"Ah," said Lady Gore, "I wanted to say that to you. Now, as we are speaking of it, let us talk it out, let us look at it in the face. Consider the possibility, Rachel, the probability that I may be taken from you; my dream would be that you should make your own life with some one that you care about, and yet not part it entirely from your father's, that while he is there he should not be left. If I thought that, do you know, it would be a very great help to me," she said, forcing herself to speak steadily, but unable to hide entirely the wistful anxiety in her tone.
"I will never, never leave him," Rachel said. "I promise you that I never will."
"Then I can look forward," her mother said, "as peacefully, I don't say as joyfully, as I look back. Twenty-four years, nearly twenty-five," she went on, half to herself and looking dreamily upwards, "we have been married. You don't know what those years mean, but some day I hope you will. I pray that you may know how the lives and souls of two people who care for one another absolutely grow together during such a time."
"It is beautiful," Rachel said softly, "to knowthat there is such happiness in the world," and her own new happiness leapt to meet the assurance of the years.
"It is beautiful indeed," Lady Gore said. "It means a constant abiding sense of a strange other self sharing one's own interests—of a close companionship, an unquestioning approval which makes one almost independent of opinions outside."
"Some people," said Rachel, pressing her mother's hand, "have the outside affection and approval too."
"Yes, the world has been very kind to me," Lady Gore said, "and all that is delightful. But it is the big thing that matters. Do you remember that there was some famous Greek who said when his chosen friend and companion died, 'The theatre of my actions has fallen'?" Rachel's face lighted up in quick response. "When I am gone," her mother went on, "don't let your father feel that the theatre ofhisactions has fallen—take my place, surround him with love and sympathy."
"I will, indeed I will," said Rachel.
"What a man needs," said Lady Gore, "is some one to believe in him."
"My father will never be in want of that," said Rachel, with heartfelt conviction. "Mother," she added, "I never will forget what I am saying now, and you may believe it and you may be happy about it. I won't leave my father; he shall come first, I promise, whatever happens."
"First?" said Lady Gore gently. "No, Rachel,not that; it is right that your husband should come first."
"The people," said Rachel smiling, "whose husbands come first have not had a father and mother like mine."
There was a knock at the house door. Rachel sprang hurriedly to her feet, the colour flying into her cheeks. Lady Gore looked at her. She had never before seen in Rachel's face what she saw there now.
"I must take off my things," the girl said, catching up her gloves and veil.
"Don't be very long," said her mother.
"I'll—I'll—see," Rachel said, and she suddenly bent over her mother and kissed her, then went quickly out by one door as the other was thrown open to admit a visitor.
Francis Rendel came into the room with his usual air of ceremony, amounting almost to stiffness. Then, as he realised that his hostess was alone, his face lighted up and he came eagerly towards her.
"Thisisa piece of good fortune, to find you alone," he said. "I was afraid I should find you surrounded."
"It is early yet," Lady Gore said, with a smile.
"I know, yes," Rendel said. "I must apologise for coming at this time, but I wanted very much to see you——" He paused.
"I am delighted to see you at any time," Lady Gore said.
"It is so good of you," he answered, in the tone of one who is thinking of the next thing he is going to say. There was a silence.
"I hope you enjoyed yourself at Maidenhead?" said Lady Gore.
"Very, very much," Rendel answered with an air of penetrated conviction. There was another pause. Then he suddenly said, "Lady Gore——" and stopped.
She waited a moment, then said gently, "Yes, I know. Rachel has been telling me."
"She has! Oh, I am so glad," Rendel said. Then he added, finding apparently an extreme difficulty in speaking at all, "And—and—do you mind?"
"That is a modest way of putting it," said Lady Gore, smiling. "No, I don't mind. I am glad."
"Are you really?" said Rendel, looking as if his life depended on the answer. "Do you mean that you really think you—you—could be on my side? Then it will come all right."
"I will be on your side, certainly," said Lady Gore; "but I don't know that that is the essential thing. I am not, after all, the person whose consent matters most."
"Do you know, I believe you are," Rendel said. "I verily believe that at this moment you come before any one else in the world." There was no need to say in whose estimation, or to mention Rachel's name.
"Well, perhaps at this moment, as you say," said Lady Gore, "it is possible, but there is no reason why it should go on always."
"She is absolutely devoted to you," Rendel said.
"Rachel has a fund," her mother said, "of loyal devotion, of unswerving affection, which makes her a very precious possession."
"I have seen it," said Rendel. "Her devotion toyou and her father is one of the most beautiful things in the world, even though...."
"Even...?" said Lady Gore, with a smile.
"Did she tell you what she said to me this morning?"
"I gathered, yes," Lady Gore replied, "both what you had said and her answer."
"I didn't take it as an answer," said Rendel. "I thought that I would come straight to you and ask you to help me, and that you would understand, as you always do, in the way that nobody else does."
"Take care," said Lady Gore smiling, "that you don't blindly accept Rachel's view of her surroundings."
"Oh, it is not only Rachel who has taught me that," said Rendel, his heart very full. "It is you yourself, and your sympathy. I wonder," he went on quickly, "if you know what it has meant to me? You see, it is not as if I had ever known anything of the sort before. To have had it all one's life, as your daughter has, must be something very wonderful. I don't wonder she does not want to give it up."
Lady Gore tried to speak more lightly than she felt. "She need not give it up," she said, with a somewhat quivering smile. "And you need not thank me any more," she went on. "I should like you to know what a great interest and a great pleasure it has been to me that you should have cared to come and see me as you have done, and to take me into your life." Rendel was going to speak,but she went on. "I have never had a son of my own. It was a great disappointment to me at first; I was very anxious to have one. I used to think how he and I would have planned out his life together, and that he might perhaps do some of the things in the world that are worth doing. You see how foolish I was," she ended, with a tremulous little smile.
Rendel, in spite of his gravity, experience and intuitive understanding, had a sudden and almost bewildering sense of a change of mental focus as he heard the wise, gentle adviser confiding in her turn, and confessing to foolish and unfulfilled illusions. He felt a passionate desire to be of use to her.
"I should have been quite content if he had been like you," she said, and she held out her hand, which he instinctively raised to his lips.
