CHAPTER Xx

A SLIGHT DISCREPANCY
Mzs. Wooneare paid the Promised call a few days later, walking briskly by herself along the woodland path that made it no distance from Marley Vicarage to Normanthorpe House, and cuttiog a very attractive figure among the shimmering lights and shadows of the trees, She was rather tall, and very straight, with the pale brown skin and the dark brown eye, which, more especially when associated with hair as light as Morna Woodgate's, go to make up one of the most charming and distinctive types of English womanhood. Morna, moreover, took a healthy interest in her own
new coat and skirt had just come home, and, fawn- coloured like herself, they fitted and suited her to equal perfection. Morna th
i nheheeemetienhine tater Henauhnantiianasnsdnisicin bene nt)
vein .
oer
’ r) amet nnn omons pousanenseinir teens esendignis cnt salacauicionaneaateiboneeneeenrnienrres mereecaen-scenerstistr arsseuyraioreraiemethsei stuisshewstensyisenbinshs Singita Saat Steph lt et veginaes Ca er ee. wane “Sate ppt napbambon PSE Se aa a mo ceneecnnceeee aire
aie ttnetininas tit spire ad uabghbahodupbacipesss cin
t a| soritosge-repeomaterdear reas ieee
ee ee “ a > linnieeemeerra ee wnmetannees
o iis rm Sidelines lee
Sir arMONTE ism
110 THE SHADOW OF THE ROPE
grand for an informal call, for Hugh had been sum- moned to a sick-bed at the last moment, and might be detained too late to follow. But the Steels had been back two days, and Morna could not wait another hour.
She was certainly consumed with curiosity; but that was not the only feeling which Mrs. Woodgate enter- tained towards the lady who was to be a nearer neighbour of her own sex and class *han any she could count as yet. On the class question Morna had no misgivings; nevertheless, she was prepared for a sur- prise. Both she and her husband had seen a good deal of Mr. Steel. Morna had perhaps seen the best of him, since she was at once young and charming, and not even an unwilling and personally innocent candi- date for his hand, like honest Sybil Venables. Yet Morna herself was not more attracted than repelled
~ by the inscrutable personality of this rich man dropped
from the clouds, who had never a word to say about his former life, never an anecdote to tell, never an adventure to record, and of whom even Mrs. Venables had not the courage to ask questions. What sort of woman would such a man marry, and what sort of woman would marry such a man? Morna asked her- self the one question after the other, almost as often as she set her right foot in front of her left; but she was not merely inquisitive in the matter, she had a secret and instinctive compassion for the woman who had done this thing.
of England, radiantly and blue sky, wi
through the soles into the lofty drawi
of her natty ng-ro architraves to the doors,
sane man to buy ;
its glaring individuality, its alien air—how like the buyer !
nor cient saint sete rineeenesteienesisen venir etamyetetarss ainateneaniier
“a freon sogvana pareotenmeiberigeenrti \Saeiraasctanteeepasensee
| i r. a, ; Bat i rf i ie a:
118 THE SHADOW OF THE ROPE
Though it was May, and warm enough for the month and place, Morna got up when the footman had left her, and thrust one brown shoe after the other as near as she could to the wood fire that glimmered underneath the great, ornate, marble mantelpiece. Then she sat down again, and wondered what to say; for Morna was at once above and below the conversational average of her kind. Soon she was framing a self-conscious apology for premature intrusion—Mrs. Steel was so long in coming. But at last there was a rustle in the conservatory, and a slender’ figure in a big hat stood for an instant on the threshold.
That was Morna’s first impression of the new mistress of Normanthorpe, and it was never erased from her mind: a slender silhouette in an enormous hat, the light all behind her, the pilastered doorway for a frame, a gay backgroud of hothouse flowers, and in the figure itself a nervous hesitancy which struck an immediate chord of sympathy in Morna. She also was shy; the touch of imperfect nature was mutually discernible and discerned ; and the two were kin from the meeting of their hands.
Morna began her apology, nevertheless; but Rachel cut it very short. ‘My dear Mrs. Woodgate, I think it is so kind of you!” she exclaimed, her low voice full of the frankest gratitude ; and Morna was surprised at the time; it was as thougk wife, and Mrs, Steel the vicar’s.
