"Was any one else in the room?" said Stamfordham.
"Yes," said Rendel, and a sudden idea occurred to him, to be dismissed as soon as entertained, "Sir William Gore."
"Gore?" said Stamfordham, looking at Rendel, but forbearing any comment on his father-in-law.
"It was quite impossible," Rendel said decidedly, answering Stamfordham's unspoken words, "that he could have got at the papers; for, as I told you, when I came back again they were exactly where I had left them, and the thing locked with this very complicated key, and he showed it hanging on his chain."
"It is evident," Stamfordham repeated inflexibly, "that some one must have got hold of it with or without your knowledge. I warned you yesterday,you remember, about taking your—any one in your household into your confidence."
"And I did not," Rendel said, grasping his meaning. "My wife did not even know that I had the papers to transcribe. She does not know it now."
Stamfordham paused a moment. He could not in words accuse Rendel's wife, whatever his silence might imply. Then he spoke with emphatic sternness.
"Rendel," he said, "by whatever means the thing happened, we must know how. I must have an explanation."
Rendel was powerless to speak.
"For you must see," Stamfordham went on, "what a terrible catastrophe this might have been—the danger is not over yet, in fact, although I may be strong enough for my colleagues to condone the fact that the public has been told of this before themselves, and the country may be strong enough for foreign Powers to do the same. But, as a personal matter, I must know how it got out, and I repeat, I must have an explanation. For your own sake you must explain."
Rendel felt as if the ground were reeling under his feet.
"I will try," he said, still feeling as if he were in some wild dream.
"When you have made inquiries," Stamfordham said, still speaking in a brief tone of command, "you had better come and tell me the result. I shall be at the Foreign Office till twelve."
"Till twelve. Very well," said Rendel, feeling as if there was a dark chasm between himself and that moment. Mechanically he let Lord Stamfordham out, and stood as the latter mounted and rode away. Then he turned back into the house.
He went into the dining-room first—Rachel was still upstairs—and picked up theArbiteragain, looking at it with this new, terrible interpretation of what he saw in it. There it was, as damning evidence as ever a man was convicted upon, the map that no one but himself and the two principals had seen, reproduced, roughly it is true, but still unmistakably, from the paper that he alone in the house had had in his possession. He turned hurriedly to the brief but guarded commentary evolved at a venture by Pateley, but nevertheless very near the truth. Pateley had played a bold game indeed, but he was playing it as skilfully and watchfully as was his wont. Rendel threw down the paper with a gesture of despair, then clenched his hands. If he had been a woman he would have wept from sheer misery and agitation. But it was of no good to clench his hands in despair; every moment that passed ought to be used to find out the truth of what had happened, to clear himself from that nightmare of suspicion.
He went hurriedly across the hall to his studywith the instinct of one who feels that on the spot itself there may be some suggestion to help discovery. His writing-table was locked. He tried it, shook it. The key, one of a peculiar make, hung always on his watch-chain. It was quite impossible that, save by one who had the key, the table should have been opened. What had he done yesterday? What had happened? And he sat down and buried his face in his hands, concentrating his thoughts, trying to recall every incident. The first time that Stamfordham had come in and given him the rough notes and the map, he, Rendel, had been alone. There was no doubt of that. After that who came in? Rachel? No, Rachel had not been in the room with the papers except just at the end when Rendel was sealing up the packet. Besides, if Rachel had had a hundred secrets in her possession, they would have been as safe as in his own. Then he caught himself up—in his own! after all, he was suspected—so the impossible idea, apparently, could be entertained. Then the thought of Sir William Gore came into his mind, but only to be instantly dismissed, for since the papers were locked up in Rendel's writing-table they must have been as inaccessible to Sir William as though they had been separated from him by the walls of several apartments. And there was one thing pretty certain: Gore, supposing him to be capable of using it, had not got a duplicate key. "Even he," Rendel found himself thinking, "would not do that." He heard Rachel's step swiftly descend the stairs and go intothe dining-room, then she came quickly across the hall to the study.
"Oh, there you are, Frank," she said. "My father is——" then she broke off as she saw that he was apparently buried in painful thought from which he roused himself with a start as she spoke. "Is anything the matter?"
"I will tell you," said Rendel, speaking with an effort.
"May I just ask you something first?" said Rachel hurriedly. "I want some foolscap paper for my father. He is so restless this morning, so impatient."
"It is in there—I told you, didn't I?" said Rendel, turning round and pointing to one of the drawers at the side of his table.
"In that drawer!" said Rachel. "How very stupid of me! I didn't think of that. I thought it was in the top part, and I could only get one sheet out of there."