"You make me very happy," he said. "You make me hope."
"But," she said, trying to speak in her ordinary voice, "—perhaps I ought to have begun by saying this—I wonder if Rachel is the right sort of wife for a rising politician?"
"She is the right sort of wife for me," said Rendel. "That is all that matters."
"I'm afraid," Lady Gore said, "she isn't ambitious."
"Afraid!" said Rendel.
"She has no ardent political convictions."
"I have enough for both," said Rendel.
"And—and—such as she has are naturally her father's, and therefore opposed to yours."
"Then we won't talk about politics," Rendel said, "and that will be a welcome relief."
"I'm afraid also," the mother went on, smiling, "that she is not abreast of the age—that she doesn't write, doesn't belong to a club, doesn't even bicycle, and can't take photographs."
"Oh, what a perfect woman!" ejaculated Rendel.
"In fact I must admit that she has no bread-winning talent, and that in case of need she could not earn her own livelihood."
"If she had anything to do with me," said Rendel, "I should be ashamed if she tried."
"She is not as clever as you are."
"But even supposing that to be true," said Rendel, "isn't that a state of things that makes for happiness?"
"Well," replied Lady Gore, "I believe that as far as women are concerned you are behind the age too."
"I am quite certain of it," Rendel said, "and it is therefore to be rejoiced over that the only woman I have ever thought of wanting should not insist on being in front of it."
"The only woman? Is that so?" Lady Gore asked.
"It is indeed," he said, with conviction.
"And you are—how old?"
"Thirty-two."
"It sounds as if this were the real thing, I must say," she said, with a smile.
"There is not much doubt of that," said he quietly. "There never was any one more certain than I am of what I want."
"That is a step towards getting it," Lady Gore said.
"I believe it is," he said fervently. "You have told me all the things your daughter has not—that I am thankful she hasn't—but I know, besides, the things she has that go to make her the only woman I want to pass my life with—she is everything a woman ought to be—she really is."
"My dear young friend," said Lady Gore, with a shallow pretence of laughing at his enthusiasm, "you really are rather far gone!"
"Yes," said Rendel, "there is no doubt about that. I have not, by the way, attempted to tell you about things that are supposed to matter more than those we have been talking about, but that don't matter really nearly so much—I mean my income and prospects, and all that sort of thing. But perhaps I had better tell Sir William all that."
"You can tell him about your income," said Lady Gore, "if you like."
"I have enough to live upon," the young man said. "I don't think that on that score Sir William can raise any objection."
"Let us hope he won't on any other," she replied. "We must tell him what he is to think."
"And my chances of getting on, though it sounds absurd to say so, are rather good," he went on. "Lord Stamfordham will, I know, help me whenever he can; and I mean to go into the House, and then—oh, then it will be all right, really."
At this moment the door opened and Sir William came in.
"You are the very person we wanted," his wife said.
"You want to apologise to me for the conduct of your party, I suppose," said Gore to Rendel, half in jest, half in earnest, as he shook hands.
"I'm very sorry, Sir William," said Rendel, "if we've displeased you. Pray don't hold me responsible."
"Oh yes," said Lady Gore lightly, to give Rendel time, "one always holds one's political adversary responsible for anything that happens to displease one in the conduct of the universe."
"I hope," said Rendel, trying to hide his real anxiety, "that Sir William will try to forgive me for the action of my party, and everything else. Pray feel kindly towards me to-day."
Sir William looked at him inquiringly, affecting perhaps a more unsuspecting innocence than he was feeling. Rendel went on, speaking quickly and feeling suddenly unaccountably nervous.
"I have come here to tell you—to ask you——" He stopped, then went on abruptly, "This morning, at Maidenhead, I asked your daughter to marry me."
"What, already?" said Sir William involuntarily. "That was very prompt. And what did she say?"
"She said it was impossible," Rendel answered,encouraged more by Gore's manner and his general reception of the news than by his actual words.
"Impossible, did she say?" said Sir William. "And what did you say to that?"
"That I should come here this afternoon," Rendel replied.
Sir William smiled.
"That was prompter still," he said. "It looks as if you knew your own mind at any rate."
"I do indeed, if ever a man did," said Rendel confidently. "And I really do believe that it was because she was a good daughter she said it was impossible."
"Well, if it was, that's the kind that often makes an uncommonly good wife," Sir William said.
"I don't doubt it," Rendel said, with conviction. "And I feel that if only you and Lady Gore——"
He stopped, as the door opened gently, and Rachel appeared, in a fresh white summer gown. She stood looking from one to the other, arrested on the threshold by that strange consciousness of being under discussion which is transmitted to one as through a material medium. Then what seemed to her the full horror of being so discussed swept over her. Was it possible that already the beautiful dream that had surrounded her, that wonderful secret that she had hardly yet whispered to herself, was having the light of day let in upon it, was being handled, discussed, as though it were possible that others might share in it too?
Rendel read in her face what she was going through. He went forward quickly to meet her.
"I am afraid," he said, putting his thoughts into words more literally than he meant, "that I have come too soon. I hope you will forgive me?"
"It is rather soon," Rachel answered, not quite knowing what she was saying.
"But you don't say whether you forgive him or not, Rachel," said Sir William, whose idea of carrying off the situation was to indulge in the time-honoured banter suitable to those about to become engaged.
"Don't ask her to say too much at once," Lady Gore said quickly, realising far better than Rachel's father did what was passing in the girl's mind.
"I'm afraid I can't say very much yet," Rachel said hesitatingly.
"I don't want you to say very much," said Rendel, "or indeed anything if you don't want to," he ended somewhat lamely and entreatingly.
"Miss Tarlton!" announced the servant, throwing the door open.
The four people in the room looked at each other in consternation. Events had succeeded each other so quickly that no one had thought of providing against the contingency of inopportune visitors by saying Lady Gore was not at home. It was too late to do anything now. Miss Tarlton happily had no misgivings about her reception. It never crossed her mind that she could be unwelcome, especially to-day that she had brought with her some photographs taken from the Gores' own balcony some weeks before, on the occasion of some troops having passed along Prince's Gate. She had half suggested on that occasion that she should come, in order that she might have a post of vantage from which to take some of the worst photographs in London, and the Gores had not had the heart to refuse her. If she had had any doubt, however—which she had not—about her hosts' feelings in the matter, she would have felt that she had now made up for everything by bringing them the result of her labours, and that nothing could be more opportune or more agreeable than her entrance on this particular occasion.
