On the other hand, there was that woman’s instinct which no wise woman disregards; and Rachel’s instinct had never confirmed her fancies in this matter. But within the last few hours her point of view had totally changed. Her husband was suspected. He said so laughingly himself. He was in a certain danger. Her place was by his side. And let it be remembered that, before his absolute refusal to answer her crucial question about his prime motive for the marriage, Rachel had grown rather to like that place.
They had been strolling quite apart, though chatting amiably. Rachel had not dreamt of putting her hand within his arm, as she had sometimes done towards the end before their quarrel. Yet she did it again now, the very moment his quicker vision descried the cyclist in the drive.
“I hope they are not going to run me in to-night,” he said. “If they do, I shall run them in for riding without a light. So it’s Langholm! Well, Langholm, put salt on him yet?”
“On whom?”
“Your murderer, of course.”
“I have his confession in my pocket.”
It was the first time that Rachel had known her husband taken visibly aback.
“Good God!” he cried. “Then you don’t think it’s me any longer?”
“I know it is not. Nevertheless, Mrs. Steel must prepare for a shock.”
Rachel was shocked. But her grief and horror, though both were real and poignant, were swept away for that hour at least by the full tide of her joy.
It was a double joy. Not only would Rachel be cleared for ever before the world, but her husband would stand exonerated at her side. The day of unfounded suspicions, of either one of them, by the other or by the world, that day at least was over once for all.
Her heart was too full for many explanations; she lingered while Langholm told of his interview with Abel, and then left him to one with her husband alone.
Langholm thereupon spoke more openly of his whole case against Steel, who instantly admitted its strength.
“But I owe you an apology,” the latter added, “not only for something I said to you this afternoon, more in mischief than in malice, which I would nevertheless unsay if I could, but for deliberately manufacturing the last link in your chain. I happened to buy both my revolvers and Minchin’s from a hawker up the country; his were a present from me; and, as they say out there, one pair was the dead spit of the other. This morning when I found I was being shadowed by these local heroes, it occurred to me for my own amusement to put one of my pair in a thoroughly conspicuous place, and this afternoon I could not resist sending you to the room to add it to your grand discoveries. You see, I could have proved an alibi for the weapon, at all events, during my trip to town a year ago. Yes, poor Minchin wrote to me, and I went up to town by the next train to take him by surprise. How you got to know of his letter I can’t conceive. But it carried no hint of blackmail. I think you did wonders, and I hope you will forgive me for that little trap; it really wasn’t set for you. It is also perfectly true that I stayed at the Cadogan and was out at that particular time. I went there because it was the one decent hotel I knew of in those parts, which was probably your own reason, and I was out reconnoitring my old friend’s house because I knew him for an inveterate late-bird, and he did not write as though marriage had improved his habits. In fact, as you know, he had gone to the dogs altogether.”
This reminded Langholm of the hour.
“It is late now,” said he, “and I must be off. Poor Severino had not a relation in this country that I know of. There will be a great deal to do to-morrow.”
Steel at once insisted on bearing all expenses; that would be the lightest part, he said. “You have done so much!” he added. “By the way, you can’t go without saying good-night to my wife. She has still to thank you.”
“I don’t want to be thanked.”
“But for you the truth might never have come out.”
“Still I shall be much happier if she never speaks of it again.”
“Very well, she shall not — on one condition.”
“What is that?”
“Langholm, I thought last summer we were to be rather friends? I don’t think that of many people. May I still think it of you?”
“If you will,” said Langholm. “I — I don’t believe I ever should have brought myself to give you away!”
“You behaved most fairly, my dear fellow. I shall not forget it, nor the way you scored off the blackmailer Abel. If it is any satisfaction to you, I will tell you what his secret was. Nay, I may as well; and my wife, I must tell her too, though all these months I have hidden it from her; but I have no doubt he took it to the police when you failed him. It is bound to get about, but I can live it down as I did the thing itself. Langholm, like many a better man, I left my country for my country’s good. Never mind the offence; the curious can hunt up the case, and will perhaps admit there have been worse. But that man and I were transported to Western Australia on the same vessel in ‘69.”
“And yet,” said Langholm — they were not quite his next words— “and yet you challenged me to discover the truth! I still can’t understand your attitude that night!”
Steel stood silent.
“Some day I may explain it to you,” he said. “I am only now going to explain it to my wife.”
The men shook hands.
And Langholm rode on his bicycle off the scene of the one real melodrama of a life spent in inventing fictitious ones; and if you ask what he had to show for his part in it, you may get your answer one day from his work. Not from the masterpiece which he used to talk over with Mrs. Steel, for it will never be written; not from any particular novel or story, much less in the reproduction of any of these incidents, wherein he himself played so dubious a part; but perhaps you will find your answer in a deeper knowledge of the human heart, a stronger grasp of the realities of life, a keener sympathy with men and (particularly) with women, than formerly distinguished this writer’s books. These, at all events, are some of the things which Charles Langholm has to show, if he will only show them. And in the meantime you are requested not to pity him.
