CHAPTER XVIII
Rendel up to this moment had been accustomed, unconsciously to himselfperhaps, to live, as most men of keen intelligence and aspirations dolive, in the future. The possibilities of to-day had always had an addedzest from the sense of there being a long, magnificent expansestretching away indefinitely in front of him, in which to achieve whathe would. In his moments of despondency he had been able to conceivedisaster possible, but it was always, after all, such disaster as a manmight encounter, and then, surmounting, turn afresh to life. But of allpossible forms of disaster that would have occurred to him as beinglikely to come near himself, there was one that he would have knowncould not approach him: there was one form of misery from which, so faras human probabilities could be gauged, he was safe. He had neverimagined that he could in his own experience learn what it meant,according to the customary phrase, to "go under" because he could nothold his head up: to disappear from among the honourable and thestrenuous, to be dragged down by the weight of some shameful deed whichwould make him unfit to consort with people of his own kind. As hewalked home he was not conscious, perhaps, of trying to look hissituation in the face, of trying to adjust himself to it. And yetinsensibly things began falling into shape, as particles of sandgradually 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 thusknow how it happened, but they were, to Rendel, the only people whomattered--the people, practically, in whose hands his own future lay. Herealised now as he had never done before in what calm confidence he hadin his inmost heart looked on that future, and most of all how much, howentirely he had always counted on Lord Stamfordham's good opinion of hisintegrity and worth. It was all gone. What should he do? How should hetake hold of life now?
As he waited at a corner to cross the road, he saw big newspaper boardsstuck up. The second edition of the other morning papers was coming outwith the news eagerly caught up from the _Arbiter_. There it was in bigletters, people stopping to read it as they passed: "StartlingDisclosure. Unexpected Action of the Government." No power on earthcould stop that knowledge from spreading now. How it would turn thecountry upside down--what a fever of conjecture, what storms ofdisapproval from some, of jubilation from others. What franticexcitement was in store for the few who, with vigilance strained to theutmost, were steering warily through such a storm! Rendel involuntarilystopped and read with the others.
Some people he knew drove by in a victoria, two exquisitely dressedwomen who smiled and bowed to him as they passed--chance acquaintanceswhom he met in society, and to whom under ordinary circumstances hewould have been profoundly indifferent.
Rendel could almost have stood still in sheer terror at realising somenumbing sense that was stealing over him, some horrible change in hisview of things that was already beginning. For as they bowed to him withunimpaired friendliness, he felt conscious of a distinct sensation ofrelief, almost of gratitude, that in spite of what had happened theyshould still be willing to greet him. Good God! was _that_ what his viewof 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 ashudder a man he had known, Bob Galloway, who, beginning life under themost prosperous auspices, had been convicted of cheating at cards. Herecalled the look of the man who knew his company would be toleratedonly by those beneath him. He realised now part of what Galloway musthave gone through before he went out of England and took to frequentingsecond-rate people abroad.
He looked up and found that he had mechanically walked back to CosmoPlace. He was recalled from his absorption to a more pressing calamity,as he recognised, with an acute pang of self-reproach, the doctor'sbrougham still standing before the door. He entered the house quickly.There was a sense of that strange emptiness, of the ordinary livingrooms of the house being deserted, that gives one an almost physicalsense that life is being lived through with stress and terribleearnestness somewhere else. He heard some words being exchanged in a lowtone on the upper landing, and then a door shutting as Rachel turnedback into her father's room. Rendel met Doctor Morgan as he came downthe stairs. Morgan's face assumed an air of grave concern as he saw SirWilliam's son-in-law coming towards him, and Rendel read in his facewhat he had to tell. There are moments in which the intensity of nervousstrain seems to make every sense trebly acute, in which, without knowingit, we are aware of every detail of sight and sound that forms thematerial setting for a moment of great emotion. As he looked at DoctorMorgan coming towards him, Rendel, without knowing it, was conscious ofevery detail that formed the background to that figure of foreboding: ofthe sunlight glancing on the glass of a picture, of its reflection inthe brass of a loose stair rod that had escaped from its fastenings, andof which, even in that moment, Rendel's methodical mind automaticallymade a note.
"I am afraid I can't give you a very good account," he said in answerto Rendel's hurried inquiries. "He has had another and more prolongedfainting fit, and I think it possible that his heart may be affected."
"Do you mean, then," said Rendel, "that--that--you are really anxiousabout the ultimate issue?" and he tried to veil the thing he wasdesignating, as men instinctively do when it is near at hand.
"Yes, I am," Doctor Morgan answered. "Unless there is a great change inthe next few hours, there certainly will be cause for the gravestanxiety."
