Great Possessions Part 25

"But I am not glad."

"I repeat that you are, and this is the reason why."

"You shall not say it," said Rose, now more and more distressed and embarra.s.sed.

"It's because you never knew before why I did not volunteer for the war, that is why you are so glad." "Yes," he thought in anger, "she has had this thing against me all the time; it is one of the defences she has set up." But he was hurt all the same--hurt and angry; he wanted to punish her. "So all the time you have thought this of me?"

"No, indeed, indeed, Edmund, it wasn't that. I never meant that; I knew you were never that, do believe me."

"Well, if I do believe you so far, what did you think?"

Rose let her book lie on her knee and leant over it with her hands clasped. "I thought that perhaps," she faltered, "you had been too long in the habit of doing nothing much, and that you had grown a little lazy--at least, I didn't really think so, but that idea has struck me."

She came and stood by him. "Oh, Edmund, why do you make me say things when I don't want to, when I hate saying them, when they are not really true at all." She was deeply moved, and he felt that in one sense she was in his power. He gave a bitter sigh.

"Can I make you say whatever I like?" Her face flushed and a different look, one of fear he thought, came into her troubled eyes. "Then say after me, 'I am very sorry I did not understand by intuition that you were too blind to shoot the Boers, and that I was so silly as to think for a moment that you had ever wasted your time or been the least little bit lazy.'"

"No, I won't say anything at all"--she held out both hands to him--"except what the children say, 'let us just go on with the game and pretend that that part never happened.'"

And though Rose was still embarra.s.sed, still inclined to fear she had hurt him, what might have been a little cloud was pierced by sunshine.

"How ridiculously glad she is that I'm not a coward!" He, too, in spite of annoyance, felt more hopeful than he had been for a long time.

At Genoa they got long delayed letters and papers. In one of these a short paragraph announced the death of Madame Danterre. "It is believed," were the concluding words, "that she has left her large fortune to her daughter, Miss Mary Dexter." That was the first reminder to Rose that the interlude of mere enjoyment was almost over. She was not going to repine; it had been very good. Coming on board after reading this with a quiet patient look, a look habitual to her during the last two years, but which had faded under the sunshine of happy days, Rose saw Edmund Grosse standing alone in the stern of the boat with a number of letters in his left hand pressed against his leg, looking fixedly at the water. The yacht was already standing out to sea, but Edmund had not glanced a farewell at beautiful and yet prosperous Genoa, a city that no modern materialism can degrade. Like a young bride of the sea, she is decked by things old and things new, and her marble palaces do not appear to be insulted by the jostling of modern commerce.

All things are kept fresh and pure on that wonderful coast. Something had happened, of that Rose was sure; but what?

Edmund did not look puzzled; he was deciding no knotty question at this moment. Nor did he look simply unhappy: she knew his expression when in sorrow and when in physical pain or mere disgust. He looked intensely preoccupied and very firm. Perhaps, she fancied, he too had a deep sense of that pa.s.sing of life, of something akin in the swift movement of the water pa.s.sing the yacht and the swift movement of life pa.s.sing by the individual man. Was he, perhaps, feeling how life was going for him and for Rose, and by the simple fact of its pa.s.sing on while they were standing pa.s.sive their lives would be fixed apart?--pa.s.sing, apart from what might have been of joy, of peace, of company along the road? There are moments when, even without the stimulus of pa.s.sion, human beings have a sort of guess at the possibilities of helping one another, of giving strength, and gaining sweetness, that are slipping by. There are many degrees of regret, between that of ships that pa.s.s in the night, and that of those who have voyaged long together. There are pa.s.sages of pleasure sympathy, and pa.s.sages of sympathy in fight, and pa.s.sages of mutual succour, and pa.s.sages of intercourse when incapacity to help has in itself revealed the intensity of good-will in the watcher. But whenever the heart has been fuller than its words, and the will has been deeper than its actions, there is this beauty of regret. There has been a wealth of love greater than could be given or received--not the love of pa.s.sion, but the love of the little children of the human race for one another. This regret is too grave to belong to comedy, and too happy to belong to tragedy. Rose's heart was full with this sorrow, if it be a real sorrow. These are the sorrows of hearts that are too great for the occasions of life, whereas the pain is far more common of the hearts that are not big enough for what life gives them of opportunity.

Rose was oppressed by feelings she could not a.n.a.lyse, a sense of possibilities of what might have been after these perfect weeks together. But her feelings were dreamy; she had no sense of concrete alternative; she did not now--he had been too skilful--expect Edmund to ask her, nor did she wish him to ask her, to draw quite close to him.

She only felt at the end of this interlude they had spent together a suspicion of the infinite reach of the soul, and the soul not rebelling against its bonds, but conscious of them while awaiting freedom.

"Only I discern infinite pa.s.sion and the pain Of finite hearts that yearn."

Such were the moments when a man might be pardoned if he called Rose's beauty angelic--angelic of the type of Perugino's pictured angels, a figure just treading on the earth enough to keep up appearances, but whose very skirts float buoyantly in the fresh atmosphere of eternity.