A SLIGHT DISCREPANCY 118
They sat for a little, talking of the time of year; and
Morna really saw her new
neighbour's face, what with her great hat and the 7 ; position of the chair which Mrs, Steel selected. And for these few minutes, after that first frank speech,
the part of the hostess ;
fame ; enlarged by a dead and kept up by successors cold, uncomfortable house, It was said to have been a similar taste in Mr. Steel
= eyr™= vei wr TF Fe lUL!HElUCYCD
was said of him, and would i reached his ears, there was report,
e Qu i=] B, E z 5 E 5 Ee 5 e
114 THE SHADOW OF THE ROPE
the tables and replenished the greenhouses of seats more favoured by the family; and all this was the more wonderful as a triumph of art over some natural disadvantages in th. ay of soil and climate. The Normanthorpe roses, famous throughout the north of England, were as yet barely budding in the kindless wind ; the blaze of early bulbs was over; but there were the curious alien trees, and the ornamental waters haunted by outlandish wildfowl, bred there oz the same principle of acclimatisation.
“ay you know the way quite well,” said Rachel, as they followed a winding path over a bank of rhododendrons near the lake ; “to me every stroll is still a voyage of exploration, and I shall be rather sorry when I begin to know exactly what I am going to see next. Now, I have never been this way before, and have no idea what is coming, so you mustn't tell me, if you know. Whata funny scent! I seem to know it, too. Why, what have they got here?”
On the further side of the bank of rhododendrons the path had descended into a sheltered hollow, screened altogether from the colder winds, and, even in this temperate month of May, a very trap for the after- noon sun. In this hollow grew a clump of attenuated trees, with drooping leaves of a lacklustre hue, and a white bark peeling from the trunk; a pungent aroma, more medicinal than sylvan, hung rather heavily over the sequestered spot.
Rachel stood a moment with wide nostrils and
=a FF SF eC -/__ rr P| ee ee =—l re CoO..UL}wmm
“_oe,mUlc
| eed
A SLIGHT DISCREPANCY 115
round eyes; the look hardly lasted longer, and she sald no more; but she was aware that Morna had made some answer to her question,
“What did you say?” inquired Rachel, turning politely to her visitor,
“I said they were blue gums from Australia,”
Rachel made no immediate comment; secretive
& deliberate pretence
did not even say,
after a pause, “ You are
yourself, then, Mrs. Wood-
been talking of the gardens walked.
“Tonly wish I was; but
Steel telling me that one summer,”
Rachel opened ‘er eyes again, and her lips with them; but instead of speaking she went to the nearest gum-tree and picked a Spray of the lack- lustre leaves, «J like the smell of them,” she said es they went on; and the little incident left no impression upon Morna’s mind.
Yet presently she perceived that Mrs. Steel had some colour after all—at the moment Rachel hap. pened to be smelling her gum-leaves—and that she was altogether prettier than Morna had fancied hitherto. The fact was that it was her first good look at Rachel, who had kept her back to the light
indoors, and had literally led the way along the
116 THE SHADOW OF THE ROPE
narrow ‘paths, while her large hat had supplied a perpetual shadow of its own. It was a pathetic habit, which had become second nature with Rachel during the last six months; but now, for once, it was for- gotten, and her face raised unguardedly to the sun, which painted it in its true and sweet colours, to Morna’s surprise and real delight. The vicar’s wife was one of those healthy-hearted young women who are the first to admire their own sex; she had very many friends among women, for whom marriage had not damped an enthusiasm which she hid from no one but themselves; and she was to prove sufficiently enthusiastic about the thin but perfect oval of Rachel's face, the soft sweet hazel of her eyes, the impetuous upper lip and the brave lower one, as she saw them now for an ine*int in the afternoon sun.
Moreover, she was already interested in Rachel on her own account, and not only as the wife of the mysterious Mr, Steel, There was an undoubted air of mystery about her also; but that might only be derived from him, and with all her reserve she could not conceal a sweet and sympathetic self from one as like her in that essential as they were different in all others, Not that the reserve was all on one side. Morna Woodgate had her own secrets too, One of them, however, was extracted during their stroll.
“May I make a personal remark ?” asked Rachel, who had been admiring the pale brown face of Morna
‘A SLIGHT DISCREPANCY 117
in her turn, as they came slowly back to the house across the lawns,
“You frighten me,” said Morna, laughing. “ But let me hear the worst.”
“It's the ribbon on your hat,” went on Rachel, “What pretty colours! Are they your husband's school or college ?”
“No,” said Morna, blushing as she laughed again ; “no, they're my own college colours,”
Rachel stood still on the grass,
“Have you really been at college?” said she; but her tone was so obviously one of envy that Morna, who was delightfully sensitive about her learning, did not even think of the short answer which she some- times returned to the astonished queries of the intellectually vulgar, but admitted the impeachment with another laugh.
