Great Possessions Part 33

Listening to her Miss Carew almost believed that all the men Molly met were _divorces_, or notoriously lived bad lives, and hardly veiled their intention to continue to do the same after obtaining her hand and her money.

Molly would lie on a sofa, in a gorgeous kind of _deshabille_ which cost almost as much as Miss Carew spent on her clothes in the whole year, and apparently take delight in scaring her by these hideous revelations.

She was so strange in her wild kind of eloquence, and it was so impossible to believe all she said, that the doubt more than once occurred to Miss Carew whether it might be a case of the use of drugs.

The extraordinary personal indulgence of luxury was unlike anything the older woman had ever come across. Then there was no system, nothing business-like about Molly as there often is in women of the modern world. Miss Carew dimly suspected that any society of human beings expects some self-discipline, and some sacrifice to ordinary rules. As it was she wondered how long Molly's neglect of small duties and her frequent insolence would be condoned.

All this, which had been coming on gradually, was positively nauseous to the middle-aged Englishwoman whose nerves were suffering from the strain, and she came to feel that it would be impossible to endure it much longer. It would be easier to drudge and trudge with girls in the schoolroom for a smaller salary than to endure life with Molly if she were to develop further this kind of temper.

For months now Miss Carew had lived under a great strain. From the evening when she had found Molly sitting on the floor with the tin box open before her, and old, yellow letters lying on the ground about it, she had been almost constantly uneasy. She could not forget the sight of Molly crouching like a tramp in the midst of the warm, comfortable room, biting her right hand in a horrible physical convulsion. It was of no use to try to think that Molly's condition that night was entirely the result of illness, or that the loss of her unknown mother had upset her to that degree or at all in that way. The character of Molly's mental state was quite, quite different from the qualities that come of grief or sickness. Then had followed the very anxious nursing, during which all other thoughts had been swallowed up in immediate anxiety and responsibility.

During Molly's convalescence, in the quiet days by the sea-side, Miss Carew began to reflect on a kind of coherent unity in the delirious talk she had listened to during the worst days of the illness. And she also noticed that Molly, by furtive little jokes and sudden, irrelevant questions, was trying to find out what Miss Carew had heard her say.

Then it became evident that Molly attributed all the excitement of that night to her subsequent illness--only once, and that very calmly, alluding to the fact of her mother's death.

Miss Carew had no wish to penetrate the mystery of the black box and the faded letters. She had a sort of instinctive horror of the subject, but she could not but watch the fate of the box when they came back to the flat. Molly paid no attention to it whatever, and said in a natural tone:

"I shall send my father's dispatch box and sword-case and my own dispatch boxes in a cab. Would you mind taking them and having them put in the little room next to my bed-room?"

But in the end Molly had taken them herself, as she thought Miss Carew had a slight cold. Miss Carew always had a certain dislike to the door of the little room next to Molly's, which had evidently been once used for a powder closet. She did not even know if the door were locked or not, and she never touched the handle. She had an uncanny horror of pa.s.sing the door, at least so she said afterwards; probably in retrospect she came to exaggerate her feelings as to these things.

She was puzzled and confused: her health was not good, and her faculties were dimmed. It was probably the strain of living with Molly whom she could no longer control or guide, and who was so evidently in dire need of some one to do both. She felt dreadfully burdened with responsibility, both as to the things she did understand and the things she did not understand. What she could not understand was a sense of moral darkness, like a great, looming grey cloud, sometimes simply dark and heavy, and at other times a cloud electric with coming danger. She felt as if burdened with a secret which she longed to impart, only that she did not know what it was. At times it was as if she carried some monstrous thing on her back, whilst she could only see its dark, shapeless shadow. Her self-confidence was going, and her culture was so useless. What good was it to her now to know really well the writings of Burke, or Macaulay--nay, of Racine and Pascal? She had never been religious since her childhood, but in these long, solitary days in the great house that grew more and more gloomy as she pa.s.sed about it when Molly was out, she began to feel new needs and to seek for old helps.

Molly was sometimes struck by the change in her companion. Miss Carew seemed to have grown so futile, so incoherent and funny, unlike the Miss Carew who had been her finishing governess not many years ago.

