The Shadow of the Rope

by E. W. Hornung

  CHAPTER XIII

  THE AUSTRALIAN ROOM

  It was that discomfort to man, that cruelty to beast, that outrage byunnatural Nature upon all her children--a bitter summer's day. The windwas in the east; great swollen clouds wallowed across the sky, nowwithout a drop, now breaking into capricious showers of stinging rain;and a very occasional burst of sunlight served only to emphasize theevil by reminding one of the season it really was, or should have been,even if it did not entice one to the wetting which was the sure rewardof a walk abroad. The Delverton air was strong and bracing enough, butthe patron wind of the district bit to the bone through garments neverintended for winter wear.

  On such a day there could be few more undesirable abodes thanNormanthorpe House, with its marble floors, its high ceilings, and itsgeneral scheme of Italian coolness and discomfort. It was a Tuesday,when Mr. Steel usually amused himself by going on 'Change inNorthborough and lunching there at the Delverton Club. Rachel was thusnot only physically chilled and depressed, but thrown upon her ownsociety at its worst; and she missed that of her husband more than shewas aware.

  Once she had been a bright and energetic person with plenty of resourceswithin herself; now she had singularly few. She was distraught anduneasy in her mind, could settle less and less to her singing or a book,and was the victim of an increasing restlessness of mind and limb.Others did not see it; she had self-control; but repression was no cure.And for all this there were reasons enough; but the fear ofidentification by the neighbors as the notorious Mrs. Minchin was nolonger one of them.

  No; it was her own life, root and branch, that had grown into theupas-tree which was poisoning existence for Rachel Steel. She was beingpunished for her second marriage as she had been punished for her first,only more deservedly, and with more subtle stripes. Each day brought adozen tokens of the anomalous position which she had accepted in themadness of an hour of utter recklessness and desperation. Rachel was notmistress in her own house, nor did she feel for a moment that it was herown house at all. Everything was done for her; a skilled housekeepersettled the smallest details; and that these were perfect alike inarrangement and execution, that the said housekeeper was a woman ofirreproachable tact and capability, and that she herself had never anexcuse for concrete complaint, formed a growing though intangiblegrievance in Rachel's mind. She had not felt it at first. She hadchanged in these summer months. She wanted to be more like other wives.There was Morna Woodgate, with the work cut out for every hour of herfull and happy days; but Morna had not made an anomalous marriage, Mornahad married for love.

  And to-day there was not even Morna to come and see her, or for her togo and see, for Tuesday afternoon was not one of the few upon which thevicar's wife had no settled duty or occupation in the parish. Rachel soenvied her the way in which she helped her husband in his work; she hadtried to help also, in a desultory way; but it is one thing to do athing because it is a duty, and another thing to do it for something todo, as Rachel soon found out. Besides, Hugh Woodgate was not herhusband. Rachel had the right feeling to abandon those half-heartedattempts at personal recreation in the guise of good works, and thecourage to give Morna her reasons; but she almost regretted it thisafternoon.

  She had explored for the twentieth time that strange treasury known asthe Chinese Room, a state apartment filled with loot brought home fromthe Flowery Land by a naval scion of the house of Normanthorpe, andsomewhat cynically included in the sale. The idols only leered inRachel's face, and the cabinets of grotesque design were unprovided withany key to their history of former uses. In sheer desperation Rachelbetook herself to her husband's study; it was the first time she hadcrossed that threshold in his absence, but within were the books, and abook she must have.

  These also had been purchased with the house. With few exceptions, theywere ancient books in battered calf, which Steel had stigmatized as"musty trash" once when Rachel had asked him if she might take one. Shehad not made that request again; indeed, it was seldom enough that shehad set foot inside the spacious room which the old books lined, and inwhich the master of the house disliked being disturbed. Yet it wasanything but trash which she now discovered upon the dusty shelves.

  There was _Tom Jones_ in four volumes and the _Spectator_ in eight, _GilBlas_ and the works of Swift, all with the long "s," and backs likepolished oak; in the lower shelves were Hogarth and Gillray in rarefolios; at every level and on either hand were books worth taking out.But this was almost all that Rachel did; she took them out and put themin again, for that was her unsettled mood. She spent some minutes overthe Swifts, but not sufficiently attracted to march off with them. Thequaint, obsolete type of the various volumes attracted her more as acuriosity than as readable print; the coarse satires of the earlymasters of caricature and cartoon did not attract her at all. Rachel'supbringing had deprived her of the traditions, the superstitions, andthe shibboleths which are at once a strength and a weakness of theordinary English education; if, however, she was too much inclined totake a world's masterpiece exactly as she found it, her taste, such asit was, at all events was her own.