They stood a few paces apart, Rose with her look bent vaguely towards the sh.o.r.e, Edmund, still reading his letters, apparently unaware of her presence. He was thus able to take a long exposure sun-picture of the white figure on a sensitive memory that would prove but too retentive of the impression.

But he had to speak at last. "Is it you?"

Edmund thought he spoke as usual, but there was a depth of pain and of tenderness revealed in the face that usually betrayed so little. He held out his hand unconsciously and then drew it back half closed, and looked again at the flowing water. It was a moment of temptation, when love was fighting against itself. Then, with the same half movement of the hand towards her:

"I have had a bolt from the blue, Rose. That man, Hewitt, whom I trusted as I would myself, has absconded. It is thought he has been playing wildly with my money, and that this crisis in South America has been the last blow. I shan't know yet if I am ruined completely or not."

"Oh, Edmund, how dreadful!"

"Don't pity me, dear, it's not worth while. It only means that one of the unemployed will get to work at last. That is, if he can find a job.

But I must hurry home at once and leave you to follow. If I put back into Genoa now I can leave by the night express. And you and your mother had better go on to Ma.r.s.eilles in the yacht after you have dropped me."

CHAPTER XXII

SOMETHING LIKE EVIDENCE

Mr. Murray Junior's step sounded heavy, and his head was a little more bent than usual, as he pa.s.sed down the pa.s.sage into his sanctum. The snow, turning to rain and then rea.s.serting itself and insisting that it would be snow, was dreary enough already when the fog set in firmly and without compromise. There was a good fire in the sanctum; the electric light was on, and the clean sheet of blotting-paper, fresh every morning, lay on the table.

But Mr. Murray, Junior, was struggling for a few moments to realize where he was, for his mind was in such different surroundings. In his thoughts it was June--not June sweltering in London, but June gone mad with roses in a tiny Surrey garden; and with true realism his memory chose just one rose-tree out of them all, which best implied the glory of the others. And one branch of this tree was bent down by a girl's hand; her arm, from which a cotton sleeve had fallen back, was wonderfully white, and the roses wonderfully red.

And the office boy, slowly pulling off one damp, well-made boot and then the other over the gouty toes, was the only person who noticed that "the governor" was awfully down in the mouth.

But no one knew that in Mr. Murray Junior's pocket was a letter from a great specialist, who had seen Mr. Murray Junior's wife the day before,--and what that letter said has nothing to do with this story.

Sir Edmund called about mid-day, and noticed nothing unusual in the heavy face; only it struck him that Murray was looking old, and he wondered on which side of seventy the lawyer might be.

Grosse's visit was the first real distraction the older man had that day. It was impossible for the solicitor not to be interested in the probability that Edmund Grosse had lost a great fortune. The affair teemed with professional interest, and then he liked the man himself. He had a taste for the type, for the man who knows how to cut a figure in the great world without being vulgar or ostentatious. He liked Edmund's manner, his tact, his gift for putting people at their ease. Rumour said that the baronet had shown pluck since the news had come, and had behaved handsomely to underlings. Most men become agitated, irritable, and even cruel when driven into such a position.

It never entered into Murray's imagination to appear to know that Edmund had any cause for care: he was not his solicitor, and he knew that his visitor had not come about his own affairs. But he could not conceal an added degree of respect, and liking even, under the impenetrable manner which hid his own aching sense of close personal suffering. Grosse answered the firm hand-grip with a kindly smile.

"I only heard of Madame Danterre's death when I got to Genoa on our return journey."

"And she died just before you left London," said Murray.

"Yes; I must have overlooked the paper in which it was announced, although I thought I read up all arrears of news whenever we went into port. I wonder no one mentioned it in Cairo; there were several people there who seemed posted up in Lady Rose's affairs. What do you know about Madame Danterre's will?"

"Very little but rumour; nothing is published. Miss Dexter was too ill to attend to business until about two weeks ago; she only saw her lawyer at the end of January. Anyhow, Madame Danterre having died abroad makes delays in this sort of business. But I have been wanting to see you," he said.

Something in his manner made Grosse ask him if he had news.

"Nothing very definite, but things are moving in your direction; and something small, but solid, is the fact that old Akers's son, and the other private, Stock, who witnessed some deed or other for Sir David, are coming home. The regiment is on its way back in the _Jumna_."

Edmund, watching the strong, heavy face, could see that this interested him less than something else as yet unexpressed.

Murray leant back in the round office chair, and crossed his legs in the well of the ma.s.sive table before him. Edmund bent forward, his face sunburnt and healthy after the weeks on the yacht, but the eyes seemed tired.

"I don't know that it comes to much," Murray went on slowly, "but three days after Madame Danterre's death a foreigner asked to see me who refused to give his name to my clerk. I had him shown in, and thought him a superior man--not, perhaps, a gentleman, but a man with brains.

