CHAPTER XVIII
"THEY WHICH WERE BIDDEN"
The rose-covered cottage of Charles Langholm's dreams, which could nothave come true in a more charming particular, stood on a wooded hill atthe back of a village some three miles from Normanthorpe. It was one oftwo cottages under the same tiled roof, and in the other there lived anadmirable couple who supplied all material wants of the simple lifewhich the novelist led when at work. In his idle intervals the placeknew him not; a nomadic tendency was given free play, and the man was awanderer on the face of Europe. But he wandered less than he had donefrom London, finding, in his remote but fragrant corner of the earth,that peace which twenty years of a strenuous manhood had taught him tovalue more than downright happiness.
Its roses were not the only merit of this ideal retreat, though in thesummer months they made it difficult for one with eyes and nostrils toappreciate the others. There was a delightful room running right throughthe 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 bedin another adjoining that. Of the upper floor he made no use; it wasfilled with the neglected furniture of a more substantial establishment,and Langholm seldom so much as set foot upon the stairs. The lower roomswere very simply furnished. There was a really old oak bureau, and somesolid, comfortable chairs. The pictures were chiefly photographs ofother writers. There were better pictures deep in dust upstairs.
An artist in temperament, if not in attainment, Langholm had of lateyears found the ups and downs of his own work supply all the excitementthat was necessary to his life; it was only when the work was done thathis solitude had oppressed him; but neither the one nor the other hadbeen the case of late weeks. His new book had been written under thespur of an external stimulus; it had not written itself, like all themore reputable members of the large but short-lived family to which itbelonged. Langholm had not felt lonely in the breathing spaces betweenthe later chapters. On the contrary, he would walk up and down among hisroses with the animated face of one on the happy heights of intercoursewith a kindred spirit, when in reality he was quite alone. But the manwrote novels, and withal believed in them at the time of writing. Itwas true that on one occasion, when the Steels came to tea, the novelistwalked his garden with the self-same radiant face with which he hadlately taken to walking it alone; but that also was natural enough.
The change came on the very day he finished his book, when Langholm madehimself presentable and rode off to the garden-party at Hornby Manor inspirits worthy of the occasion. About seven of the same evening hedismounted heavily in the by-lane outside the cottage, and pushed hismachine through the wicket, a different man. A detail declared hisdepression to the woman next door, who was preparing him a moresubstantial meal than Langholm ever thought of ordering for himself: hewent straight through to his roses without changing his party coat forthe out-at-elbow Norfolk jacket in which he had spent that summer andthe 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 apractice pitch of proper length. Yet this little garden contained almosteverything that a garden need have. There were tall pines among thetimber to one side, and through these set the sun, so that on thehottest days the garden was in sufficient shadow by the time themorning's work was done. There was a little grass-plot, large enough fora basket-chair and a rug. There was a hedge of Penzance sweet-brieropposite the backdoor and the window at which Langholm wrote, and yetthis hedge broke down in the very nick and place to give the luckywriter a long glimpse across a green valley, with dim woods upon theopposite hill. And then there were the roses, planted by the lastcottager--a retired gardener--a greater artist than his successor--a manwho knew what roses were!
Over the house clambered a William Allen Richardson and two Gloires deDijon, these last a-blowing, the first still resting from a profuseyield in June; in the southeast corner, a Crimson Rambler was at itsripe red height; and Caroline Testout, Margaret Dickson, La France,Madame Lambard, and Madame Cochet, blushed from pale pink to richestred, or remained coldly but beautifully white, at the foot of thePenzance briers. Langholm had not known one rose from another when hecame to live among this galaxy; now they were his separate, familiar,individual friends, each with its own character in his eyes, its owncharm for him; and the man's soul was the sweeter for each summer spentin their midst. But to-night they called to closed nostrils and blindeyes. And the evening sun, reddening the upper stems of the pines, andwarming the mellow tiles of his dear cottage, had no more to say toLangholm's spirit than his beloved roses.
The man had emerged from the dreamy, artistic, aesthetic existence intowhich he had drifted through living alone amid so much simple beauty; hewas in real, human, haunting trouble, and the manlier man for italready.
