CHAPTER XII
EPISODE OF THE INVISIBLE VISITOR
That was something like a summer, as the saying is, and for once theycould 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 asthe mountains of Alsace and hackneyed song, seen with an envious eyefrom the grimy outskirts of Northborough, and when from the hillsthemselves the only blot upon the fair English landscape was the pall ofsmoke that always overhung the town. On such days Normanthorpe Housejustified its existence in the north of England instead of in southernItaly; the marble hall, so chill to the tread at the end of May, was theone really cool spot in the district by the beginning of July; andnowhere could a more delightful afternoon be spent by those who cared toavail themselves of a general invitation.
The Steels had not as yet committed themselves to formal hospitality ofthe somewhat showy character that obtained in the neighborhood, but theykept open house for all who liked to come, and whom they themselvesliked well enough to ask in the first instance. And here (as in someother matters) this curious pair discovered a reflex identity of taste,rare enough in the happiest of conventional couples, but a gratuitousirony in the makers of a merely nominal marriage. Their mutual feelingstowards each other were a quantity unknown to either; but about a thirdperson they were equally outspoken and unanimous. Thus they had fewerdisagreements than many a loving couple, and perhaps more points ofinsignificant contact, while all the time there was not even thepretence of love between them. Their lives made a chasm bridged bythreads.
This was not seen by more than two of their acquaintance. Morna Woodgatehad both the observation and the opportunities to see a little how theland lay between them. Charles Langholm had the experience and theimagination to guess a good deal. But it was little enough that Mornasaw, and Langholm's guesses were as wide of the mark as only the guessesof an imaginative man can be. As for all the rest--honest Hugh Woodgate,the Venables girls, and their friends the young men in the variousworks, who saw the old-fashioned courtesy with which Steel alwaystreated his wife, and the grace and charm of her consideration forhim--they were every one receiving a liberal object lesson in matrimony,as some of them even realized at the time.
"I wish I could learn to treat my wife as Steel does his," sighed thegood vicar, once when he had been inattentive at the table, and Mornahad rebuked him in fun. "That would be my ideal--if I wasn't too old tolearn!"
"Then thank goodness you are," rejoined his wife. "Let me catch youdancing in front of me to open the doors, Hugh, and I shall keep my eyeon you as I've never kept it yet!"
But Rachel herself did not dislike these little graces, partly becausethey were not put on to impress an audience, but were an incident oftheir private life as well; and partly because they stimulated a studyto which she had only given herself since their return to England andtheir establishment at Normanthorpe House. This was her study of the manwho was still calmly studying her; she was returning the compliment atlast.
And of his character she formed by degrees some remote conception; hewas Steel by name and steel by nature, as the least observant mightdiscern, and the least witty remark; a grim inscrutability was hisdominant note; he was darkly alert, mysteriously vigilant, a measurerof words, a governor of glances; and yet, with all his self-mastery andmastery of others, there were human traits that showed themselves fromtime to time as the months wore on. Rachel did not recognize among thesethat studious consideration which she could still appreciate; it seemedrather part of a preconceived method of treating his wife, and the waryeye gleamed through it all. But it has been mentioned that Rachel at onetime had a voice, of which high hopes had been formed by inexperiencedjudges. It was only at Normanthorpe that her second husband became awareof her possession, one afternoon when she fancied that she had the houseto herself. So two could play at the game of consistent concealment! Hecould not complain; it was in the bond, and he never said a word. But hestood outside the window till she was done, for Rachel saw him in amirror, and for many an afternoon to come he would hover outside thesame window at the same time.
Why had he married her? Did he care for her, or did he not? What couldbe the object of that extraordinary step? Rachel was as far from hittingupon a feasible solution of these mysteries as she was from penetratingthe deeper one of his own past life. Sometimes she put the likequestions to herself; but they were more easily answered. She had beenin desperate straits, in reckless despair; even if her second marriagehad turned out no better than her first, she could not have been worseoff than she was on the night of her acquittal; but she had been verywell off ever since. Then there had been the incentive of adventure, thefascination of that very mystery which was a mystery still. Andthen--yes!--there had been the compelling will of a nature infinitelystronger than her own or any other that she had ever known.
