The Shadow of the Rope

by E. W. Hornung

  CHAPTER XV

  A CHANCE ENCOUNTER

  There was now an open breach between the Steels, but no third personwould have discerned any difference in their relations. It was a meresnapping of the threads across the chasm which had always separatedRachel from her second husband. The chasm had been plain enough to thosewho came much in contact with the pair, but the little threads ofsympathy were invisible to the naked eye of ordinary observation. Therewas thus no outward change, for neither was there any outward rupture.It takes two to quarrel, and Steel imperturbably refused to make one.Rachel might be as trying as she pleased; no repulse depressed, nocaprice annoyed him; and this insensibility was not the least of Steel'soffences in the now jaundiced eyes of his wife.

  Rachel felt as bitter as one only does against those who have inspiredsome softer feeling; the poison of misplaced confidence rankled in herblood. Her husband had told her much, but it was not enough for Rachel,and the little he refused to tell eliminated all the rest from hermind. There was no merit even in such frankness as he had shown, sinceher own, accidental discoveries had forced some measure of honesty uponhim. He had admitted nothing which Rachel could not have deduced fromthat which she had found out for herself. She felt as far as ever fromany satisfactory clew to his mysterious reasons for ever wishing tomarry her. There lay the kernel of the whole matter, there the problemthat she meant to solve. If her first husband was at the bottom of it,no matter how indirectly, and if she had been married for the dead man'ssake, to give his widow a home, then Rachel felt that the last affronthad been put upon her, and she would leave this man as she had beenwithin an ace of leaving his friend. So ran the wild and unreasonabletenor of her thoughts. He had not married her for her own sake; it wasnot she herself who had appealed to him, after all. Curiosity mightconsume her, and a sense of deepening mystery add terrors of its own,but the resentful feeling was stronger than either of these, and wouldhave afforded as strange a revelation as any, had Rachel dared to lookdeeper into her own heart.

  If, on the other hand, she had already some conception of the truthabout herself, it would scarcely lessen her bitterness against one whoinspired in her emotions at once so complex and so painful. Suffice itthat this bitterness was extreme in the days immediately following thescene between Rachel and her husband in the drawing-room after dinner.It was also unconcealed, and must have been the cause of many anothersuch scene but for the imperturable temper and the singularly rulytongue of John Buchanan Steel. And then, in those same days, there fellthe two social events to which the bidden guests had been lookingforward for some two or three weeks, and of which the whole neighborhoodwas to talk for years.

  On the tenth of August the Uniackes were giving a great garden party atHornby Manor, while the eleventh was the date of the first realdinner-party for which the Steels had issued invitations to NormanthorpeHouse.

  The tenth was an ideal August day: deep blue sky, trees stilluntarnished in the hardy northern air, and black shadows under thetrees. Rachel made herself ready before lunch, to which she came downlooking quite lovely, in blue as joyous as the sky's, to find herhusband as fully prepared, and not less becomingly attired, in a grayfrock-coat without a ripple on its surface. They looked critically ateach other for an instant, and then Steel said something pleasant, towhich Rachel made practically no reply. They ate their lunch in asilence broken good-naturedly at intervals from one end of the tableonly. Then the Woodgates arrived, to drive with them to Hornby, whichwas some seven or eight miles away; and the Normanthorpe landau and pairstarted with, the quartette shortly after three o'clock.

  Morning, noon, and afternoon of this same tenth of August, CharlesLangholm, the minor novelist, never lifted his unkempt head from the oldbureau at which he worked, beside an open window overlooking his cottagegarden. A tumbler of his beloved roses stood in one corner of thewriting space, up to the cuts in MSS., and roses still ungathered peepedabove the window-sill and drooped from either side. But Langholm had asoul far below roses at the present moment; his neatly numbered sheetsof ruled sermon-paper were nearing the five hundredth page; his hero andhis heroine were in the full sweep of those emotional explanations whichthey had ingeniously avoided for the last three hundred at least; in aword, Charles Langholm's new novel is being finished while you wait. Itis not one of his best; yet a moment ago there was a tear in his eye,and now he is grinning like a child at play. And at play he is, thoughhe be paid for playing, and though the game is only being won afterweeks and months of uphill labor and downhill joy.

  At last there is the final ticking of inverted commas, and CharlesLangholm inscribes the autograph for which he is importuned once in ablue moon, and which the printer will certainly not set up at the footof the last page; but the thing is done, and the doer must needs set hishand to it out of pure and unusual satisfaction with himself. And so,thank the Lord!