"The top? Wasn't the top locked?" said Rendel quickly, his whole thought concentrated on the problem before him, and the part of the table must have played in the drama that affected him so nearly.
"Yes, it was," said Rachel smiling, "and I couldn't open it, but there was a little tiny corner of ruled paper sticking out, so I pulled it, and out it came."
Rendel started and looked at her.
"It is sweetly simple," she added.
"Yes," said Rendel, with an energy that surprised her. "It would come out quite easily, of course."
"Frank," she said, surprised, "what is it? You didn't mind my pulling it out, did you?"
"Of course not; I don't mind your doing anything—only—I didn't realise that things could be got out of my writing-table in that way."
"Well, you must be sure to poke them in further next time," Rachel said lightly, shutting again the side drawer to which she had been directed, and out of which she had got some sheets of foolscap. "I will be back directly."
"Wait one moment," said Rendel. "Lord Stamfordham has been here."
"Lord Stamfordham! Since I went upstairs?" said Rachel, standing still in sheer surprise.
"Yes," said Rendel. "Some secret information that—I knew about, has got into the paper and is published this morning."
"Oh, Frank, how terrible!" said Rachel. "How did it happen? Do they mind?"
"Yes, they mind," Rendel said.
"Was that what you saw in the paper," Rachel said, "that excited you so much?"
"Yes," said Rendel.
"I don't wonder," Rachel said, standing with her hand on the handle of the door, an attitude of all others least inviting of confidence. "Who let it out?"
"That is what we want to know," said Rendel. "That is what Lord Stamfordham came here to ask."
"Well, he doesn't think it was you, I suppose," said Rachel, smiling at the absurd suggestion.
"It is quite possible," Rendel said, with a dim idea that he would lead up to the statement, "that he might—that he does."
"What!" said Rachel, opening her eyes wide. "Frank! how absurd!"
"So it seems to me," said Rendel sombrely.
"Too ridiculous!—I'll come down in one moment," Rachel said apologetically. "I don't want to keep my father waiting."
"Don't say anything to him," said Rendel, "of what I have just been saying to you."
"Oh, no, I won't indeed," Rachel said. "He ought not to have anything to excite him to-day," and she went rapidly upstairs.
Rendel, as the door closed behind her, felt for the moment like a man who, shipwrecked alone, has seen a vessel draw near to him and then pass gaily on its way without bringing him help. What was to be done? Again he took hold of the situation and looked it in the face. But now a new light had been thrown upon it by Rachel. If a paper could be taken out in the way that she had shown him, it was possible that Gore might have obtained the map in the same way, though it still seemed to Rendel exceedingly unlikely that, granted he had done so, he would have been able, given the condition he was in, to act upon it soon enough for it to appear this morning. He hesitated a moment, then he made up his mind to wait no longer. He took uptheArbiterand went upstairs to Sir William's room. He met Rachel coming out.
"Oh, thank you," she said, as she saw the paper. "I was just coming down to fetch that. Father would like to see it."
"I thought I would bring it up," Rendel said. "I want to speak to him a moment."
Rachel looked alarmed.
"Frank, you will be careful, won't you?" she said. "He really is not in a fit state to discuss anything this morning."
"I am afraid what I have to say won't wait," Rendel said. "I think I had better speak to him alone." And he quite unmistakably waited for Rachel to go her way before he went into Sir William's room and shut the door. Sir William, wrapped in his dressing-gown, was sitting up in an easy chair. On the table near him were sheets of foolscap paper covered with figures, and lying beside them a letter with a bold, splotchy writing, which he quickly moved out of sight as Rendel came in, a letter that had told him of certain successful financial operations undertaken in the City on his behalf. His face was pale and haggard. He looked up, as he saw Rendel come into the room, with an expression almost of terror, dashed however with resentment. In his mind at that moment, his son-in-law was the embodiment of the fate that, in some incredible way, had, as it were, turned him, Sir William Gore, who had hitherto spent his life in the sunshine of position, of dignity, of the deservedrespect of his fellow-creatures, out into a chill storm of circumstances, absolutely alone, into some terrible world where, instead of walking upright among his fellow-men, he was, by no fault of his own, he kept repeating to himself, hurrying along with a burden on his back, crouching, fearing observation, fearing detection. That burden was almost intolerable. He had been trying to distract his thoughts and seek some cold comfort by making calculations based upon the letter he had received from Pateley, but all the time, behind it lay ice-cold and immovable the thought of the price at which Pateley's co-operation had been bought, of the moment of reckoning with Rendel that must come when the sands should have run out their appointed time. So much had he suffered, so much had he been dominated by this thought, that when the door opened and Rendel finally came in, the moment brought a sort of relief. Rendel, on the other hand, when he saw Sir William looking so old, so white and feeble, suddenly felt his purpose arrested. It was impossible, surely, that this old man, with the worn, handsome face and pathetically anxious expression, could have had a hand in a diabolical machination, and the thought that it was unlikely came to him with a gleam of comfort. Then as quick as lightning came a reaction of wonderment as to what hypothesis was to take the place of this one. At any rate, there was only one thing to be done: to tell Gore the story without a moment's further delay.
