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

Venables was the other person."

"But she isn't the only other person; that is just it. Oh, Hugh, you do like Rachel, don't you?"

"I do," he said emphatically. "But surely you haven't been quarrelling with her?"

"No, indeed! And that is exactly why I have quarrelled with Mrs. Venables, because I wouldn't refuse to go to the dinner-party at Normanthorpe to-night!"

Woodgate was naturally nonplussed.

"Wouldn't refuse?" he echoed.

"Yes. She actually asked me not to go; and now I do believe she has gone driving round to ask everybody else!"

Woodgate's amazement ended in a guffaw.

"And that is what you quarrelled about!" he roared. "The woman must be mad. What reason did she give?"

"She had a reason, dear."

"But not a good one! There can be no excuse for such an action, let alone a good reason!"

Morna looked at her husband with sidelong anxiety, wondering whether he would say as much when he had heard all. She was sure enough of him. But as yet they had never differed on a point that mattered, and the one which was coming mattered infinitely to Morna.

"Hugh," she began, "do you remember being with Rachel yesterday at Hornby, when she was introduced to Sir Baldwin Gibson?"

"Perfectly," said Hugh.

"He is the judge, you know."

"Yes, yes."

"Did you think they looked as though they had ever seen each other before?"

The vicar revolved where he sat, looking his wife suddenly in the face, while a light broke over his own.

"Now you speak of it," he cried, "they did! It didn't strike me at the time. I was rather surprised at her being so nervous, but that never occurred to me as the explanation. Yet now I have no doubt about it. You don't mean to say he knows something against Mrs. Steel, and has been giving her away?"

"No, dear, the judge has not; but you were not the only one who saw the meeting; and other eyes are more suspicious than yours, Hugh. Darling, you would not think the worse of Rachel for keeping her past life to herself, would you, especially if it had been a very unhappy one?"

"Of course not; it is no business of ours."

"So you told Mrs. Venables the day she came to tell us Mr. Steel was married, and so I told her again this afternoon. However, that is not her main point, and there is another thing I am still surer you would never do. If a person had been put upon her trial, and found not guilty in open court, you would not treat her as though she had been found guilty, would you—even though the verdict had come as a surprise?"

"Of course I would not, Morna; no decent Christian would, I should hope! But do you mean to tell me that Mrs. Steel has been tried for something?"

"Yes; and by Justice Gibson!"

"Poor thing," said Hugh Woodgate, after a pause.

Morna took his hand.

"My dear, she is, or rather she was, Mrs. Minchin!"

"What! The woman who was tried for murdering her husband?"

"Yes—and acquitted."

"Good heavens!" exclaimed the vicar, and for a minute that was all. "Well," he continued, "I didn't read the case, and I am glad that I didn't, but I remember, of course, what was said about it at the time. But what does it matter what is said? I imagine the jury knew what they were about; they listened to the evidence for a week, I believe, which other people read in a few minutes. Of course they knew best! But how long have you known this, Morna?"

"Never until this afternoon; there was no reason why I should."

"Of course there was not."

"Then you agree with me, Hugh?"

And Morna was transfigured.

"Of course I agree with you! But I want to know more. Do you mean to tell me that a woman of education and ability, who calls herself a Christian, like Mrs. Venables, has actually backed out of this dinner-party on this account, and asked others to do the same?"

"She certainly asked me, point-blank," said Morna. "And when I refused, and persisted in my refusal, she flounced out in a rage, and must have cut you dead next minute."

"Incredible!" exclaimed Woodgate. "I mean, she must have had some further reason."

"Oh, but she had! I forgot to tell you in my anxiety to know what you thought. She came to me straight from Normanthorpe, where they had insulted her as she had never been insulted in her life before!"

"Who? Steel or his wife?"

"Mr. Steel, I fancy. Mrs. Venables had no name bad enough for him, but she brought it on herself, and I think more of him than I ever did before. You know that Mrs. Vinson, the Invernesses' new agent's wife?"

"I do. Langholm took her into dinner the night we dined at Upthorpe, and she was in the offing yesterday when Mrs. Steel was talking to the judge."

"Exactly! It appears that it was Mrs. Vinson who first suspected something, the very night you mention; and yesterday her suspicions were confirmed to her own satisfaction. At all events she felt justified in mentioning them to Mrs. Venables, who instantly drove over to ask Rachel to her face if there was any truth in the rumor that she was or had been Mrs. Minchin."

"Well?"

"Rachel told her it was perfectly true."

"Good!"

"And then the fat was in the fire; but what happened exactly it was impossible to gather from Mrs. Venables. I never saw a woman so beside herself with rage. She came in incoherent, and went out inarticulate! From the things she said of him, I could only guess that Mr. Steel had come upon the scene and insulted her as she deserved to be insulted. But I would give a good deal to know what did happen."

"Would you really?"

Morna started to her feet. The vicar rose more slowly, after sitting for some moments in mute confusion. It was Mrs. Steel who stood before them on their lawn, pale as death, and ten years older since the day before, yet with a smile upon her bloodless lips, which appeared indeed to express some faint irresistible amusement.

