Red Pottage Part 51

"I know that a lie and an adroit appeal to the vanity of man are supposed to be a woman's recognized weapons. The same woman told me that I might find myself mistaken in many things in this world, but never in counting on the vanity of man. She said that was a reed which would never pierce my hand. I don't think you are vain, Hugh."

"Not vain! Why, I am so conceited at the fact that you are going to marry me that I look down on every one else. I only long to tell them so. When may I tell my mother, Rachel? She is coming to London this week."

"You have the pertinacity of a fly. You always come back to the same point. I am beginning to be rather bored with your marriage. You can't talk of anything else."

"I can't think about anything else."

He drew her cheek against his. He was an ingratiating creature.

"Neither can I," she whispered.

And that was all Rachel ever said of all she meant to say about Mr.

Tristram.

A yellow fog. It made rings round the shaded electric lamp by which Rachel was reading. The fire burned tawny and blurred. Even her red gown looked dim. Hugh came in.

"What are you reading?" he said, sitting down by her.

He did not want to know, but if you are reading a book on another person's knee you cannot be a very long way off. He glanced with feigned interest at the open page, stooping a little, for he was short-sighted now and then--at least now.

Rachel took the opportunity to look at him. You can't really look at a person when he is looking at you. Hugh was very handsome, especially side face, and he knew it; but he was not sure whether Rachel thought so.

He read mechanically:

"Take back your vows.

Elsewhere you trimmed and taught these lamps to burn; You bring them stale and dim to serve my turn.

You lit those candles in another shrine, Guttered and cold you offer them on mine.

Take back your vows."

A shadow fell across Hugh's mind. Rachel saw it fall.

"You do not think that of me, Rachel," he said, pointing to the verse.

It was the first time he had alluded to that halting confession which had remained branded on the minds of both.

He glanced up at her, and she suffered him for a moment to look through her clear eyes into her soul.

"I never thought that of you," she said, with difficulty. "I am so foolish that I believe the candles are lit now for the first time. I am so foolish that I believe you love me nearly as much as I love you."

"It is a dream," said Hugh, pa.s.sionately, and he fell on his knees, and hid his white face against her knee. "It is a dream. I shall wake, and find you never cared for me."

She sat for a moment stunned by the violence of his emotion, which was shaking him from head to foot. Then she drew him into her trembling arms, and held his head against her breast.

She felt his tears through her gown.

"What is past will never come between us," she said, brokenly, at last.

"I have cried over it too, Hugh; but I have put it from my mind. When you told me about it, knowing you risked losing me by telling me, I suddenly trusted you entirely. I had not quite up till then. I can't say why, except that perhaps I had grown suspicious because I was once deceived. But I do now, because you were open with me. I think, Hugh, you and I can dare to be truthful to each other. You have been so to me, and I will be so to you. I knew about _that_ long before you told me.

Lady Newhaven--poor thing!--confided in me last summer. She had to tell some one. I think you ought to know that I know. And oh, Hugh, I knew about the drawing of lots, too."

Hugh started violently, but he did not move.

Would she have recognized that ashen, convulsed face if he had raised it?

"Lady Newhaven listened at the door when you were drawing lots, and she told me. But we never knew which had drawn the short lighter till Lord Newhaven was killed on the line. Only she and I and you know that that was not an accident. I know what you must have gone through all the summer, feeling you had taken his life as well. But you must remember it was his own doing, and a perfectly even chance. You ran the same risk.

His blood is on his own head. But oh, my darling, when I think it might have been you!"

Hugh thought afterwards that if her arms had not been round him, if he had been a little distance from her, he might have told her the truth.

He owed it to her, this woman who was the very soul of truth. But if she had withdrawn from him, however gently, in the moment when her tenderness had, for the first time, vanquished her natural reserve, if she had taken herself away then, he could not have borne it. In deep repentance after Lord Newhaven's death, he had vowed that from that day forward he would never deviate again from the path of truth and honor, however difficult it might prove. But this frightful moment had come upon him unawares. He drew back instinctively, giddy and unnerved, as from a chasm yawning suddenly among the flowers, one step in front of him. He was too stunned to think. When he rallied they were standing together on the hearth-rug, and she was saying--he did not know what she was saying, for he was repeating over and over again to himself, "The moment is past. The moment is past."

At last her words conveyed some meaning to him.

"We will never speak of this again, my friend," she said; "but now that no harm can be done by it, it seemed right to tell you I knew."

"I ought never to have drawn," said Hugh, hoa.r.s.ely.

"No," said Rachel. "He was in fault to demand such a thing. It was inhuman. But having once drawn he had to abide by it, as you would have done if you had drawn the short lighter."

She was looking earnestly at him, as at one given back from the grave.

"Yes," said Hugh, feeling she expected him to speak. "If I had drawn it I should have had to abide by it."

"I thank G.o.d continually that you did not draw it. You made him the dreadful reparation he asked. If it recoiled upon himself you were not to blame. You have done wrong, and you have repented. You have suffered, Hugh. I know it by your face. And perhaps I have suffered too, but that is past. We will shut up the past, and think of the future. Promise me that you will never speak of this again."

"I promise," said Hugh, mechanically.

"The moment to speak is past," he said to himself.

Had it ever been present?

CHAPTER XLV

Dieu n'oublie personne. Il visite tout le monde.--VINET.

Hugh did not sleep that night.

His escape had been too narrow. He shivered at the mere thought of it.

It had never struck him as possible that Rachel and Lady Newhaven had known of the drawing of lots. Now that he found they knew, sundry small incidents, unnoticed at the time, came crowding back to his memory. That was why Lady Newhaven had written so continually those letters which he had burned unread. That was why she had made that desperate attempt to see him in the smoking-room at Wilderleigh after the boating accident.

She wanted to know which had drawn the short lighter. That explained the mysterious tension which Hugh had noticed in Rachel during the last days in London before--before the time was up. He saw it all now. And, of course, they naturally supposed that Lord Newhaven had committed suicide. They could not think otherwise. They were waiting for one of the two men to do it.

"If Lord Newhaven had not turned giddy and stumbled on to the line, if he had not died by accident when he did," said Hugh to himself, "where should I be now?"

There was no answer to that question.