CHAPTER XII

EPISODE OF THE INVISIBLE VISITOR
THat was something like a summer, as the saying is, and for once they could say it even on the bleak northern spurs of the Delverton Hills. There were days upon days when that minor chain looked blue and noble as the mountains of Alsace and hack- neyed song, seen with an envious eye from the grimy outskirts of Northborough, and when from the hills themselves the only blot upon the fair English landscape was the pall of smoke that always overhung the town. On such days Normanthorpe House justified its existence in the north of instead of in southern Italy ; the marble hall, so chill to the tread at the end of May, was the one really cool spot in the district by the beginning of July ; and nowhere could a more delightful afternoon be spent by those who cared to avail themselvesof a general invitation. The Steels had not as yet committed themselves to formal hospitality, of the somewhat showy character that obtained in the neighbourhood, but they kept open house for all who liked to come, and whom they 186
EPISODE OF THE INVISIBLE VISITOR 187
themselves liked well enough to ask in the first instance, And here (as in some other matters) this curious pair &@ reflex identity of taste, rare enough in the happiest of conventional couples, but a gratuitous irony in the makers of a merely nominal marriage, Their mutual feelings towards each other were a quantity unknown to either ; but about a third person they were equally outspoken and unanimous. they had fewer disagreements than many a lovi Perhaps more points of insignificant con-
servation and the opportuni the land lay between them. Charles Langholm had ire experience and the imagination to guess a good deal. But it was little enough that Morna saw, and Langholm’s guesses were as wide of the mark as only the guesses of an imaginative man can be. As for all the rest—honest Hugh Woodgate, the Venables girls, and their friends the young men in the various works, who saw the old-fashioned courtesy with which Steel always treated his wife, and the grace and charm of her consideration for him—they were every one receiving a liberal object-lesson in matrimony, as some of them even realised at the time.
“I wish I could learn to treat my wife as Steel does
sae semen nsienns mice ne . reat one em ith 002 BEE A A ADS A DARL eR RARER TDS APN SAINT ASTRA STIS aE 8 jabs *
i i ; : : i |
he ~-
= . é a ile AURA ABR at ae) ad NS aT ee AR aol boar os - re “ ih oR DER? ho AMR PRT
ij | teenie ntseeba er ccec ene iamean mannan ReeAayyet adeno a at é salts se on abbisensreanciias ssanonabe — seman “ espe noe ovine hil
188 THE SHADOW OF THE ROPE
his,” sighed the good vicar, once when he had been inattentive at the table, and Morna had rebuked him in fun. “That would be my ideal—if I wasn’t too old to learn !”
“Then thank goodness you are,” rejoined his wife. “Let me catch you dancing in front of me to open the doors, Hugh, and I shall keep my eye on you. as I've never kept it yet!”
But Rachel herself did not dislike these little graces, partly because they were not put on to impress an audience, but were an incident of their private life as well; and partly because they stimulated a study to which she had only given herself since their return to England and their establishment at Normanthorpe House. This was her study of the man who was still calmly studying her; she was returning the com- pliment at last.
‘And of his character she formed by degrees some remote conception ; he was Steel by name and steel by nature, as the least observant might discern, and the least witty remark; a grim inscrutability was his dominant note; he was darkly alert, mysteriously vigilant, a measurer of words, a governor of glances ; and yet, with all his self-mastery and mastery of others, there were human traits that showed themselves from time to time as the months wore on. Rachel did not recognise among these that studious considera- tion which she could still appreciate; it seemed rather part of a preconceived method of treating his wife, and
EPISODE OF THE INVISIBLE VISITOR 199
the wary eye gleamed through it all. But it has been mentioned that Rachel at one time had a voice, of which high hopes had been formed by inexperienced judges. It was only at Normanthorpe that her second husband became aware of her possession, one afternoon when she fancied that she had the house to herself, So two could play at the game of consistent concealment ! He could not complain; it was in the bond, and he never said a word. But he stood outside the window till she was done, for Rachel saw him in a mirror, and for many an afternoon to come he would hover outside the same window at the same time.
