Red Pottage Part 40

"I was not going to speak of Mr. Vernon."

Lady Newhaven sighed impatiently. She did not want to talk of Rachel's affairs. She wanted, now the funeral was over, to talk of her own. She often said there were few people with less curiosity about others than herself.

Rachel pulled herself together.

"Violet," she said, "we have known each other five months, haven't we?"

"Yes, exactly. The first time you came to my house was that dreadful night of the drawing of lots. I always thought Edward drew the short lighter. It was so like him to turn it off with a laugh."

"I want you to remember, if ever you think hardly of me, that during those five months I did try to be a friend. I may have failed, but--I did my best."

"But you did not fail. You have been a real friend, and you will always be so, dear Rachel. And when Hugh and I are married you will often come and stay with us."

A great compa.s.sion flooded Rachel's heart for this poor creature, with its house of cards. Then her face became fixed as a surgeon's who gets out his knife.

"I think I ought to tell you--you ought to know--that I care for Mr.

Scarlett."

"He is mine," said Lady Newhaven instantly, her blue eyes dilating.

"He is unmarried, and I am unmarried," said Rachel, hoa.r.s.ely. "I don't know how it came about, but I have gradually become attached to him."

"He is not unmarried. It is false. He is my husband in the sight of Heaven. I have always, through everything, looked upon him as such."

This seemed more probable than that Heaven had so regarded him. Rachel did not answer. She had confided her love to no one, not even to Hester; and to speak of it to Lady Newhaven had been like tearing the words out of herself with hot pincers.

"I knew he was poor, but I did, not know he was as poor as that," said Lady Newhaven, after a pause.

Rachel got up suddenly, and moved away to the fireplace. She felt it would be horribly easy to strangle that voice.

"And you came down here pretending to be my friend, while all the time you were stealing his heart from me."

Still Rachel did not answer. Her forehead was pressed against the mantel-shelf. She prayed urgently that she might stay upon the hearth-rug, that whatever happened she might not go near the sofa.

"And you think he is in love with you?"

"I do."

"Are you not rather credulous? But I suppose he has told you over and over again that he cares for you yourself alone. Is the wedding-day fixed?"

"No, he has not asked me to marry him yet. I wanted to tell you before it happened."

Lady Newhaven threw herself back on the sofa. She laughed softly. A little mirror hung tilted at an angle which allowed her to see herself as she lay. She saw a very beautiful woman, and then she turned and looked at Rachel, who had no beauty, as she understood it, and laughed again.

"My poor dear," she said, in a voice that made Rachel wince, "Hugh is no better than the worst. He has made love to you _pour pa.s.ser le temps_, and you have taken him seriously, like the dear, simple woman you are.

But he will never marry you. You own he has not proposed? Of course not.

Men are like that. It is hateful of them, but they will do it. They are the vainest creatures in the world. Don't you see that the reason he has not asked you is because he knew that Edward had to--and that I should soon be free to marry him. And, Rachel, you need not feel the least little bit humiliated, for I shan't tell a soul, and, after all, he loved me first."

Lady Newhaven was quite rea.s.sured. It had been a horrible moment, but it was past.

"Why do I always make trouble?" she said, with plaintive self-complacency. "Rachel, you must not be jealous of me. I can't help it."

Rachel tried to say "I am not," but the words would not come. She _was_ jealous, jealous of the past, cut to the heart every time she noticed that Lady Newhaven's hair waved over her ears, and that she had taper fingers.

"I think it is no use talking of this any more," Rachel said. "Perhaps I was wrong to speak of it at all. I did as I would be done by. As I am starting early I think I will say good-night and good-bye."

"Good-night, dear Rachel, and perhaps, as you say, it had better be good-bye. You may remain quite easy in your mind that I shall never breathe a word of what you have said to any living soul--except Hugh,"

she added to herself, as Rachel left the room.

CHAPTER x.x.xVIII

"To every coward safety, and afterwards his evil hour."

Sleep, that fickle courtier of our hours of ease, had deserted Hugh.

When the last hour of the last day was over, and the dawn which he had bound himself in honor not to see found him sitting alone in his room, where he had sat all night, horror fell upon him at what he had done.

Now that its mire was upon him he saw by how foul, by how dastardly a path he had escaped.