"Good morning, Sir William," he said. "Iam sorry to hear you are not well this morning."
"Not very," Gore said, trying to speak calmly, and involuntarily looking at the newspaper in Rendel's hand.
"I hear you were asking for theArbiter," Rendel said.
"Yes, I should like to see it," Gore replied, "when you have done with it."
"I want you to see it," Rendel said. "There is something in it which matters a great deal." Gore felt a sudden grip at his heart. He said nothing. "Here it is," said Rendel, and he handed him the paper, folded so as to show the startling headings in big letters and the rough facsimile of the map. Gore looked at it. The whole thing swam before his eyes; he held it for a moment, trying desperately to think what he had better say, but he could find no anchorage anywhere.
"That is very surprising," he said finally. "As far as I can see, it's—it's a partition of Africa between England and Germany? Is that it? I can't see very well this morning."
"That is it," said Rendel.
"Yes, that is very important," Gore said, leaning back and letting the paper slide from his grasp. "Most important," and he was silent again, waiting in an agony of suspense for what Rendel's next words would be. Rendel, scarcely less agitated, was trying to choose them carefully.
"I am very sorry," he began, "to have to tire andworry you about this when you are not well, but I have a particular reason for talking to you about it."
"Pray go on," Gore managed to say under his breath.
"I have a special reason," said Rendel, "for wanting to remember what happened in my study yesterday afternoon."
"Yesterday afternoon?" said Gore. "Did anything particular happen?"
"That is what I want to know," said Rendel, trying to speak calmly and quietly. "You will oblige me very much if you will try to remember exactly what happened all the time, from the moment you came into the room until you left it."
Gore made an effort to pull himself together. There was no difficulty, alas! for him in remembering every single thing that had taken place—the difficulty was not to show that he remembered too well.
"When I came in," he said, endeavouring to speak in an ordinary tone, "you were at your writing-table."
"I was," said Rendel, watching him.
"And then I sat down in an armchair and read theMayfair Gazette——" and he stopped.
"Yes. All that," Rendel said, "I remember, of course. Thacker came in telling me Lord Stamfordham was there, and I rushed out, shutting the roller top of my writing-table, which closes with a spring. I was especially careful to shut it, as it had valuable papers in it."
"Indeed?" said Sir William, almost inaudibly.
"Yes, and among them," Rendel said, watching the effect of his words, "a map—that map of Africa which is reproduced this morning in theArbiter."
"In your writing-table?" Gore said, with quivering lips.
"Yes, in my writing-table, out of which it must have been taken."
"That is very serious," Gore forced himself to say.
"It is very serious," said Rendel, "as you will see. When I came back and had finished my work on the papers I did them up myself in a packet and sent them to Lord Stamfordham."
"Your messenger was not trustworthy, apparently," said Gore, recovering himself.
"My messenger was Thacker," Rendel said, "who is absolutely trustworthy. Lord Stamfordham himself told me that he had received the packet with my seal intact."
"Still," said Gore, "servants have been known to sell State secrets before now."
"But not Thacker," said Rendel. "However, of course I shall ask him; I must ask every one in the house, for it must have been by some one here that the thing was done, that the map was got out."
"I thought you said the table was locked?"
"It was locked, yes," said Rendel, "but I have learnt this morning that papers can be pulled out from under the lid. Rachel got a piece of foolscap paper for you in that way."
"Did she?" said Gore, feeling that he had unwittingly supplied one link in the chain of evidence.
"There was only one person, so far as I know," said Rendel, "in the room while that paper was in my desk, who could have pulled it out and looked at it, and apparently made an unwarrantable use of it." The question that he expected to hear from Gore did not follow. Rendel waited, then he went on, "That person was—you."
"What do you mean?" said Gore, sitting up, his colour going and coming quickly.
"My words, I think, are quite plain," Rendel said. "I mean that all the evidence, circumstantial, I grant, points—you must forgive me if I am wronging you—to your having taken out the map."
"Will you please give me your reasons for this extraordinary accusation?" said Gore.