Why had he married her? Did he care for her, or did he not? What could be the object of that extra- ordinary step? Rachel was as far from hitting upon a feasible solution of these mysteries as she was from penetrating the deeper one of his own past life. Some- times she put the like questions to herself; but they were more easily answered. She had been in desperate straits, in reckless despair ; even if her second marriage had turned out no better than her first, she could not have been worse off than she was on the night of her acquittal ; but she had been very well off ever since. Then there had been the incentive of adventure, the fascination of that very mystery which was a mystery still. And then—yes !—there had been the compelling will of a nature infinitely stronger than her own or any other that she had ever known.
Did she regret this second marriage, this second leap
~~
140 THE SHADOW OF THE ROPE
in the dark? No, she could not honestly pretend that she did; yet it had its sufficiently sinister side, its occasional admixture of sheer horror. But this was only when the mysteries which encompassed her hap- pened to prey upon nerves unstrung by some outwardly oxciting cause; it was then she would have given back all that he had ever given her, to pierce the veil of her husband’s past. Here, however, the impulse was more subtle ; it was not the mere consuming curiosity which one in Rachel’s position was bound to feel; it was rather a longing to be convinced that that veil hid nothing which should make her shudder to live under the same roof with this man.
Of one thing she was quite confident ; wherever her husband had spent or misspent his life (if any part of so successful a whole could really have been misspent), it was not in England. He was un-English in a hundred superficial ways—in none that cut deep. With all his essential cynicism, there was the breadth and tolerance of a travelled man. Cosmopolitan, on the other hand, he could not be called ; he had proved himself too poor a linguist in every country that they had visited. It was only now, in their home life, that Rachel received hints of the truth, and it filled her with vague alarms, for that seemed to her to be the last thing he need have kept to himself. :
One day she saw him ride a fractious horse, not because he was fond of riding, but because nobody in the stables could cope with this animal. Steel tamed
ra hn
8 an ic oan raat wpmmnionetoneginesnuer 908 unheoghasenesh
GAR RN ge” MR ARM RNS mye a8i THEY Be
ry _ " " = - - ots ee } é ~ H 4 Sn AB BR: RON AGN Aga ata nmesteae
sal aa | RRR: feng sapieta do
+a ttre: Bt amt —somapadripiangac edaeUete ~ 4
ge ag SED MRST fSYST RN TWICE a saa ES ERE: Spee. gee RIPE, Re 2 oe ERP eSMO TREE
EPISODE OF THE INVISIBLE VISITOR 141
it in ten minutes, But & groom remarked upon the shortness of his stirrups, in Rachel's hearing, and on the word a flash
Nor had it 3 it was a point upon which Rachel had been deliberately misled, and the only one she could recall.
She was still brooding over it when a fresh incident occurred, which served not only to confirm her suspicions in this regard, but to deepen and intensify the vague horror with which her husband's presence sometimes inspired her,
Mr. Steel was an
something to that habit, bad sleeper, kept quite a different set of hours, and was seldom seen outside her own rooms before the
grey with dew; the birds were singing as they never sing twice in one summer's day. Rachel thought that for once she would like to be up and out before the sun
ne enn
\| e680 faethe estado As usin tn eaneme nant Mt a cane ; : e mre ih
Se ee
+
144 THE SHADOW OF THE ROPE
was overpowering. And she proceeded to fulfil her wish
All had been familiar from tiie window ; all was unfamiliar on the landing and tise stairs. No one had been down; thu blinds were all drawn; a clock ticked like a sledge-hammer in the hall. Rachel ran downstairs like a mouse, and almost into the atms of her husband, whom she met coming out of the dining-room with a loaded tray. Another would ha‘e dropped it; with Steel there was not so much as a rattle of the things, but his colour changed, and Rachel had not yet had such a look as he gave her with his pursed mouth and his flashing eyes.
* What does this mean?” he demanded, in the tone of distant thunder, with little le’ than lightning in his glance.
“I think that’s for me to .:k,” laughed Rachel, standing up to him with a nerve that surprised her- self, “TI didn’t know that you began so early!”