Rendel was silent, his thoughts chasing each other tumultuously throughhis brain.
"Does my wife know?" he said.
"I think she does," Morgan said. "I have not told her quite as clearlyas I have said it to you, but she knows how much care he needs and howabsolutely essential it is that he should be quiet. It is his onechance. No talk, no news, no excitement."
"What has brought on this attack, do you think?" said Rendel, feeling asif he were driven to ask the question.
"I can't tell," said Morgan. "He looked to me like a man who had beenexcited about something. Do you know whether that is so?"
"Yes," said Rendel; "he got excited this morning about something thatwas in the paper."
"Ah! by the way, yes, I don't wonder," said Morgan, who was an ardentpolitician. "It was a most astonishing piece of news, certainly."
"It was, indeed," said Rendel, brought back for a moment to theunendurable burthen he had been carrying about with him.
"The Imperialists are safe now to get in," said Morgan. "We look to youto do great things some day," and without waiting for the politedisclaimer which he took for granted would be Rendel's reply to hisremark, without seeing the swift look of keen suffering that swept overRendel's face, he hurried away.
Rendel was bowed down by an intolerable self-reproach. He could havesmiled at the thought that he had actually been seeking solace in theidea that he had, at any rate, done a fine, a noble thing, that he haddone it for Rachel, that, if she ever knew it, she would know he hadsacrificed everything for her. And now, instead, how did his conductappear? How would it appear to her, since she knew but the outwardaspect of it? To her? Why, to himself, even, it almost appeared thatwishing to insist on screening himself at the expense of some one else,he had, in defiance of her entreaties, appealed to her father, andbrought on an attack that might probably cause his death.
He stood for a moment as the door closed behind Morgan, and waitedirresolutely, with a half hope that Rachel would come downstairs to him.But all was silent, desolate, forlorn; it was behind the shut doorupstairs that the strenuous issues were being fought out which were todecide, in all probability, other fates than that of the chief suffererwho lay there waiting for death. The chief sufferer? No. Rendel, as heturned back sick at heart, after a moment, into his own study, thoughtbitterly within himself that death to the man who has so little toexpect from life is surely a less trial than dying to all that is worthhaving while one is still alive. That was how he saw his own life as helooked on into th
e future, or rather, as he contemplated it in thepresent--for the future was gone, it was blotted out. That was thethought that ever and anon would come to the surface, would come inspite of his efforts to the contrary, before every other. Then thethought of Rachel's face of misery rose before him, haunted him with anadditional anguish. With an effort he pulled himself together, sat downto 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 hewas throwing overboard his most precious possessions to appease theFates that were pursuing him. Where would it end? What would be left tohim? The one precious possession, the turning-point of his existencestill remained: Rachel, his love for her, their life together. But,after all, those great goods he had meant to have in any case, and therest besides. The door opened. It was the servant come to tell him thatluncheon was ready; the ordinary bell was not rung for fear ofdisturbing Sir William. Luncheon? Could the routine of life be going onjust in the same way? Was it possible that a morning had been enough todo all this? He went listlessly into the dining-room. Rachel was notthere. He went upstairs, and as he went up met her coming out of herfather's room. Her startled and almost alarmed look, as at the firstmoment she thought that he was going back into her father's room, smotehim to the heart.
"You had better not go in, Frank," she said hurriedly. "The doctor saidhe was to be quite quiet. Please don't go in again," and the intonationof 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 tohave some luncheon."
"I don't think I could eat anything," she said.
"You must try, darling," he said gently. "It is no good your beingknocked up at this stage. You look pretty well worn out already."
And indeed she did. The last twenty-four hours had made her look asthough she herself had been through an illness, and the nervous strainadded to her own condition made her appear, Rendel felt as he looked ather, quite alarmingly ill. She suffered herself to be persuaded to eatsomething, then wandered wretchedly back to her father's room to remainthere for the rest of the day.
Rendel did not leave the house again. He sat downstairs alone, trying torealise what this world was that he was contemplating, this landscapepainted in shades of black and grey. Was this the prospect flooded withsunshine that he had looked upon that very morning? The afternoon wenton: the streets of London were full of a gay and hurrying crowd. Was itRendel's imagination, the tense state of his nerves, that made him feelin the very air as it streamed in at his window the electric disturbancethat was agitating the destinies of the country? Everyone looked as theypassed as though something had happened; men were talking eagerly andintently. The afternoon papers were being hawked in the streets. One ofthem actually had the map, all had the news, given with the samecomments of amazement, and, on the part of the Imperialists, ofadmiration at the feat that had been so cleverly performed. So the daywore on, the long summer's day, till all London had grasped what hadhappened--while the man through whom London knew was sitting alone, anoutcast, with Grief and Anxiety hovering by him.
