CHAPTER VII.

THE SCARRED HAND

Rhoda, with her eyes fixed on the scarred hand, did not see either of the faces turned towards her, did not catch the quick look exchanged between Jack Rotherfield and Lady Sarah, or note their rapid loss of colour.

It was quite a long time before anybody spoke. Then Lady Sarah, crossing the room slowly and with apparent carelessness, asked:

“What’s the matter?”

Rhoda looked up, but there was a mist before her eyes; she said nothing, but rose unsteadily from her chair and took a couple of steps toward the window.

She was stopped, however, before she reached it, and found Lady Sarah’s hand within her arm.

“Don’t go away, Miss Pembury. Tell me, are you ill? What is it?”

The light bright voice was unchanged. But Rhoda, still breathing heavily, though the mist seemed to be clearing away, glanced quickly at her, and perceived that she was still of a deadly pallor.

“Let me go,” whispered the girl. “I--I’m not well--I--I feel faint.”

“I’ll take you into the garden. Jack, bring out a chair, and find a sunshade.”

Rhoda shuddered at the name, and looked round. Jack Rotherfield was pale also, although he tried to carry it off in an unconcerned manner. Rhoda would have escaped, but she was firmly held, and made to sit in the verandah, while her companions stood one on each side of her.

Rhoda had noticed, without being sufficiently herself to take in the significance of the fact, that there had been a short colloquy between them. Now Lady Sarah suddenly seized Jack’s right hand, and holding it close under Rhoda’s face, said:

“This was what shocked you, wasn’t it? The mark on his poor hand? I’ll tell you all about it.”

Rhoda bowed her head. She knew that she was going to hear a trumped-up story, but she had to listen. What the real truth was as to Jack Rotherfield’s connection with the tragedy that took place at the Mill-house ten years before she did not yet know, but that it was not what she was going to hear she was quite sure.

“Do you remember--I’m awfully sorry to have to remind you of it, for it’s an unpleasant subject, but I must--Do you remember the night you went away from here all those years ago?”

“Yes,” said Rhoda below her breath.

“And do you know that, on that very night, the poor butler, Langton, was found lying dead in the drawing-room?”

Rhoda bowed her head.

“Well, the next day the place was in a dreadful state, everybody excited and half-crazy. We were all following out the track of the burglar who had got in and murdered the poor man. And standing by the drawing-room window, with Sir Robert and me, Jack, opening it quickly, thrust his hand through the glass, and cut it right open. I fainted. Coming so soon after the ghastly discovery we had made, it made me quite ill. Sir Robert carried me to the sofa, and the doctor, who was in the house with the police, bound up Jack’s hand first, and then came up and attended to me, and then mama took me home!”

Rhoda bowed her head in silence. Lady Sarah waited for some sort of an apology for her behaviour, but she made none. After rather a long pause, during which Rhoda suddenly looked up and perceived a stealthy interchange of looks of alarm between the other two, she got up and murmured something about going back to Caryl.

“Not yet,” said Lady Sarah, “you are not well enough yet to be teased by the boy. Sit still, and I will bring your tea out to you. Jack, fetch Miss Pembury’s cup, and mine too, there’s a good boy. And then go and ask Sir Robert if he will come and have some too.”

Jack hesitated, but she gave him another look, and he obeyed.

Within five minutes Rhoda was sitting with her tea-cup in her hand, Lady Sarah was beside her, and Jack was returning along the terrace with Sir Robert.

When she was alone with the other lady, Rhoda seized the opportunity to say:

“I’m sorry I cried out as I did, but----”

She could not go on, and after a pause, Lady Sarah finished her sentence for her.

“The sight of a scar or wound distresses you. I understand. Some people are very sensitive to anything like that. But it’s not really painful now, you know. At the moment it happened I thought it must be, for it looked so dreadful. But even then I think perhaps I suffered more at the sight of the wound than Jack did himself.”

“Yes.”

Lady Sarah turned quickly to her husband, who was now in sight.

“Bertie,” she said, “Tell Miss Pembury how Jack cut his hand.”

Rhoda rose quickly from her chair.

