"THEY WHICH WERE BIDDEN"
The rose-covered cottage of Charles Langholm's dreams, which could not
have come true in a more charming particular, stood on a wooded hill at
the back of a village some three miles from Normanthorpe. It was one of
two cottages under the same tiled roof, and in the other there lived an
admirable couple who supplied all material wants of the simple life
which the novelist led when at work. In his idle intervals the place
knew him not; a nomadic tendency was given free play, and the man was a
wanderer on the face of Europe. But he wandered less than he had done
from London, finding, in his remote but fragrant corner of the earth,
that peace which twenty years of a strenuous manhood had taught him to
value more than downright happiness.
Its roses were not the only merit of this ideal retreat, though in the
summer months they made it difficult for one with eyes and nostrils to
appreciate the others. There was a delightful room running right through
the cottage; and it was here that Langholm worked, ate, smoked, read,
and had his daily being; his bath was in the room adjoining, and his bed
in another adjoining that. Of the upper floor he made no use; it was
filled with the neglected furniture of a more substantial establishment,
and Langholm seldom so much as set foot upon the stairs. The lower rooms
were very simply furnished. There was a really old oak bureau, and some
solid, comfortable chairs. The pictures were chiefly photographs of
other writers. There were better pictures deep in dust upstairs.
An artist in temperament, if not in attainment, Langholm had of late
years found the ups and downs of his own work supply all the excitement
that was necessary to his life; it was only when the work was done that
his solitude had oppressed him; but neither the one nor the other had
been the case of late weeks. His new book had been written under the
spur of an external stimulus; it had not written itself, like all the
more reputable members of the large but short-lived family to which it
belonged. Langholm had not felt lonely in the breathing spaces between
the later chapters. On the contrary, he would walk up and down among his
roses with the animated face of one on the happy heights of intercourse
with a kindred spirit, when in reality he was quite alone. But the man
wrote novels, and withal believed in them at the time of writing. It
was true that on one occasion, when the Steels came to tea, the novelist
walked his garden with the self-same radiant face with which he had
lately taken to walking it alone; but that also was natural enough.
The change came on the very day he finished his book, when Langholm made
himself presentable and rode off to the garden-party at Hornby Manor in
spirits worthy of the occasion. About seven of the same evening he
dismounted heavily in the by-lane outside the cottage, and pushed his
machine through the wicket, a different man. A detail declared his
depression to the woman next door, who was preparing him a more
substantial meal than Langholm ever thought of ordering for himself: he
went straight through to his roses without changing his party coat for
the out-at-elbow Norfolk jacket in which he had spent that summer and
the last.
The garden behind the two cottages was all Langholm's. The whole thing,
levelled, would not have made a single lawn-tennis court, nor yet a
practice pitch of proper length. Yet this little garden contained almost
everything that a garden need have. There were tall pines among the
timber to one side, and through these set the sun, so that on the
hottest days the garden was in sufficient shadow by the time the
morning's work was done. There was a little grass-plot, large enough for
a basket-chair and a rug. There was a hedge of Penzance sweet-brier
opposite the backdoor and the window at which Langholm wrote, and yet
this hedge broke down in the very nick and place to give the lucky
writer a long glimpse across a green valley, with dim woods upon the
opposite hill. And then there were the roses, planted by the last
cottager--a retired gardener--a greater artist than his successor--a man
who knew what roses were!
Over the house clambered a William Allen Richardson and two Gloires de
Dijon, these last a-blowing, the first still resting from a profuse
yield in June; in the southeast corner, a Crimson Rambler was at its
ripe red height; and Caroline Testout, Margaret Dickson, La France,
Madame Lambard, and Madame Cochet, blushed from pale pink to richest
red, or remained coldly but beautifully white, at the foot of the
Penzance briers. Langholm had not known one rose from another when he
came to live among this galaxy; now they were his separate, familiar,
individual friends, each with its own character in his eyes, its own
charm for him; and the man's soul was the sweeter for each summer spent
in their midst. But to-night they called to closed nostrils and blind
eyes. And the evening sun, reddening the upper stems of the pines, and
warming the mellow tiles of his dear cottage, had no more to say to
Langholm's spirit than his beloved roses.