"To every coward safety, and afterwards his evil hour." Hugh's evil hour had come. But was he a coward? Men not braver than he have earned the Victoria Cross, have given up their lives freely for others. Hugh had it in him to do as well as any man in hot blood, but not in cold. That was where Lord Newhaven had the advantage of him. He had been overmatched from the first. The strain without had been greater than the power of resistance within. As the light grew Hugh tasted of that cup which G.o.d holds to no man's lips--_remorse_. Would the cup of death which he had pushed aside have been more bitter?

He took up his life like a thief. Was it not stolen? He could not bear his rooms. He could not bear the crowded streets. He could not bear the parks. He wandered aimlessly from one to the other, driven out of each in turn, consumed by the smouldering flame of his self-contempt. Scorn seemed written on the faces of the pa.s.sers-by. As the day waned, he found himself once again for the twentieth time in the park, pacing in "the dim, persistent rain," which had been falling all day.

But he could not get away from the distant roar of the traffic. He heard it everywhere, like the Niagara which he had indeed escaped, but the sound of which would be in his ears till he died. He drew nearer and nearer to the traffic, and stood still in the rain listening to it intently. Might one of those thousand wheels be even now bringing his enemy towards him, to force him to keep his unspoken word. Hugh had not realized that his worst enemy was he who stood with him in the rain.

The forlorn London trees, black and bare, seemed to listen too, and to cling closer to their parks and gra.s.s, as if they dimly foresaw the inevitable time coming when they too should toil, and hate, and suffer, as they saw on all sides those stunted uprooted figures toil and suffer, which had once been trees like themselves. "We shall come to it," they seemed to say, shivering in all their branches, as they peered through the iron rails at the stream of human life, much as man peers at a pa.s.sing funeral.

The early night drove Hugh back to the house. He found a note, from a man who had rooms above him, enclosing a theatre ticket, which at the last moment he had been prevented using. He instantly clutched at the idea of escaping from himself for a few hours at least. He hastily changed his wet clothes, ate the food that had been prepared for him, and hurried out once more.

The play was "Julius Caesar," at Her Majesty's. He had seen it several times, but to-night it appealed to him as it had never done before. He hardly noticed the other actors. His whole interest centred in the awful figure of Ca.s.sius, splendid in its unswerving deathless pa.s.sion of a great hate and a great love. His eyes never left the ruthless figure as it stood in silence with its unflinching eyes upon its victim. Had not Lord Newhaven thus watched him, Hugh, ready to strike when the hour came.

The moment of the murder was approaching. Hugh held his breath. Ca.s.sius knelt with the rest before Caesar. Hugh saw his hand seek the handle of his sword, saw the end of the sheath tilt upwards under his robe as the blade slipped out of it. Then came the sudden outburst of animal ferocity long held in leash, of stab on stab, the self-recovery, the cold stare at the dead figure with Ca.s.sius's foot upon its breast.

For a moment the scene vanished. Hugh saw again the quiet study with its electric reading-lamp, the pistols over the mantel-piece, the tiger glint in Lord Newhaven's eyes. He was like Ca.s.sius. He, too, had been ready to risk life, everything in the prosecution of his hate.

"He shall never stand looking down on my body," said Hugh to himself, "with his cursed foot upon me." And he realized that if he had been a worthier antagonist, that also might have been. The play dealt with men.

Ca.s.sius and Lord Newhaven were men. But what was he?

The fear of death leading the love of life by the hand took with shame a lower seat. Hugh saw them at last in their proper places. If he could have died then he would have died cheerfully, gladly, as he saw Ca.s.sius die by his own hand, counting death the little thing it is. Afterwards, as he stood in the crowd near the door, where the rain was delaying the egress, he saw suddenly Lord Newhaven's face watching him. His heart leaped. "He has come to make me keep my word," he said to himself, the exaltation of the play still upon him. "I will not avoid him. Let him do it," and he pressed forward towards him.

Lord Newhaven looked fixedly at him for a moment, and then disappeared.

"He will follow me and stab me in the back," said Hugh. "I will walk home by the street where the pavement is up, and let him do it."

He walked slowly, steadily on, looking neither to right nor left.

Presently he came to a barrier across a long deserted street, with a red lamp keeping guard over it. He walked deliberately up it. He had no fear. In the middle he stopped, and fumbled in his pocket for a cigarette.