The sight of Carey's troubled, mottled face began to irritate Molly to an unbearable degree.

"Why not have a treatment for eczema and have done with it? You used to have quite a clear skin," she cried, in brutal irritation one morning.

"Oh! it's nerves--merely nerves," said poor Miss Carew apologetically.

"Then have a treatment for nerves," cried Molly furiously. "It is too ridiculous to have blotches on your face because I have a bad temper!"

It was the night after the little supper party at which the slander was born that Molly said this rude thing, and then abruptly left the drawing-room to join a hairdresser who was waiting upstairs. Almost immediately afterwards Adela Delaport Green was standing over the stiff chair on which Miss Carew was sitting, very limp in figure, and holding a damp handkerchief to her face.

"How d'ye do? They told me Molly was here," she said in a disappointed voice, and her eyes ranged round the room with the alertness of a sportswoman.

Adela had come with a purpose; she had come there to right the wrong and to force Molly to tell the truth.

"She was here a moment ago. She has just gone up to the hairdresser,"

said Miss Carew as she got up, quickly restoring the damp handkerchief to her pocket and composing her countenance, not without a certain dignity. She liked Adela, who was always friendly and civil whenever they met.

That little lady threw herself pettishly into a deep chair.

"So tiresome when I haven't a minute to spare, and I suppose he will keep her nearly an hour?"

"Can I take a message?"

"Oh! no, thanks, dear Miss Carew, don't go up all those horrid steep steps. Do rest and entertain me a little. I am sure you feel these hot days terribly."

"I find it very cool and quiet here," said Miss Carew, a little sadly.

"I'm afraid it's lonely," cried Adela.

"Well! I oughtn't to grumble about that."

"No, you never do grumble, I know; but I feel sometimes that you must be tired and anxious, placed, as you are, as the only thing instead of a mother to poor, dear Molly!"

The fierce, quick envy betrayed in that "poor, dear Molly" did not reach Miss Carew's brain, and a little sympathy was very soothing.

"Now, could any fortune stand this sort of thing?" asked Adela.

The companion shook her head sadly, but would not speak.

"You know that she has bought Sir Edmund Grosse's old yacht? And that she is taking one of the best deer forests in the Highlands? And is it true that she is thinking of buying Portlands?"

"Oh, yes!" sighed Miss Carew. "There is some new scheme every day."

"She has everything the world can give," said Adela sharply. "But, you know," she went on, "people won't go on standing her manners as they do now, even if she can pay her amazing way! Do you know that her cousin, Lady Dawning, declares she won't have anything more to do with her? Not that that matters very much; old Lady Dawning hardly counts, now that Molly has really great people as her friends, only little leaks let in the water by degrees."

A pause, and then suddenly:

"Do you know Father Molyneux?"

"Yes," said Miss Carew, who was glad to change the subject. "He is very charming."

"I didn't know he was a friend of Molly's."

"Oh! didn't you? She took a great fancy to him last autumn; he used to come to luncheon."

"Did he come often?"

"Oh! I think so, but I don't remember exactly."

"And has he been coming here lately?"

"I really don't know. I have my meals by myself now; the hours were so irregular, and I am too old and dull for Molly's friends. I know she went to see him a few days ago, and she came back looking agitated. I was rather glad--I thought it would be good for her, but I fear it was not. She has been more excited, I think, these two or three days. Her nerves are really quite overwrought; she allows herself no quiet. Yes; she was very much excited after seeing Father Molyneux."

Miss Carew was talking more to herself than to Adela.

"I thought perhaps he had pressed her to become a Roman Catholic; certainly he upset her in some way."

Adela's small eyes were like sharp points as she looked at the older woman.

Then was it really true? Oh! no; surely not. But then, what else could he have said to upset Molly?

At that moment Molly's maid came into the room.

"Miss Dexter has only just heard that you were here, madam. She is very sorry you have been waiting. She wished me to say that she is obliged to go immediately to a sale at Christie's, and would you be able to go with her?"

Adela declined, perceiving that Molly was in no mind for a private talk, and having parted affectionately from Miss Carew, went her way to have a chat with Lady Dawning.