“Oh, no,” she said hastily, “I don’t want to hear any more, really.”

But Lady Sarah insisted.

“You must,” she said, with peremptoriness, which betrayed the importance she attached to the apparently small matter.

Sir Robert was not at all pleased at his wife’s question, recalling an episode in his life which he would fain have forgotten.

“He put his hand through a window,” he said briefly, “and the mark shows still, as I dare say you have noticed, Miss Pembury.”

Rhoda said “Yes” under her breath, but there was still upon her face a dazed look of incredulity which irritated Lady Sarah.

The girl took the first opportunity of escaping upstairs, but she was in no state to amuse little Caryl, so she hastened to her own room, locked herself in, and sitting down, breathless and trembling, on a chair near the window, gave herself up to her distress, her doubts and her fears.

What did it mean? What could it mean but one thing?

There stood out clearly in her recollection the remembrance of the terrible night of her escape from the Mill-house, and the sight of the moonlight streaming on the hand with the red wound across it. That the hand she had seen that night was the hand of Jack Rotherfield she was quite sure. Her impression of the red mark she had seen that night was so strong, that nothing would have shaken her in this conviction. True, it was difficult to understand the story she had just heard, and wholly impossible to believe that Sir Robert was not telling the truth when he said he had seen the hand gashed by the broken window.

But Rhoda, who mistrusted Lady Sarah as strongly as she trusted her husband, thought that the clever little lady, who had certainly succeeded in throwing dust in Sir Robert’s eyes before her marriage, was quite capable of having deceived him by a trick. How it was managed the girl could not quite understand; but she felt sure that Jack, having been concerned in the death of Langford, was the man with the wounded hand whom she saw on his way upstairs; and she believed that the wound had been received in a struggle with the poor butler, and that, in order to avoid bringing suspicion upon himself, the young man had been artful enough to conceal his injury until the following day, when, taking an opportunity when there were several people present, he had thrust his wounded hand through the window as if by accident, and led those present to believe that the cut was freshly made.

Some such trick as this Rhoda felt sure had been played, but it sickened her to think that, in that case, Lady Sarah must have been a party to the stratagem, by which Jack shielded himself and deceived Sir Robert at the same time.

What was the whole truth concerning that night? Rhoda wondered.

It was now quite clear to her that, by accident or by design, it was Jack Rotherfield who caused the death of the butler. If it was an accident, why had he not told the truth about the night’s events? If it was more than that, what was the reason of his quarrel with the servant?

Certain dark suggestions did pass through her mind, but she would not encourage them. The thing was a mystery, an ugly mystery, and the ugliest part of it undoubtedly was that Lady Sarah was evidently in the confidence of the young man, and that he and she were still engaged together in practising a deception upon the lady’s husband.

Rhoda shuddered at the thought.

If Lady Sarah could deceive her trusting and indulgent husband to the extent of keeping such a secret from his ears for ten years, how was it possible to believe that she did not deceive him even farther?

The best thing to be said for the volatile beauty that her friendship with Jack Rotherfield was perfectly open, that he was constantly the guest of her husband, who certainly had no doubts of the loyalty either of his wife or of his late ward.

Why, therefore, Rhoda told herself, should she worry herself about the matter, since Sir Robert did not?

But argue as she might, she knew that there was more in the story than had become known; and while refusing to believe that even the artful Lady Sarah could go the length of wronging the man who trusted her so nobly she knew that the wife was lacking in sterling loyalty, and that, while she might be, and probably was, careful of herself and of her position, she bestowed more confidence upon Jack Rotherfield, if she did not more affection, than she gave to her own husband.

The knowledge which had come to her so suddenly that day, the conviction that she had in her hands now the clue to the mystery of the murder, made Rhoda so uneasy that she felt sure she would not be able to remain long in the household.

How could she go from husband to wife, and back again, with a light enough heart and a free conscience, when she was burdened, as she now was, with part, at least, of such an important secret?

Would Lady Sarah wish her to remain at the Mill-house? Rhoda thought not. It could not be pleasant to the proud little mistress of the house to feel that there was some one under the same roof who knew so much as Rhoda did, and she could not fail to look upon the girl as a spy, and to wonder whether she would keep to herself what she knew.