Steel went straight to his wife. Tears were still in her eyes, but such tears, and such eyes! It cost him an effort to say what he had to say, and that was unusual in his case.
“Rachel,” he said at length, in a tone as new as his reluctance, “I am going to answer the question which you have so often asked me. I am going to answer it with perfect honesty, and very possibly you will never speak to me again. I shall be sorry for both our sakes if you do anything precipitate, but in any case you shall act as you think best. You know that I was exceedingly fond of Alec Minchin as a young man; now, I am not often exceedingly fond of anybody, as you may also know by this time. Before your trial I was convinced that you had killed my old friend, whom I was so keen to see again that I came up to town by the very first train after getting his letter. You had robbed me of the only friend I had in England at the very moment when he needed me and I was on my way to him. I could have saved his ship, and you had sent both him and it to the bottom! That, I say candidly, was what I thought.”
“I don’t blame you for thinking it before the trial,” said Rachel. “It seems to have been the universal opinion.”
“I formed mine for myself, and I had a particular reason for forming it,” continued Steel, with a marked vibration in his usually unemotional voice. “I don’t know which to tell you first.... Well, it shall be that reason. On the night of the murder do you remember coming downstairs and going or rather looking into the study — at one o’clock in the morning?”
Rachel recoiled in her chair.
“Heavens!” she cried. “How can you know that?”
“Did you hear nothing as you went upstairs again?”
“I don’t remember.”
“Not a rattle at the letter-box?”
“Yes! Yes! Now I do remember. And it was actually you!”
“It was, indeed,” said Steel, gravely. “I saw you come down, I s
aw you peep in — all dread and reluctance! I saw you recoil, I saw the face with which you shut those doors and put out the lights. And afterwards I learned from the medical evidence that your husband must have been dead at that time; one thing I knew, and that was that he was not shot during the next hour and more, for I waited about until half-past two in the hope that he would come out. I was not going to ring and bring you down again, for I had seen your face, and I still saw your light upstairs.”
“So you thought I had come down to see my handiwork!”
“To see if he was really dead. Yes, I thought that afterwards. I could not help thinking it, Rachel.”
“Did it never occur to you that I might have thought he was asleep?”
“Yes, that has struck me since.”
“You have not thought me guilty all along, then?”
“Not all along.”
“Did you right through my trial?”
“God forgive me — yes, I did! And there was one thing that convinced me more than anything else; that was when you told the jury that the occasion of your final parting upstairs was the last time you saw poor Alec alive.”
“But it was,” said Rachel. “I remember the question. I did not know how to answer it. I could not tell them I had seen him dead but fancied him only asleep; that they would never have believed. So I told the simple truth. But it upset me dreadfully.”
“That I saw. You expected cross-examination.”
“Yes; and I did not know whether to stick to the truth or to lie!”
“I can read people sometimes,” Steel continued after a pause. “I guessed your difficulty. Surely you must see the only conceivable inference?”
“I did see it.”
“And, seeing, do you not forgive?”
“Yes, that. But you married me while you still thought me guilty. I forgive you for denying it at the time. I suppose that was necessary. But you have not yet told me why you did it.”
“Honestly, Rachel, it was largely fascination—”
“But not primarily.”
“No.”
“Then let me hear the prime motive at last, for I am tired of trying to guess it!”
Steel stood before his wife as he had never stood before her yet, his white head bowed, his dark eyes lowered, hands clasped, shoulders bent, the suppliant and the penitent in one.
“I did it to punish you,” he said. “I thought some one must — I felt I could have hanged you if I had spoken out what I had seen — and I — married you instead!”
His eyes were on the ground. When he raised them she was smiling through unshed tears. But she had spoken first.
“It was not a very terrible motive, after all,” she had said; “at least, it has not been such a very terrible — punishment!”
“No; but that was because I did the very last thing I ever thought of doing.”
“And that was?”
“To fall in love with you at the beginning!”
Rachel gave a little start.
“Although you thought me guilty?”
“That made no difference at all. But I have thought it less and less, until, on the night you appealed first to me and then to Langholm — on thinking over that night — it was impossible to suppose it any more.”
Rachel rose, her cheeks divinely red, her lip trembling, her hand outstretched.
“And you fell in love with me!” she murmured.
“God knows I did, Rachel, in my own way,” said Steel.
“I am so glad!” whispered his wife.
