Susan hardly knew how she reached the dreary place that was her refuge.
Meeting Rackham had shaken her. An unaccountable restlessness took
possession of her as she thought of him; she felt him pursuing her; she
had an impulse to run and run until she was hidden from the penetrating
intentness of his regard. In the shop whither she had fled she had
tried to argue with herself, but it had been useless. The relief with
which she had found herself for the moment free from him taught her too
much.
She had glanced desperately backwards. He was not walking on with
Kilgour.... What did she want; what excuse had she for staying till he
was gone? She must buy something. Clothes for travelling;--was she
not going to America?--and she had nothing, not even a handkerchief.
The suggestion steadied her. How soon could she sail? She must find
out at once; must engage her passage.--They had nothing but hats in
here, but an assistant directed her to another shop upstairs.
Recklessly,--since the prices here were extravagant prices for one who
had only a handful of sovereigns between her and want,--she made
purchases. It seemed to quiet her silly agitation, to restore to her
something of her despairing calm.
But when she issued into the street again panic ruled her. She could
not breathe freely until she was far from this dangerous neighbourhood,
until at last she was shut inside the gloomy house in a side street,
that barred out imaginary pursuers with the massive security of its
blistered door.
But she must go out again; she must discover how quickly she could
sail:--perhaps she was missing an opportunity.
The girl who had talked to her in the morning came in and brushed
against her as she passed in the dim hall.
"Oh, it's you!" she said, stopping. "How dark it is in the passage! I
wish they'd light the gas. How did you get on? I found something else
of yours up there. It didn't look worth much, but it's no good leaving
things about, and there isn't a key in your chest of drawers."
As she spoke she held out something.
"They've been talking about you," she went on, "saying things about you
turning up at night without a bag or anything. They can't understand
you calling yourself Miss and wearing a wedding ring. I told them it
would be worse if you called yourself Mrs. and didn't.--You'll have to
get some things, won't you?"
She looked inquisitively at Susan, who had sunk on to the hard wooden
chair in the hall, unable to face the stairs. But the mysterious
stranger was hardly attending to what she said, amounting as it did to
a declaration that she had found a supporter. Lady Henrietta's unlucky
brooch, that she had inadvertently taken with her, was just then a
precious thing. She remembered how Barnaby had laughed at his mother,
while she persisted in telling its history, and how she had vainly
tried once or twice to throw it away, but had given up.
"I know it's bewitched," she had said.
"It is always bringing me small misfortunes, but I have an uncanny
feeling that I mustn't part with it. Besides, I can't. It has fallen
in the fire, and been left in a railway carriage, and had all kinds of
mischances, but it has always come back to me. It's attached to me for
ever and ever. I don't know what would break the spell."
Susan smiled a little as she gazed at that bit of dinted silver. Fate
had made an end of the superstition. Surely she might keep it,
valueless in itself, for the sake of the woman she would never see
again. Its unluckiness did not matter....
"Yes," she said vaguely. "I must go and get some things."
What had the girl been saying? There was a kind of sympathy in her
face.
"Would you come with me?" she asked, yielding to her instinctive need
of companionship. She could not go out alone....
"Rather!" said the girl.
They set out, an ill-matched couple, flotsam that had drifted together,
and would as casually drift apart. The Londoner led the way
confidently, but surprised at Susan's first errand, the shipping
office. It heightened her interest, and she listened closely to the
stranger's eager inquiries. No, there was no room on the next boat
sailing. She could have a berth in the following steamer if she liked,
only three days later. But was there no boat to-morrow?--Oh, yes, but
no cabin accommodation. The traveller did not care. She would go
steerage.
"You're in a dreadful hurry to sail, aren't you?" said the Londoner, to
whom the trip represented a tremendous voyage.
Yes, she was in a hurry.
"And you keep so close to me; you turn your head sometimes as if you
thought we were followed. What are you afraid of?"
Susan tried to smile, but the truth was too near her lips.
"A man," she said nervously, with her thoughts on Rackham.
The other seemed to understand. She did not ask any more questions,
but was kind and useful, advising her, helping her, reminding her that
she must buy a trunk. Till they turned the last corner, and were
within a few yards of the Rabbit Warren, as this old inhabitant called
the house; then she hung back a little, glancing right and left.
"You're not quite yourself, are you?" she said, consideringly. Her
eyes had the brightened gleam of one plunging alive into a serial tale,
one of these in which lords and ladies behave strangely and the
typewriting girl rules the tempest. As she put her key in the latch
she looked round again. But there were no untoward appearances dogging
them in the distance. There was a disappointing emptiness in the
street.
The gas was lit in the hall at last, accentuating its gloom. The
rather dismal illumination fell on a mahogany table under the stair
where stood a row of candlesticks, each bearing a different length of
candle and a slip of paper.