Rhoda felt that she must prepare for an early departure.

She was very sorry; for she had already attached herself deeply to little Caryl, while her feeling for the grave, gentle Sir Robert, having lost the quality of girlish enthusiasm which she had cherished for him ten years before, had become deeper, more pathetic, in the knowledge that he was not being treated as he had every right to be by the woman he loved so loyally and indulged in such a princely fashion.

It was in a very nervous condition that Rhoda rejoined the family at dinner that evening. She expected to find a difference in Lady Sarah’s manner towards her, but she was surprised indeed to find what that difference proved to be.

If she had been kind before, charming, merry, amiable, now Lady Sarah was infinitely more fascinating, more bent on making herself agreeable to her son’s companion.

With the most tender concern she asked after the headache which had been Rhoda’s excuse for leaving them that afternoon. Most sweetly she insisted that the girl was devoting herself too closely to her care of Caryl, and that, in order to get some relaxation, she must go to-morrow to the Chrysanthemum Show.

“Oh, no, it would leave me no time,” objected Rhoda. “You know Lady Eridge has asked me to tea at the Priory to-morrow afternoon.”

“Never mind. You shall go to the Show, too, and, as one of my sisters will be with me, I will drop you both at the Priory as we come back.”

It was of no use to attempt to thwart Lady Sarah; she never heeded any objection to her plans; and Sir Robert, smiling, told Rhoda so when she still kept up an attempt at protest.

Jack Rotherfield seemed quite untroubled by the discovery Rhoda had made that afternoon. He chatted so gaily, was so charming, so merry, and babbled on about things in general with so much easy gaiety that Sir Robert, who delighted in his conversation, was more animated than Rhoda had ever seen him before.

She was the only member of the party who was grave, pre-occupied and unhappy. She knew that Lady Sarah and Jack noticed this, and that Sir Robert was the only person present who failed to observe the depression from which she was suffering.

Later in the evening, when she would have escaped upstairs, she was detained and made to play and sing. She accompanied Jack Rotherfield in his songs, receiving his thanks and compliments upon her skill with coldness and shrinking which she did her best, not very successfully, to hide.

When she went upstairs she had a good cry. Sir Robert, the one of all the rest whom she liked and respected, had been slightly conscious, towards the end of the evening, of a difference in her manner, and had been perplexed and slightly displeased by it, while the two persons who overwhelmed her with civility and kindness were those from whom she would have preferred to receive as little attention as possible.

Truly her position was growing difficult, and she was sure that before long it would be impossible.

However, on the following day she recovered her spirits a little, feeling so sure that she would not stay long at the Mill-house that she determined to enjoy her time there as much as she could, and to trouble herself as little as possible about those causes of uneasiness which she could not help.

After a pleasant morning with Caryl, she was whirled off to Canterbury in the motor-car with Lady Sarah, Jack Rotherfield, and Lady Aileen, enjoyed herself in spite of her own wishes, and was landed with Lady Aileen at the door of the Priory in time for tea.

Lady Eridge was most gracious, and so were her two daughters, while the marquis, who came in quietly while they were all chatting round the little fire, without which the marchioness always felt chilly when the sun went down, was kind and good-natured, asked Rhoda the same questions two or three times over, and being rather deaf, always failed to catch the answers.

It was not until Lady Eridge had found an opportunity to speak to the visitor apart from the rest, that she broached the subject which Rhoda felt must have been in her thoughts all the time.

“And so you like the life at the Mill-house?” she began, after she had looked round nervously, and put out one waxlike hand to try to detect the bugbear of her sheltered life, “a draught.”

“Oh, yes, I like it very much. They are all kind to me, and I’m as fond of Caryl as if I’d lived with him for years.”

“And I hear you are a great help to Sir Robert?”

“Oh, no, not a great help. I’m interested in his work, and so grateful to him for what he did for me ten years ago in saving my life, that I’m most eager to do anything I can. It isn’t much, of course.”

“You are doing the things that my daughter ought to do herself,” said Lady Eridge.