Miss Tarlton was a single woman of independent means living alone, a destiny which makes it almost inevitable that there should be a luxuriant growth of individual peculiarities which have never needed to accommodate themselves to the pressure of circumstances or of companionship. She was perfectly content with her life, and none the less so although those to whom she recounted the various phases of it were not so content at second hand with hearing the recital of it. She was one of those fortunate persons who have a hobby which takes the place of parents, husband, children, relations—a hobby, moreover, which appears to afford a delight quite independent of the varying degrees of success with which it is pursued. Unhappily the joy of those who thus pursue a much-loved occupation is bound to overflow in words; and if they have nodaily auditor within their own four walls, they are driven by circumstances to choose their confidants haphazard when they go out. Miss Tarlton's confidences, however, were all of an optimistic character: she inflicted on her hearers no grievances against destiny. She recorded her vote, so to speak, in favour of content, and thereby established a claim to be heard.
To see her starting on one of her photographing expeditions was to be convinced that she considered the scheme of the universe satisfactory, as she went off with her felt hat jammed on to her head, with an air, not of radiant pleasure perhaps, but of faith in her occupation of unflinching purpose. With her camera slung on to her bicycle and her fat little feet working the pedals, she had the air of being the forerunner of a corps of small cyclist photographers. Life appealed to Miss Tarlton according to its adaptability to photography. For this reason she was not preoccupied with the complications of sentiment or of the softer emotions which not even the Röntgen rays have yet been able to reproduce with a camera.
"How do you do, Lady Gore?" she said as she came in. "I am later than I meant to be. I was so afraid I should not get here to-day, but I knew how anxious you would be to see the photographs."
"How kind of you!" Lady Gore said vaguely, for the moment entirely forgetting what the photographs were.
Miss Tarlton, after greeting the other membersof the party, and making acquaintance with Rendel, all on her part with the demeanour of one who quickly despatches preliminaries before proceeding to really important business, drew off her gloves, displaying strangely variegated fingers, and proceeded to take from the case she was carrying photographs in various stages of their existence.
"I have brought you the negatives of one or two," she said, holding one after another up to the light, "as I didn't wait to print them all. Ah, here is one. This is how you must hold it, look."
Lady Gore tried to look at it as though it were really the photograph, and not the equilibrium of a most difficult situation, that she was trying to poise. Sir William was about to propose to Rendel to come down with him to his study, but Miss Tarlton obligingly included everybody at once in the concentration upon her photographs which she felt the situation demanded.
"Look, Sir William," she said. "I am sure you will be interested in this one. That is Lord X. He is a little blurred, perhaps; still, when one knows who it is, it is a very interesting memento, really. Look, Miss Gore, this is the one I did when we were standing together. Do you remember?"
"Oh! yes, of course," Rachel said. She did, as a matter of fact, very well remember the occasion, the length of time that had been necessary to adjust the legs of the camera, which appeared to have a miraculous power of interweaving themselves into the legs of the spectators; the piercing cry fromMiss Tarlton at the feather of another lady's hat coming across the field of vision just as the troops came within focus; and a general sense of agitation which had prevented any one in the photographer's immediate surroundings from contemplating with a detached mind the military spectacle passing at their feet.
"These plates are really too small," said Miss Tarlton; "I have been wishing ever since that I had brought my larger machine that day." Her hearers did not find it in their hearts to echo this wish. "Of course, though, a small machine is most delightfully convenient. It is so portable, one need never be without it. I am told there is quite a tiny one to be had now. Have you seen it, Sir William?"
"No, I haven't," said Sir William, in an entirely final and decided manner. Miss Tarlton turned to Rendel as though to ask him, but saw that he was standing apart with Rachel, apparently deep in conversation. She felt that it was rather hard on Rachel to be called away when she might have been enjoying the photographs.
"Do you know whether Mr. Rendel photographs?" she said to Lady Gore, in a more subdued tone.
"I really don't know; I think not," Lady Gore said, amused in spite of herself at her husband's rising exasperation, although she was conscious of sharing it.
"Rendel," said Sir William, obliged to let hisfeelings find vent in speech at the expense of his discretion, "Miss Tarlton is asking whether you photograph?"
"I'm afraid I don't," said Rendel.
"Ah, I thought not," said Sir William, giving a sort of grunt of satisfaction.
"It is only..." said Miss Tarlton, who had relapsed into her photographs again, and was therefore constrained to speak in the sort of absent, maundering tone of people who try to frame consecutive sentences while they are looking over photographs or reading letters—"ah—this is the one I wanted you to see, Lady Gore——"
"Oh! yes, I see," said Lady Gore, mendaciously as to the spirit, if not to the letter, for she certainly did not see in the negative held up by Miss Tarlton, which appeared to the untutored mind a square piece of grey dirty glass with confused black smudges on it, all that Miss Tarlton wished her to behold there. Then she became aware of a welcome interruption.
"How do you do, Mr. Wentworth?" she said, putting down the photograph with inward relief, as a tall young man with a fair moustache and merry blue eyes came into the room.
"Photographs?" he said, after exchanging greetings with his host and hostess, nodding to Rendel and bowing to Rachel.
"Yes," said Lady Gore. "Now you shall give your opinion."
"I shall be delighted," he said. "I have got heaps of opinions."
"Do you photograph?" said Miss Tarlton, with a spark of renewed hope.
"I am sorry to say I don't," answered Wentworth. "I believe it is a charming pursuit."
"It is an inexhaustible pleasure," said Miss Tarlton, with conviction.
"I congratulate you," said Wentworth, "on possessing it."
"Yes," said Miss Tarlton solemnly, "I lead an extremely happy life. I take out my camera every day on my bicycle, and I photograph. When I get home I develop the photographs. I spend hours in my dark room."
