CHAPTER XI
ANOTHER NEW FRIEND
The country folk did call upon the Steels, as indeed, they couldscarcely fail to do, having called on him already as a bachelor the yearbefore. Nor were the Uniackes and the Invernesses the bell-wethers ofthe flock. Those august families had returned to London for the season;but the taboo half-suggested by Mrs. Venables had begun and ended in herown mind. Indeed, that potent and diplomatic dame, who was the undoubtedleader of society within a four-mile radius of Northborough town hall,was the first to recognize the mistake that she had made, and to behaveas though she had never made it. Quite early in June, the Steels werebidden to a dinner-party in their honor at Upthorpe Hall.
"Mrs. Venables!" cried Rachel, in dismay. "Is that the gushing womanwith the quiet daughters who called last Thursday?"
"That is the lady," said Steel, a gleam of humor in his grim eyes. Henever expressed an opinion to his wife about any one of theirneighbors, but when she let fall an impression of her own, he wouldlook at her in this way, as though it was the very one that he hadformed for himself a year ago.
"But need we go?" asked Rachel, with open apprehension.
"I think so," he said. "Why not?"
"A dinner-party, of all things! There is no cover at the dinner-table;you can't even wear a hat; you must sit there in a glare for hours andhours!" And Rachel shuddered. "Oh, don't let us go!" she urged; but hertone was neither pathetic nor despairing; though free from the faintestaccent of affection, it was, nevertheless, the tone of a woman who hasnot always been denied.
"I am afraid we must go," he said firmly, but not unkindly. "You see, itis in our honor--as I happen to know; for Venables gave me a hint when Imet him in the town the other day. He will take you in himself."
"And what is he like?"
"Fond of his dinner; he won't worry you," said Steel, reassuringly. "Norneed you really bother your head about all that any more. Nobody hasrecognized you yet; nobody is in the least likely to do so down here.Don't you see how delightfully provincial they are? There's a locallawyer, a pillar of all the virtues, who has misappropriated his owndaughter-in-law's marriage portion and fled the country with theprincipal boy in their last pantomime; there are a lot of smart youngfellows who are making a sporting thousand every other day out of ironwarrants; the district's looking up after thirty years' bad times; andthis is the sort of thing it's talking about. These are its heroes andits villains. All you hear from London is what the last man spent whenhe was up, and where he dined; and from all I can gather, the Tichbornetrial made less impression down here than that of a Delverton parson whogot into trouble about the same time."
"They must have heard of my trial," said Rachel, in a low voice. Theywere walking in the grounds after breakfast, but she looked round beforespeaking at all.
"They would glance at it," said Steel, with a shrug; "an occasionalschoolboy might read it through; but even if you were guilty, and werehere on view, you would command much less attention than the localmalefactor in an infinitely smaller way. I am sorry I put it quite likethat," added Steel, as Rachel winced, "but I feel convinced about it,and only wish I could convince you."
And he did so, more or less; but the fear of recognition had increasedin Rachel, instead of abating, as time went on. It had increasedespecially since the rapid ripening of her acquaintance with MornaWoodgate into the intimacy which already subsisted between the two youngwives. Rachel had told her husband that she would not have Morna knowfor anything; and he had appeared in his own dark way to sympathize witha solicitude which was more actual than necessary; but that was perhapsbecause he approved of Mrs. Woodgate on his own account. And so rare wasthat approval, as a positive and known quantity, yet so marked in thiscase, that he usually contrived to share Morna's society with his wife.
"You shall not monopolize Mrs. Woodgate," he would say with all urbanityas he joined them when least expected. "I was first in the field, youknow!"
And in the field he would remain. There were no commands, no wishes toobey in the matter, no embargo upon the comings and goings between thetwo new friends. But Mr. Steel invariably appeared upon the scene aswell. The good vicar attributed it to the elderly bridegroom's jealousinfatuation for his beautiful young bride; but Morna knew better fromthe first.
"Are you going?" asked Rachel, eagerly, when she and Morna met again;indeed, she had gone expressly to the Vicarage to ask the question; andnot until she had seen the Woodgates' invitation could Steel himselfinduce her to answer theirs.
The Woodgates were going. Morna was already in alternate fits of despairand of ideas about her dress.
"I wish I might dress you!" said Rachel, knowing her well enough alreadyto say that. "I have wardrobes full of them, and yet my husband insistsupon taking me up to London to get something fit to wear!"
"But not necessarily on your back!" cried Steel himself, appearing atthat moment in his usual way, warm, breathless, but only playfully putout. "My dear Mrs. Woodgate, I must have a special wire between yourhouse and ours. One thing, however, I always know where to find her! Didshe tell you we go by the 12:55 from Northborough?"
It was something to wear upon her neck--a diamond necklet of superbstones, gradually swelling to one of the first water at the throat; andRachel duly wore it at the dinner-party, with a rich gown of bridalwhite, whose dazzling purity had perhaps the effect of cancelling thebride's own pallor. But she was very pale. It was her first appearanceat a gathering of the kind, not only there in Delverton, but anywhereat all since her second marriage. And the invitation had been of thecorrect, most ample length; it had had time to wind itself aboutRachel's nerves.
