The Arbiter: A Novel

by Lady Florence Eveleen Eleanore Olliffe Bell

  CHAPTER XXIV

  Rachel turned in the other direction and walked slowly back to thepavilion. What had happened? What had she been hearing? The slightestmental exertion still made her head ache, but she was conscious that ifshe once let herself go and made the effort it would be possible for herto understand. But that moment had not come yet.

  She had not been many minutes in her quiet shady garden when the littlegate at the bottom of it was thrown open, and her husband came quicklyin, looking round him with an anxious, hurried glance as though notknowing what he might find. What had he expected? He could hardly havetold. But as he drew nearer and nearer he had been gradually nervinghimself for the worst. He had been dreading to find he knew not what.Wentworth might be sitting with Rachel, the faces of both telling thatWentworth's would-be explanations had been of no avail; or Rachelherself might have been absent--she might have strolled out into thecrowd and there unawares heard rumours of what he felt convinced must bythis time be in every one's mind, on every one's lips. It was thereforefor the moment an unmeasured relief to find that all seemed as usual,that Rachel was sitting there quiet and cool before her littletea-table.

  "Ah!" he almost gasped, with a long sigh, as he sank into a chair andleant his head against the back of it with a weary, hunted look.

  "Frank!" said Rachel anxiously, "what is the matter? What has happened?"

  "What do you mean?" he said, sitting up, with again the startled,haggard expression on his face. "What should have happened?"

  "I don't know," Rachel said, startled too at his look and manner. "Youlook so tired, so ill."

  "Oh, I'm all right," he said, taking up and drinking eagerly the cup oftea that almost mechanically she had poured out and pushed towards him,and as he did so he realised that he had had no food since the morning.He ate and drank and then again lay back in his chair and was silent. AsRachel looked at him the absolute conviction swept over her--she knewnot why--that he had been concerned in the terrible catastrophe of whichshe had heard the broken accounts. It began to dawn upon her that insome inconceivable way the thing had happened to him; that it was of himthose women were speaking. She still heard Lady Adela saying: "Did youever see any one look so awful?" And yet what could it be? What horriblemisunderstanding was it? What horrible mistake could have been made?

  She sat and waited. Not the least of her charms was that she knew, whatmany women do not know, how to sit absolutely quiet. She knew when torefrain from questioning, how to sit by her companion in so peaceful, sofinal a manner, as it were, that he did not feel that she was simplywaiting for what he would do next.

  The band blared out again with renewed vigour. Rendel leant his elbowson his knees, his face between his hands.

  "Oh! that miserable noise!" he said. "Will it never leave off? Thehideousness of it all!--those people, that band! Oh! to get away from itall!" he muttered half to himself.

  "Frank," said Rachel entreatingly, touching his arm, "if you don't likeit why shouldn't we go away from it? I think it is horrible, too. I wentout of the garden to-day to where the people were walking."

  Rendel looked up quickly.

  "Did you? Did you see any one you knew?"

  "Yes," said Rachel; "I saw Mr. Pateley."

  "Pateley!" said her husband. "Did you have any talk with him? What didhe say?"

  "Hardly anything," said Rachel. "He was surprised to see me, and askedhow long we had been here, and if he might come and see us. That wasall."

  "That was all," echoed Rendel, again with an inward shiver. "Coming tosee us, is he?"

  That encounter for the moment he must at any cost avoid.

  "Frank, I wonder if we must go on staying here?" Rachel said.

  "Of course we must," Rendel replied, trying to pull himself togetheragain. "Dr. Morgan said that this was the very best place for you tocome to, and that the waters would do you all the good in the world."

  "I wonder if we need," said Rachel. "I am sure it is the kind of thingyou hate."

  "It is not for very long, after all," said Rendel, trying to smile.

  He was gradually regaining possession of himself, but was still afraidto trust himself to utter any but the most commonplace and ordinarysentences.

  "The moment I have done the cure," said Rachel, "we'll go back toLondon, won't we? And you can begin your work again, and do all thethings you like. And then," she went on with an attempt at lightness oftone, "you can go back to your beloved politics, and think of nothingelse all day." And she went on talking of their house, of their arrival,of what they would do, in a forlorn little attempt to show him that shemeant to try to shoulder life valiantly, although it had been soaltered. "You will stand for somewhere. You will go into the House."

  Rendel thought of what the life might have been that she was sketching,and what it was going to be now. What he had gone through that day wasan earnest probably of what awaited him many a time if he should try tolead his life as he used to lead it, among the people who were congenialto him.

  "No," he said, "I'm not going to stand. I'm not going into the House. Ishan't have anything to do with politics."

  "What?" said Rachel, looking at him startled.

  "All that, is at an end," he said firmly. Then with the relief ofspeaking, came the irresistible desire to go on, to tell her somethingat least of what his fate was, although he might not tell the thing thatmattered most.

  "Do you remember," he said, "something that I told you had happened----"he broke off, then began again. "Tell me," he said, impelled to ask,"how much you remember, if you remember anything, of those days whenyour father was so ill, at the end, just before he died, or is it stilla blank to you?"

  Rachel shuddered.

  "No, I can't remember," she said. "The last thing I remember clearly isone afternoon when he was beginning to be worse and had to go upstairsagain; and I remember nothing more after that till," and her voicetrembled, "till--a day that I woke up in bed and wanted to go to him,and you told me that--that he was dead. The rest of that time is ablank."

  "How extraordinary it is!" muttered Rendel to himself.