"It is indeed a happy temperament," said Wentworth, "that can find pleasure in spending hours in a dark room."
"Have you ever tried it?" said Miss Tarlton.
"Certainly," said Wentworth. "In London in the winter, when it is foggy, you know."
"Oh," said Miss Tarlton, again with unflinching gravity. "I don't think you quite understand what I mean. I mean in a photographic dark room, developing, you know."
"I see," said Wentworth. "When I am in a dark room in the winter I generally develop theories."
"Develop what?" said Miss Tarlton.
"Theories, about smuts and smoke, you know; things people write to the papers about in the winter," said Wentworth, whose idea of conversation was to endeavour to coruscate the whole time. Itis not to be wondered at, therefore, if the spark was less powerful on some occasions than on others.
"Oh," said Miss Tarlton, not in the least entertained.
Wentworth, a little discomfited, could for once think of nothing to say.
"I suppose," said Miss Tarlton, still patiently pursuing her investigations in the same hopeless quarter, "you don't know the name of that quite, quite new and tiny machine?"
"Machine? What sort of machine?" said Wentworth.
"A camera," said Miss Tarlton, with an inflection in her tone which entirely eliminated any other possibility.
"No, I'm afraid I don't," said Wentworth. "I don't know the name of any cameras, except that their family name is legion."
"What?" said Miss Tarlton.
"Legion," said Wentworth again, crestfallen.
"Oh," said Miss Tarlton.
"Pateley would be the man to ask," said Wentworth, desperately trying to put his head above the surface.
"Pateley? Is that a shop?" said Miss Tarlton eagerly. "Where?"
"A shop!" said Sir William, laughing. "I should like to see Pateley's face"—but the door opened before he completed his sentence, and his wish, presumably not formed upon æsthetic grounds, was fulfilled.
Robert Pateley was a journalist, and a successful man. Some people succeed in life because they have certain qualities which enlist the sympathy and co-operation of their fellow-creatures; others, without such qualities, yet succeed by having a dogged determination and power of push which make them independent of that sympathy and co-operation. Robert Pateley was one of the latter. When he was discussed by two people who felt they ought to like him, they said to one another, "What is it about Pateley that puts people off, I wonder? Why can't one like him more?" and then they would think it over and come to no conclusion. Perhaps it was that his journalism was of the very newest kind. He was certainly extremely able, although his somewhat boisterous personality and entirely non-committal conversation did not give at the first meeting with him the impression of his being the sagacious and keen-witted politician that he really was. Was it his laugh that people disliked? Wasit his voice? It could not have been his intelligence, which was excellent, nor yet his moral character, which was blameless. In fact, in a quiet way, Pateley had been a hero, for he had been left, through his father's mismanagement of the family affairs, with two sisters absolutely on his hands, and he had never, since undertaking the whole charge of them, for one instant put his own welfare, advancement or interest before theirs. Absorbed in his resolute purpose, he had coolness of head and determination enough to govern his ambitions instead of letting himself be governed by them. The son of a solicitor in a country town, he had made up his mind that, as he put it to himself, he would be "somebody" some day. He had got to the top of the local grammar school, and tasted the delights of success, and he determined that he would continue them in a larger sphere. It is not always easy to draw the line between conspicuousness and distinction. Pateley, who went along the path of life like a metaphorical fire-engine, had very early become conspicuous; he had gone steadily on, calling to his fellow-creatures to get out of his way, until now, as steerer of theArbiter, a dashing little paper that under his guidance had made a sudden leap into fame and influence, he was a personage to be reckoned with, and it was evident enough in his bearing that he was conscious of the fact.
Such was the person who, almost as his name was on Sir William Gore's lips, came cheerfully, loudly, briskly into the room, including everybody in theheartiest of greetings, stepping at once into the foreground of the picture, and filling it up.
"Did I hear you say that you would like to see my face, Gore? How very polite of you! most gratifying!" he said with a loud laugh, which seemed to correspond to his big and burly person.
"You did," said Sir William. "Wentworth says you know everything about photography."
"Ah! now, that," said Pateley, galvanised into real eagerness and interest as he turned round after shaking hands with Lady Gore, "I really do know at this moment, as I have just come from the Photographic Exhibition."
"Oh!" said Miss Tarlton with an irrepressible cry, the ordinary conventions of society abrogated by the enormous importance of the information which she felt was coming.
"Let me introduce you to Miss Tarlton," said Sir William. Miss Tarlton bowed quickly, and then proceeded at once to business.
"Do you know the name of a quite tiny camera?" she said; "the very newest?"
"I do," said Pateley. "It is the 'Viator,' and I have just seen it." A sort of audible murmur of relief ran through the company at this burning question having been answered at last. "And it is only by a special grace of Providence," Pateley went on, "assisted by my high principles, that that machine is not in my pocket at this moment."
"Oh! I wish it were!" said Miss Tarlton.
"I'm afraid it may be before many days are over,"said Pateley. "I never saw anything so perfect. And do you know, it takes a snapshot in a room even just as well as in the open air. If I had it in my hand I could snap any one of you here, at this moment, almost without your knowing anything about it."
"I am so glad you haven't," Lady Gore couldn't help ejaculating.
"The man who was showing it took one of me as I turned to look at it. It is perfectly wonderful."
"And that in a room?" Miss Tarlton said, more and more awestruck. "And simply a snapshot, not a time exposure at all?"
"Precisely," Pateley said.
"I shall go and see it," Miss Tarlton said, and, notebook in hand, she continued with a businesslike air to write down the particulars communicated by Pateley.
"I am quite out of my depth," Lady Gore said to Wentworth. "What does a 'time exposure' mean?"
"Heaven knows," said Wentworth. "Something about seconds and things, I suppose."
"I can never judge of how many seconds a thing takes," said Lady Gore.
"I'm sure I can't," Wentworth replied. "The other day I thought we had been three-quarters of an hour in a tunnel and we had only been two minutes and a half."
"Now then," Pateley said with a satisfied air, turning to Sir William, "I have cheered MissTarlton on to a piece of extravagance." Sir William felt a distinct sense of pleasure. "I have persuaded her to buy a new machine."
