The Arbiter Part 10

"Darling, I know," he said, recollecting himself at the sight of her distress, "and you know what my little girl is to me; but there are some things that even a daughter cannot do. And," he went on, "it would really be a comfort to me, I think, if"--he was going to say, "if you were married," but he altered it as he saw a swift change pa.s.s over Rachel's face--"if I knew you were happy; if you had a home of your own and were provided for."

"Do you think that would be a comfort to you?" asked Rachel, trying to speak in an almost indifferent tone. "That you would be glad if I were to go away from you to a home of my own?"

"Yes," he said, "I think it would." And as he spoke he felt that the burden of giving Rachel companions.h.i.+p and trying to help her to bear her grief would be removed from him. "Besides," he went on, with an attempt at a smile, "it is not as if you would go far away from me altogether; you will only be a few streets off, after all. I could come to you whenever I wanted, and even--who knows?--I might sometimes ask you for your hospitality."

"If I thought _that_----" Rachel said, and caught herself up.

"You know," her father said more seriously, "we have been discussing this from one point of view only, from mine; but you are the person most concerned, and I am taking for granted that, from your point of view, it would be the best thing to do--that you would be happy."

"If I only thought," Rachel said, her face answering his last question, if her words did not, "that you would come to me--that you would be with me altogether----"

"I have no doubt that you would find that I came to you very often,"

said Sir William, with again a desolate sense of having no definite reason for being anywhere.

There was a pause before he said, "Then I'll tell him to come and see me, and perhaps he can see you afterwards."

"Oh," said Rachel, shrinking, "it is not possible yet."

"Well," said Sir William, "I will tell him so. We will explain to him that, since he is willing to wait, for the moment he must wait."

CHAPTER VIII

And Rendel waited--through the autumn, through the winter--but not without seeing Rachel again. On the contrary, every week that pa.s.sed during that time was bringing him nearer to his goal. After the first visit was over, that first meeting under the now maimed and altered conditions of life, the insensible relief afforded to both father and daughter by his companions.h.i.+p, his unselfish devotion and helpfulness, his unfailing readiness to be a companion to Sir William, to come and play chess with him, or to sit up and do intricate patiences through the small hours of the morning, all this gradually made him insensibly slide into the position of a son of the house. And Rachel, convinced that she was doing the best thing for her father and admitting in her secret heart that for herself she was doing the thing that of all others would make her happy, yielded at last. They were married in April, and went away for a fortnight to a shooting-box lent them by Lord Stamfordham in the West of Scotland, leaving Sir William for the first time alone in the big, empty house. It was with many, many misgivings that Rachel had agreed to go; but her father had insisted on her doing so. He had vaguely thought that perhaps it would be a relief to him to be alone, but he found the solitude unbearable. Those acquaintances of Gore's who saw him at the club expressed in suitably tempered tones their pleasure at seeing him again, and, thinking he would rather be left alone, discreetly refrained from thrusting their society upon him when in reality he most needed it, remarking to one another that poor old Gore had gone to pieces dreadfully since his wife died. A great many people knew him, and liked him well enough, but he had no intimate friends.

Pateley occasionally dropped in; but Pateley was too full of business to have leisure to help to fill up anybody else's time, and Sir William found the blank in his own house, the unchanging loneliness, almost unbearable.

In the meantime Rendel and his wife were beginning that page of the book of life which Sir William had closed for ever. At last, that vision of the future to which Rendel had clung with such steadfast hope, with such unswerving purpose, had been fulfilled: Rachel was his wife. It was an unending joy to him to remember that she was there; to watch for her coming and going; to see the dainty grace of movement and demeanour, the sweet, soft smile--her mother's smile--with which she listened as he talked. And during those days he poured himself out in speech as he had never been able to do before. It was a relief that was almost ecstasy to the man who had been made reserved by loneliness to have such a listener, and the sense of exquisite joy and repose which he felt in her society deepened as the days went on. To Rachel, too, when once she had made up her mind to leave her father, these days were filled with an undreamt-of happiness. She was beginning to recover from the actual shock of her mother's death, although, even as her life opened to all the new impressions that surrounded her, she felt daily afresh the want of the tender sympathy and guidance that had been her stay; but another great love had happily come into her life at the moment she needed it most, and a love that was far from wis.h.i.+ng to supplant the other. The memory of Lady Gore was almost as hallowed to Rendel as it was to his wife: it was another bond between them. They talked of her constantly, their reverent recollection kept alive the sense of her abiding, gracious influence.

It was a new and wonderful experience to Rachel to have the burden of daily life lifted from her. She had been loved in her home, it is true, as much as the most exacting heart might demand, but since she was seventeen it was she who had had to take thought for others, to surround them with loving care and protection; she had always been conscious, even though not feeling its weight, of bearing the burden of some one else's responsibilities. And now it was all different. In the first rebound of her youth she seemed to be discovering for the first time during those days how young she was, in the companions.h.i.+p of one whose tender care and loving protection smoothed every difficulty, every obstacle out of her path. And all too fast the perfumed days of spring glided away, a spring which, on that side of Scotland, was balmy and caressing. Day after day the sun shone, the mist remained in the distance, making that distance more beautiful still; and everything within and without was irradiated, and like motes in the suns.h.i.+ne Rendel saw the golden possibilities of his life dancing in the light of his hopes and illuminating the path that lay before him.

