who died for his country."

"It may be forgotten," said Mr. Murray in a stern voice she had never heard before. "It may be forgotten in a society which is always needing some new sensation and is always well supplied. But there is a less fluctuating public opinion. We men of business keep a clearer view of character, and we know better how through all cla.s.ses there is a verdict pa.s.sed on men that does not pa.s.s away in a season. Do you think, madam, that when men treasure a good name it is the gossip of a London season they regard? No; it is the thoughts of other good men in which they wish to live. It is the sympathy of the good that a good man has a right to.

I believe in a future life, but I don't imagine I know whether in another world they rejoice or suffer pain by anything that affects their good name here. But I do know, Lady Rose, that deep in our nature is the sense of duty to their memory, and I cannot believe that such an instinct is without meaning or without some actual bearing on departed souls. I don't expect Sir David to visit me in dreams, but I do expect to feel a deep and reasonable self-reproach if I do not try to clear his name."

The heavy features of the solicitor had worked with a good deal of emotion. The thought, the words "departed souls," were no mere words to him in these summer days while Mrs. Murray, Junior, was supposed to be doing well after an operation in a nursing home, and the doctors were inclined to speak of next month's progress and on that of the month after that, and to be silent as to any dates far ahead. In his professional hours he did not dwell on these things, but it was the actual spiritual conditions of the life he and his wife were leading that gave a strange force to his words.

"She never loved him," thought Mr. Murray as he looked out of the window. He was on the same side of the writing-table that he had been on when he had first told her of the deep insult offered to her by Sir David. He did not realise now the intensity of the contempt he had felt then for the departed General as he looked at his photograph. It was intolerable, he had thought then, that a man should have those large, full eyes, that straight, manly look and bearing, who had gone to his grave having deliberately planned that his dead hand should so deeply wound a defenceless woman, and that woman his sweet, young wife.

Murray's mind was so full now of relief at the idea that Sir David had done his best at the last, that in his relief he almost forgot that, in a woman's mind the main fact might still be that there had been a Madame Danterre in the case!

But Rose now, as when he had first told her of Madame Danterre's existence, was seeking with a single eye to find the truth. It had seemed to her then a moral impossibility to believe that her husband had meant to leave this horrible insult to their married life. David had been incapable of anything so monstrous; he had not in his character even the courage of such a crime.

But now the key to the situation, according to Mr. Murray, was Molly; and Rose again brought to bear all that she had of perception, of experience, of instinct, to see her way clearly. She was silent; then at last she looked up.

"Mr. Murray, Miss Dexter could not commit such a crime. Why, I know her; I spent some days in a country house with her. I know her quite well, and I don't like her very much, but she really can't have done anything of the kind, and therefore, the case won't be proved. I am sure it won't. And if it fails only harm will be done to David's memory, not good."