"The thing that amuses me," said Sir William with some scorn, having apparently forgotten which of his pet aversions had been the subject of the conversation, "is people's theory that when once you have bought a bicycle it costs you nothing afterwards."
"It is not a bicycle, Sir William, it is a camera," said Miss Tarlton, with some asperity.
"Oh, well, it is the same thing," Sir William said.
"The same thing?" Miss Tarlton repeated, with the accent of one who feels an immeasurable mental gulf between herself and her interlocutor.
"As to results, I mean," he said. Arrived at this point Miss Tarlton felt she need no longer listen, she simply noted with pitying tolerance the random utterance. "A camera costs very nearly as much to keep as a horse, what with films and bottles of stuff, and all the other accessories. And as for a bicycle, I am quite sure that you have to count as much for mending it as you do for a horse's keep."
"The really expensive thing, though, is a motor," said Wentworth. "Lots of men nowadays don't marry because they can't afford to keep a wife as well as a motor."
Rendel, who was standing by Rachel's side at the tea-table, caught this sentence. He looked up at her with a smile. She blushed.
"I have no intention of keeping a motor," he said. Rachel said nothing.
"Are you very angry with me?" Rendel said.
"I am not sure," she answered. "I think I am."
"You mustn't be—after saving my life, too, this morning, in the boat."
"Saving your life?" said Rachel, surprised.
"Yes," Rendel said. "By not steering me into any of the things we met on the Thames."
"Oh!" said Rachel, smiling, "I am afraid even that was more your doing than mine, as you kept calling out to me which string to pull."
"Perhaps. But the extraordinary thing was that when you were told you did pull it," said Rendel.
"Oh, any one can do that," replied Rachel.
"I beg your pardon, it is not so simple," Rendel answered, thinking to himself, though he had the good sense at that moment not to formulate it, what an adorable quality it would be in a wife that she should always pull exactly the string she was told to pull.
"I've been asking Sir William if I may come and speak to him...." he said in a lower tone. "He said I might." Rachel was silent. "You don't mind, do you?" he said, looking at her anxiously.
"I—I—don't know," Rachel said. "I feel as if I were not sure about anything—you have done it all so quickly—I can't realise——"
"Yes," he said penitently, "I have done it all very quickly, I know, but I won't hurry you to give meany answer. My chief's going away to-morrow for ten days, and I am afraid I must go too, but may I come as soon as I am back again?"
"Yes," said Rachel shyly.
"And perhaps by that time," he said, "you will know the answer. Do you think you will?" Rachel looked at him as her hand lay in his.
"Yes, by that time I shall know," she said.
As Rendel went out a few minutes later he was dimly conscious of meeting an agitated little figure which hurried past him into the room. Miss Judd was a lady who contrived to reduce as many of her fellow-creatures to a state of mild exasperation during the day as any female enthusiast in London, by her constant haste to overtake her manifold duties towards the human race. Those duties were still further complicated by the fact that she had a special gift for forgetting more things in one afternoon than most people are capable of remembering in a week.
"My dear Jane, how do you do?" said Lady Gore. "We have not seen you for an age."
"No, Cousin Elinor, no," said Miss Judd, who always spoke in little gasps as if she had run all the way from her last stopping-place. "I have been so frightfully busy. Oh, thank you, William, thank you; but do you know, that tea looks dreadfully strong. In fact, I think I had really better not have any. I wonder if I might have some hot water instead? Thank you so much. Thank you, dear Rachel—simply water, nothing else."
"That doesn't sound a very reviving beverage," said Lady Gore.
"Oh, but it is, I assure you," said Miss Judd. "It is wonderful. And, you see, I had tea for luncheon, and I don't like to have it too often."
"Tea for luncheon?" said Sir William.
"Yes, at an Aërated Bread place," she replied, "near Victoria. I have been leaving the canvassing papers for the School Board election, and I had not time to go home."
"What it is to be such a pillar of the country!" said Lady Gore laughing.
"You may laugh, Cousin Elinor," Miss Judd said, drinking her hot water in quick, hurried sips, "but I assure you it is very hard work. You see, whatever the question is that I am canvassing for, I always feel bound to explain it to the voters at every place I go to, for fear they should vote the wrong way: and sometimes that is very hard work. At the last General Election, for instance, I lunched off buns and tea for a fortnight."
"Good Lord!" said Sir William to Pateley as they stood a little apart. "Imagine public opinion being expounded by people who lunch off buns!"
"And the awful thing, do you know," said Pateley laughing, "is that I believe those people do make a difference."
"It is horrible to reflect upon," said Sir William.
"By the way," said Pateley, with a laugh, "your side is going in for the sex too, I see. Is it true that you are going to have a Women's Peace Crusade?"
"Yes," said Sir William with an expression of disgust, "I believe that it is so.Mywomenkind are not going to have anything to do with it, I am thankful to say."
"Oh, yes, I saw about that Crusade," said Wentworth, joining them, "in theTorch."
"Don't believe too firmly what theTorchsays—or indeed any newspaper—ha, ha!" said Pateley.
"I should be glad not to believe all that I see in theArbiter, this morning," Sir William said. "Upon my word, Pateley, that paper of yours is becoming incendiary."
"I don't know that we are being particularly incendiary," said Pateley, with the comfortable air of one disposing of the subject. "It is only that the world is rather inflammable at this moment."
"Well, we have had conflagrations enough at the present," said Sir William. "We want the country to quiet down a bit."
"Oh! it will do that all in good time," said Pateley. "I am bound to say things are rather jumpy just now. By the way, Sir William, I wonder if you know of any investment you could recommend?"
Wentworth discreetly turned away and strolled back to Lady Gore's sofa.
"I rather want to know of a good thing for my two sisters who are living together at Lowbridge. I have got a modest sum to invest that my father left them, and I should like to put it into something that is pretty certain, but, if possible, that will give them more than 2 ½ per cent."
"Why," said Sir William, "I believe I may know of the very thing. Only it is a dead secret as yet."
"Hullo!" said Pateley, pricking up his ears. "That sounds promising. For how long?"
"Just for the moment," said Sir William. "But of necessity the whole world must know of it before very long."
"Well, if it really is a good thing let us have a day or two's start," said Pateley laughing.