Could he be mistaken after all? No; the more he pondered, the moreconvinced he felt. Everything pointed to the same conclusion, beginningwith that first dinner-party at Upthorpe, and that first conversation ofwhich he remembered every word. Mrs. Steel was Mrs. Minchin--thenotorious Mrs. Minchin--the Mrs. Minchin who had been tried for herhusband's murder, and acquitted to the horror of a righteous world.
And he had been going to write a book about her, and it was she herselfwho had given him the idea!
But was it? There had been much light talk about Mrs. Steel's novel, andthe plot that Mrs. Steel had given Langholm, but that view of the matterhad been more of a standing joke than an intellectual bond betweenthem. It was strange to think of it in the former light to-night.
Langholm recalled more than one conversation upon the same subject. Ithad had a fascination for Rachel, which somehow he was sorry to remembernow. Then he recollected the one end to all these conversations, and hismomentary regret was swept away by a rush of sympathy which it did himgood to feel. They had ended invariably in her obtaining from him, onone cunning pretext or another, a fresh assurance of his belief in Mrs.Minchin's innocence. Langholm radiated among his roses as his memoryconvinced him of this. Rachel had not talked about her case and his plotfor the morbid excitement of discussing herself with another, but forthe solid and wholesome satisfaction of hearing yet again that the otherdisbelieved in her guilt.
And did he not? Langholm stood still in the scented dusk as he asked hisheart of hearts the point-blank question. And it was a crisper step thathe resumed, with a face more radiant than before.
Yes, analytical as he was, there at least he was satisfied with himself.Thank God, he had always been of one opinion on that one point; that hehad made up his mind about her long before he knew the whilom Mrs.Minchin in the flesh, and had let her know which way almost as longbefore the secret of her identity could possibly have dawned upon him.Now, if the worst came to the worst, his sincerity at least could not bequestioned. Others might pretend, others again be unconsciouslyprejudiced in favor of their friend; he at least was above eithersuspicion. Had he not argued her case with Mrs. Venables at the time,and had he not told her so on the very evening that they met?
Certainly Langholm felt in a strong position, if ever the worst came tothe worst; it illustrated a little weakness, however, that he himselfforesaw no such immediate eventuality. There had been a very briefencounter between two persons at a garden-party, and a yet more briefconfusion upon either side. Of all this there existed but half-a-dozenwitnesses, at the outside, and Langholm did not credit the other fivewith his own trained insight and powers of observation; he furthermorereflected that those others, even if as close observers as himself,could not possibly have put two and two together as he had done. Andthis was sound; but Langholm had a fatal knack of overlooking the ladywhom he had taken in to dinner at Upthorpe Hall, and scarcely noticed atHornby Manor. Cocksure as he himself was of the significance of thatwhich he had seen with his own eyes, the observer flattered himself thathe was the only real one present; remembered the special knowledge whichhe had to assist his vision; and relied properly enough upon the sil
enceof Sir Baldwin Gibson.
The greater the secret, however, the more piquant the situation for onewho was in it; and there were moments of a sleepless night in whichLangholm found nothing new to regret. But he was in a quandary none theless. He could scarcely meet Mrs. Steel again without a word about theprospective story, which they had so often discussed together, and uponwhich he was at last free to embark; nor could he touch upon that themewithout disclosing the new knowledge which would burn him until he did.Charles Langholm and Rachel Steel had two or three qualities in common:an utter inability to pretend was one, if you do not happen to think ita defect.
As a rule when he had finished a rapid bit of writing, Langholm sat downto correct, and a depressing task his spent brain always found it; butfor once he let it beat him altogether. After a morning's tussle withone unfortunate chapter, the desperate author sent off the rest in theirsins, and rode his bicycle to abolish thought. But that mild pastimefell lamentably short of its usual efficacy. It was not one of hisheroines who was worrying the novelist, but a real woman whom he likedand her husband whom he did not. The husband it was who had finishedmatters by entering the field of speculation during the morning's work.It may be confessed that Langholm had not by any means disliked him theyear before.
What was the secret of this second marriage on the part of one who hadbeen so recently and so miserably married? Was it love? Langholm wouldnot admit it for a moment. Steel did not love his wife, and there wascertainly nothing to love in Steel. Langholm had begun almost to hatehim; he told himself it was because Steel did not even pretend to lovehis wife, but let strangers see the abnormal terms on which they lived.
