Hugh came in unannounced. Upon his grave face there was that concentrated look of happiness which has settled in the very deep of the heart and gleams up into the eyes.
His face changed painfully. He glanced from one woman to the other.
Rachel was sorry for him. She would fain have spared him, but she could not.
"Hugh," she said, gently, her steadfast eyes resting on him, "Lady Newhaven and I were talking of you. I think it would be best if she heard from your own lips what she, naturally, will not believe from mine."
"I will never believe," said Lady Newhaven, "that you will desert me now, that all the past is nothing to you, and that you will cast me aside for another woman."
Hugh looked at her steadily. Then he went up to Rachel, and taking her hand, raised it to his lips. There was in his manner a boundless reverent adoration that was to Lady Newhaven"s jealousy as a match to gunpowder.
Rachel kept his hand.
"Are you sure you want him, Rachel?" gasped Lady Newhaven, holding convulsively to a chair for support. "He has cast me aside. He will cast you aside next, for he is a coward and a traitor. Are you sure you want to marry him? His hands are red with blood. He murdered my husband."
Rachel"s hand tightened on Hugh"s.
"It was an even chance," she said. "Those who draw lots must abide by the drawing."
"It was an even chance," shrieked Lady Newhaven. "But who drew the short lighter, tell me that? Who refused to fulfil his part when the time was up? Tell me that."
"You are mad," said Rachel.
"I can prove it," said Lady Newhaven, holding out the letter in her shaking hands. "You may read it, Rachel. I can trust you. Not him, he would burn it. It is from Edward; look, you know his writing, written to tell me that he," pointing at Hugh, "had drawn the short lighter, but that, as he had not killed himself when the time came, he, Edward, did so instead. That was why he was late. We always wondered, Rachel, why he was two days late. Read it! Read it!"
"I will not read it," said Rachel, pushing away the paper. "I do not believe a word of it."
"You shall believe it. Ask him to deny it, if he can."
"You need not trouble to deny it," said Rachel, looking full at Hugh.
The world held only her and him. And as Hugh looked into her eyes his soul rose up and scaled the heights above it till it stood beside hers.
There is a sacred place where, if we follow close in Love"s footsteps, we see him lay aside his earthly quiver and his bitter arrows, and turn to us as he is, with the light of G.o.d upon him, one with us as one with G.o.d. In that pure light lies cease to be. We know them no more, neither remember them, for love and truth are one.
Hugh strode across to Lady Newhaven, took the letter from her, and threw it into the heart of the fire. Then he turned to Rachel.
"I drew the short lighter," he said. "I meant to take the consequences at first, but when the time came--I did not. Partly I was afraid, and partly I could not leave you."
If Lady Newhaven yearned for revenge she had it then. They had both forgotten her. But she saw Rachel"s eyes change as the eyes of a man at the stake might change when the fire reached him. She shrank back from the agony in them. Hugh"s face became pinched and thin as a dead man"s.
A moment ago he saw no consequences. He saw only that he could not lie to her. His mind fell headlong from its momentary foothold. What mad impulse had betrayed him to his ruin?
"You drew the short lighter, and you let me think all the time he had,"
said Rachel, her voice almost inaudible in its fierce pa.s.sion. "You drew it, and you let him die instead of you, as any one who knew him would know he would. And when he was dead you came to me, and kept me in ignorance even--that time--when I said I trusted you."
The remembrance of that meeting was too much.
Rachel turned her eyes on Lady Newhaven, who was watching her terror-stricken.
"I said I would not give him up, but I will," she said, violently. "You can take him if you want him. What was it you said to me, Hugh? That if you had drawn the short lighter you would have had to abide by it. Yes, that was it. Your whole intercourse with me has been one lie from first to last. You were right, Violet, when you said he ought to marry you. It will be another lie on the top of all the others."
"It was what Edward wished," faltered his widow. "He says so in the letter that has just been burned."
"Lord Newhaven wished it," said Rachel, looking at the miserable man between them. "Poor Lord Newhaven! First his honor. Then his life. You have taken everything he had. But there are still his shoes."
"Rachel!" said Hugh, suddenly, and he fell on his knees before her, clasping the hem of her gown.
She pushed him violently from her, tearing her gown in releasing it from his frenzied grasp.
"Leave me," she whispered. Her voice was almost gone. "Coward and liar, I will have nothing more to do with you."
He got upon his feet somehow. The two gray desperate faces spent with pa.s.sion faced each other. They were past speech.
He read his death-warrant in her merciless eyes. She looked at the despair in his without flinching.
He stood a moment, and then feeling his way, like one half blind, left the room, unconsciously pushing aside Lady Newhaven, whom both had forgotten.
She gave one terrified glance at Rachel, and slipped out after him.
CHAPTER LI
I thought, "Now, if I had been a woman, such As G.o.d made women, to save men by love-- By just my love I might have saved this man."
--ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING.
"Has Lady Newhaven been here?" said the Bishop, coming into the study, his hands full of papers. "I thought I saw her carriage driving away as I came up."
"She has been here."
The Bishop looked up suddenly, his attention arrested by Rachel"s voice.
There is a white heat of anger that mimics the pallor of a fainting fit.
The Bishop thought she was about to swoon, until he saw her eyes. Those gentle faithful eyes were burning. He shrank as one who sees the glare of fire raging inside familiar windows.
"My poor child," he said, and he sat down heavily in his leather arm-chair.
Rachel still stood. She looked at him, and her lips moved, but no sound came forth.
The Bishop looked intently at her.
"Where is Scarlett?" he said.
"Hugh is gone," she said, stammering. "I have broken off my engagement with him. He will never come back."
And she fell suddenly on her knees, and hid her convulsed face against the arm of a chair.
The Bishop did not move. He waited for this paroxysm of anger to subside. He had never seen Rachel angry before in all the years he had known her, but he watched her without surprise. Only stupid people think that coal cannot burn as fiercely as tow.