"All right, you shall," said Sir William. "You shall hear from me in a day or two."
The days had passed. The great scheme of "The Equator, Ltd.," was before the world, which had received it in a manner exceeding Fred Anderson's most sanguine expectations. The possibilities and chances of the mine, as set forth by the experts, appeared to be such as to rouse the hopes of even the wary and experienced, and Anderson had no difficulty of forming a Board of Directors most eminently calculated to inspire confidence in the public—none the less that they were presided over by a man who, if not possessed of special business qualifications, was of good social position and bore an honourable name. Sir William Gore, the Chairman of the company, was well pleased. He invested largely in the undertaking. The savings of the Miss Pateleys, under the direction of their brother, had gone the same way. TheArbiterhad indeed reason to cheer on the Cape to Cairo railway, which day by day seemed more likely of accomplishment.
Sir William, on the afternoon of the day when the success of the company was absolutely an assured fact, came back to his house from the city, satisfiedwith the prospects of the "Equator," with himself, and with the world at large. He put his latchkey into the door and looked round him a moment before he went in with a sense of well-being, of rejoicing in the summer day. Then as he stepped into the house he became conscious that Rachel was standing in the hall waiting for him, with an expression of dread anxiety on her face. The transition of feeling was so sudden that for a moment he hardly realised what he saw—then quick as lightning his thoughts flew to meet that one misfortune that of all others would assail them both most cruelly.
"Rachel!" he said. "Is your mother ill?"
"Yes," the girl answered. "Oh, father, wait," she said, as Sir William was rushing past her, and she tried to steady her quivering lips. "Dr. Morgan is there."
"Morgan—you sent for him...." said Gore, pausing, hardly knowing what he was saying. "Rachel ... tell me...?"
"She fainted," the girl said, "an hour ago. And we couldn't get her round again. I sent—ah! there he is coming down." And a steady, slow step, sounding to the two listeners like the footfall of Fate, was heard coming down from above. Sir William went to meet the doctor, knowing already what he was going to hear.
Lady Gore died that night, without regaining consciousness. Hers had been the unspeakable privilege of leaving life swiftly and painlessly without knowing that the moment had come. Shehad passed unconsciously into that awful gulf, without having had to stand for a moment shuddering on the brink. She had never dreaded death itself, but she had dreaded intensely the thought of old age, of a lingering illness and its attendant horrors. But none of these she had been called upon to endure: even while those around her were looking at the beautiful aspect of life that she presented to them the darkness fell, leaving them the memory only of that bright image. Her daughter's last recollection of her had been the caressing endearment with which Lady Gore had deprecated Rachel's remaining with her till Sir William's return—how thankful the girl was to have remained!—her husband's last vision of her, the smiling farewell with which she had sped him on his way in the morning, with a caution as to prudence in his undertakings. As he came back he had found himself telling her already in his mind, before he was actually in her presence, of what he had done. That was the thing which gave an edge to every action, to each fresh development of existence. Life was lived through again for her, and acquired a fresh aspect from her interest and sympathy, from her keen, humorous insight and far-seeing wisdom. But now, what would his life be without that light that had always shone on his path? He did not, he could not, begin to think about the future. He knew only that the present had crumbled into ruins around him. That, he realised the next morning when, after some snatches of uneasy sleep, he suddenly wakened with a sense ofabsolute horror upon him, before he remembered shuddering what that horror was. He had wanted to tell her about yesterday, about the "Equator," he said to himself with a dull aching pain almost like resentment—he wanted to have her approval, to have the sense that for her what he did was right, was wise. But he knew now in his heart, as he really had known all the time, that it was she who had been the wise one. And part of the horror, as the time went on, would be to realise that when she had gone out of the world something had gone out of himself too, which she had told him was there. And he had dreamt that it was true. But that would come when the details of misery were realised by him one by one, as after some hideous explosion it is not possible to see at once in the wreck made by the catastrophe all the ghastly confirmations of disaster that come to light with the days. The first days were not the worst, either for him or for Rachel, as each one of them afterwards secretly found. For though life had come to a standstill, had stopped dead, with a sudden shock that had thrown everything in it out of gear, there were at first new and strange duties to be accomplished that filled up the hours and kept the standards of ordinary existence at bay. There were letters of condolence to be answered, tributes of flowers to be acknowledged, sent by well-meaning friends moved by some impotent impulse of consolation, until the air became heavy with the scent of camellias and lilies. Rachel moved about in the darkened rooms, feeling as if thefaint, sweet, overpowering perfume were a kind of anodyne, that was mercifully, during those early days, lulling her senses into lethargy. To the end of her days the scent of the white lily would bring back to her the feeling of actually living again through that first time of numbing grief. How many hours, how many days and nights she and her father had lived within that quiet sanctuary they could not have told—lived in the dark stillness, with one room, the stillest of all, containing the beloved something strangely aloof all that was left of the thing that had been their very life. Then out of that quiet hallowed darkness they came one dreadful day into the brilliant sunlight, a day that was lived through with the acutest pain of all, of which every detail seemed to have been arranged by a horrible cruel convention of custom in order to intensify the pangs of it. They drove at a foot's pace through the crowded, sunlit streets, with a shrinking agony of self-consciousness as one and another passer-by looked up for a moment at what was passing. "Look, Jim, 'ere's a funeral!" one small boy called to another—and Rachel, shuddering, buried her face in her hands and could have cried out aloud. Some men, not all, lifted their hats; two gaily-dressed women who were just going to cross stopped as a matter of course on the pavement and waited indifferently, hardly seeing what it was, until the obstruction had gone by, as they would have done had it been anything else. Rachel, leaning back by her father, trying to hide herself, yet felt as if shecould not help seeing everything they met. Every step of the way was a slow torture. And oh, the return home! that drive, at a brisk trot this time, through the same crowded, unfeeling streets, which still retained the association of the former progress through them, the sense that now, as the coachman whipped up his horses, for every one save for the two desolate people who sat silently together inside the carriage, life might—indeed, would—throw off that aspect of gloom and go on as before! And then the worst moment of all, the finding on their return that the house had taken on a ghastly semblance of its usual aspect, that the blinds were up, the windows open, the sun streaming in everywhere—the hard, cruel light, as it seemed to Rachel, shining into the rooms that were for evermore to be different.