“Do you mean that I ought not to do them?” asked Rhoda anxiously.

But the old lady answered quite eagerly:

“By no means. I am hoping that she will see now just what she ought to be doing herself, and that she may be induced to take up her duties,” said Lady Eridge. “As it is, she spends far too much time away from home. If she found an interest in her husband’s pleasures she would not find so much temptation to go abroad and to town.”

“Somehow it doesn’t seem natural to expect her to take an interest in making catalogues, and work of that sort,” said Rhoda. “She is so brilliant, so--so lively, that I’m sure she would look upon such occupations as too dry for her.”

“Since they are not too dry for you, why should they be for her?”

“Well, I was always a staid, quiet person, not a bit like Lady Sarah.”

The marchioness looked at her keenly, and Rhoda blushed.

“Do you think,” suggested the girl in a hesitating manner, “that it is right for me to do what I am doing? It seemed so natural, when I first came, and found Sir Robert rather helpless in the midst of the notes that he couldn’t read, to take up the easy and pleasant work of helping him, that I fell into it without, perhaps, considering whether I was not taking too much upon myself. Now I begin already to realise that my position is a little difficult, and to wonder whether I ought to go away.”

The old lady laid her hand impressively upon the girl’s arm.

“No, my dear, you are to stay,” she said earnestly. “I was delighted to see you yesterday, and again to-day, and to believe more and more that we have found in you just the link which has been wanting. You have a mission in that household, Miss Pembury, a delicate one perhaps, but one that I am sure you will perform in the most efficient manner.”

“Oh, no, no,” cried Rhoda. “I am not so ambitious. And indeed I would much rather retire into the background altogether.”

Lady Eridge interrupted her.

“You will not hesitate, I am sure,” she said, “to give up your own wishes when you realise what a useful office you could perform if you could succeed in drawing these two nearer together.”

“I don’t think you quite realise, Lady Eridge,” replied Rhoda earnestly, “the difficulty of interfering in any way between husband and wife.”

“I shouldn’t call it interference.”

“But that’s what it must come to,” persisted Rhoda. “And the task requires a great deal more tact and cleverness than I possess. Lady Sarah is cleverer than I am, and she is more likely to do what she pleases with me, than I am to make her do anything she doesn’t care to do of her own free will.”

But obstinacy was a trait which Lady Sarah had inherited from her mother, and the Marchioness went on:

“I don’t want you to preach to her, or anything of that kind. It is by example that I want you to lead her back to her duty.”

Rhoda shook her head.

“Indeed you’re asking too much of me, Lady Eridge, and I couldn’t undertake anything of the sort. My only fear is that I shall soon find my present modest position in the household too difficult for me, and that I shall have to go away.”

“Why is it difficult?”

Rhoda hesitated. Not for worlds would she have betrayed a suspicion of the real difficulties which beset her path, of the mystery of which she now had an inkling, and of which she feared to obtain further knowledge. How could she suggest to the marchioness that Jack Rotherfield was, if not actually the murderer of poor Langton, at least concerned actively in his death, and that Lady Sarah appeared to have been, if not an accomplice, at least an accessory after the fact?

“How do Sir Robert and Mr. Rotherfield get on together?” asked Lady Eridge as if carelessly, though Rhoda knew well the thought that was in her mind.

“Quite well. Sir Robert is very fond of him, and I have never seen him laugh or talk so much as he did last night at dinner when Mr. Rotherfield was there.”

“Yes. He is a most amusing companion, I must admit. But I think he is too flippant and too extravagant to be a safe friend for a young married woman. You will perhaps be surprised, Miss Pembury, that I speak to you so openly. But you have been initiated into the family circumstances, and you must have noticed for yourself that there is not that sympathy between my daughter and her husband that there ought to be, and that she is too much inclined to spend her time in frivolous pleasures. She is too extravagant, and I think that Mr. Rotherfield encourages her in it. Certainly she seems to grow more and more wasteful in money matters.”

“Wouldn’t she listen to you, if you were to speak to her on the subject? I certainly could not,” said Rhoda.

Lady Eridge shrugged her shoulders.