Did she regret this second marriage, this second leap in the dark? No,she could not honestly pretend that she did; yet it had its sufficientlysinister side, its occasional admixture of sheer horror. But this wasonly when the mysteries which encompassed her happened to prey uponnerves unstrung by some outwardly exciting cause; it was then she wouldhave given back all that he had ever given her to pierce the veil of herhusband's past. Here, however, the impulse was more subtle; it was notthe mere consuming curiosity which one in Rachel's position was bound tofeel; it was rather a longing to be convinced that that veil hid nothingwhich 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 ormisspent his life (if any part of so successful a whole could reallyhave been misspent), it was not in England. He was un-English in ahundred superficial ways--in none that cut deep. With all his essentialcynicism, there was the breadth and tolerance of a travelled man.Cosmopolitan on the other hand, he could not be called; he had provedhimself too poor a linguist in every country that they had visited. Itwas only now, in their home life, that Rachel received hints of thetruth, and it filled her with vague alarms, for that seemed to her to bethe last thing he need have kept to himself.
One day she saw him ride a fractious horse, not because he was fond ofriding, but because nobody in the stables could cope with this animal.Steel tamed it in ten minutes. But a groom remarked upon the shortnessof his stirrups, in Rachel's hearing, and on the word a flash of memorylit up her brain. All at once she remembered the incident of thegum-leaves, soon after their arrival; he had told Morna what they were,yet to his wife he had pretended not to know. If he also was anAustralian, why on earth should that fact, of all facts, be concealedfrom her? Nor had it merely been concealed; it was a point upon whichRachel had been deliberately misled, and the only one she could recall.
She was still brooding over it when a fresh incident occurred, whichserved not only to confirm her suspicions in this regard, but to deepenand intensify the vague horror with which her husband's presencesometimes inspired her.
Mr. Steel was an exceptionally early riser. It was his boast that henever went to sleep a second time; and one of his nearest approaches toa confidence was the remark that he owed something to that habit. NowRachel, who was a bad sleeper, kept quite a different set of hours, andwas seldom seen outside her own rooms before the forenoon. Onemagnificent morning, however, she was tempted to dress and make the bestof the day which she had watched breaking shade by shade. The lawns weregray with dew; the birds were singing as they never sing twice in onesummer's day. Rachel thought that for once she would like to be up andout before the sun was overpowering. And she proceeded to fulfil herwish.
All had been familiar from the window; all was unfamiliar on the landingand the stairs. No one had been down; the blinds were all drawn; a clockticked like a sledge-hammer in the hall. Rachel ran downstairs like amouse, and almost into the arms of her husband, whom she met coming outof the dining-room with a loaded tray. Another would have dropped it;with Steel there was not so much as a rattle of the things, but hiscolor changed, an
d Rachel had not yet had such a look as he gave herwith his pursed mouth and his flashing eyes.
"What does this mean?" he demanded, in the tone of distant thunder, withlittle less than lightning in his glance.
"I think that's for me to ask," laughed Rachel, standing up to him witha nerve that surprised herself. "I 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 are you up?"
Rachel told him the simple truth in simple fashion. His tone of voicedid not hurt her; there was no opposite extreme of tenderness to call tomind for the contrast which inflicts the wound. On the other hand, therewas a certain satisfaction in having for once ruffled that smooth mienand smoother tongue; it was one of her rare glimpses of the real man,but as usual it was a glimpse and nothing more.
"I must apologize," said Steel, with an artificiality which was seldomso transparent; "my only excuse is that you startled me out of my temperand my manners. And I was upset to begin with. I have a poor fellow inrather a bad way in the boathouse."
"Not one of the gardeners, I hope?" queried Rachel; but her kind anxietysubsided in a moment, for his dark eyes were measuring her, his darkmind meditating a lie; and now she knew him well enough to read him thusfar in his turn.
"No," replied Steel, deciding visibly against the lie; "no, not one ofour men, or anybody else belonging to these parts; but some unluckytramp, whom I imagine some of our neighbors would have given intocustody forthwith. I found him asleep on the lawn; of course he had nobusiness upon the premises; but he's so far gone that I'm taking himsomething to pull him together before I turn him off."
"I should have said," remarked Rachel, thoughtfully, "that tea or coffeewould 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."
"And why didn't you bring him into the house," pursued Rachel, lookingher husband very candidly in the face, "instead of taking him all thatway to the lake, and giving yourself so much more trouble than wasnecessary?"
The smile broadened upon Steel's thin lips, perhaps because it hadentirely vanished from his glittering eyes.
"That," said he, "is a question you would scarcely ask if you had seenthe poor creature for yourself. I don't intend you to see him; he is arather saddening spectacle, and one of a type for which one can doabsolutely nothing permanent. And now, if you are quite satisfied, Ishall 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 hiswife's expense, though few people who came much in contact with himescaped an occasional flick from a tongue that could be as bitter as itwas habitually smooth. His last words were therefore as remarkable ashis first; both were exceptions to a rule; and though Rachel moved awaywithout replying, feeling that there was indeed no more to be said, shecould not but dwell upon the matter in her mind. Satisfied she certainlywas not; and yet there was so much mystery between them, so manyinstinctive reservations upon either side, that very little circumstanceof the kind could not carry an ulterior significance, but many must bedue to mere force of habit.