Rachel wrote to her father constantly, tenderly, solicitously; and Sir William, reading of her happiness, did not write back to tell her what those same days meant to him. For in London the sky was grey and heavy, and it was through a haze the colour of lead that he saw the years to come. The dark and cheerless winter had given place to a cold and cheerless spring.

It was a rainy afternoon that the young couple returned to London; but the gloomy look of the streets outside did but enhance the brightness of the little house in Cosmo Place, Knightsbridge, with its open, square hall, in which a bright fire was blazing. Light and warmth shone everywhere. Rachel drew a long breath of satisfaction, then her eyes filled with tears. The very sight of London brought back the past. Could it be possible that her mother was not there to welcome her? She had thought her father might be awaiting her at Cosmo Place; but as he was not, she went off instantly to Prince's Gate. How big and lonely the house looked with its gaunt, ugly portico, its tall, narrow hall and endless stairs! The drawing-rooms were closed: Sir William was sitting in his study, a chess-board in front of him, on which he was working out a problem.

Rachel was terribly perturbed at the change in his appearance--a something, she did not quite know in what it lay, that betokened some absolute change of outlook, of att.i.tude. He had the listless, indifferent air of one who lets himself be drifted here and there rather than of one who moves securely along, strong enough to hold his own way in spite of any opposing elements. This fortnight of solitude, in which he had been face to face with his own life and his prospects, had suddenly, roughly, pitilessly graven on his face the lines that with other men successive experiences acc.u.mulate there gently and almost insensibly. He had taken a sudden leap into old age, as sometimes happens to men of his standing, who, as long as their life is smooth, uneventful, and prosperous, succeed in keeping an aspect of youth.

Rachel's heart smote her at having left him; it reproached her with having known something like happiness in these days, and her old sense of troubled, anxious responsibility came back. She begged him to come and dine with them that evening. He demurred at first at making a third on their first night in their own house. Rachel protested, and overruled all his objections. She arrived at home just in time to dress for dinner, finding her husband surprised and somewhat discomfited at her prolonged absence. He had wanted to go proudly all over the house with her, and see their new domain. But as he saw her come up the stairs, he realised that black care had sprung up behind her again, that this was not the confiding, navely happy Rachel who had walked with him on the moors.

"There you are!" he said. "I was just wondering what had become of you."

"I was with my father," Rachel said, in a tone in which there was a tinge of unconscious surprise at what his tone had conveyed. "And, Francis, he looks so dreadfully ill!"

"Does he?" said Rendel, concerned. "I am sorry."

"He looks really broken down," she said, "and oh, so much older. I am sure it has been bad for him being alone all this time. I ought not to have stayed away so long."

"Well, it has not been very long," said Rendel with a natural feeling that two weeks had not been an unreasonable extension of their wedding tour.

"He looks as if he had felt it so," she answered. "But at any rate, I have persuaded him to come to dinner with us to-night; I am sure it will be good for him."

"To-night?" said Rendel, again with a lurking surprise that for this first night their privacy should not have been respected.

"Yes," said Rachel. "You don't mind, do you?"

"Oh, of course not," he replied, again stifling a misgiving.

"You see," said Rachel, "I thought it might amuse him, and be a change for him, and then you might play a game of chess with him after dinner, perhaps."

"Of course, of course," Rendel answered. But the misgiving remained.

When, however, Sir William appeared, Rendel's heart almost smote him as Rachel's had done, he seemed so curiously broken down and dispirited.

They talked of their Scotch experiences, they spoke a little of the affairs of the day, but, as Rendel knew of old, this was a dangerous topic, which, hitherto, he had succeeded either in avoiding altogether or in treating with a studied moderation which might so far as possible prevent Sir William's susceptibilities from being offended. Rachel sat with them after dinner while they smoked, then they all went upstairs.

"Now then, father dear, where would you like to be?" she said, looking round the room for the most comfortable chair. "Here, this looks a very special corner," and she drew forward an armchair that certainly was in a most delightful place, looking as if it were destined for the master of the house, or, at any rate, the most privileged person in it, a comfortable armchair, with the slanting back that a man loves, and by it a table with a lamp at exactly the right height. "There," she said, pus.h.i.+ng her father gently into it, "isn't that a comfortable corner?"

"Very," Sir William said, looking up at her with a smile. It truly was a delight to be tended and fussed over again.

"And now you must have a table in front of you," she said, looking round. "Let me see--Frank, which shall the chess-table be? Is there a folding table? Yes, of course there is--that little one that we bought at Guildford. That one!"--and she clapped her hands with childish delight as she pointed to it.

Rendel brought forward the little table and opened it.

"Oh, that is exactly the thing," she cried. "See, father, it will just hold the chess-board. Now then, this is where it shall always stand--your own table, and your own chair by it."