  Langholm rose stiffly from the old bureau, where at his best he couldlose all sense of time; for the moment he was bent double, and faintwith fasting, because it was his mischievous rule to reach a given pointbefore submitting to the physical and mental distraction of a meal. Butto-day's given point had been the end of his book, and for some happyminutes Langholm fed on his elation. It was done at last, yet anothernovel, and not such a bad one after all. Not his best by any means, butperhaps still further from being his worst; and, at all events, thething was done. Langholm could scarcely grasp that fact, though therewas the last page just dry upon the bureau, and most of the rest lyingabout the room in galley-proofs or in typewritten sheets. Moreover, thepublishers were pleased; that was the joke. It was nothing less toLangholm when he reflected that the final stimulus to finish this bookhad been the prospect and determination of at last writing one to pleasehimself. And this reflection brought him down from his rosy clouds.

  It was the day of the Uniacke's garden-party; they had actually askedthe poor author, and the poor author had intended to go. Not that heeither shone or revelled in society; but Mrs. Steel would be there, andhe burned to tell her that he had finished his book, and was at lastfree to tackle hers; for hers at bottom it would be, the great novel bywhich the name of Langholm was to live, and which he was to found byRachel Steel's advice upon the case of her namesake Rachel Minchin.

  The coincidence of the Christian names had naturally struck thenovelist, but no suspicion of the truth had crossed a mind too skilledin the construction of dramatic situations to dream of stumbling intoone ready-made. It was thus with a heart as light as any feather thatLangholm made a rapid and unwholesome meal, followed by a deliberate andpainstaking toilet, after which he proceeded at a prudent pace upon hisbicycle to Hornby Manor.

  Flags were drooping from their poles, a band clashing fitfully throughthe sleepy August air, and carriages still sweeping into the long drive,when Langholm also made his humble advent. He was a little uneasy andself-conscious, and annoyed at his own anxiety to impart his tidings toMrs. Steel, but for whom he would probably have stayed at home. His eyesought her eagerly as he set foot upon the lawn, having left his bicycleat the stables, and carefully removed the clips from his trousers; butbefore his vigilance could be rewarded he was despatched by his hostessto the tea-tent, in charge of a very young lady, detached for the noncefrom the wing of a gaunt old gentleman with side whiskers and lanternjaws.

  Fresh from his fagging task, Langholm did not know what on earth to sayto the pretty schoolgirl, whose own shyness reacted on herself; but hewas doing his best, and atoning in attentiveness for his shortcomings asa companion, when in the tent he had to apologize to a lady in blue, whoturned 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 tothe 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 theattitude of respectful interest in the young girl; "only on a visit; andwho was the old gentlem
an from whom I tore you away?"

  The child laughed merrily.

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

  "You mustn't call it my book," remonstrated Rachel, while Woodgatewaited 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 bookat 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 asyou have given me!"

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

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

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

  "Neither, thank you. I've been here before," the young girl said with ajolly 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 theyfollowed Rachel at but a few yards' distance.

  It was a picturesque if an aimless pageant, the smart frocks sweepingthe smooth sward, the pretty parasols with the prettier facesunderneath, the well-set-up and well-dressed men, with the old graymanor rising upon an eminence in the background, and a dazzling splashof scarlet and of brass somewhere under the trees. The band was playingselections from _The Geisha_ as Langholm emerged from the tea-tent inRachel's wake. Mrs. Venables was manoeuvring her two highly marriageablegirls in opposite quarters of the field, and had only her ownindefatigable generalship to thank for what it lost her upon thisoccasion. Mr. Steel and Mrs. Woodgate apparently missed the same thingthrough wandering idly in the direction of the band; but the tableaumight have been arranged for the express benefit of Charles Langholm andthe very young lady upon whom he was dancing laborious attendance.

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

  "Wait while I introduce you to my most distinguished guest, or rawtherhim to you," whispered Mrs. Uniacke, with the Irish brogue whichrendered her slightest observation a delight to the appreciative. "SirBaldwin Gibson--Mrs. Steel."

  Langholm and the little Miss Gibson were standing close behind, and thetrained eye of the habitual observer took in every detail of a scenewhich he never forgot. Handsome Mrs. Uniacke was clinching theintroduction with a smile, which ended in a swift expression ofsurprise. Sir Baldwin had made an extraordinary pause, his hand half wayto his hat, his lantern jaws fallen suddenly apart. Mrs. Steel, thoughslower 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; butonly for another second at the most; then Sir Baldwin Gibson not onlyraised his hat, but held out his hand in a fatherly way, and as she tookit Rachel's color changed from livid white to ruby red.

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

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

  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 youmean the Mrs. Minchin who was tried for murder, when you were talkingabout your plot?"

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

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

  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 seeit was you."

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