“Unfortunately it is impossible to influence her by preaching. That is why I am hoping so much from your example.”

“You must not hope, Lady Eridge. If Lady Sarah were to have the least suspicion that I was to be held up to her as a pattern, my life would at once become unendurable. And I should be sorry to have to go, for Caryl’s sake.”

Lady Eridge leaned back with a sigh.

“I shall persist in hoping,” she said gently. “And in believing that you may be working for good without your own knowledge.”

When Rhoda went away she was oppressed by a new sense of responsibility and uneasiness. New difficulties seemed to be cropping up at every step. The idea of her influencing the wilful, artful wife of Sir Robert was laughable, or would have been so if she had not felt that there was something pitiful in the anxiety of the mother to bring wholesome influences to bear upon her self-willed, extravagant daughter.

Of course Rhoda knew that she could do nothing, unless indeed she could contrive to put in a word of warning to Sir Robert to tighten his hold a little on his erratic wife.

But how was she to dare to intervene?

She was walking more and more slowly, weighed down by her anxieties, when she heard rapid footsteps behind her, and then her name uttered in Jack Rotherfield’s voice:

“Miss Pembury!”

The next moment he had caught her up, and was laughing down merrily into her face. In spite of all that she knew and all that she guessed, Rhoda found it impossible to be as stiff and cold to him as she wished. How could she retain her belief that he was guilty of manslaughter, if not of actual murder, when he could laugh so merrily, and speak so light-heartedly, that she could scarcely believe the man of thirty to be more than a boy still?

“I’ve been tearing after you for three fields and a half, and now I’m completely blown and can only pant!” he cried, with an affectation of laboured breathing which hardly interfered with his volubility. “I’ve been hanging about to escort you back to the Mill-house. I knew you’d take the short cut through the fields, and it’s hardly safe or pleasant for a young lady so late as this.”

“Oh, I can take care of myself,” said Rhoda.

She was rather dry of manner, and she would not even thank him, though his amiability made her feel ungracious.

He assumed an appearance of intense dejection.

“So you’re one of the strong-minded sisterhood,” he said dolefully. “Now I shouldn’t have thought it of you. It isn’t what one would have expected you to turn out, when I knew you first, ten years ago.”

Rhoda was silent. She looked at him cautiously out of the corners of her eyes, and saw in his the anxiety she had expected to see. He wanted to “pump” her, she knew, concerning the extent of her information as to the doings of the night of the death of Langton.

“You were as timid as a hare, a little shy girl with big eyes! But you were always nice to me then, much nicer than you are now. Why aren’t you as nice to me as you used to be?”

“I don’t think I quite know what you mean by ‘nice,’” Rhoda answered. “There must be a difference, I suppose, between the manner of a girl of seventeen and that of a woman of twenty-seven.”

“You haven’t taken a dislike to me for anything?”

She could scarcely repress a shudder, but she answered hastily:

“Of course not. Why should I?”

“I fancied that you had though, without any reason,” persisted he. “I thought it rather ungrateful of you, because I was so awfully glad to meet you again.”

“Thank you.”

“Glad too, for Lady Sarah’s sake and Sir Robert’s, because they’re so pleased with your devotion to Caryl, and with the way you’ve dropped into the family interests.”

To Rhoda’s great joy they had reached the high road, and she was able to escape him by getting on a tram-car which would take her into Dourville. He got in too, but there were other passengers inside, so that he had to make his conversation more general and less embarrassing.

But she could not help fancying, when she got home and thought over their walk, that he had had something to say which he had had no opportunity of saying, and she resolved to do her best to avoid him for the future.

As she came to that conclusion, she became conscious, to her own surprise, that in spite of his merry eyes, his liveliness and his charm, in spite of her belief that his guilt in the matter of Langton’s death could not have been that of murder, she was more afraid of Jack Rotherfield than she had ever been of any man in her life before.

And she realised that in the rare moments when she got a glimpse of his features in repose, there were lines in his face which should not have been there, lines which indicated that, under all his surface gaiety and charm, there was all the hardness and the capacity for cruelty of an utterly selfish nature.