Barnaby Part 39

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. n.o.body 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, d.a.m.n 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 hoa.r.s.e.

"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 pa.s.sed 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 s.h.i.+pping 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 embarra.s.sment 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 att.i.tude 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 rea.s.sured 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 a.s.sistant 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 const.i.tuted 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 s.h.i.+vered 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 att.i.tude 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 a.s.s. 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 fict.i.tious barrier, no mistaken idea of loyalty to a man who took advantage of your false step to make you play his own foolish game.