The man had emerged from the dreamy, artistic, aesthetic existence into
which he had drifted through living alone amid so much simple beauty; he
was in real, human, haunting trouble, and the manlier man for it
already.
Could he be mistaken after all? No; the more he pondered, the more
convinced he felt. Everything pointed to the same conclusion, beginning
with that first dinner-party at Upthorpe, and that first conversation of
which he remembered every word. Mrs. Steel was Mrs. Minchin--the
notorious Mrs. Minchin--the Mrs. Minchin who had been tried for her
husband's murder, and acquitted to the horror of a righteous world.
And he had been going to write a book about her, and it was she herself
who had given him the idea!
But was it? There had been much light talk about Mrs. Steel's novel, and
the plot that Mrs. Steel had given Langholm, but that view of the matter
had been more of a standing joke than an intellectual bond between
them. It was strange to think of it in the former light to-night.
Langholm recalled more than one conversation upon the same subject. It
had had a fascination for Rachel, which somehow he was sorry to remember
now. Then he recollected the one end to all these conversations, and his
momentary regret was swept away by a rush of sympathy which it did him
good to feel. They had ended invariably in her obtaining from him, on
one cunning pretext or another, a fresh assurance of his belief in Mrs.
Minchin's innocence. Langholm radiated among his roses as his memory
convinced him of this. Rachel had not talked about her case and his plot
for the morbid excitement of discussing herself with another, but for
the solid and wholesome satisfaction of hearing yet again that the other
disbelieved in her guilt.
And did he not? Langholm stood still in the scented dusk as he asked his
heart of hearts the point-blank question. And it was a crisper step that
he resumed, with a face more radiant than before.
Yes, analytical as he was, there at least he was satisfied with himself.
Thank God, he had always been of one opinion on that one point; that he
had made up his mind about her long before he knew the whilom Mrs.
Minchin in the flesh, and had let her know which way almost as long
before the secret of her identity could possibly have dawned upon him.
Now, if the worst came to the worst, his sincerity at least could not be
questioned. Others might pretend, others again be unconsciously
prejudiced in favor of their friend; he at least was above either
suspicion. Had he not argued her case with Mrs. Venables at the time,
and had he not told her so on the very evening that they met?
Certainly Langholm felt in a strong position, if ever the worst came to
the worst; it illustrated a little weakness, however, that he himself
foresaw no such immediate eventuality. There had been a very brief
encounter between two persons at a garden-party, and a yet more brief
confusion upon either side. Of all this there existed but half-a-dozen
witnesses, at the outside, and Langholm did not credit the other five
with his own trained insight and powers of observation; he furthermore
reflected that those others, even if as close observers as himself,
could not possibly have put two and two together as he had done. And
this was sound; but Langholm had a fatal knack of overlooking the lady
whom he had taken in to dinner at Upthorpe Hall, and scarcely noticed at
Hornby Manor. Cocksure as he himself was of the significance of that
which he had seen with his own eyes, the observer flattered himself that
he was the only real one present; remembered the special knowledge which
he had to assist his vision; and relied properly enough upon the silence
of Sir Baldwin Gibson.
The greater the secret, however, the more piquant the situation for one
who was in it; and there were moments of a sleepless night in which
Langholm found nothing new to regret. But he was in a quandary none the
less. He could scarcely meet Mrs. Steel again without a word about the
prospective story, which they had so often discussed together, and upon
which he was at last free to embark; nor could he touch upon that theme
without disclosing the new knowledge which would burn him until he did.
Charles Langholm and Rachel Steel had two or three qualities in common:
an utter inability to pretend was one, if you do not happen to think it
a defect.
As a rule when he had finished a rapid bit of writing, Langholm sat down
to correct, and a depressing task his spent brain always found it; but
for once he let it beat him altogether. After a morning's tussle with
one unfortunate chapter, the desperate author sent off the rest in their
sins, and rode his bicycle to abolish thought. But that mild pastime
fell lamentably short of its usual efficacy. It was not one of his
heroines who was worrying the novelist, but a real woman whom he liked
and her husband whom he did not. The husband it was who had finished
matters by entering the field of speculation during the morning's work.
It may be confessed that Langholm had not by any means disliked him the
year before.
