Red Pottage | Page 6

in secret, that also must have been some time ago. He took up an _Imitation of Christ_, bound in the peculiar shade of lilac which at that moment prevailed, and turned it in his hand.
"You are overwrought," he said, after a moment's pause, "and I particularly dislike a scene."
She did not heed him.
"I listened at the door," she said, in a harsh, unnatural voice.
"I am perfectly aware of it."
A sort of horror seemed to have enveloped the familiar room. The very furniture looked like well-known words arranged suddenly in some new and dreadful meaning.
"You never loved me," she said.
He did not answer, but he looked gravely at her for a moment, and she was ashamed.
"Why don't you divorce me if you think me so wicked?"
"For the sake of the children," he said, with a slight change of voice.
Teddy, the eldest, had been born in this room. Did either remember that gray morning six years ago?
There was a silence that might be felt.
"Who drew the short lighter?" she whispered, before she knew that she had spoken.
"I am not here to answer questions," he replied. "And I have asked none. Neither, you will observe, have I blamed you. But I desire that you will never again allude to this subject, and that you will keep in mind that I do not intend to discuss it with you."
He laid down the Imitation and moved towards his own room.
With a sudden movement she flung herself upon her knees before him and caught his arm. The attitude suggested an amateur.
"Which drew the short lighter?" she gasped, her small upturned face white and convulsed.
"You will know in five months' time," he said. Then he extricated himself from her trembling clasp and left the room, closing the door quietly behind him.
CHAPTER IV
For the sin ye do by two and two ye must pay for one by one! --RUDYARD KIPLING.
When Hugh awoke the morning after Lady Newhaven's party the day was already far advanced. A hot day had succeeded to a hot night. For a few seconds he lay like one emerging from the influence of morphia, who feels his racked body still painlessly afloat on a sea of rest, but is conscious that it is drifting back to the bitter shores of pain, and who stirs neither hand nor foot for fear of hastening the touch of the encircling, aching sands on which he is so soon to be cast in agony once more.
His mind cleared a little. Rachel's grave face stood out against a dark background--a background darker surely than that of the summer night. He remembered with self-contempt the extravagant emotion which she had aroused in him.
"Absurd," Hugh said to himself, with the distrust of all sudden springs of pure emotion which those who have misused them rarely escape. And then another remembrance, which only a sleeping-draught had kept at bay, darted upon him like a panther on its prey.
He had drawn the short lighter.
He started violently, and then fell back trembling.
"Oh, my God!" he said, involuntarily.
He lay still, telling himself that this dreadful nightmare would pass, would fade in the light of common day.
His servant came in noiselessly with a cup of coffee and a little sheaf of letters.
He pretended to be asleep; but when the man had gone he put out his shaking hand for the coffee and drank it.
The mist before his mind gradually lifted. Gradually, too, the horror on his face whitened to despair, as a twilight meadow whitens beneath the evening frost. He had drawn the short lighter. Nothing in heaven or earth could alter that fact.
He did not stop to wonder how Lord Newhaven had become aware of his own dishonor, or at the strange weapon with which he had avenged himself. He went over every detail of his encounter with him in the study. His hand had been forced. He had been thrust into a vile position. He ought to have refused to draw. He did not agree to draw. Nevertheless, he had drawn. And Hugh knew that, if it had to be done again, he should again have been compelled to draw by the iron will before which his was as straw. He could not have met the scorn of those terrible half-closed eyes if he had refused.
"There was no help for it," said Hugh, half aloud. And yet to die by his own hand within five months! It was incredible. It was preposterous.
"I never agreed to it," he said, passionately.
Nevertheless, he had drawn. The remembrance ever returned to lay its cold hand upon his heart, and with it came the grim conviction that if Lord Newhaven had drawn the short lighter he would have carried out the agreement to the letter. Whether it was extravagant, unchristian, whatever might have been truly said of that unholy compact,