A decanter and a glass were among the things upon the tray.
“ And I didn’t know it of you,” he retorted. “ Why te you up?” |
Rachel told him the simple truth in simple fashion. His tone of voice did not hurt her; there was no opposite extreme of tenderness to call to mind for the contrast which inflicts the wound. On the other hand, there was a certain satisfaction in having for once ruffled ‘thas smooth mien and smoother
EPISODE OF THE INVISIBLE VISITOR 143
tongue; it was one of her rare glimpses of the real man, but as usual it was & glimpse and nothing more,
“T must apologise,” said Steel, with an artificiality which was seldom so transparent ; “ my only excuse is that you startled me out of my temper and my manners. And I was upset to begin with. | have a poor feiiow in rather & bad way in the boathouse.”
“Not one of the gardeners, I hope?” queried Rachel ; but her kind anxiety subsided in a moment, for his dark eyes were measuring her, his dark mind
tieditating a lie; and now she knew him well enough to read him thus far in his turn.
unlucky tramp, whom I imagine some of our neighbours would have
the premises; but he’s so far gone that I'm taking him something to pull him together before I turn him off.”
“TI should have said,” remarked Rachel, thought- folly, “that tea or coffee would have been better for him than spirits,”
Steel smiled indulgently across the tray.
“ Most ladies would say the same,” he replied, “but very few men,”
pate ene 98 NAST A Ne ak AMOR wee TERS eR TS et | ry PeetE Pmt nae oe
Fass 08
=
bi
§ 3 . : | iG e- 4 j i j Z os ES. Hi HE N 2 P ~ z i zi jig ; #2 413 = peug | ita
14 THE SHADOW OF THE ROPE
“And why didn’t you bring him into the house,” pursued Rachel, looking her husband very candidly in the face, “instes of taking him all that way to the lake, and giving yourself so much more trouble than was iiecessary ?”
The smile broadened upon Steel's thin lips, perhaps because it had entirely vanished from his glittering
eyes. “That,” said he, “is a question you would scarcely ask if you had seen the poor creature for yourself, I don't intend you to see him; he is a rather saddening spectacle, and one of a type for which one can do absolutely nothing permanent. And now, if you are quite satisfied, I shall proceed, with your permission, to get rid of him in my own way.”
It was seldom indeed that Steel descended to a display of sarcasm at his wife’s expense, though few people who came much in contact with him escaped an occasional flick from a tongue that could be as bitter as it was habitually smooth. His last words were therefore as remarkable as his first; both were exceptions to a rule; and though Rachel moved away without replying, feeling that there was indeed no more to be said, she could not but dwell upon the matter in her mind. Satisfied she certainly was not; and yet there was so much mystery between them, so many instinctive reservations upon either side, that every little circumstance of the kind could
EPISODE OF THE INVISIBLE VISITOR 146
Rachel hated the condition of mutual secretiveness upon which she had married this man; it was an- tagonistic to her whole nature; she longed to repudiate But there her pride stepped in and closed her lips; and the intolerable thought thai she would value her husband’s
spite every sinister attribute, would bring humiliation and self-loathing in its train,
It was the truth, however, or, at all events, part of the truth.
to her husband else to hide; all concealment of the past, as between themselves, was upon his side. Kut matters were coming to a crisis in this respect ; and, when Rachel deemed it done with, this incident of the tramp was only just begun.
It seemed that the servants knew of it, and that it was not Steel who had ori
Cy See en eee te renee ee ee eet ee re een a erin ere eee Ter er eee eee ere gnreees oe
ssc fied | conn tapeh aR abla ies MMhatahent tation A ah etn ec ERPNROSRaCareRIEEN AC as tes nA sesigiennea | \ 40s z a
2s _— Abeba aoe HNMR i aos a BGS 0a ne aE Aha nN Cate aA AR AIMS AB a Sige ot ob 4S et wis we Sih ch Cent tate
, your own imagination supply the colour ?”