Mr. Venables, who of course did take her in, by no means belied herhusband's description of him; he was a rotund man with a highcomplexion, and his bulging eye was on the menu before his soft body hadsunk into his chair. His conversation proved limited, but strictly tothe point; he told Rachel what to eat, and once or twice what to avoid;lavished impersonal praise upon one dish, impartial criticisms uponanother, and only spoke between the courses. It was a largedinner-party; twenty-two sat down. Rachel was at last driven to glancingat the other twenty.
To the man on her left she had not been introduced, but he had offeredone or two civil observations while Mr. Venables was better engaged;and, after the second, Rachel had chanced to catch sight of the cardupon which his name had been inscribed. He was, it seemed, a Mr.Langholm; and all at once Rachel leant back and looked at him. He was aloose-limbed, round-shouldered man, with a fine open countenance, and agreat disorderly moustache; his hair might have been shorter, and hisdress-coat shone where it caught the light. Rachel put the screw uponher courage.
"These cards," she said, with a glimpse of her own colonial self, "arevery handy when one hasn't been introduced. Your name is not verycommon, is it?"
"Not very," he answered, "spelt like that."
"Yes it's spelt the same way as the Mr. Langholm who writes."
"It is."
"Then are you any relation?"
"I am the man himself," said Langholm, with quite a hearty laugh,accompanied by a flush of pleasurable embarrassment. He was not aparticularly popular writer, and this did not happen to him every day.
"I hoped you were," said Rachel, as she helped herself to the first_entree_.
"Then you haven't read my books," he chuckled, "and you never must."
"But I have," protested Rachel, quite flushed in her turn by the smallexcitement. "I read heaps of them in Tauchnitz when we were abroad. ButI had no idea that I should ever meet you in the flesh!"
"Really?" he said. "Then that's funnier still; but I suppose Mr. Steeldidn't want to frighten you. We saw quite a lot of each other last year;he wrote to me from Florence before you came over; and I should havepaid my respects long ago, but I have been up in town, and only justcome back."
The flush had died out of Rachel's face. Her husband told hernothing--nothing! In her indignation she was tempted to say so to thestranger; she had to think
a moment what to say instead. A falsehood ofany sort was always a peculiar difficulty to Rachel, a constitutionalaversion, and it cost her an effort to remark at last that it was verystupid of her, she had quite forgotten, but now she remembered--ofcourse! And with that she turned to her host, who was offering anobservation across his empty plate.
"Strange thing, Mrs. Steel, but you can't get the meat in the countrythat you can in town. Those fillets, now--I wish you could taste 'em atmy club; but we give our chef a thousand a year, and he drives up everyday in his brougham."
The novels of Charles Langholm were chiefly remarkable for theirintricate plots, and for the hope of better things that breathed throughthe cheap sensation of the best of them. But it was a hope that had beendeferred a good many years. His manner was better than his matter;indeed, an incongruous polish was said by the literary to preventLangholm from being a first favorite either with the great public or thelittle critics. As a maker of plots, however, he still had humblepoints; and Rachel assured him that she had burnt her candle all nightin order to solve one of his ingenious mysteries.
"What!" he cried; "you call yourself a lady, and you don't look at theend before you reach it?"
"Not when it's a good book."
"Well, you have pitched on about the best of a bad lot; and it's asatisfaction to know you didn't cut the knot it took some months totie."
Rachel was greatly interested. She had never before met a literary man;had no idea how the trick was done; and she asked many of thoseingenuous questions which seldom really displease the average gentlemanof this type. When not expatiating upon the heroine whom the exigenciesof "serial rights" demanded in his books, Charles Langholm, the talkerand the man, was an unmuzzled misogynist. But nobody would havesuspected it from his answers to Rachel's questions, or from any portionof their animated conversation. Certainly the aquiline lady whomLangholm had taken in, and to whom he was only attentive by remorsefulfits and penitential starts, had not that satisfaction; for herright-hand neighbor did not speak to her at all. There was thus oneclose and critical follower of a conversation which without warning tookthe one dramatic turn for which Rachel was forever on her guard; onlythis once, in an hour of unexpected entertainment, was she not.
"How do I get my plots?" said Langholm. "Sometimes out of my head, asthey say in the nursery; occasionally from real life; more often a blendof the two combined. You don't often get a present from the newspaperthat you can lift into a magazine more or less as it stands. Facts arestubborn things; they won't serialize. But now and then there's a case.There was one a little time ago. Oh, there was a great case not longsince, if we had but the man to handle it, without spoiling it, inEnglish fiction!"
"And what was that?"
"The Minchin case!"
And he looked straight at her, as one only looks at one's neighbor attable when one is saying or hearing something out of the common; heturned half round, and he looked in Rachel's face with the smile of anartist with a masterpiece in his eye. It was an inevitable moment, comeat last when least expected; instinct, however, had prepared Rachel,just one moment before; and after all she could stare coldly on hisenthusiasm, without a start or a tremor to betray the pose.