What, then, was the explanation--the history--the excuse? They weresupposed to have married on the Continent; that was one of the fewstatements vouchsafed by Steel, and he happened to have made it in thefirst instance to Langholm himself. Was there any truth in it? And didSteel know the truth concerning his wife?
Your imaginative man is ever quick to form a theory based upon facts ofhis own involuntary invention. Langholm formed numerous theories andinvented innumerable facts during the four-and-twenty hours of hispresent separation from the heroine and the villain of these romances.The likeliest of the lot was the idea that the pair had really metabroad, at some out-of-the-way place, where Rachel had been in hidingfrom the world, and that in her despair of receiving common justice fromher kind, she had accepted the rich man without telling him who she was.His subsequent enlightenment was Langholm's explanation of Steel'scoldness towards his wife.
He wondered if it was the kind of coldness that would ever be removed;if Steel believed her guilty, it never would. Langholm would not haveadmitted it, was not even aware of it in his own introspective mind, buthe almost hoped that Steel was not thoroughly convinced of his wife'sinnocence.
The night of the dinner-party was so fine and the roads so clean thatLangholm went off on his bicycle once more, making an incongruous figurein his dress-suit, but pedalling sedately to keep cool. Fortune,however, was against him, for they had begun clipping those northernhedgerows, and an ominous bumping upon a perfectly flat road led to thediscovery of a puncture a long mile from Normanthorpe. Thence onward theunhappy cyclist had to choose between running beside his machine andriding on the rims, and between the two expedients arrived at last bothvery hot and rather late. But he thought he must be very late; for heneither met, followed, nor was followed by any vehicle whatsoever in thedrive; and the door did not open before Langholm rang, as it does whenthey are still waiting for one. Then the house seemed strangely silentwhen the door did open, and the footman wore a curious expression as heushered the late comer into an empty drawing-room. Langholm was nowalmost convinced that he had made some absurd mistake, and theimpression was not removed by the entry of Steel with his napkin in onehand.
"I've mistaken the night!" exclaimed the perspiring author.
"Not a bit of it," replied Steel; "only we thought you weren't coming atall."
"Am I really so late as all that?"
And Langholm began to wish he had mistaken the night.
"No," said Steel, "only a very few minutes, and the sin is oursentirely. But we thought you were staying away, like everybody else."
"Like--everybody--else?"
"My dear fellow," said Steel, smiling on the other's bewilderment, "Ihumbly apologize for having classed you for an instant with the rank andfile of our delightful neighbors; for the fact is that all but two havemade their excuses at the last moment. The telegrams will delight you,one of these days!"
"There was none from me," declared Langholm, as he began to perceivewhat had happened.
"There was not; and my wife was quite confident that you would come; sothe fault is altogether mine. Langholm, you were almost at her heelswhen she was introduced to the old judge yesterday?"
"I was."
"Have you guessed who she was--before she married me--or has anybodytold you?"
"I have guessed."
Steel stood silent for an instant, his eyes resting in calm scrutinyupon the other, his mouth as firm and fixed, his face fresh as a youngman's, his hair like spun silver in the electric light. Langholm lookedupon the man who was looking upon him, and he could not hate him as hewould.
"And do you still desire to dine with us?" inquired his host at last.
"I don't want to be in the way," faltered Langholm, "on a painful--"
"Oh, never mind that!" cried Steel. "Are you quite sure you don't wantto cut our acquaintance?"
"You know I don't," said Langholm, bluntly.
"Then come in, pray, and take us as we are."
"One moment, Steel! All this is inconceivable; do you mean to say thatyour guests have thrown you over on account of--of--"
"My wife having been a certain Mrs. Minchin before she changed her nameto Steel! Yes, every one of them, except our vicar and his wife, who arereal good friends."
"I am another," said Langholm through his big mustache.
"The very servants are giving notice, one by one!"
"I am her servant, too!" muttered Langholm, as Steel stood aside to lethim pass out first; but this time it was through his teeth, though fromhis heart, and the words were only audible to himself.
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