The Arbiter Part 24

"Of course," said Stamfordham, "what I ought to do is to insist on the inquiry being continued until the matter is cleared up and brought to light."

A strange expression pa.s.sed over Rendel's face as there rose in his mind a feeling that he instantly thrust out of sight again, that supposing--supposing--Stamfordham himself investigated to the bottom all that had happened, and that without any doing of his, Rendel's, the truth were discovered? Then with horror he put the idea away. Rachel! it would give Rachel just as great a pang, of course, whoever found it out.

The flash of impulse and recoil had pa.s.sed swiftly through his mind before he woke up, as it were, to find Stamfordham continuing--

"But I am willing for your sake to stop here."

Rendel tried to make some acknowledgment, but no words that he could speak came to his lips.

"It might, as I told you before," Stamfordham went on, standing up as though to show that the interview was over, "have been a national disaster. That, however, has, I hope, been averted, and we shall simply have done now something we meant to do a few days hence. But that does not affect the point we have been discussing," and he looked at Rendel as though with a forlorn hope that at the last moment he might speak.

But Rendel was silent still. "You understand, then," Stamfordham said, looking him straight in the face, an embodiment of inexorable justice, "what this means to a man in your position?"

"Yes," said Rendel again.

"I owe my colleagues an explanation," said Stamfordham. "Since one is not to be had, I must repeat to them what has pa.s.sed between us."

"Of course," said Rendel. And he went towards the door.

"There is another thing I must ask you," Stamfordham said, speaking with cold courtesy. "I have a letter here about Stoke Newton. It will have to be settled." And he waited for Rendel to answer the question which had not been explicitly asked.

"I shall not stand," said Rendel.

"That is best," said Stamfordham quietly. "Will you telegraph to the Committee, then?"

"I will," said Rendel, and with an inclination of the head, to which Lord Stamfordham responded, he went out.

CHAPTER XVIII

Rendel up to this moment had been accustomed, unconsciously to himself perhaps, to live, as most men of keen intelligence and aspirations do live, in the future. The possibilities of to-day had always had an added zest from the sense of there being a long, magnificent expanse stretching away indefinitely in front of him, in which to achieve what he would. In his moments of despondency he had been able to conceive disaster possible, but it was always, after all, such disaster as a man might encounter, and then, surmounting, turn afresh to life. But of all possible forms of disaster that would have occurred to him as being likely to come near himself, there was one that he would have known could not approach him: there was one form of misery from which, so far as human probabilities could be gauged, he was safe. He had never imagined that he could in his own experience learn what it meant, according to the customary phrase, to "go under" because he could not hold his head up: to disappear from among the honourable and the strenuous, to be dragged down by the weight of some shameful deed which would make him unfit to consort with people of his own kind. As he walked home he was not conscious, perhaps, of trying to look his situation in the face, of trying to adjust himself to it. And yet insensibly things began falling into shape, as particles of sand gradually subside after a whirlwind and settle into a definite form.

Then Stamfordham's words rang in his ears: "I must tell my colleagues."

It was a small fraction of the world in number, perhaps, that would thus know how it happened, but they were, to Rendel, the only people who mattered--the people, practically, in whose hands his own future lay. He realised now as he had never done before in what calm confidence he had in his inmost heart looked on that future, and most of all how much, how entirely he had always counted on Lord Stamfordham's good opinion of his integrity and worth. It was all gone. What should he do? How should he take hold of life now?

As he waited at a corner to cross the road, he saw big newspaper boards stuck up. The second edition of the other morning papers was coming out with the news eagerly caught up from the _Arbiter_. There it was in big letters, people stopping to read it as they pa.s.sed: "Startling Disclosure. Unexpected Action of the Government." No power on earth could stop that knowledge from spreading now. How it would turn the country upside down--what a fever of conjecture, what storms of disapproval from some, of jubilation from others. What frantic excitement was in store for the few who, with vigilance strained to the utmost, were steering warily through such a storm! Rendel involuntarily stopped and read with the others.

Some people he knew drove by in a victoria, two exquisitely dressed women who smiled and bowed to him as they pa.s.sed--chance acquaintances whom he met in society, and to whom under ordinary circ.u.mstances he would have been profoundly indifferent.

Rendel could almost have stood still in sheer terror at realising some numbing sense that was stealing over him, some horrible change in his view of things that was already beginning. For as they bowed to him with unimpaired friendliness, he felt conscious of a distinct sensation of relief, almost of grat.i.tude, that in spite of what had happened they should still be willing to greet him. Good G.o.d! was _that_ what his view of life, and of his relations with his kind was going to be? No! no!

anything but that. He would go away somewhere, he would disappear...

yes, of course, that was what "they" all did. He remembered with a shudder a man he had known, Bob Galloway, who, beginning life under the most prosperous auspices, had been convicted of cheating at cards. He recalled the look of the man who knew his company would be tolerated only by those beneath him. He realised now part of what Galloway must have gone through before he went out of England and took to frequenting second-rate people abroad.