Susan's ally paused to examine them, reading out the names scribbled on
the slips. It was the custom for those who were to be out late to
leave their candles in the hall, and the last one in, finding a
solitary candlestick left downstairs, knew that it was her business to
chain the door.
"Miss Shanklin, Miss Friend, Miss Mitchell--" read out the inquisitor.
"Mitchell is burnt down into the socket; she reads in bed. She'll set
us on fire one night.--Miss Robinson--that's me, but I've changed my
mind:--Miss Grahame--"
Susan made no sign. Then she remembered.--That was her name again.
"Oh, yes," she said, "is that mine?"
The other girl nodded to herself.
"Well," she said. "It's been brought down by mistake. Better take it
up with you; they don't turn the gas off till ten."
She watched Susan go wearily up the long flights, and then ran swiftly
along the passage and called down to the basement. The boy who opened
the door to strangers and carried coals answered her call out of the
black gulf of the kitchen stair;--his eyes glittering, like a demon
invisible in the dark.
"What are you ladies wanting now?" he asked in an injured voice--"You
can't have 'em!"
"Gerald," said the girl mysteriously, "come up. Higher;--higher! If
anybody calls here asking for a lady, darkish, with grey eyes, and
middling tall,--never mind what name he says--! Don't breathe a word
of it, but fetch me."
"Doesn't sound like you," said Gerald, but grinned, diving backwards
into his native gloom.
Miss Robinson turned from the basement stairs and began her long
journey to the top of the house. No, wild horses would not drag her
out that night. Did they always write down a traveller's address at
the shipping office? Supposing it were her lot to draw two sundered
hearts together?
The Rabbit Warren was a depressing house. As the day waned its
dreariness increased; it grew fuller of tired women whose search for
work had been useless, and who came trudging in with the twilight to
join the rest who had been listening all day with straining ears for
the postman, while they studied ceaselessly the advertisement sheets in
the daily paper.
It was chiefly the incapable, the discouraged, those who had fallen out
of the ranks through ill health, or were losing their hold because they
were not any longer young, who drifted into this harbour. They were
all in a manner waifs, and they had nothing to hope for but that they
might die in harness.
Susan sat with her cheek on her hand, withdrawn a little, in the dingy
sitting room. She was unconscious of the whispering interest she
excited; she did not hear the subdued discussion that raged around her.
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 Gods relent?--But no full scuttle bumped
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 passage 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 passed 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. "Damn 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 passion.
"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 damnably 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?
What's the good? You don't care a straw for the girl. Oh, I've seen
you together; I know the terms you were on.--It's sheer obstinacy makes
you play the dog-in-the-manger----"
"Take care," said Barnaby, breathing hard.
"Let's drop that humbug," said Rackham. "_I'm_ no gossip.--But I've
had an inkling from the first. I've guessed all along that it was a
plant of your mother's.--Infernally inconvenient of you to turn up and
spoil it--! But I held my tongue. Nobody else had any idea of how the
land lay but Julia.--There's a devilish instinct sometimes in a jealous
woman--"
He laughed shortly. Something in Barnaby's look amused him.
"What? She's been reproaching you, has she, after all?" he said.
"Well, I did you one service there. If I hadn't kept her quiet, she'd
have shrieked it all out on the house-tops on the night of the Melton
Ball. You owe me something for that, Barnaby. There 'ud always have
been a few who wouldn't have put her down as a raving lunatic. Mind, I
didn't muzzle her for your sake--I did that for Susan. I wasn't going
to stand by and see that woman hounding 'em on--!"
"Have you done?" said Barnaby. He had got back some measure of
self-control.
"I'm done if you are reasonable," said Rackham. "Why not own up and
tell me what you can, and let me look for her. I swear I'll find
her--but not for you."
Barnaby took one step towards him, and he stood back quickly, smiling
at his own involuntary precaution. He could afford to smile, to stave
off a scuffle that would summon all the rabble in the hotel.
"Steady!" he said. "Don't try to kill me. It would be a waste of time
for both of us. I'm not afraid of you, Barnaby, but I have something
else to do,--now,--than to stop rowing up here with you. I'd better
warn you--"
Barnaby was struggling to hold himself in. Susan had still to be
found, and she would want his protection. Rackham was right there,
damn him; he must not lose his head.
"And I warn _you_," he said. "I'll find my wife without your help. Do
you hear what I say?--my wife, Rackham. I don't care what story you
have got hold of. Understand that. She belongs to me."
"And yet she's gone," said Rackham.
Somebody was knocking at the door, but so discreetly that neither of
the two men heard. Rackham, turning to go, had halted to fling back
his taunting word. And the other man had no answer. His own storming
haste had undone him.
