The Arbiter Part 33

"Yes," said Pateley, looking at her.

"Then," she said, "you know--you must know."

"Know what?" he said calmly.

"You must know," she said, "who it was told the _Arbiter_ what was in those papers."

Pateley sat silent a moment. Then he said--

"It can and does happen occasionally that things are brought to the _Arbiter_ of which I don't know the origin, in fact of which the origin is purposely kept a secret."

She waited for him to add something to this sentence, to add a _but_ to it, but he remained silent. Being unversed in diplomatic evasions, she accepted his words as a disclaimer.

"But still," she said, "even if you don't know this you could find it out. It matters terribly. I don't want to say to any one else, it is not a thing to be told, how horribly it matters, but I must tell _you_, that you may see. Lord Stamfordham thought that my husband had betrayed the secret--he told him so then. And to-day--it was too terrible!--he was at a luncheon to which Frank and Mr. Wentworth went, not knowing----" A sudden involuntary change in Pateley's face made her stop and say, "But perhaps you were there? Were you at the luncheon?"

"No," said Pateley. "I was not there."

"But you heard about it?" she said.

"Yes," he said after a pause. "I heard about it."

"It's too horrible!" said Rachel, covering her face with her hands. "Of course you heard about it--everybody will hear about it: how Lord Stamfordham insulted him and refused to sit down with him, because of the unjust accusation that was brought against him. Now do you see," she said excitedly, and Pateley, as he looked at her, was amazed at the fire that shone from her eyes, at the glow of excitement in her whole being--"now do you see how much it matters? how if we don't find out the truth, if we don't get to know who did it, this is the kind of thing that will happen to him? You see now, don't you? You will help me?"

Pateley had got up and restlessly paced to the end of the garden and back, his eyes fixed on the ground, Rachel breathlessly watching him. He was moved at her distress, he felt the stirrings of something like remorse at the fate that had overtaken Rendel. But in Pateley's Juggernaut-like progress through the world he did not, as a rule, stop to see who were the victims that were left gasping by the roadside. As long as the author of the mischief drives on rapidly enough, the evil he has left behind him is not brought home to him so acutely as if he is compelled to stop and bend over the sufferer. But a brief moment of reflection made him pretty clear that neither himself nor the _Arbiter_ had anything to fear from the disclosure. He had nothing particularly heroic in his composition; he would not have felt called upon for the sake of Francis Rendel, or even for the sake of Rendel's wife, to sacrifice his own destiny and possibilities if it had been a question of choosing between his own and theirs; but fortunately this choice would not be thrust upon him. He looked up and met Rachel's eyes fixed upon him.

"Yes," he said. "I will help you."

"Oh, thank you!" she cried, her heart swelling with relief. "Will you, can you find out about it?"

"Yes," said Pateley again. He paused a moment, then came back and stood in front of her. "I have no need to find out," he said slowly. "I know who did it."

Rachel sprang up.

"What?" she cried, quivering with anxiety. "Do you mean that you know now, that you can tell Frank, that you can tell Lord Stamfordham? Oh, why didn't you say so?"

Pateley paused.

"I didn't know," he said, "that Stamfordham had accused your husband of it, and so I kept--I was rather bound to keep--the other man's secret."

"The other man?" Rachel repeated, looking at him.

"Yes," said Pateley. "The man who did it."

Rachel started. Of course, yes--if her husband had not done it some one else had, they were s.h.i.+fting the horrible burden on to another. But that other deserved it, since he was the guilty man.

"Yes," she said lower, "of course I know there is some one else!--it is very terrible--but--but--it's right, isn't it, that the man who has done it should be accused and not one who is innocent?"

"Yes," said Pateley, "it is right."

"You must tell me," she said, "you must!--you must tell me everything now, as I have told you. Is it some one to whom it will matter very much?"

Pateley waited.

"No," he said at length, "it won't matter to him."

Rachel looked at him, not understanding.

He went on, "Nothing will ever matter to him again. He is dead."

"Dead, is he?" said Rachel, but even in the horror-struck tone there rang an accent of glad relief. "Then it can't matter to him. And it is right, after all, that people should know what he did. It is right, it is justice, isn't it?" she repeated, as though trying to rea.s.sure herself, "not only because of Frank?"

"Yes," said Pateley, "I believe that it is right, that it is justice."

Then as he looked at her he suddenly became conscious of an unwonted difficulty of speech, of an almost unknown wave of emotion rising within him, of shrinking from the words he was now clear had to be said.

"Mrs. Rendel," he said at last, "I am afraid it will be very painful to you to hear what I am going to say."

She looked at him bewildered. He waited one moment, almost hoping that the truth might dawn upon her before he spoke, but she was a thousand miles from being anywhere near it. "Those papers which I published in the _Arbiter_ the next morning were shown to me on the afternoon your husband had them to copy, by--" again the strange unfamiliar perturbation stopped him, and he felt he had to make a distinct effort to bring the name out--"your father, Sir William Gore."

Rachel said absolutely nothing. She looked at him with dilated eyes, incredulous amazement and then horror in her face, as she saw in his that he was telling her the truth.

"My father?" she said at last, with trembling lips.

"Yes," Pateley said. The worst was over now, he felt, and he had recovered possession of himself.

"No, no, it can't be!" she said miserably. "It's not possible...."

"I fear it is," said Pateley. "They were shown to myself, you see, so it is an absolute certainty."

"But when was it?" said Rachel, bewildered. "When did he have them?"

"They were left," Pateley said, "in the study where he was, when your husband went down to speak to Lord Stamfordham. During that time I happened to go in."

And as Rachel listened to his brief account of what had taken place she knew that there was no longer any doubt as to the culprit. For the moment, as the idol of her life fell before her in ruins the discovery she had made swallowed up everything else. Pateley made a move.

"Wait, wait!" she said. "Don't go away. Only wait till I see what I must do. It is all so horrible! I see nothing clearly yet."

He walked away to the other end of the little garden.

She leant back in her chair, her eyes fixed, seeing nothing, trying to make up her mind. Gradually what she must do became more and more distinct to her, more and more inevitable. The sheer force of her agitation and emotion were carrying her own. If she acted at once, within the next half-hour, anything, everything might be possible. She would not wait to think, she would do it now, while it was still possible to p.r.o.nounce the name, the dear name that she had hardly been able to bring to her lips during these last weeks in which every day, every hour, she had been conscious of her loss. She would go to the person who must be told, and who alone could remedy the great evil that had been done. She got up, a despairing determination in her face.

Pateley looked at her, his face asking the question which he did not put in words.

"I am going to Lord Stamfordham," she said. "I am going to tell him."

"You?" said Pateley. "Are you going to tell him yourself?"

"Yes," she said, "it is I who must tell him. I have quite made up my mind." She turned to him appealingly as though taking for granted he would help her. "I want to go now, while I feel I can, and before Frank knows anything about it. Can you help me--would you help me to find Lord Stamfordham?"

"Certainly," said Pateley, with a new admiration for Rachel rising within him, but with some misgivings, however, as to the possibility or the desirability of running Stamfordham to earth among his present surroundings.