He looked up and found that he had mechanically walked back to Cosmo Place. He was recalled from his absorption to a more pressing calamity, as he recognised, with an acute pang of self-reproach, the doctor's brougham still standing before the door. He entered the house quickly.

There was a sense of that strange emptiness, of the ordinary living rooms of the house being deserted, that gives one an almost physical sense that life is being lived through with stress and terrible earnestness somewhere else. He heard some words being exchanged in a low tone on the upper landing, and then a door shutting as Rachel turned back into her father's room. Rendel met Doctor Morgan as he came down the stairs. Morgan's face a.s.sumed an air of grave concern as he saw Sir William's son-in-law coming towards him, and Rendel read in his face what he had to tell. There are moments in which the intensity of nervous strain seems to make every sense trebly acute, in which, without knowing it, we are aware of every detail of sight and sound that forms the material setting for a moment of great emotion. As he looked at Doctor Morgan coming towards him, Rendel, without knowing it, was conscious of every detail that formed the background to that figure of foreboding: of the sunlight glancing on the gla.s.s of a picture, of its reflection in the bra.s.s of a loose stair rod that had escaped from its fastenings, and of which, even in that moment, Rendel's methodical mind automatically made a note.

"I am afraid I can't give you a very good account," he said in answer to Rendel's hurried inquiries. "He has had another and more prolonged fainting fit, and I think it possible that his heart may be affected."

"Do you mean, then," said Rendel, "that--that--you are really anxious about the ultimate issue?" and he tried to veil the thing he was designating, as men instinctively do when it is near at hand.

"Yes, I am," Doctor Morgan answered. "Unless there is a great change in the next few hours, there certainly will be cause for the gravest anxiety."

Rendel was silent, his thoughts chasing each other tumultuously through his brain.

"Does my wife know?" he said.

"I think she does," Morgan said. "I have not told her quite as clearly as I have said it to you, but she knows how much care he needs and how absolutely essential it is that he should be quiet. It is his one chance. No talk, no news, no excitement."

"What has brought on this attack, do you think?" said Rendel, feeling as if he were driven to ask the question.

"I can't tell," said Morgan. "He looked to me like a man who had been excited about something. Do you know whether that is so?"

"Yes," said Rendel; "he got excited this morning about something that was in the paper."

"Ah! by the way, yes, I don't wonder," said Morgan, who was an ardent politician. "It was a most astonis.h.i.+ng piece of news, certainly."

"It was, indeed," said Rendel, brought back for a moment to the unendurable burthen he had been carrying about with him.

"The Imperialists are safe now to get in," said Morgan. "We look to you to do great things some day," and without waiting for the polite disclaimer which he took for granted would be Rendel's reply to his remark, without seeing the swift look of keen suffering that swept over Rendel's face, he hurried away.

Rendel was bowed down by an intolerable self-reproach. He could have smiled at the thought that he had actually been seeking solace in the idea that he had, at any rate, done a fine, a n.o.ble thing, that he had done it for Rachel, that, if she ever knew it, she would know he had sacrificed everything for her. And now, instead, how did his conduct appear? How would it appear to her, since she knew but the outward aspect of it? To her? Why, to himself, even, it almost appeared that wis.h.i.+ng to insist on screening himself at the expense of some one else, he had, in defiance of her entreaties, appealed to her father, and brought on an attack that might probably cause his death.

He stood for a moment as the door closed behind Morgan, and waited irresolutely, with a half hope that Rachel would come downstairs to him.

But all was silent, desolate, forlorn; it was behind the shut door upstairs that the strenuous issues were being fought out which were to decide, in all probability, other fates than that of the chief sufferer who lay there waiting for death. The chief sufferer? No. Rendel, as he turned back sick at heart, after a moment, into his own study, thought bitterly within himself that death to the man who has so little to expect from life is surely a less trial than dying to all that is worth having while one is still alive. That was how he saw his own life as he looked on into the future, or rather, as he contemplated it in the present--for the future was gone, it was blotted out. That was the thought that ever and anon would come to the surface, would come in spite of his efforts to the contrary, before every other. Then the thought of Rachel's face of misery rose before him, haunted him with an additional anguish. With an effort he pulled himself together, sat down to the table, and wrote a letter to the committee of Stoke Newton, stating briefly that he had relinquished his intention of standing, directed it, and closed the envelope with a heavy sigh. One by one he was throwing overboard his most precious possessions to appease the Fates that were pursuing him. Where would it end? What would be left to him? The one precious possession, the turning-point of his existence still remained: Rachel, his love for her, their life together. But, after all, those great goods he had meant to have in any case, and the rest besides. The door opened. It was the servant come to tell him that luncheon was ready; the ordinary bell was not rung for fear of disturbing Sir William. Luncheon? Could the routine of life be going on just in the same way? Was it possible that a morning had been enough to do all this? He went listlessly into the dining-room. Rachel was not there. He went upstairs, and as he went up met her coming out of her father's room. Her startled and almost alarmed look, as at the first moment she thought that he was going back into her father's room, smote him to the heart.