™
146 THE SHADOW OF THE ROPE
“ And the master said, ‘leave him to me,*” declared Rachel’s maid, who was her informant on the point, as she combed out her mistress’s beautiful brown hair, before the late breakfast which did away with luncheon when there were no visitors at Norma:thorpe.
“ And did he do so?” inquired Rachel, looking with interest into her own eyes in the glass. “Did he leave him to your master ?”
“He did that!” replied her maid, a simple York- shire wench, whom Rachel herself had chosen in preference to the smart town type. “Catch any on ‘em not doing what master tells them !”
“Then did John see what happened ?”
“No, m'm—because master sent him to see if the chap 4 come in at t’ lodge gates, or where, and when he got back he was gone, blanket an’ all, an’ master with him.”
‘-Blanket and all!” repeated Rachel. “Do you mean to say he had the impudence to bring a blanket with him ?”
“ And slept in it!” cried her excited little maid. “John says he found him tucked up in a corner of the lawn, out of the wind, behind some o’ them shrubs, sound asleep, ard lapped round and round in his blue blanket from head to heel.”
Rachel saw her own face change in the glass; but she only asked one more question, and that with a smile.
“ Did John say it was a blue blanket, Harris, or did
EPISODE OF THE INVISIBLE VISITOR 147
“* He said it, m’m ; faded blue,”
“And pray when did you see John to hear ail this?” demanded Rachel, suddenly remembering her responsibility as mistress of this young daughter of the soil,
“Deary me, m’m Harris, “TI didn’t see him others ; j servants’ hall, as we were
was that full of it, was John!”
Rachel asked no more questions; but she was not altogether sorry that the matter had already become one of common Sossip throughout the house. Mean- while she made no allusion to it at breakfast, but her observation uickened by the events of the
148 THE SHADOW OF THE ROPE -
reasons unknown in Yorkshire. His flat was abandoned before quarter-day, his effects transplanted at consider- able cost, and ever since Langholm had been a bigoted countryman, who could not spend a couple of days in town without making himself offensive on the subject at his club, where he was nevertheless discreetly vague as to the exact locality of his rural paradise. Even at the club, however, it was admitted that his work had improved almost as much as his appearance; and he put it all down to the roses in which he lived em- bowered for so many months of the year. Such was their profusion that you could have filled a clothes- basket without missing one, and Langholm never visited rich or poor without a little offering out of his abundance.
“They may be coals to Newcastle,” he would say to the Woodgates or the Steels, “ but none of your Tyne- side collieries are a patch on mine.”
Like most victims of the artistic temperament, the literary Langholm was a creature of moods; but the very fact of a voluntary visit from him was sufficient guarantee of the humour in which he came, and this afternoon he was at his best. He had indeed been writing a’. day, and for many days past, and was filled with the curious exhilaration which accompanies an output too rapid and too continuous to permit a running sense of the defects. He was a ship with a fair wind, which he valued the more for the belts of calms and the adverse weather through which he had
EPISODE OF THE INVISIBLE VISITOR 149
passed and must inevitably pass again ; for the moment he was a happy man, though one with no illusion as to the present product of his teeming pen.
“Tt is nonsense,” he said to Rachel, in answer to @ question from that new and sympathetic friend, “but it is not such nonsense as to seem nothing else when one’s in the act of perpetrating it, and what more can one want? It had to be done by the tenth of August, and by Jove it will be! A few weeks ago I didn’t think it possible; but the summer has thawed my ink.”
“Are you sure it isn’t Mrs. Steel?” asked one of the Venables girls, who had also ridden over on their bicycles. “I heard you had a tremendously literary conversation when you dined with us,”
“We had, indeed!” said Langholm, with enthu- siasm. “And Mrs. Steel gave me one of the best
It was Sybil to whom he was speaking, but at this point Rachel plunged into conversation with the sister, Vera, which required an effort, since the elder Mise Venables was a young lady who had cultivated languor a8 a sign of breeding and sophistication. Rachel, how- ver; made the effort with such a will that the talk became general in a moment, . 2
“TI don't know how anybody writes books,” was the "elder young lady's solitary contribution ; her tone added ~ that she did not want to know
ete AAPA aS 9 TOTNES OLSEN a cs AO oe PERMA SRA MS PERE MOL ON
150 ‘THE SHADOW OF THE ROPE
“Nor I,” echoed Syhil, “especially in a place like this, where nothing ever happens. If I wanted to write a novel, I should go to Spain—or Siberia—or the Rocky Mountains—where things do happen, ac- cording to all accounts.”