"You can't get over that, can you?" said Rackham. "It knocks the
bottom out of your doggedness. If she doesn't choose to carry it on
you can do nothing."
"I can take care of her," said Barnaby. His voice sounded hoarse.
"No, you can't," said Rackham, with a sudden fierceness that matched
his own. "That will be my business."
"Yours?" said Barnaby, and his look was dangerous. He advanced on the
other man with a clenching hand.
"Because," said Rackham, "if she's not your wife:--and she's not; she's
nothing to you--I shall make her mine."
In the short silence that fell between them the knocking became
insistent.
"Better let them in," said Rackham, "I'm going."
Barnaby pulled himself together and turned the key. His locking the
door had been an instinctive action. And Rackham passed out, ignoring
the insignificant person waiting on the threshold, who met Barnaby's
look of blank interrogation with an apologetic reminder of his own
orders. He had said if a message came it was to be brought up at once.
And a message it was;--from the shipping office.
* * * * *
Rackham swung out of the place like a conqueror. The knowledge that
Susan had run away was to him the knowledge that he had won.
He never doubted that he would find her, and inspiration helped him, as
it will the man whose blood runs quicker under the stimulus of his
belief in his luck. What was the shop she had flown into to escape him
and Kilgour, and the embarrassment of their ignorant questions? He had
stayed long enough outside to know it again, waiting till he had no
excuse for loitering any longer. She must have made purchases. He
went straight there.
How simple it was, with luck on his side, to call in and say that a
lady who had been that morning was afraid she had forgotten to leave
her name and address.... This was no big emporium, but a little
exclusive shop where it was possible to describe a customer's
appearance with a chance of finding it remembered by saleswomen who
recognized his standing and were sympathetically amused. In the
hat-shop they directed him upstairs, and there he found an equal
appreciation of his attitude of comical despair, as he tried helplessly
to run through a list of feminine furbelows that the careless lady was
supposed to have ordered to be sent home. How should a man
succeed?--Smiling they reassured him. They recollected the lady
perfectly from his description, and she had made no mistake in that
establishment; the parcel was already packed and waiting to be
despatched. To satisfy him an assistant was bidden to read out the
address on the label, and as she glanced up at him, expecting him to
verify it, Rackham checked himself just in time. For the name she
slurred over was strange to him.
Why, he had thought of that,--since naturally the runaway was no longer
masquerading as his cousin's wife;--and yet he had been about to deny
that it was she. What had it sounded like? Grant, or Grand?--And was
it indeed Susan, or a stranger? He had no means of knowing; the only
thing possible was to go blindly forward, trusting in his luck and
fixing that address in his head.
"Yes, yes, that's all right," he acknowledged, and laughed
good-naturedly at the apparent futility of his mission as he sauntered
out of the shop.
* * * * *
It was Miss Robinson's mysterious signal that cleared the room. One by
one, like startled shadows, its denizens flitted thence, and left
Rackham alone with Susan.
They hung over the stairs, buzzing like bees in the semi-darkness,
thrilled by an interest that was vaguely heightened by alarm. At
intervals they hushed each other into silence, listening with bated
breath lest anything might transpire, and watching with a kind of
fascination the crack of light that issued from the door of the sitting
room. Only Miss Robinson herself went whispering, whispering on.
"Poor little girl!" said Rackham.
There was triumph and pity and a threatening kindness in his voice.
His reckless personality seemed to fill the room that had been so
suddenly deserted.
She had risen to her feet with a gasp at his entrance. A wave of panic
swept over her head and left her slightly trembling;--because she had
had no warning.
"How did you come here?" she said.
"Oh," he said, smiling down upon her. "I prevailed on a drab young
woman who seems to have constituted herself your guardian to bring me
in. I wasn't going to risk your giving me the slip as you did this
morning. You wouldn't have seen me if I'd sent in a ceremonious
message."
"No," she said, "I would not."
"I knew that," said Rackham. "The same pride that kept you from
telling me the truth would have hidden you from me. You'd have had me
turned from the door.--But the drab romancer was a great ally, though
I've had to agree with most of her wild surmises.--I'll make you
forgive me later."
He laughed under his breath.
"She asked me," he said, "if I was your husband."
"You--you--! Did you let her think----" cried Susan in a choking
voice, fighting against a strange sense of the inevitable that his look
inspired.
"Oh, she had been thinking hard," he said. "A runaway stranger,
calling herself Miss--Grahame, was it?--I got it wrong--and wearing a
wedding ring. What more likely--? I had the part thrust on me
directly I showed my face."
He dropped the half-jesting air that had masked his excitement, and
came nearer. She shivered a little at his approach.