"Would you really like to know?" she repeated, standing at a distance from them, her great eyes travelling from one to the other. "It is strange, because I had come on purpose to tell you both that and all the rest—but especially all the rest—in which it seems Mrs. Venables has been before me." She paused an instant, and the corners of her sad mouth twitched just once. "What my husband did," said Rachel, "was to lock the doors and refuse to let her out until she had begged my pardon."

"I hope she did so," said Hugh Woodgate, with the emphasis which often atoned for the inadequacy of his remarks.

"In about three minutes," replied Rachel, dryly, with some pride, but no triumph in her tone.

Morna had not spoken. Now she took a quick step forward, her eyes brimming. But Rachel held up her hand.

"You are sure you realize who I am?"

"Yes, Rachel."

"Rachel Minchin!" added Rachel, harshly. "The notorious Mrs. Minchin—the Mrs. Minchin whom Mr. Venables would have come to see hanged!"

"Hush, Rachel, hush!"

"Then be honest with me—mind, honest—not kind! You would not have said what Mrs. Venables said to me; she said that all the world believed me guilty. You would not have said that, Morna; but are you sure you would not have said it in your heart? Can you look me in the face and tell me you don't believe it, like all the rest of the world?"

There was no faltering of the firm, sweet voice; it was only unutterably sad.

And Morna answered it only with a sob, as she flung her arms round Rachel's neck, while her husband waited with outstretched hand.

CHAPTER XVIII "THEY WHICH WERE BIDDEN"

The rose-covered cottage of Charles Langholm's dreams, which could not have come true in a more charming particular, stood on a wooded hill at the back of a village some three miles from Normanthorpe. It was one of two cottages under the same tiled roof, and in the other there lived an admirable couple who supplied all material wants of the simple life which the novelist led when at work. In his idle intervals the place knew him not; a nomadic tendency was given free play, and the man was a wanderer on the face of Europe. But he wandered less than he had done from London, finding, in his remote but fragrant corner of the earth, that peace which twenty years of a strenuous manhood had taught him to value more than downright happiness.

Its roses were not the only merit of this ideal retreat, though in the summer months they made it difficult for one with eyes and nostrils to appreciate the others. There was a delightful room running right through the cottage; and it was here that Langholm worked, ate, smoked, read, and had his daily being; his bath was in the room adjoining, and his bed in another adjoining that. Of the upper floor he made no use; it was filled with the neglected furniture of a more substantial establishment, and Langholm seldom so much as set foot upon the stairs. The lower rooms were very simply furnished. There was a really old oak bureau, and some solid, comfortable chairs. The pictures were chiefly photographs of other writers. There were better pictures deep in dust upstairs.

An artist in temperament, if not in attainment, Langholm had of late years found the ups and downs of his own work supply all the excitement that was necessary to his life; it was only when the work was done that his solitude had oppressed him; but neither the one nor the other had been the case of late weeks. His new book had been written under the spur of an external stimulus; it had not written itself, like all the more reputable members of the large but short-lived family to which it belonged. Langholm had not felt lonely in the breathing spaces between the later chapters. On the contrary, he would walk up and down among his roses with the animated face of one on the happy heights of intercourse with a kindred spirit, when in reality he was quite alone. But the man wrote novels, and withal believed in them at the time of writing. It was true that on one occasion, when the Steels came to tea, the novelist walked his garden with the self-same radiant face with which he had lately taken to walking it alone; but that also was natural enough.

The change came on the very day he finished his book, when Langholm made himself presentable and rode off to the garden-party at Hornby Manor in spirits worthy of the occasion. About seven of the same evening he dismounted heavily in the by-lane outside the cottage, and pushed his machine through the wicket, a different man. A detail declared his depression to the woman next door, who was preparing him a more substantial meal than Langholm ever thought of ordering for himself: he went straight through to his roses without changing his party coat for the out-at-elbow Norfolk jacket in which he had spent that summer and the last.

The garden behind the two cottages was all Langholm's. The whole thing, levelled, would not have made a single lawn-tennis court, nor yet a practice pitch of proper length. Yet this little garden contained almost everything that a garden need have. There were tall pines among the timber to one side, and through these set the sun, so that on the hottest days the garden was in sufficient shadow by the time the morning's work was done. There was a little grass-plot, large enough for a basket-chair and a rug. There was a hedge of Penzance sweet-brier opposite the backdoor and the window at which Langholm wrote, and yet this hedge broke down in the very nick and place to give the lucky writer a long glimpse across a green valley, with dim woods upon the opposite hill. And then there were the roses, planted by the last cottager—a retired gardener—a greater artist than his successor—a man who knew what roses were!

Over the house clambered a William Allen Richardson and two Gloires de Dijon, these last a-blowing, the first still resting from a profuse yield in June; in the southeast corner, a Crimson Rambler was at its ripe red height; and Caroline Testout, Margaret Dickson, La France, Madame Lambard, and Madame Cochet, blushed from pale pink to richest red, or remained coldly but beautifully white, at the foot of the Penzance briers. Langholm had not known one rose from another when he came to live among this galaxy; now they were his separate, familiar, individual friends, each with its own character in his eyes, its own charm for him; and the man's soul was the sweeter for each summer spent in their midst. But to-night they