"Yes," said Rendel, "I will." And he spoke more and more rapidly as, his self-control at length utterly broken down, and his emotion having gained entire possession of him, he felt the fierce joy of those who, habitually watchful of their words, yield once or twice in their lives to the impulse of letting them flow out unchecked in an overwhelming flood. "You alone were in the room with the papers; your prepossessions are all against us; you spoke yourself just now of the value of a State secret sold in the proper quarter; things are looking ugly about the 'Equator.'"
"Do you mean to hint——" said Gore.
Rendel interrupted him quickly. "No, not tohint," he said; "hinting is not in my line. I dare to say it out. I dare to say that in one of those moments of aberration, of deviation, whatever you choose to call it, that sometimes descend upon the most unlikely people, you pulled that paper out, from idle curiosity, I daresay, and finding out what it was you sent it to theArbiter."
"You did well," said Gore bitterly, "to keep your wife out of the room while you were accusing me. I am old and defenceless," he said, with lips trembling, and again an immense self-pity rushing over him. "I can't answer; I can't reply to a young man's violence."
"I have no intention," Rendel said, still speaking with a passion which intoxicated him, "of being violent, but I must go on with this, for Lord Stamfordham won't rest until it is sifted to the bottom, and he is not a man to be trifled with. And as to your being defenceless, good God! your best defence is Rachel's trust in you and devotion to you. It is because of it that I wanted to spare her the knowledge of what we have been saying. Her faith in your infallibility has always seemed to me so touching that for her sake I have respected it. I have tried—Heaven knows I have tried!—all this time to be to you what she wished me to be." Gore stirred; he was quite incapable of speaking. "This is not the moment," Rendel went on, almost unconscious of his words, which poured out in a flood, "to keep up a hollow mockery of trust and friendship, and it is more honest to tell you fairly that Ihave not entirely shared her faith in you. I have always thought that, like the rest of us after all, you were neither better nor worse than most other fallible people in this world, and that you may be, as I daresay we all are, fashioned by circumstances, or even by temptation. And I tell you frankly that I believe that you did this thing that I accuse you of. How, I demand to know. That, at any rate, is not more than one man may ask of another."
Sir William winced and writhed helplessly under Rendel's words. The intolerable discomfort and misery that he felt as the moment of discovery drew near had given place gradually to a furious resentment at what he was being made to endure at the hands of one who ought not to have presumed to criticise him. As Rendel stood there, his clearly cut face hard and stern, pouring out accusations and reproach, Gore felt as if the younger man embodied all the adverse influences of his own life. It was through Rendel that the fatal opportunity had come of his getting himself into this terrible strait, Rendel: who, most unjustly in the scheme of things, was daring to tax Gore with it. It was too horrible to bear longer. He too felt that the time had come when that with which his heart and soul were overflowing must find vent in speech. As he heard Rendel's words of stern impeachment ringing in his ears, "I tell you frankly that I believe that you did this thing," he rose desperately to his feet.
"Well," he said, casting with a kind of horriblerelief all restraints and prudence to the winds, "what if I had?"
Rendel turned pale.
"If you had?" he said. "You did it, then?"
"If I had," Gore went on quickly, "it wouldn't have been a crime. You can't know how easy it was for the thing to happen. I am not going to tell you—I am not going to justify myself——" And he went on with a passionate need of self-vindication, drawing from his own words the conviction that he had hardly been at fault.
"Sir William," Rendel said hurriedly, "tell me——"
"It is easy enough," said Gore, "for you to talk of faith and trust. You need not grudge my child's faith in me. I have nothing else left now." And as the two men looked at each other each in his soul had a vision of the gracious presence that had always been by Sir William's side: of one who would have believed in him, justified him, if the whole world had accused him. Rendel suddenly paused as he was going to speak.
"Life is very easy for you," Gore went on in a rapid, trembling voice. Oh, the relief of saying it all!
"It is all quite plain sailing for you, you with whom everything succeeds, you who are young and have your life before you. You have time for the things that happen to you to be made right."
"Don't let us discuss all that now," said Rendel, with an effort. "We are talking of something elsethat matters more than I can say. You only can tell me——"
"I will tell you nothing," said Gore loudly, excited and breathless, speaking in gasps. "One day when you are old and alone—and both of these things may come to you as well as to other people—you will understand what all this means to me."
"Father, dear father!" cried Rachel, coming in hurriedly. Anxious and wretched at Rendel's interview with her father being so unduly prolonged, she had wandered upstairs again, and when she heard the excited and angry voices she could bear the suspense no longer. "What is it?"