"Yes?" she said, her fine eyebrows raised a little. "And do you reallythink that would make a book?"
It was characteristic of Rachel that she did not for a moment--even thatunlooked-for moment--pretend to be unfamiliar with the case.
"Don't you?" he asked.
"I haven't thought about it," said Rachel, looking pensively at theflowers. "But surely it was a very sordid case?"
"The case!" he cried. "Yes, sordid as you like; but I don't mean thecase at all."
"Then what do you mean, Mr. Langholm?"
"Her after life," he whispered; "the psychology of that woman, and hersubsequent adventures! She disappeared into thin air immediately afterthe trial. I suppose you knew that?"
"I did hear it."
Rachel moistened her lips with champagne.
"Well, I should take her from that moment," said Langholm. "I shouldstart her story there."
"And should you make her guilty or not guilty?"
"Ah!" said Langholm, as though that would require consideration;unluckily, he paused to consider on the spot.
"Who are you talking about?" inquired Mr. Venables, who had caughtRachel's last words.
"Mrs. Minchin," she told him steadily.
"Guilty!" cried Mr. Venables, with great energy. "Guilty, and I'd havegone to see her hanged myself!"
And Mr. Venables beamed upon Rachel as though proud of the sentiment,while the diamonds rose and fell upon her white neck, where he wouldhave had the rope.
"A greater scandal," he went on, both to Rachel and to the lady on hisother side (who interrupted Mr. Venables to express devout agreement),"a greater scandal and miscarriage of justice I have never known.Guilty? Of course she was guilty; and I only wish we could try her againand hang her yet! Now don't pretend you sympathize with a woman likethat," he said to Rachel, with a look like a nudge; "you haven't beenmarried long enough; and for Heaven's sake don't refuse that bird! It'sthe best that can be got this time of year, though that's not sayingmuch; but wait till the grouse season, Mrs. Steel! I have a moor here inthe dales, keep a cellar full of them, and eat 'em as they drop off thestring."
"Well?" said Rachel, turning to Langholm when her host became a busyman once more.
"I should make her guilty," said the novelist; "and she would marry aman who believed in her innocence, and he wouldn't care two pins whenshe told him the truth in the last chapter, and they would live happilyever afterwards. Nobody would touch the serial rights. But that would bea book!"
"Then do you think she really was guilty?"
And Rachel waited while he shrugged, her heart beating for no goodreason that she knew, except that she rather liked Mr. Langholm, and didnot wish to cease liking him on the spot. But it was to him that theanswer was big with fate; and he trifled and dallied with the issue ofthe moment, little dreaming what a mark it was to leave upon his life,while the paradox beloved of the literary took shape on his tongue.
"What does it matter what she was? What do the facts matter, Mrs. Steel,when one has an idea like that for fiction? Fiction is truer than fact!"
"But you haven't answered my question."
Rachel meant to have that answer.
"Oh, well, as a matter of fact, I read the case pretty closely, and Iwas thankful the jury brought in an acquittal. It required a littleimagination, but the truth always does. It is no treason to our host towhisper that he has none. I remember having quite a heated argument withhim at the time. Oh, dear, no; she was no more guilty than you or I; butit would be a thousand times more artistic if she were; and I shouldmake her so, by Jove!"
Rachel finished her dinner in great tranquillity after this; but therewas a flush upon her face which had not been there before, and Langholmreceived an astonishing smile when the ladies rose. He had been makingtardy atonement for his neglect of the aquiline lady, but Rachel had thelast word with him.
"You will come and see us, won't you?" she said. "I shall want to hearhow the plot works out."
"I am afraid it's one I can't afford to use," he said, "unless I stickto foolish fact and make her innocent."
And she left him with a wry face, her own glowing again.
"You looked simply great--especially towards the end," whispered MornaWoodgate in the drawing-room, for she alone knew how nervous Rachel hadbeen about what was indeed her social debut in Delverton.
The aquiline lady also had a word to say. Her eyes were like brownbeads, and her nose very long, which gave her indeed a hawk-likeappearance, somewhat unusual in a woman; but her gravity was rather thatof the owl.
"You talked a great deal to Mr. Langholm," said she, sounding her rebukerather cleverly in the key of mere statement of fact. "Have you read hisbooks, Mrs. Steel?"
"Some of them," said Rachel; "haven't you?"
"Oh, no,
I never read novels, unless it be George Eliot, or in thesedays Mrs. Humphrey Ward. It's such waste of time when there areBrowning, Ruskin, and Carlyle to read and read again. I know I shouldn'tlike Mr. Langholm's; I am sure they are dreadfully uncultured andsensational."
"But I like sensation," Rachel said. "I like to be taken out of myself."
"So you suggested he should write a novel about Mrs. Minchin!"
"No, I didn't suggest it," said Rachel, hurriedly; but the beady browneyes were upon her, and she felt herself reddening horribly as shespoke.
"You seemed to know all about her," said the aquiline lady. "I'm not inthe habit of reading such cases. But I must really look this one up."
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