The Shadow of the Rope, E. W. Hornung [good novels to read in english txt] 📗

blue, who turned out to be Rachel herself, with Hugh Woodgate at her side.

"Oh, no, we live in London," the young girl was saying; "only I go to the same school as Ida Uniacke, and I am staying here on a visit."

"I've finished it," whispered Langholm to Rachel, "this very afternoon; and now I'm ready for yours! I see," he added, dropping back into the attitude of respectful interest in the young girl; "only on a visit; and who was the old gentleman from whom I tore you away?"

The child laughed merrily.

"That was my father," she said; "but he is only here on his way to Leeds."

"You mustn't call it my book," remonstrated Rachel, while Woodgate waited upon both ladies.

"But it was you who gave me the idea of writing a novel round Mrs. Minchin."

"I don't think I did. I am quite sure it was your own idea. But one book at a time. Surely you will take a rest?"

"I shall correct this thing. It will depress me to the verge of suicide. Then I shall fall to upon my magnum opus."

"You really think it will be that?"

"It should be mine. It isn't saying much; but I never had such a plot as you have given me!"

Rachel shook her head in a last disclaimer as she moved away with the Vicar of Marley.

"Oh, Mr. Langholm, do you write books?" asked the schoolgirl, with round blue eyes.

"For my sins," he confessed. "But do you prefer an ice, or more strawberries and cream?"

"Neither, thank you. I've been here before," the young girl said with a jolly smile. "But I didn't know I should come back with an author!"

"Then we'll go out into the open air," the author said; and they followed Rachel at but a few yards' distance.

It was a picturesque if an aimless pageant, the smart frocks sweeping the smooth sward, the pretty parasols with the prettier faces underneath, the well-set-up and well-dressed men, with the old gray manor rising upon an eminence in the background, and a dazzling splash of scarlet and of brass somewhere under the trees. The band was playing selections from The Geisha as Langholm emerged from the tea-tent in Rachel's wake. Mrs. Venables was manoeuvring her two highly marriageable girls in opposite quarters of the field, and had only her own indefatigable generalship to thank for what it lost her upon this occasion. Mr. Steel and Mrs. Woodgate apparently missed the same thing through wandering idly in the direction of the band; but the tableau might have been arranged for the express benefit of Charles Langholm and the very young lady upon whom he was dancing laborious attendance.

Mrs. Uniacke had stepped apart from the tall old gentleman with the side whiskers, to whom she had been talking for some time, and had intercepted Rachel as she was passing on with Hugh Woodgate.

"Wait while I introduce you to my most distinguished guest, or rawther him to you," whispered Mrs. Uniacke, with the Irish brogue which rendered her slightest observation a delight to the appreciative. "Sir Baldwin Gibson—Mrs. Steel."

Langholm and the little Miss Gibson were standing close behind, and the trained eye of the habitual observer took in every detail of a scene which he never forgot. Handsome Mrs. Uniacke was clinching the introduction with a smile, which ended in a swift expression of surprise. Sir Baldwin had made an extraordinary pause, his hand half way to his hat, his lantern jaws fallen suddenly apart. Mrs. Steel, though slower at her part of the obvious recognition, was only a second slower, and thereupon stood abashed and ashamed in the eyes of all who saw; but only for another second at the most; then Sir Baldwin Gibson not only raised his hat, but held out his hand in a fatherly way, and as she took it Rachel's color changed from livid white to ruby red.

Yet even Rachel was mistress of herself so quickly that the one or two eye-witnesses of this scene, such as Mrs. Uniacke and Charles Langholm, who saw that it had a serious meaning, without dreaming what that meaning was, were each in hopes that no one else had seen as much as they. Sir Baldwin plunged at once into amiable and fluent conversation, and before many moments Rachel's replies were infected with an approximate assurance and ease; then Langholm turned to his juvenile companion, and put a question in the form of a fib.

"So that is your father," said he. "I seem, do you know, to know his face?"

Little Miss Gibson fell an easy prey.

"You probably do; he is the judge, you know!"

"The judge, is he?"

"Yes; and I wanted to ask you something just now in the tent. Did you mean the Mrs. Minchin who was tried for murder, when you were talking about your plot?"

Langholm experienced an unforeseen shock from head to heel; he could only nod.

"He was the judge who tried her!" the schoolgirl said with pardonable pride.

A lady joined them as they spoke.

"Do you really mean that that is Mr. Justice Gibson, who tried Mrs. Minchin at the Old Bailey last November?"

"Yes—my father," said the proud young girl.

"What a very singular thing! How do you do, Mr. Langholm? I didn't see it was you."

And Langholm found himself shaking hands with the aquiline lady to whom he had talked so little at the Upthorpe dinner-party; she took her revenge by giving him only the tips of her fingers now, and by looking deliberately past him at Rachel and her judge.

CHAPTER XVI A MATCH FOR MRS. VENABLES

That was absolutely all that happened at the Uniackes' garden-party. There was no scene, no scandal, no incident whatsoever beyond an apparently mutual recognition between Mrs. Steel and Mr. Justice Gibson. Of this there were not half-a-dozen witnesses, all of whom were given immediate reason to suppose that either they or the pair in question had made a mistake; for nothing could have surpassed the presence of mind and the kindness of heart with which Sir Baldwin Gibson chatted to the woman whom he had tried for her life within the year. And his charity continued behind her back.