  "I did not even know," said Rachel, "that I had fallen on the stairs,until the doctor told me days afterwards that I had caught my foot as Iwas running downstairs. He told me then it was no use trying toremember the time just before," she went on in a low, anxious voice,something stirring uneasily within her: "that it might not come back atall. It seems it doesn't sometimes to people who have that sort ofaccident."

  Rendel, his eyes fixed on the ground, had been listening; he took in themeaning of her words and tried to realise their bearing on himself, buthe was too far gone on the slope to stop. It was clear that she wouldnot know what had happened, unless she were told by himself... and yet,who could tell how the awakening would come? it might even be in a worseform when she was able once more to mix with her kind.

  "Rachel," he said. "I want to tell you something that happened the daybefore your father became worse, the day before you had that accident,the last day, in fact, that you remember." She looked at him withanxious eagerness. "Something tremendously important happened. LordStamfordham brought me some private notes of his own to decipher andcopy."

  "Of course," said Rachel, "that I remember. In your study downstairs."

  "You remember?" said Rendel eagerly. Then instantly conscious, alas,that the evidence could do him no kind of good, "that I gave some papersto Thacker to take to Stamfordham?"

  "Stop a minute," said Rachel. "Yes, I remember that too. My fatherwanted to play chess afterwards, but he was too tired."

  "In those papers," said Rendel, "there was a very important secret,though it didn't remain a secret," he added, with a bitter little laugh,"for twenty-four hours. Those papers contained the notes of aconversation at the German Embassy at which that agreement was decidedupon by which Germany and England divided Africa between them. It was_I_ copied those papers from Stamfordham's notes. I copied the map ofAfrica with a line down the middle of it. The next morni
ng, no one knewhow or why, that map appeared in the _Arbiter_."

  Rachel looked at him, still not understanding all that was implied.

  "Do you see what that means for me?" Rendel said. "It was notStamfordham published it, he did not mean to do so until the momentshould come, and since I was the person who had had the original notes,he thought that I had published it; that I had let it out, somehow."

  "You!" said Rachel, with wide-open eyes.

  "Yes," said Rendel shortly. "That I had betrayed the great secretentrusted to me."

  "Frank!" she cried. "But of course you didn't!"

  "Of course I didn't," Rendel said quietly.

  "And--then----?" said Rachel breathlessly.

  "Then," Rendel said, shrinking at the very recollection, "Stamfordhamtold me he believed I had done it. Then of course,"--and the words camewith an effort--"there was an end of everything, and I knew that therewas nothing left for me to do but to go under, to throw everything up. Iknew that people would turn their backs upon me, and I didn't seeStamfordham again until--until to-day. And to-day Wentworth and I wentup to that place in the woods to lunch, and by chance, by the mosthorrible, evil fortune, we came upon a luncheon party at whichStamfordham was, and--and," he said trying to speak calmly, "when he sawme he refused to sit down at the same table with me." And as he spokeRachel felt that things were becoming clear to her and that she wasbeginning to understand. The comments of the people who had stood by herand discussed the scene they had witnessed still rang in her ears, andshe realised what the horror of that scene must have been.

  "Frank!" she cried, with her tears falling. And she went to him and tookhis hand, then drew his head against her bosom as though to give himsanctuary. "Imagine believing that you, _you_ of all people..." and thebroken words of comfort and faith in him, of love and belief again gavehim a moment of feeling that rehabilitation might be possible.

  "Frank!" Rachel went on, "tell me this. Did my father know?"

  "Know what?" Rendel said, starting up, the iron reality again facinghim.

  "That you were accused? That they could believe that you had done such ashameful thing?"

  "Yes," said Rendel slowly. "At least he knew what hadhappened--and--and--he guessed that the suspicion would fall upon me."

  "Oh!" cried Rachel, hiding her face in her hands and trying to steadyher voice. "I am sorry he knew just at the end. I wonder if herealised?"

  Rendel said nothing. Even now was Sir William Gore to stand betweenthem?

  "Perhaps he didn't," Rachel said, almost entreatingly, "as he was soill. Because think what it would have been to him! Of course he wouldhave known it was not true, but he was so fastidious, so terriblysensitive, the mere thought that you could have been suspected of such athing even would have preyed upon him so terribly."

  "Well," said Rendel, in a low voice--the last possibility of clearinghimself was put behind him, and the darkness fell again--"he is beyondreach of it. It is I who must suffer now."

  Rachel had walked to the other side of the garden, pressing herhandkerchief to her eyes and trying to control herself. Now she cameswiftly back, a sudden determination in her heart.

  "Frank," she cried, "why must you suffer? We must find out who reallydid it."

  "I can't," said Rendel.

  "But have you tried?"

  "Yes," he said. "As much as was possible."

  "But it must be possible," she cried. And she came to him, her eyes andface glowing with resolve. "If the whole world came to me and said thatyou had done this I should not believe it. I remember so well my mothersaying, the day that I came back from Maidenhead," and their eyes met inthe recollection of that happy, cloudless time, "'what a man needs issome one to believe in him,' and I thought to myself that when--if--Imarried I would believe in my husband as she believed in my father."

  At this moment one of the Swiss waiters came quickly through thepavilion into the garden.

  "Monsieur Pateley," he said, "wishes to know if Madame is at home."Rachel and her husband looked at each other in consternation.

  "I can't see him at this moment," Rendel said, going to the gate.

  "Can't we send him away?" said Rachel, anxiously.

  "Where is he?" addressing the waiter. But it was too late. The questionanswered itself, as Pateley's large form appeared behind that of thewaiter, distinctly seen on every side of it. Rachel, trying to controlher face into a smile of welcome, went forward to meet him as Rendeldisappeared amongst the trees, from whence he could get round into thehouse another way.