Barnaby Part 38

But the atmosphere of the house weighed on her, charged as it was with failure. It was robbing her of courage.

How strange it was to look back; almost unbearable. How hard it was to look forward. She was to sail to-morrow ... she must be brave....

The girl who had struck up a casual alliance with her sat amidst the others, ripping the ragged binding off a skirt. Her sallow face was less heavy than usual, her eyes alight.

She had glanced up quickly as Susan came in, and had begun to hum a tune, snipping fast. It had been impossible to resist the temptation to crystallise wandering speculation and focus the general attention for awhile on herself by a few dark hints and thereupon thrilling silence. The rest fell with a pathetic eagerness on the brief distraction that lightened their dreary lives. They had outlived their own little histories; no excitement touched any of them but the recurrent terror of wanting bread.

All at once Miss Robinson laid down her scissors and listened intently to something she heard without.

"Is that coals?" said one, huddling near the fire, in a hushed voice, as who should say--Might the G.o.ds relent?--But no full scuttle b.u.mped the panels as Gerald put in his head.

"Wanted," he said, and grinned.

Miss Robinson gave one gasp, half in fright, half triumphant, and fled out of the room, shutting the door with care.

Then, for a moment, cowardice nearly quenched her long-unslaked thirst for drama. Visions of herself as mediatrix, restoring a runaway wife to her frantic husband, were upset by fearful misgivings in which she saw herself figuring, not in the gilded realm of the serial page, but in lurid paragraphs on the other side of the paper. Paragraphs in which someone heard pistol-shots....

In the dim pa.s.sage she clutched at Gerald.

"What is he like?" she whispered.

"A regular toff," said Gerald in an awed voice. "Asked for a Miss Grant. None of that name here.--Slight, dark lady.--And then I twigged that he was your party. I've seen his picture once in the _News of the World_; they snapped him, held up by the police in his motor. How did you get to know 'im, Miss Robinson? He's a lord."

"Oh!" she said. This was indeed a sensation. This would last her all her life!--

Barnaby had had no luck in Bond Street.

He sat forward in his hansom, leaning out, gripping the front, ready to dash it open. It did not matter to him how many fools were about, how many frivolous idiots, men and women, stopped short in their idle progress and stared at him. Down Old Bond Street, along New Bond Street, right to the end he went, raking the narrow thoroughfare with a searching gaze. The shop signs mocked him. Milliners, jewellers, palmists, druggists, picture-sellers: a fantastic jumble. She might be anywhere, within two or three yards of him, and he not know it. She might have just gone in at that door yonder that was closing. She might be just coming out.

Half an hour ago. One chance in a hundred.... More likely she was miles off, whizzing in one of these cursed taxis--!

Well, he could hunt down Rackham. He would drive to that old barrack of his in Marylebone. No,--that was let or shut up or something.

Where the devil did he go when he was in town?

It was late in the afternoon before he ran him down. He had been heard of, or seen, in most of his ordinary haunts. One man had come across him in a saddler's shop, another had pa.s.sed him ten minutes ago in the Haymarket. And at last Barnaby found him coming out of his tailors'.

He stopped the hansom.

"Get in," he said.

"Hullo!" said Rackham, staring at him. "What's wrong with you?" But he obeyed mechanically, and the hansom started off. "What d'you mean by kidnapping a fellow like this? Where on earth are we going?"

"I've told him to drive to my hotel," said Barnaby curtly. There was a controlled fury in his voice.

"But why the deuce----"

"I'm not going to have a row in a cab."

"Whew!" said Rackham, twisting round and regarding the grim outline of his cousin's profile, his stubbornly closed mouth. Unless Barnaby were stark mad there was something serious in the wind, something he could not trust himself to utter without losing his hold on himself.

It was not far to the hotel. Barnaby got out stiffly and Rackham followed.

"I hope you've got a nurse on the premises," he said,--"or a keeper."

"We'll go to my room," said Barnaby, in the same deadly quiet voice.

Up there he closed the door and turned round on Rackham like one who had got to the end of his tether.

"Now!" he said. "d.a.m.n you, what have you done with my wife?"

"What?" said Rackham. He had not expected that charge.

"You know where she is," said Barnaby. "Don't lie to me. You were with her in Bond Street----"

So that was it.

"How should I know if you don't?" said Rackham. "Do you mean she's gone?"

His eagerness was unmistakable. It was worth a torrent of empty protestation. The two men looked each other straight in the eyes.

The likeness between them came out then, when they were roused.

Something in the angry set of the jaw, something in their expression; a recklessness, a hard blue stare.

Barnaby had dropped his stick. He could stand up without its support.

For the time he had borrowed strength of pa.s.sion.

"You don't know?" he said, and took a long breath.

"I don't," said Rackham. "There's no occasion to fight me, if that's what you brought me here for. I saw her; I spoke to her;--but I was fool enough not to understand. I supposed she was up in town for the day, buying rubbish. I never doubted she was going back.--I thought you were still on your sick-bed and she was looking after you--"

He checked himself abruptly in the burst of angry candour that his surprise evoked.

"You needn't look so d.a.m.nably glad--" he broke out, "because I've shown myself a simpleton, not a villain. Look here, Barnaby, I've answered your question. I'll ask you to tell me one thing. She's gone, and you have lost her. What do you mean to do?"

"Search London from end to end," said Barnaby, "till I find her."

"That's how we stand, is it?" said Rackham. "You're not wise enough to let her go?"

He spoke more slowly, recovering from his astonishment. There was a light in his eye, and into his voice had come a ring of exultation. He had got over his first vexation, his rage at his own stupid failure to guess the great good news.

"What right have you to say that?" cried Barnaby.

"For the matter of that," said Rackham, "what rights have you?"

The shot told. For a minute they looked again fixedly at each other.

"You had my answer," said Barnaby, "when I spoke of her as my wife."

"You stick to that then?" said Rackham. "Though she has found it unsupportable, though she's gone--you still hold to that pretence?