He asked in rather queer English whether I would object to giving him all the information I could, without betraying confidence, as to Sir David Bright and his wife. I thought for a moment that he was your Florentine detective, but then I reflected that the detective would have no object in disguising himself from me as he knew that you trusted me entirely. I told my visitor that he might ask me any questions he liked, and I can a.s.sure you he placed his shots with great skill. He wanted first to know if there had been any scandal connected with their married life, in order, of course, to find out why Sir David had not left his money to Lady Rose; and whether no one had been disposed to dispute the will. I let him see that the affair had been a nine days' wonder here, and I gave him some notion of my own opinion of Madame Danterre. He did not give himself away, and I thought he had some honest reason for anxiety in the matter. Well! he left without letting me know his name or address, but there is no doubt that he is Dr. Larrone. I wrote at once to your detective, Pietrino, in Florence, and a letter from him crossed mine saying that Dr. Larrone had left Florence within a few hours of Madame Danterre's death, and that, by her desire, he had taken a small box to Miss Dexter. There was evidently a certain sense of mystery and excitement among the nurses and servants as to the box and the sudden journey. It seems that Madame Larrone was angry at his taking this sudden journey, and said to a friend that she only 'hoped he wouldn't get his fingers burnt by meddling in other people's affairs.'

"Then Pietrino, in answering my letter, said that my description was certainly the description of Larrone. He says the doctor is exceedingly upright and sensitive as to his professional honour, and has been known to refuse a legacy from a patient because he thought it ought not to have been left out of the family. Since that, Pietrino has written that Larrone is taking a long holiday, and that people are wondering if he will have any scruples as to the large legacy that is said to have been left to him by Madame Danterre. So it is pretty clear who my reticent visitor was. Now, I don't know that we gain much from that so far, but I think it may mean that Larrone could, if he would, tell some interesting details. I will give you all Pietrino's letters, but I should just like to run on with my own impressions from them first. It seems that, since Madame Danterre's death, there has been a good deal of wild talk against her in Florence, which was kept down by self-interest as long as she was living and an excellent paying-machine. You will see, when you read the gossip, that very little is to the point. But, on the other hand, Pietrino has valuable information from one of the nurses. She is a young woman who is disappointed, as she has had no legacy; evidently Madame Danterre intended to add her name in the last codicil, but somehow failed to do so. This woman is sure that Madame Danterre had an evil conscience as to her wealth. She also said that she was always morbidly anxious as to a small box. Once, when the nurse had rea.s.sured her by showing her the box, which was kept in a little bureau by the bed, she said, with an odd smile: 'If I believed in the devil I should be very glad that I can pay him back all he lent me when I don't want it any more.' At another time she asked for the box and took out some papers, and told the nurse to light a candle close to her as she was going to burn some old letters. Then she began to read a long, long letter, and as she read, she became more and more angry until she had a sudden attack of the heart. The nurse swept the papers into the box and locked it up, knowing that she could do nothing to soothe the patient while they were lying about. That night the doctors thought Madame Danterre would die, but she rallied. She did not speak of the papers again until some days later. The nurse described how, one evening, when she thought her sleeping, she was surprised to find her great eyes fixed on the candle in a sconce near the bed. 'The candle was burnt half way down, but the paper was not burnt at all,' the nurse heard her whisper; 'I shall not do it now. I cannot be expected to settle such questions while I am ill. After all, I have always given her a full share; she can destroy it herself if she likes, or she can give it all up to that woman--it shall be her own affair.'

"She did not seem to know that she had been speaking aloud, and she muttered a little more to herself and then slept.

"The nurse heard no further allusion to the box for weeks. She said the old woman was using all her fine vitality and her iron will in fighting death. Then came the last change, and her torpid calm turned into violent excitement. While she thought herself alone with Dr. Larrone she implored him to take the box to England the moment she died, and put it into her daughter's hands. 'No one knows it matters,' she said more than once. But when she found that he did not wish to go, and said it was impossible for him to go at once, her entreaties were terrible. 'She had always had her own way, and she had it to the end,' was the nurse's comment.

"Dr Larrone, coming out of the room, realised that the nurse must have known what pa.s.sed, and told her he was glad she was there. He put a box on a table with a little bang of impatience.

"'It's delirium, delusion, madness!' he said, 'but I've given my word. I never hated a job more; she wouldn't have the morphia till I had taken my oath I would go as soon as she was dead.'"

Grosse was absorbed by the pictures feebly conveyed through the nurse's words, through the detective's letters, through the English lawyer's translation and summary. He could supply what was missing. He had seen Madame Danterre. He could so well imagine the frightful force of the woman, a tyrant to the very last moment. He could guess, too, at the reaction of those about her when once she was dead, and they were quite out of her reach. There is always a reaction when feebler personalities have to fill the s.p.a.ce left by a tyrant. He could realise the buzz of gossip, and the sense of courage with which servants and tradesmen would make wild, impossible stories of her wicked life. He came back from these thoughts with a certain shock when he found Murray saying: