The Arbiter Part 22

"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 the _Mayfair 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 the _Arbiter_."

"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, circ.u.mstantial, 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 to hint," 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 the _Arbiter_."

"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 rus.h.i.+ng 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 pa.s.sion 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 G.o.d! 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 friends.h.i.+p, and it is more honest to tell you fairly that I have 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, fas.h.i.+oned by circ.u.mstances, 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 horrible relief 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 pa.s.sionate 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 else that 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.