Gore sank back trembling into his chair as she came in, making signs to her that for the moment he was unable to speak. A glance at him was enough to show that it actually was so.
"Oh, Frank!" she cried, "what have you done? I asked you not to excite him."
"Wait, Rachel, wait!" said Rendel, trying to speak calmly, feeling that everything was at stake. "Sir William, can you not tell me——?"
Gore feebly shook his head.
"Frank!" cried Rachel, amazed at his persistence. "Oh, don't! Let me implore you not to ask him anything more. Frank! do you mind leaving him now? Oh, you must, you must, really. Look at him!"
Sir William, white and exhausted, was leaning back in his chair with his eyes closed. Rendel looked at her face of quivering anxiety as it bent over her father, then turned slowly and left the room.
Rendel came downstairs, hardly conscious of what he was doing, a wild conflict of emotion raging in his mind. He shut himself into his study, and tried to distinguish clearly the threads of motive and conduct that had become so hideously entangled. It sounds a simple thing, doubtless, as well as a praiseworthy one, to discover the doer of an evil deed, to convict him, to bring home to him what he has done, and to prove the innocence of any other who may be suspected. Such a course, when spoken of in general terms, gives a praiseworthy and sustaining sense of a duty accomplished towards society. But it is in reality a much more complicated operation than we are apt to think. The evildoer, unfortunately for our sense of righteousness in prosecuting him, is not always one who has unmixed evil instincts, and nearly every contingency of human conduct becomes, as we contemplate it, many-sided enough to be very confusing. And it was beginning to dawn upon Rendel that, although it may fulfil the ends of abstract justice that the guilty should be exposed and the innocent acquitted, such an acttakes an ugly aspect when the eager pursuer is himself the innocent man who is to be vindicated, and the guilty one a weaker and defenceless person who is to be put in his place. "And yet," he said to himself bitterly, as he tried to think of it impartially, "if it were a question of any one else's reputation and not of my own I should be bound to say who the guilty man was." What was he to do? What could he do? He did not know how long he had been sitting there when Rachel came quickly in.
"Oh! Frank," she said, with a face of alarm, "he's very ill. I'm sure he is. I've sent for Dr. Morgan to come at once. He fainted after you left, and he's only just come round again. Oh! I am terribly anxious," and she looked at him, her lips quivering, then put her hands before her eyes and burst into tears.
Rendel's heart smote him. Everything else, as he looked at her, faded into the background. The thing that mattered was Rachel was the woman he loved. It was he who had brought this grief upon her.
"Darling," he said, "I'm so sorry."
She shook her head and tried to smile.
"Oh," she said, trying to suppress her tears, "I ought not to have left him. I daresay you didn't know, but it has done him the most terrible harm. Did you tell him, then, about—about—the thing you told me of, that you had been suspected—of telling something—what was it?" and she passed her hand over her forehead as if unable to think.
"No," said Rendel, "I didn't tell him thatIhad been accused of it. I daresay he guessed I had. I told him it had happened."
"But, Frank, why did you?" she said. "I implored you not."
"Rachel," he said, "do you realise what it means to me that I should be accused of a thing like this?"
"Of course, yes, of course," she said, evidently still listening for any sound from upstairs. "But still a thing like that, that can be put right in a few minutes, cannot matter so much as life and death...."
And again her voice became almost inaudible.
"There are some things," said Rendel in a low voice, "that matter more to a man than life and death."
"Do you mean to say," said Rachel, "that it matters more that you should be supposed to have done something that you have not done, than that my father should not get well?"
"Supposing your father had been wrongfully accused of something underhand and dishonourable," said Rendel, "would not that matter more to him than—than—anything else?"
Rachel put up her hands with a cry as if to ward off a blow.
"My father!" she said, drawing away from Rendel. "You must not say such a thing. How could it be said?"
"You endure," said Rendel, "that it should be said about me."
"About you! That is different," she said, unable in the tension of her overwrought nerves to choose her words. "You are young, you can defend yourself; but it is cruel, cruel of you to say that it might happen to my father. You don't realise what my father is to me or you couldn't say such things even without meaning them. No, you can't know, you can't understand, or you couldn't, just for your own sake, have gone to him to-day when he is so ill and told him things that excited him."
"I think I do understand," Rendel said, forcing himself to speak calmly. "Of course I know, I have always known, perhaps not quite so clearly as to-day, that—that—he must come first with you."
"Oh! in some ways he must, he must," Rachel said, half entreatingly, yet with a ring of determination in her voice. "I promised my mother that I would, as far as I could, take her place, and while he lives I must. Frank, I would give up my life to save him suffering, as she would have done. Ah! there is Doctor Morgan," and she left the room hastily as a doctor's brougham stopped at the door.
