The Shadow of the Rope

by E. W. Hornung

  CHAPTER XIV

  BATTLE ROYAL

  She went to her own rooms to think and to decide; and what she firstthought and then decided was sensible enough. She was thankful she hadnot been caught like Fatima in the forbidden room; not that she lackedthe courage to meet the consequences of her acts, but it would have puther in the wrong and at a disadvantage at the first crash of battle. Anda battle royal Rachel quite expected; nor had she the faintest intentionof disguising what she had done; but it was her husband who was to betaken aback, for a change.

  The Steels dined alone, as usual, or as much alone as a man and his wifewith a butler and two footmen are permitted to be at their meals. Steelwas at his best after these jaunts of his to Northborough and the club.He would come home with the latest news from that centre of theuniverse, the latest gossip which had gone the rounds on 'Change and atlunch, the newest stories of Mr. Venables and his friends, which wereinvariably reproduced for Rachel's benefit with that slight butunmistakable local accent of which these gentry were themselves allunconscious. Steel had a wicked wit, and Rachel as a rule a sufficientlyappreciative smile, but this was to-night either lacking altogether orof an unconvincing character. Rachel could never pretend, and her firstspontaneous remark was when her glass filled up with froth.

  "Champagne!" said she, for they seldom drank it.

  "It has been such a wretched day," explained Steel, "that I ordered itmedicinally. I am afraid it must have been perishing here, as it was inthe town. This is to restore your circulation."

  "My circulation is all right," answered Rachel, too honest even to smileupon the man with whom she was going to war. "I felt cold all themorning, but I have been warm enough since the afternoon."

  And that was very true, for excitement had made her blood run hot inevery vein; nor had Rachel often been more handsome, or less lovely,than she was to-night, with her firm lip and her brooding eye.

  "There was another reason for the champagne," resumed her husband, veryfrankly for him, when at last they had the drawing-room to themselves."I am in disgrace with you, I believe, and I want to hear from you whatI have done."

  "It is what you have not done," returned Rachel, as she stoodimperiously before the lighted fire; and her bosom rose and fell, whiteas the ornate mantelpiece of Carrara marble which gleamed behind her.

  "And what, may I ask, is my latest sin of omission?"

  Rachel rushed to the point with a passionate directness that did her nodiscredit.

  "Why have you pretended all these months that you never were inAustralia in your life? Why did you never tell me that you knewAlexander Minchin out there?"

  And she held her breath against the worst that he could do, being wellprepared for him to lose first his color and then the temper which hehad never lost since she had known him; to fly into a fury, to curse herup hill and down dale--in a word, to behave as her first husband haddone more than once, but this one never. What Rachel did not anticipatewas a smile that cloaked not a single particle of surprise, and thelittle cocksure bow that accompanied the smile.

  "So you have found it out," said Steel, and his smile only ended as hesipped his coffee; even then there was no end to it in his eyes.

  "This afternoon," said Rachel, disconcerted but not undone.

  "By poking your nose into places which you would not think ofapproaching in my presence?"

  "By the merest accident in the world!"

  And Rachel described the accident, truth flashing from her eyes; in aninstant her husband's face changed, the smile went out, but it was nofrown that came in its stead.

  "I beg your pardon, Rachel," said he, earnestly. "I suppose," he added,"that a man may call his wife by her Christian name for once in a way? Idid so, however, without thinking, and because I really do most humblybeg your pardon for an injustice which I have done you for some hours inmy own mind. I came home between three and four, and I heard you were inmy study. You were not, but that book was out; and then, of course, Iknew where you were. My hand was on the knob, but I drew it back. Iwondered if you would have the pluck to do the tackling! And I apologizeagain," Steel concluded, "for I knew you quite well enough to have alsoknown that at least there was no question about your courage."

  "Then," said Rachel, impulsively, after having made up her mind toignore these compliments, "then I think you might at least be candidwith me!"

  "And am I not?" he cried. "Have I denied that the portrait you saw isindeed the portrait of Alexander Minchin? And yet how easy that wouldhave been! It was taken long before you knew him; he must have alteredconsiderably after that. Or I might have known him under another name.But no, I tell you honestly that your first husband was a very dearfriend of mine, more years ago than I care to reckon. Did you hear me?"he added, with one of his sudden changes of tone and manner. "A verydear friend, I said, for that he undoubtedly was; but was I going to askyou to marry a very dear friend of the man who deteriorated so terribly,and who treated you so ill?"

  Delivered in the most natural manner imaginable, with the quietconfidence of which this man was full, and followed by a smile ofconscious yet not unkindly triumph, this argument, like most that fellfrom his lips upon her ears, was invested with a value out of allproportion to its real worth; and Steel clinched it with one of thosehomely saws which are not disdained by makers of speeches the wide worldover.