"You had better not go in, Frank," she said hurriedly. "The doctor said he was to be quite quiet. Please don't go in again," and the intonation of the words told him how much lay at his door already.

"I was not going in," he said quietly. "I was coming to fetch you to have some luncheon."

"I don't think I could eat anything," she said.

"You must try, darling," he said gently. "It is no good your being knocked up at this stage. You look pretty well worn out already."

And indeed she did. The last twenty-four hours had made her look as though she herself had been through an illness, and the nervous strain added to her own condition made her appear, Rendel felt as he looked at her, quite alarmingly ill. She suffered herself to be persuaded to eat something, then wandered wretchedly back to her father's room to remain there for the rest of the day.

Rendel did not leave the house again. He sat downstairs alone, trying to realise what this world was that he was contemplating, this landscape painted in shades of black and grey. Was this the prospect flooded with suns.h.i.+ne that he had looked upon that very morning? The afternoon went on: the streets of London were full of a gay and hurrying crowd. Was it Rendel's imagination, the tense state of his nerves, that made him feel in the very air as it streamed in at his window the electric disturbance that was agitating the destinies of the country? Everyone looked as they pa.s.sed as though something had happened; men were talking eagerly and intently. The afternoon papers were being hawked in the streets. One of them actually had the map, all had the news, given with the same comments of amazement, and, on the part of the Imperialists, of admiration at the feat that had been so cleverly performed. So the day wore on, the long summer's day, till all London had grasped what had happened--while the man through whom London knew was sitting alone, an outcast, with Grief and Anxiety hovering by him.

These two same dread companions, seen under another aspect, were with Rachel as she sat through the afternoon hours in her father's darkened room, listening to his breathing, with all her senses on the alert for any sound, for any movement.

Sir William moved and opened his eyes; then, looking at Rachel, who was anxiously bending over him, he rapidly poured out a succession of words and phrases of which only a word here and there was intelligible.

"Frank," he said once or twice, then "Pateley," but Rachel had not the clue that would have told her what the words meant. She tried in vain to quiet him: he was not conscious of her presence. Then suddenly his voice subsided to a whisper, and a strange look came over his face. An uncontrollable terror seized upon Rachel. She ran out on to the stairs; and as, unsteady, quivering, she rushed down, meaning to call her husband, she caught her foot on the loose stair-rod and fell forward, striking her head with violence as she reached the bottom. It was there that Rendel, aghast, found her lying unconscious as he hurried out of his study to see what had happened. The sickening horror of that first moment, when he believed she was dead, swallowed up every other thought.

It made the time that followed, when Doctor Morgan, instantly sent for, had p.r.o.nounced that she had concussion of the brain, from which she would recover if kept absolutely quiet, a period almost of relief.

And so Rachel was spared the actual moment of the parting she had been trying to face. For though Sir William rallied again from the crisis which had so alarmed her, he sank gradually into a state of coma from which he was destined never to wake, and from which, almost imperceptibly, he pa.s.sed during the evening of the next day.

Rendel, tossed on a wild storm of clas.h.i.+ng emotions, the great anxiety caused by Rachel's accident and possible peril added to all he had gone through, had in truth little actual sorrow to spare for the loss of Sir William Gore. But Gore's death meant in one direction the death of all his own remaining hopes. When he knew the end had come, and that he would have to tell Rachel, when she was able to bear it, that her father was dead, he then began to realise how, unconsciously to himself almost, he had built upon some possibility of Sir William doing something to put things right. What, he had not formulated to himself; but he had had vague visions of a possible admission of some sort, of an attempted reconciliation, atonement, confession, such as he had read of in fiction, by which means the truth would have come out, and he would have been absolved without any effort on his own part. But those half-formulated dreams had vanished almost before he had realised them.

Sir William Gore had gone to his eternal rest, and, as far as Rendel knew, no one but himself knew exactly what had happened. And now there was nothing in front of him but that miserable blank.

Rachel was not told of what had happened until two days after her father's funeral. She received the news as though stunned, bewildered; as if it were too terrible for her to grasp. Gradually she came back to life again, but she was not the same as before. Her recovery would be, the doctor explained, a question of time. The accident that had befallen her, following the great strain and anxiety she had gone through, had completely upset her nervous system, and appeared--a not uncommon result after such an accident--to have completely obliterated the time immediately preceding her fall. The moment when Rendel, seeing her gradually recovering, first ventured on some allusion to Stamfordham and to what had taken place the day her father was taken ill, he saw a puzzled, bewildered look in her face, as though she had no idea of what he was saying, and he was seized by a fear almost too ghastly to be endurable.