These two same dread companions, seen under another aspect, were withRachel as she sat through the afternoon hours in her father's darkenedroom, listening to his breathing, with all her senses on the alert forany sound, for any movement.
Sir William moved and opened his eyes; then, looking at Rachel, who wasanxiously bending over him, he rapidly poured out a succession of wordsand phrases of which only a word here and there was intelligible."Frank," he said once or twice, then "Pateley," but Rachel had not theclue that would have told her what the words meant. She tried in vain toquiet him: he was not conscious of her presence. Then suddenly hisvoice subsided to a whisper, and a strange look came over his face. Anuncontrollable terror seized upon Rachel. She ran out on to the stairs;and as, unsteady, quivering, she rushed down, meaning to call herhusband, she caught her foot on the loose stair-rod and fell forward,striking her head with violence as she reached the bottom. It was therethat Rendel, aghast, found her lying unconscious as he hurried out ofhis study to see what had happened. The sickening horror of that firstmoment, 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 shewould recover if kept absolutely quiet, a period almost of relief.
And so Rachel was spared the actual moment of the parting she had beentrying to face. For though Sir William rallied again from the crisiswhich had so alarmed her, he sank gradually into a state of coma fromwhich he was destined never to wake, and from which, almostimperceptibly, he passed during the evening of the next day.
Rendel, tossed on a wild storm of clashing emotions, the great anxietycaused by Rachel's accident and possible peril added to all he had gonethrough, had in truth little actual sorrow to spare for the loss of SirWilliam Gore. But Gore's death meant in one direction the death of allhis own remaining hopes. When he knew the end had come, and that hewould have to tell Rachel, when she was able to bear it, that her fatherwas dead, he then began to realise how, unconsciously to himself almost,he had built upon some possibility of Sir William doing something to putthings right. What, he had not formulated to himself; but he had hadvague visions of a possible admission of some sort, of an attemptedreconciliation, atonement, confession, such as he had read of infiction, by which means the truth would have come out, and he would havebeen absolved without any effort on his own part. But thosehalf-formulated dreams had vanished almost before he had realised them.Sir William Gore had gone to his eternal rest, and, as far as Rendelknew, no one but himself knew exactly what had happened. And now therewas nothing in front of him but that miserable blank.
Rachel was not told of what had happened until two days after herfather's funeral. She received the news as though stunned, bewildered;as if it were too terrible for her to grasp. Gradually she came back tolife again, but she was not the same as before. Her recovery would be,the doctor explained, a question of time. The accident that had befallenher, following the great strain and anxiety she had gone through, hadcompletely upset her nervous system, and appeared--a not uncommon resultafter such an accident--to have completely obliterated the timeimmediately preceding her fall. The moment when Rendel, seeing hergradually recovering, first ventured on some allusion to Stamfordhamand to what had taken place the day her father was taken ill, he saw apuzzled, bewildered look in her face, as though she had no idea of whathe was saying, and he was seized by a fear almost too ghastly to beendurable.
"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 ofwhat had happened before her fall.
"It is a common result of an accident of this kind," he said, "and needgive you no special cause for anxiety. I have known two or three casesin which men who have completely recovered in other respects have neverregained the memory of what immediately preceded the accident. That girlwho was thrown in the Park a month ago, you remember--her horse ran awayand threw her over the railings--although she got absolutely right, doesnot remember what she did that morning, or even the night before. Andafter all," he added, "it does not seem to me so very desirable thatMrs. Rendel should remember those two particular days she may havelost."
Rendel gave an inward shudder. If he could but have forgotten them too!
"They were full, as I understand, of anxiety and grief about herfather's condition."
"They were," said Rendel. "It would be much better if she did notremember them."
"That's right, keep your heart up, then," said Morgan, allunconsciously; "and above all, no excitement for her, no anxiety, noirritation. Change of scene would be good for her, perhaps, and seeingone or two people. If I were you, I should take her to some Germanbaths. On every ground I should
think that would be the best thing forher."
See people? Rendel felt, with the sense of having received a blow, whatsort of aspect social intercourse presented to him now. But as the dayswent on Doctor Morgan insisted more strongly on the necessity thatRachel should go for a definite 'cure' somewhere, and recommended aspecial place, Bad-Schleppenheim.
"Bad-Schleppenheim," he said, "is on the whole as good a place as youcould 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'sthe way to deal with wives, I assure you."
And with a cheery laugh, Dr. Morgan, who had no wife, went out.
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