  "Could you really think," he added, with one of his rarest and mostwinning smiles, "that I should be such a fool as to invite you to stepout of the frying-pan into the fire?"

  Rachel felt for a moment that she would like to say it was exactly whatshe had done; but even in that moment she perceived that such astatement would have been very far from the truth. And her nature waslarge enough to refrain from the momentary gratification of a bitterrepartee. But he was too clever for her; that she did feel, whateverelse he might be; and her only chance was to return to the plainquestions with which she had started, demanding answers as plain. Rachelled up to them, however, with one or two of which she already knew theanswer, thus preparing for her spring in quite the Old Bailey manner,which she had mastered subconsciously at her trial, and which for oncewas to profit a prisoner at the bar.

  "Yet you don't any longer deny that you have been to Australia?"

  "It is useless. I lived there for years."

  "And you admit that you knew Alexander quite well out there?"

  "Most intimately, in the Riverina, some fifteen or twenty years ago; hewas on my station as almost everything a gentleman could be, up tooverseer; and by that time he was half a son to me, and half a youngerbrother."

  "But no relation, as a matter of fact?"

  "None whatever, but my very familiar friend, as I have already toldyou."

  "Then why in the world," Rachel almost thundered, "could you not tell meso in the beginning?"

  "That is a question I have already answered."

  "Then I have another. Why so often and so systematically pretend thatyou never were in Australia at all?"

  "That is a question which I implore you not to press!"

  The two answers, so like each other in verbal form, were utterlydissimilar in the manner of their utterance. Suddenly, and for the firsttime in all her knowledge of him, his cynical aplomb had fallen from theman like a garment. One moment he was brazening past deceit with asmiling face; the next, he was in earnest, even he, and that mockingvoice vibrated with deep feeling.

  "I should have thought all the more of you for being an Australian,"continued Rachel, vaguely touched at the change in him, "I who am proudof being one myself. What harm could it have done, my knowing that?"

  "You are not the only one from whom I have hidden it," said Steel,still in a low and altered voice.

  "Yet you brought home all those keepsakes of the bush?"

  "But I thought better of them, and have never even unpacked them all, asyou must have seen for yourself."

  "Yet your mysterious visitor of the other day--"

  "Another Australian, of co
urse; indeed, another man who worked upon myown run."

  "And he knows why you don't want it known over here?"

  "He does," said Steel, with grim brevity.

  Rachel moved forward and pressed his hand impulsively. To her surprisethe pressure was returned. That instant their hands fell apart.

  "I beg your pardon in my turn," she said. "I can only promise you that Iwill never again reopen that wound--whatever it may be--and I won't eventry to guess. I undertook not to try to probe your past, and I will keepmy undertaking in the main; but where it impinges upon my own past Isimply cannot! You say you were my first husband's close friend," addedRachel, looking her second husband more squarely than ever in the eyes."Was that what brought you to my trial for his murder?"

  He returned her look.

  "It was."

  "Was that what made you wish to marry me yourself?"

  No answer, but his assurance coming back, as he stood looking at herunder beetling eyebrows, over black arms folded across a snowy shirt. Itwas the wrong moment for the old Adam's return, for Rachel had reachedthe point upon which she most passionately desired enlightenment.

  "I want to know," she cried, "and I insist on knowing, what first put itinto your head or your heart to marry me--all but convicted--"

  Steel held up his hand, glancing in apprehension towards the door.

  "I have told you so often," he said, "and your glass tells you wheneveryou look into it. I sat within a few feet of you for the inside of aweek!"

  "But that is not true," she told him quietly; "trust a woman to know, ifit were."

  In the white glare of the electric light he seemed for once to changecolor slightly.

  "If you will not accept my word," he answered, "there is no more to besaid."

  And he switched off a bunch of the lights that had beaten too fiercelyupon him; but it only looked as if he was about to end the interview.

  "You have admitted so many untruths in the last half hour," pursuedRachel, in a thrilling voice, "that you ought not to be hurt if Isuspect you of another. Come! Can you look me in the face and tell methat you married me for love? No, you turn away--because you cannot!Then will you, in God's name, tell me why you did marry me?"

  And she followed him with clasped hands, her beautiful eyes filled withtears, her white throat quivering with sobs, until suddenly he turnedupon her as though in self-defence.

  "No, I will not!" he cried. "Since the answer I have given you, and theobvious answer, is not good enough for you, the best thing you can do isto find out for yourself."

  A truculent look came into Rachel's eyes, as they rested upon the smoothface so unusually agitated beneath the smooth silvery hair.

  "I will!" she answered through her teeth. "I shall take you at yourword, and find out for myself I will!"

  And she swept past him out of the room.

  "I will!" she answered through her teeth--and she sweptpast him out of the room.]