“Now don’t say you wouldn't have thought it of me,” she added, “and don’t say you would !”
“I am far too jealous to say anything at all,” Rachel answered with a flattering stare. “ And do
you took a degree ? ” admitted Morna, whose spoken English eans undefiled. But it turned out to mathematical degree; and when, under sympathetic pressure, Morna vouchsafed particulars, even Rachel knew enough to appreciate the '., ours which the vicar’s wife had won. difficult to understand was how so y
‘118 THE SHADOW OF THE ROPE
such distinguished attainments could be content to hide her light under the bushel of a country vicarage ; and Rachel could not resist some expression of her wonderment on that point.
“Did you do nothing with it all,” she asked, “before you married ?”
“No,” said Morna ; “you see, I got engaged in the middle of it, and the week after the lists came out we were married.”
“ What a career to have given up!”
“I would give it up again,” said Morna, with a warmer blush; and Rachel was left with a deeper envy.
“JT am afraid we shall have nothing in common,” sighed Mrs. Steel, as they neared the house. “I have no education worthy the name.”
Morna waxed all but indignant at the implication ; she had a morbid horror of being considered a “ blue- stocking,” which she revealed with much - girlish naiveté and unconscious simplicity of sentiment and phrase. She was not so narrow as all that; she had had enough of learning; she had forgotten all that she had learnt; any dolt could be crammed to pass examinations. On the contrary, she was quite sure they would have heaps in common; for example, she was longing for some one to bicycle with ; her husband seldom had the time, and he did not care for her to go quite alone in the country roads,
A SLIGHT DISCREPANCY 119
“But I don’t bicycle,” said Mrs. Steel, shaking her head cater sadly,
“ Ah, I forgot! People who ride and drive never do.”
a.nd it wa Morna’s turn to sigh.
“No, i sLould like it; but I have never tried.”
“Tll teach you!” cried Morna at once. « What fun it will be!”
“T should enjoy it, I know. But =
The sentence was abandoned, as was often the case in the subsequent intercourse between Rachel Steel and Morna Woodgate; from the beginning, Rachel was apt to be more off her guard with Morna than with any one whom she had met during the last six months ; from the beginning, she was continually remembering and stopping herself in a manner that would have irritated Morna in anybody else. But then—yet again, from the beginning—these two were natural and immediate friends,
“You must learn,” urged Morna, when she had waited some time for the sentence which had but begun. “There are people who scorn it—or pretend to—but.I am sure you are not one. It may not be the finest form of exercise, but wait till you fly down these hills with your feet on the rests! And then you are so independent; no horses to consider, no coach- man to consult ; only your own bones and your own sweet will! The independence alone——”
“May be the very thing for you, Mrs. Woodgate, but it wouldn’t do for my wife!”
120 THE SHADOW OF THE ROPE
Mr. Steel had stolen a silent march upon: them, on the soft smooth grass; and now he was taking off his straw hat to Morna, and smiling with all urbanity as he held out his hand. But Morna had seen how his wife started at the sound of his voice, and her greeting was a little cool.
“I meant the bicycling,” he was quick enough to add. “Not the independence, of course !”
But there was something sinister in his smile, some- thing quite sinister and yet not unkindly, that vexed and puzzled Morna during the remainder of her visit, which she cut somewhat short on perceiving that Mr. Steel had apparently no intention of leaving them to their own devices after tea. Morna, however, would have been still more puzzled, and her spirit not less vexed, had she heard the first words between the newly- married couple after she had gone.
“What's that you have got?” asked Steel, as they turned back up the drive, after seeing Morna to her woodland path. Rachel was still carrying her spray of gum-leaves; he must have noticed it before, but this was the first sign that he had done so, She said at once what it was, and why she had pulled it from the tree.
“It took me back to Victoria; and, you know, I was born there.”
Steel looked narrowly at his wife, a hard gleaia in his inscrutable eyes, and yet a lurking sympathy too; nor was there anything but the latter in the tone and tenor of his reply,
SEs PEAS tear oper SO AS ae a inate Sa CREA ath she + aeeebeamyedehen so teremae™ cs esa
A SLIGHT DISCREPANCY 121
“TI don’t forget,” he said, “and I think I can understand ; but neither must you forget that I offered to take you back there. So that’s a sprig of gum-tree, is it?”
Rachel gave him a sudden glance, which for once he missed, being absort:d in a curious examination of the leaves,
“Did you never see one before ?” she asked.
“A gum-tree?” said Steel, without looking up, as he sniffed and scrutinised. “Never in all my life—to my knowledge !”