Then followed the time which is incomparably the worst after a great loss, the time when, ordinary life being taken up again, the sufferer has the additional trial of too large an amount of leisure on his hands—the horror of all those new spare hours that used to be passed in a companionship that is gone, that must be filled up with something fresh unless they are to stand in wide, horrible emptiness, to assail recollection with unendurable grief. And especially in that house were they empty, where the existence of both father and daughter had revolved round that of another to a greater extent than that of most people. The problem of how to readjust the daily conditions was a hard, hard one to solve, harder obviously for Sir William than it was for Rachel.The girl was uplifted in those days by the sense that, however difficult she might find it to carry out in detail, the general scheme of her life lay clear before her. She was going to devote it to her father, she was going to carry out that unmade promise, which she now considered more binding on her than ever, although her mother had warned her against making it, the promise that her father should come first. But the warning at the moment it was made had not been accepted by Rachel, and in the exaltation of her self-sacrifice it was forgotten now. She saw her way, as she conceived, plainly in front of her. Rendel, with his usual understanding and wisdom, did not obtrude himself on her during those days. He had quite made up his mind not to ask for her decision until there might be some hope of its being made in his favour. He had felt Lady Gore's death as acutely as though he had the right of kinship to grieve for her. He was miserably conscious that something inestimably precious had gone out of his life, almost before he had had time to realise his happiness in possessing it. But neither he nor Rachel understood what Lady Gore's death had meant to Sir William. And the poor little Rachel, rudderless, bewildered, tried to do the best she could for her father's life by planning her own with absolute reference to it, by putting at his disposal all the bare, empty hours available for companionship which up to now had been so straitly, so tenderly, so happily filled. And he on his side, conscious of some of her purpose, but unaware of the extent towhich she carried her deliberate intention of consecrating herself to him, of bearing the burden of his destiny, believed that he had to bear the overwhelming burthen of guiding hers. Instead of going in the late afternoon hours of those summer days to his club, where he would have found some companionship that was not associated with his grief, and passing an hour agreeably, he wistfully went home, feeling that Rachel would be expecting him. And Rachel on her side felt it a duty to put away any regular occupation that might have proved engrossing, and so to ordain her life that she should be always ready and at her father's orders if he should appear. And, thus deliberately cutting themselves loose from such minor anchorages as they might have had, they tried to delude themselves into the belief that not only was such makeshift companionship a solace, but that it actually was able to replace that other all-satisfying companionship they had lost. But they knew in their hearts, each of them, that it was not so. And Sir William realised, more perhaps than Rachel did, that it never could be. The relation between a father and daughter, when most successful, is formed of delightful discrepancies and differences, supplementing one another in the things that are not of each age. It means a protecting care on the side of the father, an amused tender pride in seeing the younger creature developing an individuality which, however, is hardly in the secret soul of the elder one quite realised or believed in. The experience of the man in such a relation has mainly been derived from women of his own standing; his judgment of his daughter is apt to be a good deal guesswork. The daughter, on the other hand, brings to the relation elements necessarily and absolutely absent on the other side. If she cares for her father as he does for her, she looks up to him, she admires him, she accepts from him numberless prejudices and rules about the government of life, and acts upon them, taking for granted all the time that he cannot understand her own point of view. And yet, even so constituted, it can be one of the most beautiful and even satisfying combinations of affection the world has to show, provided the father has not known what it is to have the fulness of joy in his companionship with his wife, in that equal experience, mutual reliance, understanding of hopes and fears, which is impossible when the understanding is being interpreted through the imagination only, by one standing on a different plane of life. Neither Rachel nor her father had realised all this; but the mother with her acuter sensibilities had known, and had so deliberately set herself to fulfil her task that they had all these years been interpreted to one another, as it were, by that other influence that had surrounded them, that atmosphere through which everything was seen aright and in its most beautiful aspect. And the time came when Sir William suddenly grasped with a burning, startling vividness the fact that his life could not be the same again, that he must henceforth take it on alower plane. The day was fine and bright—too warm, too bright; the hopeful light of spring had given place to the steady glare of summer. He had been used before to go out riding with Rachel in the early morning, in order to be back by the time Lady Gore was ready to begin her day. They had tacitly abandoned this habit now. Then one day it occurred to Sir William that it might be a good thing for Rachel to resume it. He proposed to her that they should go out as they used. She, in her inmost heart shrinking from it, but thinking it would be a satisfaction to him, agreed. He, shrinking from it as much as she did, thought to please her. And so they went out and rode silently side by side, overpowered by mute comparison of this day with days that had been. And when they got home they went each their own way, and made no attempt at exchanging words. Sir William went miserably to his study, his heart aching with a rush of almost unbearable sorrow as he thought of the bright little room upstairs to which he had been wont to hurry for the welcome that always awaited him. What should he do with his life? How should he fill it? he asked himself in a burst of grief, as he shut himself in. And so much had the theory, firmly believed in by himself and his wife, that he had by his own free will, and in order to devote his life to her, abandoned any quest of a public career become an absolute conviction in his mind, that he felt a dull resentment at having been so noble. He recognised now that it had been quixotic. He had let the timepass. Fifty-five! To be sure, in these days it is not old age; it may, indeed, under certain circumstances be the prime of life, for a man who has begun his career early, political or otherwise. Had this been Sir William's lot he could have sought some consolation, or at any rate alleviation, in his misfortune, by turning at once to his work and plunging into it more strenuously than before. But even that mitigation, for so much as it might be worth, was denied to him. And he sat there, trying to face the fact that seemed almost incredible to a man of what seemed to him his aptitudes and capacity, the awful fact that he had not enough to do to fill up his life. He did not state this pitiless truth to himself explicitly, but it was beginning to loom from behind a veil, and he would some day be forced to look at it. He could not start anything fresh. He had not the requisite impulse. He could have continued, he could not begin; the theatre of his actions, as Lady Gore had foreseen, had indeed