"Odd thing," said Sir Baldwin to his hostess, at the earliest opportunity, "but for the moment I could have sworn that woman was some one else. May I ask who she is exactly?"

"Sure, Sir Baldwin," replied Mrs. Uniacke, "and that's what I thought we were to hear at last. It's who she is we none of us know. And what does it matter? She's pretty and nice, and I'm just in love with her; but then nobody knows any more about her husband, and so we talk."

A few more questions satisfied the judge that he could not possibly have been mistaken, and he hesitated a moment, for he was a pious man; but Rachel's face, combined with her nerve, had deepended an impression which was now nearly a year old, and the superfluous proximity of an angular and aquiline lady, to whom Sir Baldwin had not been introduced, but who was openly hanging upon his words, drove the good man's last scruple to the winds.

"Very deceptive, these likenesses," said he, raising his voice for the interloper's benefit; "in future I shall beware of them. I needn't tell you, Mrs. Uniacke, that I never before set eyes upon the lady whom I fear I embarrassed by behaving as though I had."

Rachel was not less fortunate in her companion of the moment which had so nearly witnessed her undoing. Ox-eyed Hugh Woodgate saw nothing inexplicable in Mrs. Steel's behavior upon her introduction to Sir Baldwin Gibson, and anything he did see he attributed to an inconvenient sense of that dignitary's greatness. He did not think the matter worth mentioning to his wife, when the Steels had dropped them at the Vicarage gate, after a pleasant but somewhat silent drive. Neither did Rachel see fit to speak of it to her husband. There was a certain unworthy satisfaction in her keeping something from him. But again she underrated his uncanny powers of observation, and yet again he turned the tables upon her by a sudden display of the very knowledge which she was painfully keeping to herself.

"Of course you recognized the judge?" said Steel, following his wife for once into her own apartments, where he immediately shut a door behind him and another in front of Rachel, who stood at bay before the glitter in his eyes.

"Of course," she admitted, with irritating nonchalance.

"And he you?"

"I thought he did at first; afterwards I was not so sure."

"But I am!" exclaimed Steel through his teeth.

Rachel's face was a mixture of surprise and incredulity.

"How can you know?" she asked coldly. "You were at least a hundred yards away at the time, for I saw you with Morna Woodgate."

"And do you think my sight is not good for a hundred yards," retorted Steel, "when you are at the end of them? I saw the whole thing—his confusion and yours—but then I did not know who he was. He must have been in the house when we arrived; otherwise I should have taken good care that you never met. I saw enough, however, to bring me up in time to see and hear more. I heard the way he was talking to you then; that was his damned good-nature, and he has us at his mercy all the same."

Rachel had never seen her husband in such a passion; indeed, she had never before known him in a state of mind to justify the use of such a word. He was paler than his wont, his eyes brighter, his lips more bloodless. Rachel experienced a strange sense of advantage, at once unprecedented and unforeseen, and with it an irresistible temptation to the sort of revenge which she knew to be petty at the time. But he had made her suffer; for once it was her turn. He could be cold as ice when she was not, could deny her his confidence when she all but fell upon her knees before him; he should learn what it was to be treated as he had treated her.

"I'm well aware of it," said Rachel, with a harsh, dry laugh, "though in point of fact I don't for a moment believe that he'll give me away. But really I don't think it matters if he does."

Steel stared; it was wonderful to her to see his face.

"It doesn't matter?" he repeated in angry astonishment.

"Not to me," rejoined Rachel, bitterly. "You tell me nothing. What can matter to me? When you can tell me why you felt compelled to marry me—when you have the courage to tell me that—other things may begin to matter again!"

Steel stared harder than before; he did not flinch, but his eyes seemed to hedge together as he stared, and the glittering light in them to concentrate in one baleful gleam. Yet it was not a cruel look; it was the look of a man who has sealed his lips upon one point for ever, and who views any questioning on that point as an attempt upon his treasury. There was more of self-defence than of actual hostility in the compressed lips, the bloodless face, the glaring eyes. Then, with a shrug, the look, the resentment, and the passion were shaken off, and Steel stepped briskly to the inner door, which he had shut in Rachel's path. Opening it, he bowed her through with a ceremony conspicuous even in their ceremonious relations.

But Rachel nursed her contrariety, even to the extent of a perverse satisfaction at her encounter with the judge, and a fierce enjoyment of its still possible consequences. The mood was neither logical nor generous, and yet it was human enough in the actual circumstances of the case. At last she had made him feel! It had taken her the better part of a year, but here at last was something that he really felt. And it had to do with her; it was impending disaster to herself which had brought about this change in her husband; she knew him too well not to acquit him of purely selfish solicitude for his own good name and comfortable status in a society for which he had no real regard. There was never a man less dependent upon the good opinion of other men. In absolute independence of character, as in sheer strength of personality, Steel stood by himself in the estimation of his wife. But he had deceived her unnecessarily for weeks and months. He had lied to her. He had refused her his whole confidence when she begged him for it, and when he knew how he could trust her. There was some deep mystery underlying their marriage, he could not deny it, yet he would not tell her what it was.

He had made her suffer needless pain; it was his turn.