Rachel hated the condition of mutual secretiveness upon which she hadmarried this man; it was antagonistic to her whole nature; she longed torepudiate it, and to abolish all secrets between them. But there herpride stepped in and closed her lips; and the intolerable thought thatshe would value her husband's confidence more than he would value hers,that she felt drawn to him despite every sinister attribute, would bringhumiliation and self-loathing in its train. It was the truth, however,or, at all events, part of the truth.
Yet a more unfair arrangement Rachel had been unable to conceive, eversince the fatally reckless moment in which she had acquiesced in thisone. The worst that could be known about her was known to her husbandbefore her marriage; she had nothing else to hide; all concealment ofthe past, as between themselves, was upon his side. But matters werecoming to a crisis in this respect; and, when Rachel deemed it donewith, this incident of the tramp was only just begun.
It seemed that the servants knew of it, and that it was not Steel whohad originally discovered the sleeping intruder, but an under-gardener,who, seeing his master also up and about, had prudently inquired whatwas to be done with the man before meddling with him.
"And the master said, 'leave him to me,'" declared Rachel's maid, whowas her informant on the point, as she combed out her mistress'sbeautiful brown hair, before the late breakfast which did away withluncheon when there were no visitors at Normanthorpe.
"And did he do so?" inquired Rachel, looking with interest into her owneyes in the glass. "Did he leave him to your master?"
"He did that!" replied her maid, a simple Yorkshire wench, whom Rachelherself had chosen in preference to the smart town type. "Catch any on'em not doin what master tells them!"
"Then did John see what happened?"
"No, m'm--because master sent him to see if the chap'd 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 theimpudence to bring a blanket with him?"
"And slept in it!" cried her excited little maid. "John says he foundhim tucked up in a corner of the lawn, out of the wind, behind some o'them shrubs, sound asleep, and lapped round and round in his bluebanket from head to heel."
Rachel saw her own face change in the glass; but she only asked one morequestion, and that with a smile.
"Did John say it was a blue blanket, Harris, or did your own imaginationsupply the color?"
"He said it, m'm; faded blue."
"And pray when did you see John to hear all this?" demanded Rachel,suddenly remembering her responsibility as mistress of this youngdaughter of the soil.
"Deary me, m'm," responded the ingenuous Harris, "I didn't see him, notmore than any of the others; he just comed to t' window of t' servants'hall, as we were having our breakfasts, and he told us all at once. Hewas that full of it, was John!"
Rachel asked no more questions; but she was not altogether sorry thatthe matter had already become one of common gossip throughout the house.Meanwhile she made no allusion to it at breakfast, but her observationhad been quickened by the events of the morning, and thus it was thatshe noticed and recognized the narrow blue book which was too long forher husband's breast-pocket, and would show itself as he stooped overhis coffee. It was his check-book, and Rachel had not seen it sincetheir travels.
That afternoon a not infrequent visitor arrived on his bicycle, to whichwas tied a bouquet of glorious roses instead of a lamp; this was CharlesLangholm, the novelist, who had come to live in Delverton, over twohundred miles from his life-long haunts and the literary market-place,chiefly because upon a happy-go-lucky tour through the district he hadchanced upon what he never tired of calling "the ideal rose-coveredcottage of my dreams," though also for other reasons unknown inYorkshire. His flat was abandoned before quarter-day, his effectstransplanted at considerable cost, and ever since Langholm had been abigoted countryman, who could not spend a couple of days in town withoutmaking himself offensive on the subject at his club, where he wasnevertheless discreetly vague as to the exact locality of his ruralparadise. Even at the club, however, it was admitted that his work hadimproved almost as much as his appearance; and he put it all down to theroses in which he lived embowered for so many months of the year. Suchwas their profusion that you could have filled a clothes-basket withoutmissing one, and Langholm never visited rich or poor without a littleoffering out of his abundance.
"They may be coals to Newcastle," he would say to the Woodgates or theSteels, "but none of your Tyneside collieries are a patch on mine."
Like most victims of the artistic temperament, the literary Langholm wasa creature of moods; but the very fact of a voluntary visit from him wassufficient guarante
e of the humor in which he came, and this afternoonhe was at his best. He had indeed been writing all day, and for manydays past, and was filled with the curious exhilaration whichaccompanies an output too rapid and too continuous to permit a runningsense of the defects. He was a ship with a fair wind, which he valuedthe more for the belts of calms and the adverse weather through which hehad passed and must inevitably pass again; for the moment he was a happyman, though one with no illusion as to the present product of histeeming pen.