Rendel stood perfectly still, looking straight before him, seeing nothing, but gazing with his mind's eye on a universe absolutely transformed—the bright, dancing lights had gone, it was overspread by a dark, settled gloom. There were sounds outside. He was mechanically conscious of Rachel's hurried colloquy with the doctor in the hall, of their footsteps going upstairs. Then he roused himself.What would the doctor's verdict be? But he could not remain now, he must hear it on his return from the Foreign Office, he must now go as agreed to Lord Stamfordham. But first, for form's sake, he rang for Thacker and questioned him, and through him the rest of the household, without result, except renewed and somewhat offended assurances from Thacker that the packet had been given by himself into Stamfordham's own hands and that, to his knowledge, no one but Sir William Gore had been in the study during Rendel's absence. But Rendel knew in his heart that there was no need to question any one further, and no advantage in doing so, since he knew also that he could not use his knowledge.
He drove rapidly along in a hansom, unconscious of the streets he passed through. Wherever he went he saw only Rachel's face of misery, heard the words, "just for your own sake," that had cut into him as deeply as his own into Gore. Was that it? he asked himself, was it just for his own sake, to clear himself, that he had accused Gore? Well, why else? Once Stamfordham knew that the thing had been done, the secret revealed, the name of the actual culprit would make no real difference. It would make things neither easier nor more difficult for Stamfordham to know that it had been done, not by himself, but by Sir William Gore. But there was one person besides himself and Gore for whom everything hung in the balance, and it was still with Rachel's face before him and her words in his ears, that he went into Lord Stamfordham's private room.
Lord Stamfordham had been writing with a secretary, who got up and went out as Rendel came in. How familiar the room was to Rendel! how incredible it was that day after day he should have come there—was it in some former state of existence?—valued, welcome.
"Well, what have you to tell me?" Stamfordham said quickly.
Rendel's lips felt dry and parched; he spoke with an effort.
"I am afraid," he said in a voice that sounded to him strangely unlike his own, "that I have ... nothing."
"What?" said Stamfordham. "Have you not made any inquiries? Haven't you asked every one in your house?"
"I have made inquiries, yes," said Rendel.
"And do you mean to say that there is nothing that can throw any light upon it, no possible solution?"
"I can throw no light," said Rendel.
"But...." said Stamfordham. "Is this all you are going to say? Have you thought of no possibility? Have you no suggestion to offer?"
"I am afraid," said Rendel again, "that I can offer none."
Lord Stamfordham sat silent for a moment, absolutely bewildered. Part of his exceptional administrative ability was the almost unerring judgment he displayed in choosing those he employed about him, and it was an entirely new experience to him to have to suspect one of them, or to impugn the ordinary code of honourable conduct. He found it extremely difficult, autocrat as he was, to put it into words. He was sore and angry at the grave indiscretion, if not something worse, that had been committed, most of all that it should have been himself, the great officer of state, in whom it was unpardonable to choose the wrong tool, who had put that immeasurably important secret into the hands of a man who had somehow or other let it escape from them; so much could not be denied. It certainly seemed difficult to conceive that it should be Rendel himself who had betrayed it, or that if he had betrayed it he would not admit the fact. And yet—could it be?—there was something in Rendel's demeanour now that made it more possible than it had been an hour ago to credit him with the shameful possibility. The pause during which all this had rushed through Stamfordham's mind seemed to Rendel to have lasted through untold ages of time, when Stamfordham at last spoke again.
"Rendel," he said, "I have a right to demand that you should give me more satisfaction than this. You say you have learnt nothing, and can tell me nothing, but this I find impossible to believe." Rendel made a movement. "I am sorry, but I say this advisedly, since this disclosuremusthave taken place in your house," and he underlined the words emphatically. "I can't think it possible that a man of your intelligence should not have found some clue, some possible suggestion."
"I am very sorry," said Rendel. "I'm afraid I have not."
"Then, of course, it is obvious what conclusion I must come to," said Lord Stamfordham. "That it is not that you cannot give any explanation, but that you decline to give it."
Rendel, to his intense mortification, felt that he was changing colour. Stamfordham, looking at him earnestly, felt absolutely certain that he knew.
"Rendel," he said, gravely, "take my advice before it is too late. Don't let a wish to screen some one else prevent you from speaking. If you have had the misfortune to—let the secret escape you, don't, to shelter the person who published it, withhold the truth now. But I must remind you also," and his words fell like strokes from a hammer, "that I am asking it for my own sake as well as yours. When I brought you those papers, I trusted you fully and unreservedly, and now that this catastrophe has happened in consequence of my confidence in you I am entitled to know what has happened."