fallen when she fell, and without it he could initiate no fresh achievements. Oh, to have had something definite to turn to in those days, something that called for instant completion! To have had some inexorable daily task, some duty for which he was paid, in a government office, or in some private undertaking of his own, for which he would have been obliged, like so many other men, to leave his house at a fixed hour, and to be absorbed in other preoccupations till his return. What a physical, material relief he would have found in such a claim!Round most men of his age life has woven many interests, many ties, many calls, on their time and energies from outside as well as from those near to them, but all those spare, available energies of his had been absorbed and appropriated, filled up, nearer home, and so completely that he had never needed anything else. And now, whither should he turn? What should he do? Then he remembered his Book, the Book his wife and he had been accustomed to talk of with such confidence, such certainty—he now realised how very little there was of it done, or how much of what might be fruitful in the conception was owing to the way that she, in their talking over it, had held it up to him, so that now one light played round it, now another. Well he remembered how, only two days before she was taken ill, they had talked of it for a long time until she, with an enthusiasm that made it seem already a completed masterpiece, had said with a smile, "Now then, all that remains is to write it!" And he had almost believed, as he left her, that it would spring into life some day, that it would not only hold the place in his life of the Great Possibility that is necessary to us all, but that he would actually put his fate to the proof by carrying it into execution. He took out the portfolio in which were the notes he had made about it now and again. They bore the seared outward aspect of an entirely different mental condition from that with which they came in contact now. What is that subtle, mocking change that comes over even the inanimate thingsthat we have not seen since we were happy, and now meet again in grief? It is like a horrible inversion of the golden touch given to Midas. To Gore, during those days, the darkness fell upon every fresh thing to which he went back. The impression was so strong on him as he turned over the manuscript, that he shuddered. What was the use of all this? What was it worth? He knew in his heart that the person of all others to whom it had been of most worth was gone—he would not be doing good to himself or to any one else by going on with it. He would be defrauding no one by letting the darkness cover it for ever. And another reason yet lay like cold lead at the bottom of his heart—the real, cruel, crushing reason—he could not write the book, he was not capable of writing it. That was the truth. And he desperately thrust the stray leaves into the cover, and the whole thing away from him, hopelessly, finally; there was nothing that would help him. That curtain would never lift again. And he covered his face with his hands as though trying to shut out the deadly knowledge.
But of all this Rachel, as she sat waiting for her father at breakfast, was utterly unconscious. She did not realise the unendurable complications that had piled one misery on another to him. To her the wound had been terrible, but clean. The greatest loss she could conceive had stricken her life, but there were no secondary personal problems to add to it, no preoccupations of self apart from the one great desolation.
Sir William turned over his letters listlessly as he sat down, opened them, and looked through them.
"What am I to say to that?" he said, throwing one over to Rachel.
The colour came into her cheeks as she saw that it was from Rendel.
"I have one from him too," she said.
"Oh! well, I don't ask to see that," Sir William said, with an attempt at cheerfulness. "I know better."
"I would rather you saw it, really, father," and she handed him Rendel's letter to herself—a straightforward, dignified, considerate letter, in which he assured her that he did not mean to intrude himself upon her until she allowed him to come, and that all he asked was that she should understand that he was waiting, and would be content to wait, as long as there was a chance of hope.
"Well, when am I to tell him to come?" Sir William said.
"Father, what he wants cannot be," Rachel said.
"Cannot be?" said Sir William. "Why not?"
"Oh!" Rachel said, trying to command her voice, "I could not at this moment think of anything of that kind."
"At this moment, perhaps," Sir William said. "But you see he is not in a hurry. He says so, at any rate, though I am not sure that it is very convincing."
"How would it be possible," said Rachel, "that I should go away? What would you do if I left you alone?"
"Well, as to that," Sir William replied, speaking slowly in order that he might appear to be speaking calmly, "I don't know, in any case, what I shall do." And his face looked grey and worn, conveying to Rachel, as she looked across at him, an impression of helpless old age in the father who had hitherto been to her a type of everything that was capable and well preserved. She sprang up and went to him.
"Father, dear father," she cried amidst her sobs, as she hid her face on his shoulder. "You know that you are more to me than any one else in the world. Let me help you—let me try, do let me try." And at the sound of the words Gore became again conscious of the immeasurable, dark gulf there was between what one human being had been able to do for him and what any other in the world could try to do. And his own sorrow rose darkly before him and swept away everything else—even the sorrow of his child. It was almost bitterly that he said, as if the words were wrung from him involuntarily—
"Nobody can help me now."
"Oh, father!" Rachel cried again miserably. "Let me try."
"Darling, I know," he said, recollecting himself at the sight of her distress, "and you know what my little girl is to me; but there are some thingsthat even a daughter cannot do. And," he went on, "it would really be a comfort to me, I think, if"—he was going to say, "if you were married," but he altered it as he saw a swift change pass over Rachel's face—"if I knew you were happy; if you had a home of your own and were provided for."
"Do you think that would be a comfort to you?" asked Rachel, trying to speak in an almost indifferent tone. "That you would be glad if I were to go away from you to a home of my own?"
"Yes," he said, "I think it would." And as he spoke he felt that the burden of giving Rachel companionship and trying to help her to bear her grief would be removed from him. "Besides," he went on, with an attempt at a smile, "it is not as if you would go far away from me altogether; you will only be a few streets off, after all. I could come to you whenever I wanted, and even—who knows?—I might sometimes ask you for your hospitality."
"If I thoughtthat——" Rachel said, and caught herself up.
"You know," her father said more seriously, "we have been discussing this from one point of view only, from mine; but you are the person most concerned, and I am taking for granted that, from your point of view, it would be the best thing to do—that you would be happy."
"If I only thought," Rachel said, her face answering his last question, if her words did not,"that you would come to me—that you would be with me altogether——"
"I have no doubt that you would find that I came to you very often," said Sir William, with again a desolate sense of having no definite reason for being anywhere.
There was a pause before he said, "Then I'll tell him to come and see me, and perhaps he can see you afterwards."
"Oh," said Rachel, shrinking, "it is not possible yet."
"Well," said Sir William, "I will tell him so. We will explain to him that, since he is willing to wait, for the moment he must wait."