Great Possessions Part 7

"Mrs. Delaport Green and a girl I don't know--very dark and thin."

Edmund growled and fidgeted.

"Horrid vulgar little woman," he muttered between his teeth, "pushes herself in everywhere, and I suppose she has got the heiress with her."

"Don't be so cross, Edmund," said Lady Rose. "Who is the heiress?"

"Oh! a Miss d.i.c.kson--not d.i.c.kson--what is it? The money was all made in beer"--which was really quite a futile little lie. "But that isn't the name: the name is Dexter. The girl is handsome and untruthful and clever; let her alone."

Rose perceived that he was seriously annoyed, and waited with a little curiosity to see the ladies in question.

As the two carriages crawled slowly up the zigzag road, climbing the long and steep hill, the occupants of both gazed at the towers of the Castle whenever they came in sight at a turn of the road, or at an opening in the mighty horse-chestnuts and beeches, but they spoke little about them. Those in the first carriage were too familiar with Groombridge and its history and the others were too ignorant of both to have much to say. Edmund Grosse gave expression to Rose's thought at the sight of the familiar towers when he said:

"Poor old Groombridge! it is hard not to have a son or even a nephew to leave it all to."

"He likes the cousin very much," said Rose.

"But isn't Mark Molyneux going to be a priest?" said the young man, Billy, to Lady Rose. "I heard the other day that he is in one of the Roman seminaries--went there soon after he left Oxford."

Edmund answered him.

"Groombridge told me he thought he would give that up. He said he believed it was a fancy that would not last."

"He did very well at Oxford," said Rose, "and the Groombridges are devoted to him. It is so good of them with all their old-world notions not to mind more his being a Roman Catholic."

The talk was interrupted by the two men getting out to ease the horses on a steep part of the drive.

Rose's own point of view that a young and earnest priest, even although, unfortunately, not an Anglican, might do much good in such a position as that of the master of Groombridge Castle, would certainly not have been understood by her two companions.

Meanwhile, in the second carriage, Molly was becoming more and more distracted from painful thoughts by the glory of the summer's evening, and the historic interest of the Castle. She felt at first disinclined to disturb the unusual silence of the lady beside her. Certainly the princ.i.p.al tower of the Castle, in its dark red stone, looked uncommonly fine and commanding, and about it flew the martlets that "most breed and haunt" where the air is delicate.

The horse-chestnut leaves were breaking through their silver sheaths in points of delicate green, and daffodils and wild violets were thick in gra.s.s and ground ivy, while rabbits started away from within a few feet of the road.

But, although reluctant to break the silence, at last interest in the scene made Molly ask:

"Do you know the date?"

"Oh, Norman undoubtedly," said Mrs. Delaport Green; "the round towers, you know. Round towers go back to almost any date."

Molly was dissatisfied. "You don't know what reign it was built in?"

"Some time soon after the Conqueror; I think Tim did tell me all about it. He looked it up in some book last night."

As a matter of fact, the present Castle had been built under George III., and the towers would have betrayed the fact to more educated observers; while even Molly could see when they came close to the great ma.s.s of building that the windows and, indeed, all the decoration was of an inferior type of revived Gothic. But, however an architect might shake his head at Groombridge, it was really a striking building, ma.s.sive and very well disposed, and in an astonishingly fine position, commanding an immense view of a great plain on nearly three sides, while to the east was stretched the rest of the range of splendidly-wooded hills on the westerly point of which it was situated. In the sweet, soft air many delicate trees and shrubs were developed as well as if they had been in quite a sheltered place.

Lady Groombridge was giving tea to the first arrivals when Mrs. Delaport Green and Molly were shown into the big hall of the Castle.

"Let us come for a walk; we can slip out through this window," murmured Sir Edmund, as he took her empty tea-cup from his cousin.

Rose began to move, but Lady Groombridge claimed her attention before she could escape.

"Do you know Mrs. Delaport Green and Miss Dexter?"

Rose, as she heard Molly's name, found herself looking quite directly into very unexpected and very remarkable grey eyes with dark lashes. Her gentle but reserved greeting would have been particularly negative after Edmund's warning as to both ladies, but she did not quite control a look of surprise and interest. There was a great light in Molly's face as she saw the young and beautiful woman whom she had dreaded intensely to meet.