What was the secret of this second marriage on the part of one who had
been so recently and so miserably married? Was it love? Langholm would
not admit it for a moment. Steel did not love his wife, and there was
certainly nothing to love in Steel. Langholm had begun almost to hate
him; he told himself it was because Steel did not even pretend to love
his wife, but let strangers see the abnormal terms on which they lived.
What, then, was the explanation--the history--the excuse? They were
supposed to have married on the Continent; that was one of the few
statements vouchsafed by Steel, and he happened to have made it in the
first instance to Langholm himself. Was there any truth in it? And did
Steel know the truth concerning his wife?
Your imaginative man is ever quick to form a theory based upon facts of
his own involuntary invention. Langholm formed numerous theories and
invented innumerable facts during the four-and-twenty hours of his
present separation from the heroine and the villain of these romances.
The likeliest of the lot was the idea that the pair had really met
abroad, at some out-of-the-way place, where Rachel had been in hiding
from the world, and that in her despair of receiving common justice from
her kind, she had accepted the rich man without telling him who she was.
His subsequent enlightenment was Langholm's explanation of Steel's
coldness towards his wife.
He wondered if it was the kind of coldness that would ever be removed;
if Steel believed her guilty, it never would. Langholm would not have
admitted it, was not even aware of it in his own introspective mind, but
he almost hoped that Steel was not thoroughly convinced of his wife's
innocence.
The night of the dinner-party was so fine and the roads so clean that
Langholm went off on his bicycle once more, making an incongruous figure
in his dress-suit, but pedalling sedately to keep cool. Fortune,
however, was against him, for they had begun clipping those northern
hedgerows, and an ominous bumping upon a perfectly flat road led to the
discovery of a puncture a long mile from Normanthorpe. Thence onward the
unhappy cyclist had to choose between running beside his machine and
riding on the rims, and between the two expedients arrived at last both
very hot and rather late. But he thought he must be very late; for he
neither met, followed, nor was followed by any vehicle whatsoever in the
drive; and the door did not open before Langholm rang, as it does when
they are still waiting for one. Then the house seemed strangely silent
when the door did open, and the footman wore a curious expression as he
ushered the late comer into an empty drawing-room. Langholm was now
almost convinced that he had made some absurd mistake, and the
impression was not removed by the entry of Steel with his napkin in one
hand.
"I've mistaken the night!" exclaimed the perspiring author.
"Not a bit of it," replied Steel; "only we thought you weren't coming at
all."
"Am I really so late as all that?"
And Langholm began to wish he had mistaken the night.
"No," said Steel, "only a very few minutes, and the sin is ours
entirely. But we thought you were staying away, like everybody else."
"Like--everybody--else?"
"My dear fellow," said Steel, smiling on the other's bewilderment, "I
humbly apologize for having classed you for an instant with the rank and
file of our delightful neighbors; for the fact is that all but two have
made their excuses at the last moment. The telegrams will delight you,
one of these days!"
"There was none from me," declared Langholm, as he began to perceive
what had happened.
"There was not; and my wife was quite confident that you would come; so
the fault is altogether mine. Langholm, you were almost at her heels
when she was introduced to the old judge yesterday?"
"I was."
"Have you guessed who she was--before she married me--or has anybody
told you?"
"I have guessed."
Steel stood silent for an instant, his eyes resting in calm scrutiny
upon the other, his mouth as firm and fixed, his face fresh as a young
man's, his hair like spun silver in the electric light. Langholm looked
upon the man who was looking upon him, and he could not hate him as he
would.
"And do you still desire to dine with us?" inquired his host at last.
"I don't want to be in the way," faltered Langholm, "on a painful--"
"Oh, never mind that!" cried Steel. "Are you quite sure you don't want
to cut our acquaintance?"
"You know I don't," said Langholm, bluntly.
"Then come in, pray, and take us as we are."
"One moment, Steel! All this is inconceivable; do you mean to say that
your guests have thrown you over on account of--of--"
"My wife having been a certain Mrs. Minchin before she changed her name
to Steel! Yes, every one of them, except our vicar and his wife, who are
real good friends."
"I am another," said Langholm through his big mustache.
"The very servants are giving notice, one by one!"
"I am her servant, too!" muttered Langholm, as Steel stood aside to let
him pass out first; but this time it was through his teeth, though from
his heart, and the words were only audible to himself.