  She had naturally an open mind, but it was not open now; it was full andrunning over with the mysteries and the perplexities of her ownenvironment. Books would not take her out of herself; in them she couldnot hope to find a key to any one of the problems within problems whichbeset and tortured her. So she ran her hand along the dusty books,little dreaming that the key was there all the time; so in the end, andquite by chance, but for the fact that she was dipping into so many, shetook out the right book, and started backward with it in her hand.

  The book was _The Faerie Queene_, and Rachel had extracted it in aGothic spirit, because she had once heard that very few living personshad read it from end to end; since she could not become interested inanything, she might as well be thoroughly bored. But she never openedthe volume, for in the dark slit which it left something shone like alittle new moon. Rachel put in her hand, and felt a small brass handle;to turn and pull it was the work of her hand without a guiding thought;but when tiers of books swung towards her with the opening door whichthey hid, it was not in human nature to shut that door again without somuch as peeping in.

  Rachel first peeped, then stepped, into a secret chamber asdisappointing at the first glance as such a place could possibly be. Itwas deep in dust, and filled with packing-cases not half unpacked, alumber-room and nothing more. The door swung to with a click behind heras Rachel stood in the midst of this uninteresting litter, andinstinctively she turned round. That instant she stood rooted to theground, her eyes staring, her chin fallen, a dreadful fear in everyfeature of her face.

  It was not that her second husband had followed and discovered her; itwas the face of her first husband that looked upon Rachel Steel, hisbold eyes staring into hers, through the broken glass of a fly-blownpicture-frame behind the door.

  The portrait was not hanging from the wall, but resting against it onthe floor. It was a photographic enlargement in colors, and the tintedeyes looked up at Rachel with all the bold assurance that she rememberedso keenly in the perished flesh. She had not an instant's doubt aboutthose eyes; they spoke in a way that made her shiver; and yet thephotograph was that of a much younger man than she had married. It wasAlexander Minchin with mutton-chop whiskers, his hair parted in themiddle, and the kind of pin in the kind of tie which had beenpractically obsolete for years; it was none the less indubitably andindisputably Alexander Minchin.

  And indeed that fact alone was enough to shake Rachel's nerves; herdiscovery had all the shock of an unwelcome encounter with the living.But it was the gradual appreciation of the true significance of herdiscovery that redoubled Rachel's qualms even as she was beginning toget the better of them. So they had been friends, her first husband andher second! Rachel stooped and looked hard at the enlargement, and theresure enough was the photographer's imprint. Yes, they had been friendsin Australia, that country which John Buchanan Steel elaborately andrepeatedly pretended never to have visited in
all his travels!

  Rachel could have smiled as she drew herself up with this point settledin her mind for ever; why, the room reeked of Australia! These cases hadnever been properly unpacked, they were overflowing with memorials ofthe life which she herself knew so well. Here a sheaf of boomerangs werepeeping out; there was an old gray wide-awake, with a blue-silk fly-veilcoiled above the brim; that was an Australian saddle; and those glasscases contained samples of merino wool. So it was in Australia as asquatter that Steel had made his fortune! But why suppress a fact sofree from all discredit? These were just the relics of a bush life whicha departing colonist might care to bring home with him to the oldcountry. Then why cast them into a secret lumber-room whose veryexistence was unknown to the old Australian's Australian wife?

  Rachel felt her brain reeling; and yet she was thankful for the lightwhich had been vouchsafed to her at last. It was but a lantern flashthrough the darkness, which seemed the more opaque for that one thinbeam of light; but it was something, a beginning, a clew. For the restshe was going straight to the man who had kept her so long in suchunnecessary ignorance.

  Why had he not told her about Australia, at all events? What conceivableharm could that have done? It would have been the strongest possiblebond between them. But Rachel went further as she thought more. Why nothave told her frankly that he had known Alexander Minchin years beforeshe did herself? It could have made no difference after AlexanderMinchin's death; then why had he kept the fact so jealously to himself?And the dead man's painted eyes answered "Why?" with the bold andmocking stare his wife could not forget, a stare which at that momentassumed a new and sinister significance in her sight.

  Rachel looked upward through the window, which was barred, and almosttotally eclipsed by shrubs; but a clout of sky was just visible underthe architrave. It was a very gray sky; gray also was Rachel's face inthe sudden grip of horror and surmise. Then a ragged edge of cloudcaught golden fire, a glimmer found its way into the dust and dirt ofthe secret chamber, and Rachel relaxed with a slight smile but anexceedingly decided shake of the head. Thereafter she escapedincontinently, but successfully, as she had entered; closed the hiddendoor behind her, and restored _The Faerie Queene_ very carefully to itsplace. Rachel no longer proposed to join the select band of those whohave read that epic through.