Rose was evidently unconscious of a certain gentle pride of bearing, but was fully conscious of a wish to be kindly and loving. In neither of these aspects--and they were revealed in a glance to Molly--did Rose attract her. But Molly's look, which puzzled Rose, was as a flame of feeling, burning visibly through the features of the dark, healthy face, and finding its full expression in the eyes. The glory of the landscape she had just pa.s.sed through, and the excitement of finding herself in such a building, added fuel to Molly's feelings, and seemed to give a historic background to her meeting with her enemy. Some subtle and curious sympathy lit Rose's face for a moment, and then she shrank a little as if she recoiled from a slight shock, and turning with a smile to Sir Edmund Grosse, she followed him down the great hall and out into a pa.s.sage beyond. He had given Molly an intimate but rather careless nod before he turned away.

Edmund was quite silent as he walked out on the terrace, and seemed as absorbed as Rose in the view that lay below them. But it was with the scene he had just witnessed inside the Castle that his mind was filled.

There had been something curiously dramatic in the meeting which he would have done a great deal to prevent. But, annoyed as he was, he could not help dwelling for a moment on the picture of the two with a certain artistic satisfaction. Rose, in her plain, almost poor, clinging black clothes was, as always, amazingly graceful; he felt, not for the first time, as if her every movement were music.

"But that girl is handsome. How she looked into Rose's face, the amazing little devil!--she is plucky."

Then he caught himself up abruptly; it was no use to talk nonsense to himself. The point was how to keep these two apart and how short Mrs.

Delaport Green's visit might be made.

"Unluckily Monday is a Bank holiday, but they shall not be asked to stay one hour after the 10.30 train on Tuesday if I have to take them away myself," he murmured. Meanwhile, it was a beautiful evening; there was a wonderful view, and Rose was here, and, for the moment, alone with him.

She ran her fingers into the fair hair that was falling over her forehead, and pushed it back and her hat with it, so that the fresh spring air "may get right into my brain," she said, "and turn out London blacks."

"The blacks don't penetrate in your case," said Edmund.

"I'm afraid they do," she murmured, "but now I won't think of them.

Easter Eve and this place are enough to banish worries."

"Our hostess contrives to have some worries here."

"Ah! dear Mary, I know; she can't help it; she has always been so very prosperous."

"Oh, it's prosperity, is it?" asked Edmund. He had turned from the view to look more directly at Rose.

"Yes, I know it does not have that effect on you, because you have a happier temperament."

"But am I so very prosperous?" The tone was sad and slightly sarcastic.

"It is quite glorious: one seems to breathe in everything, don't you know, and the smell of primroses; and it is so sweet to think that it is Easter Eve."

Mrs. Delaport Green was coming forth on the terrace, preceded by these words in her clear staccato voice.

"Do you think," said Rose very gently to Edmund, "that we might go down into the wood?"

Presently Molly fell behind Lady Groombridge and Mrs. Delaport Green as they walked along the terrace, and leant on the wall and looked at the view by herself.

The Castle stood on the last spur of a range of hills, and there was an abrupt descent between it and the next rounded hill-top. Covered with trees, the sharp little valley was full of shadow and mystery; and then beyond the great billowy tree-tops rose and fell for miles, until the brilliant early green of the larches and the dark hues of the many leafless branches, already ruddy with buds, became blue and at length purple in the distance.

This joy and glory of her mother earth n.o.body could grudge Molly, surely? But the very beauty of it all made her more weak; and tears rose in her eyes as she looked at the healing green.

"I am tired," she thought; "and, after all, what harm can it do me to meet Lady Rose Bright? And if Sir Edmund Grosse was annoyed to see me here, what does it matter?"

Presently Lady Groombridge and her admiring guest came back to where Molly was standing. In the excitement of arrival and of meeting Lady Rose, and the little shock of Sir Edmund's greeting, Molly had hardly taken stock of the mistress of the Castle. Lady Groombridge was verging on old age, but ruddy and vigorous. She wore short skirts and thick boots, and tapped the gravel noisily with her stick. She had almost forgotten that she had ever been young and a beauty, and her conversation was usually in the tone of a hara.s.sed housekeeper, only that the range of subjects that worried her extended beyond servants and linen and jam into politics and the Church and the souls of men within a certain number of miles of Groombridge Castle.