"Yes," Rendel said. "I quite see your position, and I know that you have a right to resent mine, but all I can say is that—" he stopped, then went on again with firmer accents, "I don't suppose I can expect you to believe me, but as a matter of fact I can't begin to conceive the possibility of knowingly handing on to some one else such a secret as that."
"Knowingly," said Stamfordham, "perhaps not,"and he waited, to give Rendel one more chance of speaking. But Rendel was silent. Then Stamfordham went on in a different tone and with a perceptibly harsher note in his voice. "My time is so precious that I am afraid if you have nothing further to tell me there is no good in prolonging the interview."
"Perhaps not," said Rendel, who was deadly white, and he made a motion as though to go.
"Do you realise," said Stamfordham, "what this will mean to you?"
"Yes," said Rendel, "I do."
"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 passed 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 passed 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 theinterview 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 passed 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.
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 weightof 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 theArbiter. There it was in big letters, people stopping to read it as they passed: "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 passed—chance acquaintances whom he met in society, and to whom under ordinary circumstances 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 gratitude, that in spite of what had happened they should still be willing to greet him. Good God! wasthatwhat 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 assumed 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 glass of a picture, of its reflection in the brass 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 goodaccount," 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 astonishing 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 noble 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 wishing 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 suffererwho 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 possiblethat 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 sunshine that he had lookedupon 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 passed 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 ofher 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 pronounced 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 passed during the evening of the next day.
Rendel, tossed on a wild storm of clashing 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 thathe 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.
"Lord Stamfordham?" she said, puzzled. "When? I don't know about it."
But the doctor reassured him, and told him that all would come right: she would be herself again, even if she never regained the memory of what had happened before her fall.
"It is a common result of an accident of this kind," he said, "and need give you no special cause for anxiety. I have known two or three cases in which men who have completely recovered in other respects have never regained the memory of what immediately preceded the accident. That girl who was thrown in the Park a month ago, you remember—her horse ran away and threw her over the railings—although she got absolutely right, does not remember what she did that morning, or even the night before. And after all," he added, "it does not seem to me so very desirable that Mrs. Rendel should remember those two particular days she may have lost."
Rendel gave an inward shudder. If he could but have forgotten them too!
"They were full, as I understand, of anxiety and grief about her father's condition."
"They were," said Rendel. "It would be much better if she did not remember them."
"That's right, keep your heart up, then," said Morgan, all unconsciously; "and above all, no excitement for her, no anxiety, no irritation. Change of scene would be good for her, perhaps, and seeing one or two people. If I were you, I should take her to some German baths. On every ground I should think that would be the best thing for her."
See people? Rendel felt, with the sense of having received a blow, what sort of aspect social intercourse presented to him now. But as the days went on Doctor Morgan insisted more strongly on the necessity that Rachel should go for a definite 'cure' somewhere, and recommended a special place, Bad-Schleppenheim.
"Bad-Schleppenheim," he said, "is on the whole as good a place as you could go to."
"But isn't it thronged with English people?" said Rendel.
"Not unduly," said Morgan. "At any rate, I think it is worth trying."
"I wonder if my wife would like it," said Rendel doubtfully.
"I wouldn't tell her," said the doctor, "till it's all settled. That's the way to deal with wives, I assure you."
And with a cheery laugh, Dr. Morgan, who had no wife, went out.
