The Arbiter Part 32

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I can't," said Rendel.

"But have you tried?"

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

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

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

"Monsieur Pateley," he said, "wishes to know if Madame is at home."

Rachel and her husband looked at each other in consternation.

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

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

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

CHAPTER XXV

We do not move unfortunately all in one piece. It would be much simpler if we did, and if our actions could be accounted for by saying, "He did this, being a generous man, or a forgiving man, or a curious man, or a remorseful man." Unhappily, and it makes our actions more difficult to account for, we are more complicated than this, and Pateley, when he finally felt impelled to make his way into Rachel's presence so soon after parting from her in the promenade, could not probably have said exactly what motive prompted him to seek her. To Rachel he arrived as the complement, the consolidation, of the resolve that she had made. She hardly tried to conceal her agitation as she shook hands with him and looked in his face. Her own wore an expression that had not been there an hour ago. Something new had come to life in it. So conscious were they both of something abnormal, overmastering, between them that there did not seem anything strange in the fact that for a moment, after the first greeting, they stood without thinking of any of the commonplaces of intercourse. Then Pateley, more accustomed to overlay the realities of life by the conventional outside, recovered himself and said in an ordinary tone, looking round him--

"What a delightful oasis! What charming quarters you are in here!"

"Yes, we like them very much," said Rachel, recovering herself; and they went towards the little table and sat down.

"No tea for me, thank you," said Pateley. "I have just been made to drink a liquid distantly resembling it at the bazaar."

"At the bazaar?" said Rachel. "It was German tea, I suppose?"

"I imagine so. It has been well said," said Pateley, "that no nation has yet been known great enough to produce two equally good forms of national beverage. We have good tea, but our coffee is abominable: the Germans have good coffee, but their tea is poison. The Spaniards, I believe, have good chocolate, but that I have to take on hearsay. I have never been to Spain. I mean to go some day, though."

"Do you?" Rachel said, dimly hearing his flow of words while she made up her mind what her own were to be. She had had so little time to form her plan of action, to piece together all that she had been hearing during the afternoon, that it was not yet clear to her that from the circ.u.mstances of the case Pateley must necessarily be concerned in it; and at the moment she began to speak she simply looked upon him as some one who knew Rendel in London, who had known her father and mother, who had a general air of bluff and hearty serviceability, and had presented himself at a moment when she had no one else to turn to.

"Mr. Pateley," she said, and at the sudden ring of resolution in her tone Pateley's face changed and his smiling flow of chatter about nothing came to a pause. "There is something I want very much to ask you about," she went on, "something I want your help in."

"I am at your orders," said Pateley, with a smile and bow that concealed his surprise.

"It is something that matters very, very much," Rachel went on.

"Something you could find out for me."

Pateley said nothing.

"I don't know if you know," she went on hurriedly--"if you heard, of what happened to me in London just before my father died? I had an accident. It seemed a slight one at the time. I fell down on the stairs one evening that he was worse when I ran down quickly to fetch my husband, and I had concussion of the brain afterwards and was unconscious for forty-eight hours. And since, I have not been able to remember anything of what happened during those days."

Pateley made a sort of sympathetic sound and gesture.

"But," Rachel said, "I have heard to-day--not until to-day--of something that happened during that time, something terrible. I am going to tell it to you, in the greatest confidence. You will see when I tell you that it matters very, very much. First of all,--this I remember--on the day my father began to be worse, Lord Stamfordham brought my husband some papers to copy for him in which was the Agreement with Germany, and told him no one was to know about them, and my husband told no one, and sent them back, when they were done, to Stamfordham, in a sealed packet."

Pateley, as he listened, sat absolutely impenetrable, with his eyes fixed on the ground.

"But somebody got hold of them," she went on--"somebody must have stolen them, because they were published the next morning in the paper, in the _Arbiter_." And as the words left her lips she suddenly realised that the man in front of her was the one of all others in the world who must know what had happened. The _Arbiter_ was embodied in Pateley, it was Pateley: that, everybody knew, everybody repeated. Pateley would, he must, be able to tell her.

"Oh," she cried, "the _Arbiter_ is your paper!"