CHAPTER IX

It is difficult to judge of any course of conduct entirely on its own merits, when it has a reflex action on ourselves. When Rendel before his marriage used to go to Prince's Gate and to see Rachel, absolutely oblivious of herself, hovering tenderly round her mother, watching to see that her father's wishes were fulfilled, that unselfish devotion and absorption in filial duty seemed to him the most entirely beautiful thing on this earth. But when, instead of being the spectator of the situation, he became an active partic.i.p.ator in it, when the stream of Rachel's filial devotion was diverted from that of her conjugal duties, it unconsciously a.s.sumed another aspect in his eyes. But not for worlds would he have put into words the annoyance he could not help feeling, and Rachel was entirely unconscious of his att.i.tude. The devoted, uncritical affection for her father which had grown up with her life was in her mind so absolutely taken for granted as one of the foundations of existence, that it did not even occur to her that Rendel might possibly not look at it in the same light. She took for granted that he would share her att.i.tude towards her father as he had shared her adoration for her mother. It was all part of her entire trust in Rendel, and the simple directness with which she approached the problems of life. She had, before her marriage, expressed an earnest wish, which Rendel understood as a condition, that even if her father did not wish to live with them, she might share in his life and watch over him, and Rendel had accepted the condition and promised that it should be as she wished.

But it is obviously not the actual making of a promise that is the difficulty. If it were possible when we pledge ourselves to a given course for our imagination to show us in a vision of the future the innumerable occasions on which we should be called upon to redeem, each time by a conscious separate effort, that lightly given pledge of an instant, the stoutest-hearted of us would quail at the prospect. Rendel looked back with a sigh to those days, that seemed already to have receded into a luminous distance, when Rachel, alone with him in Scotland, with no divided allegiance, had given herself up, heart and mind, to the new happiness, the new existence, that was opening before her.

The danger of pouring life while it is still fluid into the wrong mould, of letting it drift and harden into the wrong shape, is an insidious peril which is not sufficiently guarded against. It is easy enough to say, Begin as you mean to go on; but the difficulty is to know exactly the moment when you begin, and when the point of going on has been arrived at; and of drifting gradually into some irremediable course of action from which it is almost impossible to turn back without difficulty and struggle. There had been a feeling that everything was somehow temporary during those first days at Cosmo Place, which extended into the weeks. Sir William held as a principle, and was quite genuine in his intention when he said it, that young people ought to be left to themselves. He would not, therefore, take up his abode under their roof, but still that he should do so eventually was felt by all concerned as a vague possibility which prevented in the young household a sense of having finally and comfortably settled down. Indeed, as it was, it was perhaps more unsettling to Rachel, and therefore to her husband, to have Sir William coming and going than it would have been to have him actually under the same roof. If he had been living with them his presence would have been a matter of course, and less constant companions.h.i.+p and diversion would probably have been considered necessary for him than they were when he dropped in at odd times. The advancing season and the grey dark mornings made the early rides impossible. Rachel in her secret soul did not regret them. Sir William had taken the habit of looking in at Cosmo Place on his way to Pall Mall and further eastward, and it always gave Rachel a pang of remorse if she found that by an unlucky chance she had been out of the way when he came. He would also sometimes come in on his way back, as has been said, in the obvious expectation of having a game of chess, of which Rendel, if he were at home, had not the heart to disappoint him. In these days there was not much occupation for him in the City. The excitement of starting and floating the "Equator" Company and the allotting of the shares to the eager band of subscribers had been accomplished some time since. The "Equator's" hour, however, had not come yet. The outlook in the City was not encouraging for those who knew how to read the weather chart of the coming days. The heart of the country was still beating fast and tumultuously after the emotions of the past two years; it needed a period of a.s.sured quiet to regain its normal condition. In the meantime the storm seemed to be subsiding. The great railway laying its iron grip on the heart of Africa was advancing steadily from the north as well as from the south: it was nearing the Equator. The country, its imagination profoundly stirred by the enterprise, watched it in suspense. But until the meeting of the two giant highways was effected, everything depended upon an equable balance of forces, of which a touch might destroy the equilibrium. German possessions and German forces lay perilously near the meeting of the two lines. At any moment a spark from some other part of the world might be wafted to Africa and set the fierce flame of war ablaze in the centre of the continent.

The General Election was coming within measurable distance; the Liberal Peace Crusade was strenuously canva.s.sing the country in favour of coming to a definite understanding with certain foreign powers.

At the house in Cosmo Place it was no longer always possible, as on that first evening, to avoid the subject of politics.

"I must say," said Rendel one night with enthusiasm--Stamfordham had made a big speech the day before of which the papers were full--"Stamfordham is a great speaker, and a great man to boot."

"A great speaker, perhaps," Sir William said. "I don't know that that is entirely what you want from the man at the helm."

"Well, proverbially it isn't," said Rendel, with a smile, determined to be good-humoured.

"As to being a great man," continued Sir William, "anybody who knocks down everything that comes in his way and stands upon it looks rather big."