"Daren't you trust me, Susan?" he said. "I'm not a Pharisee.--Why, I
guessed it from the beginning. Don't you remember how I asked you to
let me help you if you wanted a friend?--And all the while I was
watching. Do you think I can't guess how Barnaby drove his bargain,
careless of you, trading on your helplessness in the shock of his
return? What did he care that it was hard on you, so long as it suited
his selfish purpose?"
"He was good to me," she said. It was no use denying anything any more.
"Are you grateful to him--still?" said Rackham.
She turned away her face.
Something in her attitude kindled in him that instinct of protection
that had from the first struggled in his soul with admiration. Had he
not felt a consuming rage that it had not been his to battle for her,
to turn round on Barnaby and his world, all pointing the finger of
scorn at her for a cheat?--He would have liked them to do their worst,
would have liked to defy them.... Well, that occasion was his at last.
Barnaby had nearly fooled him. The extraordinary course he had taken
had at first made Rackham curse himself for an imaginative ass. But he
had been right. His time had come.... And Barnaby was defeated.
"Well," he said, "that's ended. I'll take care of you now, I'll take
you out of this. Look at me! There's nothing between us now, no
fictitious barrier, no mistaken idea of loyalty to a man who took
advantage of your false step to make you play his own foolish game.
You made a gallant show. It almost deceived me, once or twice, almost
made me believe you liked him.... Never mind that. Like a brave girl
you've freed yourself from that intolerable position. And I'm here,
Susan, where I always was, at your feet."
She lifted her head; a little, sad, desperate face upturned.
"Why must you insult me?" she said. "Is it because I am all alone?"
"I'm asking you to marry me," said Rackham.
She stared at him for a minute. His pursuit of her was not all
selfish: there was an impatient fondness in his reckless face.
"I--?" she said faintly. "A woman of whom you know nothing but that
she came among you as an impostor? You cannot mean what you say, Lord
Rackham."
He broke in on her protestation roughly.
"Do you think I mind tattle?" he said. "Let their tongues wag. We'll
hold up our heads and flout 'em. I'll leave it to Barnaby to find a
way out of his muddle.--Lord, how it will puzzle them,--how they'll
jabber when they see our marriage advertised in the _Morning Post_--!"
He was taking her assent for granted, arrogant in the heat of his
headlong moment. Perhaps it did not strike him as possible that she
would refuse. What woman in her plight would not lean gladly on the
rescuer who came to offer her his kingdom? Perhaps he was blinded by
his confidence in his luck.
"I--can't marry you!" she said.
Rackham did not fall back. He laughed indulgently. Was she troubled
because of the world's opinion?
"Dear, silly child," he said. "Don't be frightened. I'll make them
treat you properly. I'll make them swallow their amazement; and they
shall be kind to you."
Yes, this man loved her. That was why she was afraid of him. She was
not used to being loved like that. She had never learned to see in it
help, instead of danger....
"I can't marry you," she repeated, but her breath came fast.
"Oh, but you must!" he said. "Fate is on my side. What kind of a
struggle can you make against me all by yourself? I've found you,
Susan, and I'll never let you go.... There's nothing too outrageous
for me to undertake, and nothing on earth to stop me.--Your hands are
trembling."
He bent to seize them in his, brushing aside her mute defiance with his
violent tenderness, as determined as Fate itself. Just for a minute
she felt very tired in spirit, very weak to resist him. It was so
strange, although it was terrible, to be loved. Why should any man
care so deeply as to stand between her and the emptiness of the world?
Might she not, if she submitted, find the strange worship sweet?
She did not know she was wavering until she understood his smile, and
with that her heart was smitten by a fugitive likeness, a trick of
manner, reminding her of another man. Uselessly, poignantly, memory
stabbed her. She flung out these trembling hands.
"No!" she panted. The thought of it was unbearable. "I can't--I
can't!"
He was taken aback by the vehemence of her cry. For a moment he did
not speak, looking at her queerly. His laugh was angry.
"I've a great mind to bundle you into a cab and carry you off," he
said. "Oh, they'd let me!--I've only to tell these people that you are
my wife and a little mad. My tale would sound more probable than
yours."
She was not sure that he was not in earnest. Panic-stricken she shook
off his hold on her arm, meaning to pass him and reach the door.
Why?--To make a futile bid for sympathy in this house of strangers?--
Who was it that had turned the handle and was coming in? Her gaze was
unbelieving; she could neither breathe nor stir till the suffocating
leap of her heart assured her that it was true. For it was Barnaby
himself who was standing in the doorway, just as he had stood on that
night when she had seen him first. Only the look in his eyes was
changed.
The same faintness overcame her that had stricken her down that night.
She did not know whose arms had caught her as she was falling ...
falling.... But she was afraid of nothing, though all was darkness.
"Your race, Barnaby," said Rackham.