“Young lady,” returned the novelist, a twinkle in his eye, “I had exactly the same notion when I first began, and I remember what a much older hand said to me when I told him I was going down to Cornwall fpr romantic background. ‘Young man,’ said he, ‘have you placed a romance in your mother’s backyard yet?’ I had not, but I did so at once instead of going to Cornwall, and sounder advice I never had in my life. Material, like charity, begins at home; nor need you suppose that nothing ever happens down here. That is the universal idea of the native about his or her own heath, but I can assure you it isn’t the case at all. Only just now, on my way here, I saw a scene and a character that might both have been lifted bodily out of Bret Harte.”
Sybil Venables clamoured for particulars, while her sister resigned herself to further weariness of the flesh. Rachel put down her cup and leant forward with curiously expectant eyes. They were sitting in the cool square hall, with doors shut or open upon every hand, and the gilded gallery overhead. Statuettes and ferns, all reflected in the highly polished marble floor, added a theatrical touch which was not out of keeping with a somewhat ornate interior.
“What ?” cried Rachel and Sybil in one breath, but in curiously different tones,
“Knocking down his cheque,” repeated Langholm. “It’s what they do in the far west or the bush or somewhere—but I rather fancy it’s the bush—when they get arrears of wages in a lump in one cheque,”
“And where did you see all this ?” inquired Rachel, whose voice was very quiet, but her hazel eyes alight with a deeper interest than the story warranted.
“At the Packhorse on the York Road. I came that way round for the sake of the surface and the exercise.” |
“And did you see the cheque ?”
“No, I only stopped for a moment, to find out what the excitement was about ; but the fellow I can see now. You never set eyes on such a pirate— gloriously drunk and bearded to the belt. I didn’t stop, because he was lacing into everybody with a cushion, and the local loafers seemed to like it.”
“What a joke !” cried Sybil Venables.
“There is no accounting for taste,” remarked her sapient sister.
“And he was belabouring them with a cushion, did
152 THE SHADOW OF THE ROPE:
you say?” added Rachel, with the slightest emphasis upon the noun.
“Well, it looked like one to me,” replied Lang- holm, “but, on second thoughts, it was more like’a bolster in shape; and now I know what it was! It has just dawned on me. It looked like a bolster done up in a blanket; but it was the swag that the tramps carry in Australia, with all their earthly goods rolled up in their bedding; and the fellow was an Australian ‘swagsman, that’s what he was!”
“Swagman,” corrected Rachel, instinctively. “ And pray what colour was the blanket?” she made haste to add.
“Faded blue.”
And, again from sheer force of instinct, Rachel gave a nod,
“Were you ever out there, Mrs, Steel?” inquired Langholm, carelessly. ‘I never was, but the sort of thing has been done to death in books, and I only wonder I didn’t recognise it at once. Well, it was the last type one thought to meet with in broad day- light on an English country road!”
Had Langholm realised that he had put a question which he had no business to put? Had he convicted himself of a direct though unpremeditated attempt to probe the mystery of his hostess’s antecedents, and were his subsequent observations designed to unsay that question in effect? If so there was no- such delicacy in the elder Miss Venables, who became
EPISODE OF THE INVISIBLE VISITOR 153
quite animated at the sudden change in Rachel's face, and at her own perception of the cause,
“Have you been to Australia, Mrs, Steel ?” repeated Vera, looking Rachel full in the eyes; and she added slyly, “I believe you have!”
There was a moment’s pause, and then a crisp step rang upon the marble, as Mr, Stee] emerged from his study.
“ Australia, my dear Miss Venables,” said he, “is the
And he took his seat among them with a smile.