THE END
DENIS DENT
A NOVEL
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I. THE SECOND OFFICER
CHAPTER II. SAUVE QUI PEUT
CHAPTER III. THE CASTAWAYS
CHAPTER IV. LOST AND FOUND
CHAPTER V. A TOUCH OF FEVER
CHAPTER VI. NEW CONDITIONS
CHAPTER VII. DENIS AND NAN
CHAPTER VIII. COLD WATER
CHAPTER IX. THE CANVAS CITY
CHAPTER X. THIEVES IN THE NIGHT
CHAPTER XI. STRANGE BEDFELLOWS
CHAPTER XII. EL DORADO
CHAPTER XIII. THE ENEMY’S CAMP
CHAPTER XIV. THE FIRST CLAIM
CHAPTER XV. A PIOUS FRAUD
CHAPTER XVI. A WINDFALL
CHAPTER XVII. HATE AND MONEY
CHAPTER XVIII. ROTTEN GULLY
CHAPTER XIX. NEW BLOOD
CHAPTER XX. THE JEWELER’S SHOP
CHAPTER XXI. THE COURIER OF DEATH
CHAPTER XXII. ATRA CURA
CHAPTER XXIII. BROKEN OFF
CHAPTER XXIV. DEATH’S DOOR
CHAPTER XXV. BEAT OF DRUM
CHAPTER XXVI. HOMEWARD BOUND
CHAPTER XXVII. THE GREAT GULF
CHAPTER XXVIII. NEWS OF BATTLE
CHAPTER XXIX. GUY FAWKES DAY
CHAPTER XXX. THE SANDBAG BATTERY
CHAPTER XXXI. TIME’S WHIRLIGIG
The original frontispiece
TO
P. M. MARTINEAU, Esq., J. P.
Dear Mr. Martineau,
The little picture of the past attempted in this tale owes more than one touch to your kindness. I only wish that the whole were nearer the mark aimed at, and so worthier to bear your name upon this page.
Yours very sincerely,
E. W. HORNUNG.
Reform Club,
October 27th, 1903.
CHAPTER I. THE SECOND OFFICER
“Land ahead!”
The North Foreland had been made advisedly snug for the night. In the middle watch she was under her three lower topsails and fore topmast staysail only. Not that it blew very hard, but the night was dark and hazy, with a heavy swell. And it was the last night of the voyage.
At eight bells there had been a cast of the deep-sea lead, with the significant result that the skipper had been the first to turn in; gradually the excited passengers had followed his example, instead of staying on deck to see the Otway light. The second mate had said there would be no Otway that night, and what the second said was good enough for most. The saloon skylight had become a clean-edged glimmer in the middle of the poop, the binnacle a fallen moon; not a port-hole twinkled on the rushing ink; and the surviving topsails, without visible stitch or stick aloft or alow, hovered over the ship like gigantic bats.
Four persons remained upon the poop: the middy of the watch, tantalized by muffled guffaws from the midshipmen’s berth in the after-house; the man at the wheel, in eclipse above the belt, with the binnacle light upon one weather-beaten hand; and on the weather side, the second mate in reluctant conversation with a big cigar that glowed at intervals into a bearded and spectacled face, the smooth brown one of the young officer sharing the momentary illumination.
“It’s all very well,” said the senior man, in low persistent tones, “but if we don’t have it out now, when are we to? You know what it will be like to-morrow: we shall land first thing, and you’ll be the busiest man on board. As for the rules of the ship, if an owner can’t use his discretion he might as well travel by some other line.”
The young fellow was smiling pleasantly as the other puffed again.
“Very good, Mr. Merridew! I don’t object if the captain doesn’t; and of course I must tell you anything you want to know.”
“Anything! My good young man, if I am to consider this matter for a moment (which I don’t promise) I must at least know everything that you can tell me about yourself first; for what,” continued Mr. Merridew, taking the cigar from his teeth, “what do you suppose I know about you at this moment? Absolutely nothing except that you seem to be a first-class sailor, as they tell me you are, and a very nice fellow, as I have found you for myself — aboardship; but of your shore-going record, of your position in life at home, and of your people and their position, to speak quite plainly, I know nothing at all.”
Mr. Merridew delivered himself with a certain dispassionate unction, as one who could do the judicial to a turn, and enjoy it. Yet his t
one was kindly, and the periods free from wilful offense.
“You may make your mind easy about my people. I have none,” said the sailor, bitterly. A fatherly hand found his shoulder on the word.
“My dear fellow! I am so sorry.”
“You mean relieved.”
“I mean what I say,” said Mr. Merridew, removing his hand.
It was the young man’s turn to apologize, which he did with much frankness and more feeling.
“The truth is, sir, my parents have been dead for years; and yet they are nearly everything to me still — they were all the world until this voyage! My mother was Irish; her name would not be new to you, but it will keep. It may not be necessary for you to know it, or anything more about me, and in any case it can’t alter me. But I am half-Irish through my mother — though you wouldn’t think it.”
“I would think it,” remarked Mr. Merridew, blowing at his cigar as at a forge, until the red light found him looking wise through his spectacles, but the officer with one eye on his sails and no perceptible emotion in the other.
“My first name,” he went on, “is as Irish as you like; it’s Denis; and you may say that I’ve been living up to it for once!”
“Denis!” repeated Mr. Merridew, with interest. “Well, I know that name, anyhow; one of our partners — Captain Devenish’s father — he’s Denis Devenish, you know.”
“Indeed,” said Denis Dent, and there was a strange light in his spare eye. “Well, so much for my mother; my father was a Yorkshire dalesman, as his father and his father’s father were before him. I am the first of them to leave the land.”
“May I ask why?”
“It isn’t our land any more. My father gave up everything to take my mother abroad, when her life was despaired of in England, and when her people — her own people — I can’t trust myself to speak of them!”
Complete Works of E W Hornung Page 262