Oh, the immensity of such a mercy! That hymn had made her shiver as a
child; how different it seemed now! Molly knelt down by the couch, and
her shoulders trembled as a tempest of feeling came over her. Criminals
hardened by long lives of fraud have been known to be happier after
being found out--simply because the strain was over. They had destroyed
their moral sense. Molly's conscience was alive, though torn, bleeding,
and debased. She could not be happy as they were, but yet there was the
lifting of the weight as of a great mountain rolled away. She was afraid
of the immense sense of relief that now seemed coming upon her. Could
she really become free of the horrible Molly of the last months--this
noxious, vile, lying, thieving woman? What an awful strain that woman
had lived in! She had told Mark that what frightened her was the thought
that she would still be herself. She longed now to cut away everything
that had belonged to her. Might she not by God's grace, in poverty and
hard work, with everything around her quite different from the past,
might she not quite do to death the Molly who had lived in Westmoreland
House? The cry was more passionate than spiritual perhaps, but the
longing had its power to help. She rose and again moved quietly about
the room of the dead, bad woman, which must be left in order for the new
owners. She put some things together--what was necessary for a night or
two--and felt almost glad that she had a comb and brush she had not yet
used. There was a bag with cheap fittings Mrs. Carteret had given her as
a girl, which would hold all she needed. And then she remembered that
she had something she would like to take away; it was a nurse's apron,
and in its pocket a nurse's case of small instruments. They were what
she used when nursing with the district nurse in the village at home.
Then she sat down and wrote a cheque and a note, and proceeded to take
them downstairs. The cheque was for L30 out of the little Dexter cheque
book, and the note was an abrupt little line to tell a friend that she
could not dine out that night. She "did not feel up to it" was the only
excuse given, and a furious hostess declared that Miss Dexter had become
perfectly insufferable. She seemed to think that she could do exactly as
she chose because she was absurdly rich.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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