"It is nonsense," he said to Rachel, in answer to a question from thatnew and sympathetic friend, "but it is not such nonsense as to seemnothing else when one's in the act of perpetrating it, and what more canone want? It had to be done by the tenth of August, and by Jove it willbe! A few weeks ago I didn't think it possible; but the summer hasthawed 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 atremendously literary conversation when you dined with us."
"We had, indeed!" said Langholm, with enthusiasm. "And Mrs. Steel gaveme one of the best ideas I ever had in my life; that's another reasonwhy I'm racing through this rubbish--to take it in hand."
It was Sybil to whom he was speaking, but at this point Rachel plungedinto the conversation with the sister, Vera, which required an effort,since the elder Miss Venables was a young lady who had cultivatedlanguor as a sign of breeding and sophistication. Rachel, however, madethe effort with such a will that the talk became general in a moment.
"I don't know how anybody writes books," was the elder young lady'ssolitary contribution; her tone added that she did not want to know.
"Nor I," echoed Sybil, "especially in a place like this, where nothingever happens. If I wanted to write a novel, I should go to Spain--orSiberia--or the Rocky Mountains--where things do happen, according toall accounts."
"Young lady," returned the novelist, a twinkle in his eye, "I hadexactly the same notion when I first began, and I remember what a mucholder hand said to me when I told him I was going down to Cornwall forromantic background. 'Young man,' said he, 'have you placed a romance inyour mother's backyard yet?' I had not, but I did so at once instead ofgoing to Cornwall, and sounder advice I never had in my life. Material,like charity, begins at home; nor need you suppose that nothing everhappens down here. That is the universal idea of the native about his orher own heath, but I can assure you it isn't the case at all. Only justnow, on my way here, I saw a scene and a character that might have beenlifted bodily out of Bret Harte."
Sybil Venables clamored for particulars, while her sister resignedherself to further weariness of the flesh. Rachel put down her cup andleant forward with curiously expectant eyes. They were sitting in thecool, square hall, with doors shut or open upon every hand, and thegilded gallery overhead. Statuettes and ferns, all reflected in thehighly polished marble floor, added a theatrical touch which was not outof keeping with a somewhat ornate interior.
"It was the character," continued Langholm, "who was making the scene;and a stranger creature I have never seen on English earth. He wore whatI believe they call a Crimean shirt, and a hat like a stage cowboy; andhe informed all passers that he was knocking down his check!"
"What?" cried Rachel and Sybil in one breath, but in curiously differenttones.
"Knocking down his check," repeated Langholm. "It's what they do in thefar west or the bush or somewhere--but I rather fancy it's thebush--when they get arrears of wages in a lump in one check."
"And where did you see all this?" inquired Rachel, whose voice was veryquiet, but her hazel eyes alight with a deeper interest than the storywarranted.
"At the Packhorse on the York Road. I came that way round for the sakeof the surface and the exercise."
"And did you see the check?"
"No, I only stopped for a moment, to find out what the excitement wasabout; but the fellow I can see now. You never set eyes on such apirate--gloriously drunk and bearded to the belt. I didn't stop, becausehe was lacing into everybody with a cushion, and the local loafersseemed to like it."
"What a joke!" cried Sybil Venables.
"There is no accounting for taste," remarked her sapient sister.
"And he was belaboring them with a cushion, did you say?" added Rachel,with the slightest emphasis upon the noun.
"Well, it looked like one to me," replied Langholm, "but, on secondthoughts, it was more like a bolster in shape; and now I know what itwas! It has just dawned on me. It looked like a bolster done up in ablanket; but it was the swag that the tramps carry in Australia, withall their earthly goods rolled up in their bedding; and the fellow wasan Australian swagsman, that's what he was!"
"Swagman," corrected Rachel, instinctively. "And pray what color was theblanket?" 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. "Inever was, but the sort of thing has been done to death in books, and Ionly wonder I didn't recognize it at once. Well, it was the last typeone thought to meet with in broad daylight on an English country road!"
Had Langholm realized that he had put a question which he had nobusiness to put? Had he convicted himself of a direct thoughunpremeditated attempt to probe the mystery of his hostess'santecedents, and were his subsequent observations designed to unsaythat question in effect? If so, there was no such delicacy in the elderMiss Venables, who became quite animated at the sudden change inRachel's face, and at her own perception of the cause.
"Have you been to Australia, Mrs. Steel?" repeated Vera, looking Rachelfull 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. Steel emerged from his study.
"Australia, my dear Miss Venables," said he, "is the one country thatneither my wife nor I have ever visited in our lives, and the last onethat either of us has the least curiosity to see."
And he took his seat among them with a smile.