The Arbiter: A Novel
Page 19
CHAPTER XIX
Rachel, however, even after the move abroad so strongly recommended byher doctor had been made, did not all at once regain her normalcondition. She appeared to be better in health; she was calmer, hernerves seemed quieter; but a strange dull veil still hung between hermind and the days immediately preceding the great catastrophe. To whathad happened the day before her father's death she never referred; shehad not asked Rendel anything more about the accusation brought againsthim. Once or twice she had spoken of her father as if he were stillthere, then caught herself up, realising that he was gone. Was this howit was always going to be? Rendel asked himself. Would he not again beable to share with her, as far as one human being can share withanother, his hopes and his fears, or rather his renunciations? Would shenever be able to take part in his life with the sweet, smiling sympathywhich had always been so ineffably precious to him? Those days that shehad lost were just those that had branded themselves indelibly into hisconsciousness: the afternoon that Stamfordham had come with the map,the morning following when it had appeared in the newspaper, the sceneswith Gore, with Stamfordham,--all those days he lived over and overagain, and lived them alone. There was some solace in the thought thatif that time were to be to Rachel for ever blurred, she would never beable to recall what had passed between herself and her husband afterRendel had brought on Gore's illness by taxing him with what he haddone. And while he struggled with his memories--would he always have tolive in the past now instead of in the future?--Rachel, who had beentold to be a great deal in the fresh air, passed her time quietly,peacefully, languidly, lying out of doors. They had deemed themselvesfortunate in securing in the overcrowded town a somewhat primitivelittle pavilion belonging to one of the big hotels, of which the charmto Rachel was that it had a shady garden. Rendel, whose time even duringthe period in which he had had no regular occupation had always beenfully occupied, reading several hours a day, making notes on certainsubjects about which he meant to write later, became conscious for thefirst time in his life that the hours hung heavy on his hands. It waswith a blank surprise that he realised that such a misfortune, which hehad always thought vaguely could befall only the idlers and desultory ofthis world, should attack himself. Life is always laying these snaresfor us, putting in our way suddenly and unexpectedly some form ofunpleasantness by which we may have seen others attacked, but fromwhich unconsciously we have felt that we ourselves should be preservedby our own merits,--just as when we are in good health we hear ofsciatica, lumbago, or gout, and accept them without concern as part ofthe composition of the universe, until one day one of thesedisagreeables attacks ourselves, and stands out quite disproportionatelyas something that after all is of more consequence than we thought. Itunfortunately nearly always happens that we have to face the mentalcrises of life inadequately prepared. We think we have pictured thembeforehand, and according to that picture we are ready, in imagination,with a sufficient equipment of fortitude and decision to enable us toencounter them. In reality we mostly do no better than a traveller whogoing to an unknown land and climate, guesses for himself beforehandwhat his outfit had better be, and then finds it deplorably inadequatewhen he gets there. Rendel, during those days of lonely agony in Londonthat followed the revelations sprung on the public by the _Arbiter_, hadendeavoured to school himself to face what the future might have instore for him; but he had thought that while he was abroad, at any rate,the horror that pursued him now would be in abeyance. He had never beento German baths, he had never been to a fashionable resort of the kind;he had no idea what it meant. All that he had vaguely pictured was thatit would be some sort of respite from the thing that dogged him now, thefear--for there was no doubt that as the days went on it grew into afear--of coming suddenly upon some one he knew, who would look him inthe face and then turn away. And now that they were at the term of theirjourney, installed in their little foreign pavilion, he had become awarethat at a stone's throw from him was a numerous cosmopolitan society,among whom was probably a large contingent from London. He did not tryto learn their names; he would jealously keep aloof from them. Rachelhad been advised to stay here for four weeks at least. Four weeks, nodoubt, is not very long under ordinary circumstances: he had notimagined that it might seem almost unendurably long to a man who hadbeen married less than a year to a wife that he loved. And yet, beforehe had been there three days, he was conscious that each separate hourhad to be encountered, wrestled with, conquered, before going on to thenext. He had meant to write: there was a point of administration uponwhich he had intended to say his say in one of the Reviews. But somehowin that sitting-room, with the windows opening down to the garden, thesteady work, which in his own study would have been a matter of course,seemed almost impossible. Then he thought he would read. He read aloudto Rachel for part of the day; but he did not dare to choose anythingthat was much good to himself, as he had been told that the moreinactive her mind was the better. Something he would have to do; hewould have to organise his daily life in some way that would make theburden of it endurable. He made up his mind to take long walks--thehotel and pavilion lay on the outskirts of the town--to go into theoutlying country and explore it on foot. But in the evenings when Rachelwas gone to bed, and when, alone at last, he would try to concentratehis mind on the study or the writing to which he had been used soeagerly to turn, another thought that he had been keeping at bay by aconscious effort would rush at him again and overwhelm him.
In the meantime, at the other side of Bad-Schleppenheim, the hours wereflying fast and gaily. From the moment when the visitors met together atan early hour in the morning to drink their glasses of Schleppenheimwater, and onwards through the luncheon parties, excursions, walking upand down, listening to the band, seeing theatricals, or playing Bridgein the evening, there was never a moment in which they were notindustriously engaged in the pursuit of something. It was mostlypleasure, though many of them imagined it was health. Many of the peoplewho in London constituted Society were here, in an inner and hallowedcircle, in the centre of which were many minor and a few major royaltiesout of every country in Europe; and revolving round them in widercircles outside, many other people who, at home just on the verge ofbeing in Society, revelled in the thought that here, under alteredconditions, and in the enforced juxtapositions of life in awatering-place, a special talent for tennis, a gift for Bridge, betterclothes than other people, or a talent for private theatricals, wouldhelp them to be on the right side of the line they were so anxious tocross. Add to these, numbers of pretty girls anxious only to enjoythemselves, and swarms of young men who had come for the same reason,and it will be imagined that the atmosphere reigning in the brilliantlylighted Casino, in and around which the joyous spent their eveningssinging, dancing, wandering in the grounds, was singularly differentfrom that of the little isolated pavilion where Rendel sat trying tofashion the picture of his life into something that he could look uponwithout a shudder.