Rachel, however, even after the move abroad so strongly recommended by her doctor had been made, did not all at once regain her normal condition. She appeared to be better in health; she was calmer, her nerves seemed quieter; but a strange dull veil still hung between her mind and the days immediately preceding the great catastrophe. To what had happened the day before her father's death she never referred; she had not asked Rendel anything more about the accusation brought against him. Once or twice she had spoken of her father as if he were still there, then caught herself up, realising that he was gone. Was this how it was always going to be? Rendel asked himself. Would he not again be able to share with her, as far as one human being can share with another, his hopes and his fears, or rather his renunciations? Would she never be able to take part in his life with the sweet, smiling sympathy which had always been so ineffably precious to him? Those days that she had lost were just those that had branded themselves indelibly into his consciousness: the afternoon thatStamfordham had come with the map, the morning following when it had appeared in the newspaper, the scenes with Gore, with Stamfordham,—all those days he lived over and over again, and lived them alone. There was some solace in the thought that if that time were to be to Rachel for ever blurred, she would never be able to recall what had passed between herself and her husband after Rendel had brought on Gore's illness by taxing him with what he had done. And while he struggled with his memories—would he always have to live in the past now instead of in the future?—Rachel, who had been told to be a great deal in the fresh air, passed her time quietly, peacefully, languidly, lying out of doors. They had deemed themselves fortunate in securing in the overcrowded town a somewhat primitive little pavilion belonging to one of the big hotels, of which the charm to Rachel was that it had a shady garden. Rendel, whose time even during the period in which he had had no regular occupation had always been fully occupied, reading several hours a day, making notes on certain subjects about which he meant to write later, became conscious for the first time in his life that the hours hung heavy on his hands. It was with a blank surprise that he realised that such a misfortune, which he had always thought vaguely could befall only the idlers and desultory of this world, should attack himself. Life is always laying these snares for us, putting in our way suddenly and unexpectedly some form of unpleasantness by which we may haveseen others attacked, but from which unconsciously we have felt that we ourselves should be preserved by our own merits,—just as when we are in good health we hear of sciatica, lumbago, or gout, and accept them without concern as part of the composition of the universe, until one day one of these disagreeables attacks ourselves, and stands out quite disproportionately as something that after all is of more consequence than we thought. It unfortunately nearly always happens that we have to face the mental crises of life inadequately prepared. We think we have pictured them beforehand, and according to that picture we are ready, in imagination, with a sufficient equipment of fortitude and decision to enable us to encounter them. In reality we mostly do no better than a traveller who going to an unknown land and climate, guesses for himself beforehand what his outfit had better be, and then finds it deplorably inadequate when he gets there. Rendel, during those days of lonely agony in London that followed the revelations sprung on the public by theArbiter, had endeavoured to school himself to face what the future might have in store 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 been to 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 that it would be some sort of respite from the thing that dogged him now, the fear—for there was no doubt that asthe days went on it grew into a fear—of coming suddenly upon some one he knew, who would look him in the face and then turn away. And now that they were at the term of their journey, installed in their little foreign pavilion, he had become aware that at a stone's throw from him was a numerous cosmopolitan society, among whom was probably a large contingent from London. He did not try to learn their names; he would jealously keep aloof from them. Rachel had been advised to stay here for four weeks at least. Four weeks, no doubt, is not very long under ordinary circumstances: he had not imagined that it might seem almost unendurably long to a man who had been married less than a year to a wife that he loved. And yet, before he had been there three days, he was conscious that each separate hour had to be encountered, wrestled with, conquered, before going on to the next. He had meant to write: there was a point of administration upon which he had intended to say his say in one of the Reviews. But somehow in that sitting-room, with the windows opening down to the garden, the steady work, which in his own study would have been a matter of course, seemed almost impossible. Then he thought he would read. He read aloud to Rachel for part of the day; but he did not dare to choose anything that was much good to himself, as he had been told that the more inactive her mind was the better. Something he would have to do; he would have to organise his daily life in some way that wouldmake the burden of it endurable. He made up his mind to take long walks—the hotel and pavilion lay on the outskirts of the town—to go into the outlying country and explore it on foot. But in the evenings when Rachel was gone to bed, and when, alone at last, he would try to concentrate his mind on the study or the writing to which he had been used so eagerly to turn, another thought that he had been keeping at bay by a conscious effort would rush at him again and overwhelm him.
In the meantime, at the other side of Bad-Schleppenheim, the hours were flying fast and gaily. From the moment when the visitors met together at an early hour in the morning to drink their glasses of Schleppenheim water, and onwards through the luncheon parties, excursions, walking up and down, listening to the band, seeing theatricals, or playing Bridge in the evening, there was never a moment in which they were not industriously engaged in the pursuit of something. It was mostly pleasure, though many of them imagined it was health. Many of the people who in London constituted Society were here, in an inner and hallowed circle, in the centre of which were many minor and a few major royalties out of every country in Europe; and revolving round them in wider circles outside, many other people who, at home just on the verge of being in Society, revelled in the thought that here, under altered conditions, and in the enforced juxtapositions of life in a watering-place, a special talent for tennis, a gift forBridge, better clothes than other people, or a talent for private theatricals, would help them to be on the right side of the line they were so anxious to cross. Add to these, numbers of pretty girls anxious only to enjoy themselves, and swarms of young men who had come for the same reason, and it will be imagined that the atmosphere reigning in the brilliantly lighted Casino, in and around which the joyous spent their evenings singing, dancing, wandering in the grounds, was singularly different from that of the little isolated pavilion where Rendel sat trying to fashion the picture of his life into something that he could look upon without a shudder.