Great Possessions

by Mrs. Wilfrid Ward

She held out her hand with a look of generous appeal to his forgiveness.

"God bless you!" he said, with complete sympathy, and then he went away to seek an interview with Sir Edmund Grosse.

Molly sank down on a low seat by the window. Then she went slowly upstairs, dragging her feet a little from fatigue, and took out of the tin box the packet of very old letters. She burned them one by one, with a match for each, kneeling in front of the empty fireplace in her bed-room. They told the story of her mother's attempt to persuade Sir David of their marriage during his illness in India. It was not a pretty story—one of deceit and intrigue. It should disappear now.

Then she sat down in a deep chair in the window. She stayed very still, curled up against the cushion behind her, her eyes fixed on the ground. She was hardly conscious of thought; she was trying to recall things Mark had said, murmuring them over to herself. She was trying not to sink into the depths of humiliation and despair. It was a blind clinging to a vague hope for better things, with a certain torpor of all her faculties.

Then gradually things in the vague gloom became definite to her. "No," she said to them with entreaty, "not to-night. My life is only just dead. I am tired by the shock—it was so sudden—only let me rest till morning, and in the morning I will try to face it."

She had, it seemed, quite settled this point; the present and the future were to be left; a pause was absolutely necessary. Then followed quickly the sharp pang of a fresh thought. It was not in her power to make things pause. She could not make a truce by calling it a truce. If she did not realise things now and act now herself, others would come upon the scene. Even to-night Sir Edmund Grosse might know. She shivered. Perhaps he was being told now. It would be insufferable to endure his kindness prompted by Rose's generous forgiveness. But ought she to find anything unbearable? Was she going to revolt at the very outset? She was not trained in spiritual matters, but it seemed to her that any revolt would betray a want of reality in her reparation, and in this great change of feeling she wanted above all things to be real. She tried to face what must come next. How could she hand over Westmoreland House? It could not be done as quietly as she had handed that letter to Father Mark. The house had been bought with the great lump sum Madame Danterre had accumulated in Florence—much of that money had been put in the bank before Sir David died. Perhaps if they were ready to come to terms, as Father Mark had said, an arrangement would be suggested in which Molly would not be expected to refund what she had spent, and would have the possession of Westmoreland House and its contents. The sale would realise enough to save her from actual want, and yet she would not be receiving a pension from Lady Rose. Her mind got out of gear and flashed through these thoughts until, unable to check it in any way, she burst into tears. She felt the self-deception of such plans with physical pain. What was that money in the bank at Florence but blackmail gathered in during Sir David's life? "Why cannot I be straight even now?" she whispered. She was still sitting on the couch with one leg drawn up under her, gazing intently at the ground. No, the only money she possessed was £2000 invested at 3½ per cent. "£70 a year—that is less than I have given Carey, or the cook, or the butler."

The fact was that while her heart and soul had gone forward in dumb pain in utter darkness with the single aim of undoing the sin done, the mind still lagged and reasoned. This is a peculiar agony, and Molly had to drink of that agony.

Gradually and mercilessly her reason told her that an arrangement with Lady Rose, the appearance of having the right of possession in Westmoreland House, the readiness of all concerned to bury the story, and the possession of a fair income, would make it possible to live in her own class quietly but, if tactfully, with a good repute. Then the thought of any kind of compromise became intolerable to her, and she realised that it was a fancy picture, not a real temptation.

To pretend that Westmoreland House was her own she could not do, but what was the alternative? Dragging poverty and shame, and with no opportunity for hiding what had passed, for living it down. Even if she did the impossible to her pride and consented to receive a good allowance from Lady Rose, it would not be at all the same in the world's view as the dignified income that could be raised from Westmoreland House, and from her mother's jewels and furniture. Her fingers unconsciously touched the pearls round her neck. Surely she need not speculate as to how her mother obtained the magnificent jewels which she had worn up to the end? Then more light came—hard and cold, but clear. If Molly had been innocent these things might have been so, but Molly had committed a fraud on a great scale. It would be by the mercy of the injured that she would be spared the rigours of the law. It was by the supreme mercy of God that she had had the chance of making the sacrifice before it was forced from her. And could she shrink from mere ordinary poverty, from a life such as the vast majority of men and women are living on this earth? She did not really shrink in her will. It was only a mechanical movement of thought from one point to another. Was it much punishment for what she had done to be very poor? Would it not be better to be unclassed—to live among people who help each other much because they have little to give? Would it not be the way to do what Father Mark had said she should try to do—those good things she had done before? She could nurse, she could watch, she was able to do with little sleep. She would be very humble with the sick and suffering now. And it would not surely be wrong to go and find such a life far away from where she had sinned? She began to wonder if she need stay and live through all the complications of the coming days. Must it be the right thing to stay because it was the most unbearable? She thought not. There are times when recklessness is the only safety. If she did not burn her ships now she could not tell what temptations might come. But she would not let it be among her motives that thus she would thereby escape unbearable pity from Lady Rose and the far sterner magnanimity of Edmund Grosse. She would act simply; she would ask Rose a favour; she would ask her to provide for Miss Carew.

Half consciously again her hands went to her throat. She unclasped the pearl necklace that Edmund had seen on Madame Danterre's withered neck in the garden at Florence. She slipped off four large rings, and then gathered up a few jewels that lay about. "One ought not to leave valuables about," she thought, and she did not know that she added "after a death."