The Shadow of the Rope | Page 2

sort of desperation, as she realized that
the benefits of her marriage were to be wholly material after all.
In the larger life of cities, Alexander Minchin was no longer the idle
and good-humored cavalier to whom Rachel had learned to look for
unfailing consideration at sea. The illustrative incidents may be omitted;
but here he gambled, there he drank; and in his cups every virtue
dissolved. Rachel's pride did not mend matters; she was a thought too
ready with her resentment; of this, however, she was herself aware, and
would forgive the more freely because there was often some obvious
fault on her side before all was said. Quarrels of infinite bitterness were
thus patched up, and the end indefinitely delayed.
In the meantime, tired of travelling, and impoverished by the husband's
follies, the hapless couple returned to London, where a pure fluke with
some mining shares introduced Minchin to finer gambling than he had
found abroad. The man was bitten. There was a fortune waiting for
special knowledge and a little ready cash; and Alexander Minchin

settled down to make it, taking for the nonce a furnished house in a
modest neighborhood. And here it was that the quarrelling continued to
its culmination in the scene just ended.
"Not another day," said Rachel, "nor a night--if I can be ready before
morning!"
Being still a woman with some strength of purpose, Mrs. Minchin did
not stop at idle words. The interval between the slamming of doors
below and another noise at the top of the house was not one of many
minutes. The other noise was made by Rachel and her empty trunk
upon the loftiest and the narrowest flight of stairs; one of the maids
opened their door an inch.
"I am sorry if I disturbed you," their mistress said. "These stairs are so
very narrow. No, thank you, I can manage quite well." And they heard
her about until they slept.
It was no light task to which Rachel had set her hand; she was going
back to Australia by the first boat, and her packing must be done that
night. Her resolve only hardened as her spirit cooled. The sooner her
departure, the less his opposition; let her delay, and the callousness of
the passing brute might give place to the tyranny of the normal man.
But she was going, whether or no; not another day--though she would
doubtless see its dawn. It was the month of September. And she was
not going to fly empty-handed, nor fly at all; she was going deliberately
away, with a trunk containing all that she should want upon the voyage.
The selection was not too easily made. In his better moods the creature
had been lavish enough; and more than once did Rachel snatch from
drawer or wardrobe that which remained some moments in her hand,
while the incidents of purchase and the first joys of possession, to one
who had possessed so little in her life, came back to her with a certain
poignancy.
But her resolve remained unshaken. It might hurt her to take his
personal gifts, but that was all she had ever had from him; he had never
granted her a set allowance; for every penny she must needs ask and
look grateful. It would be no fault of hers if she had to strip her fingers

for passage-money. Yet the exigency troubled her; it touched her honor,
to say nothing of her pride; and, after an unforeseen fit of irresolution,
Rachel suddenly determined to tell her husband of her difficulty,
making direct appeal to the capricious generosity which had been
recalled to her mind as an undeniably redeeming point. It was true that
he had given her hearty leave to go to the uttermost ends of the earth,
and highly probable that he would bid her work her own way. She felt
an impulse to put it to him, however, and at once.
She looked at her watch--it at least had been her mother's--and the final
day was already an hour old. But Alexander Minchin was a late sitter,
as his young wife knew to her cost, and to-night he had told her where
he meant to sleep, but she had not heard him come up. The room would
have been the back drawing-room in the majority of such houses, and
Rachel peeped in on her way down. It was empty; moreover, the bed
was not made, nor the curtains drawn. Rachel repaired the first
omission, then hesitated, finally creeping upstairs again for clean sheets.
And as she made his bed, not out of any lingering love for him, but
from a sense of duty and some consideration for his comfort, there was
yet something touching in her instinctive care, that breathed the wife
she