Rendel came downstairs, hardly conscious of what he was doing, a wild
conflict of emotion raging in his mind. He shut himself into his study,
and tried to distinguish clearly the threads of motive and conduct that
had become so hideously entangled. It sounds a simple thing, doubtless,
as well as a praiseworthy one, to discover the doer of an evil deed, to
convict him, to bring home to him what he has done, and to prove the
innocence of any other who may be suspected. Such a course, when spoken
of in general terms, gives a praiseworthy and sustaining sense of a duty
accomplished towards society. But it is in reality a much more
complicated operation than we are apt to think. The evildoer,
unfortunately for our sense of righteousness in prosecuting him, is not
always one who has unmixed evil instincts, and nearly every contingency
of human conduct becomes, as we contemplate it, many-sided enough to be
very confusing. And it was beginning to dawn upon Rendel that, although
it may fulfil the ends of abstract justice that the guilty should be
exposed and the innocent acquitted, such an act takes an ugly aspect
when the eager pursuer is himself the innocent man who is to be
vindicated, and the guilty one a weaker and defenceless person who is to
be put in his place. "And yet," he said to himself bitterly, as he tried
to think of it impartially, "if it were a question of any one else's
reputation and not of my own I should be bound to say who the guilty man
was." What was he to do? What could he do? He did not know how long he
had been sitting there when Rachel came quickly in.
"Oh! Frank," she said, with a face of alarm, "he's very ill. I'm sure he
is. I've sent for Dr. Morgan to come at once. He fainted after you left,
and he's only just come round again. Oh! I am terribly anxious," and she
looked at him, her lips quivering, then put her hands before her eyes
and burst into tears.
Rendel's heart smote him. Everything else, as he looked at her, faded
into the background. The thing that mattered was Rachel was the woman he
loved. It was he who had brought this grief upon her.
"Darling," he said, "I'm so sorry."
She shook her head and tried to smile.
"Oh," she said, trying to suppress her tears, "I ought not to have left
him. I daresay you didn't know, but it has done him the most terrible
harm. Did you tell him, then, about--about--the thing you told me of,
that you had been suspected--of telling something--what was it?" and she
passed her hand over her forehead as if unable to think.
"No," said Rendel, "I didn't tell him that _I_ had been accused of it. I
daresay he guessed I had. I told him it had happened."
"But, Frank, why did you?" she said. "I implored you not."
"Rachel," he said, "do you realise what it means to me that I should be
accused of a thing like this?"
"Of course, yes, of course," she said, evidently still listening for any
sound from upstairs. "But still a thing like that, that can be put right
in a few minutes, cannot matter so much as life and death...."
And again her voice became almost inaudible.
"There are some things," said Rendel in a low voice, "that matter more
to a man than life and death."
"Do you mean to say," said Rachel, "that it matters more that you should
be supposed to have done something that you have not done, than that my
father should not get well?"
"Supposing your father had been wrongfully accused of something
underhand and dishonourable," said Rendel, "would not that matter more
to him than--than--anything else?"
Rachel put up her hands with a cry as if to ward off a blow.
"My father!" she said, drawing away from Rendel. "You must not say such
a thing. How could it be said?"
"You endure," said Rendel, "that it should be said about me."
"About you! That is different," she said, unable in the tension of her
overwrought nerves to choose her words. "You are young, you can defend
yourself; but it is cruel, cruel of you to say that it might happen to
my father. You don't realise what my father is to me or you couldn't say
such things even without meaning them. No, you can't know, you can't
understand, or you couldn't, just for your own sake, have gone to him
to-day when he is so ill and told him things that excited him."
"I think I do understand," Rendel said, forcing himself to speak calmly.
"Of course I know, I have always known, perhaps not quite so clearly as
to-day, that--that--he must come first with you."
"Oh! in some ways he must, he must," Rachel said, half entreatingly, yet
with a ring of determination in her voice. "I promised my mother that I
would, as far as I could, take her place, and while he lives I must.
Frank, I would give up my life to save him suffering, as she would have
done. Ah! there is Doctor Morgan," and she left the room hastily as a
doctor's brougham stopped at the door.
Rendel stood perfectly still, looking straight before him, seeing
nothing, but gazing with his mind's eye on a universe absolutely
transformed--the bright, dancing lights had gone, it was overspread by a
dark, settled gloom. There were sounds outside. He was mechanically
conscious of Rachel's hurried colloquy with the doctor in the hall, of
their footsteps going upstairs. Then he roused himself. What would the
doctor's verdict be? But he could not remain now, he must hear it on his
return from the Foreign Office, he must now go as agreed to Lord
Stamfordham. But first, for form's sake, he rang for Thacker and
questioned him, and through him the rest of the household, without
result, except renewed and somewhat offended assurances from Thacker
that the packet had been given by himself into Stamfordham's own hands
and that, to his knowledge, no one but Sir William Gore had been in the
study during Rendel's absence. But Rendel knew in his heart that there
was no need to question any one further, and no advantage in doing so,
since he knew also that he could not use his knowledge.
He drove rapidly along in a hansom, unconscious of the streets he passed
through. Wherever he went he saw only Rachel's face of misery, heard the
words, "just for your own sake," that had cut into him as deeply as his
own into Gore. Was that it? he asked himself, was it just for his own
sake, to clear himself, that he had accused Gore? Well, why else? Once
Stamfordham knew that the thing had been done, the secret revealed, the
name of the actual culprit would make no real difference. It would make
things neither easier nor more difficult for Stamfordham to know that it
had been done, not by himself, but by Sir William Gore. But there was
one person besides himself and Gore for whom everything hung in the
balance, and it was still with Rachel's face before him and her words in
his ears, that he went into Lord Stamfordham's private room.
Lord Stamfordham had been writing with a secretary, who got up and went
out as Rendel came in. How familiar the room was to Rendel! how
incredible it was that day after day he should have come there--was it
in some former state of existence?--valued, welcome.
"Well, what have you to tell me?" Stamfordham said quickly.
Rendel's lips felt dry and parched; he spoke with an effort.
"I am afraid," he said in a voice that sounded to him strangely unlike
his own, "that I have ... nothing."
"What?" said Stamfordham. "Have you not made any inquiries? Haven't you
asked every one in your house?"
"I have made inquiries, yes," said Rendel.
"And do you mean to say that there is nothing that can throw any light
upon it, no possible solution?"
"I can throw no light," said Rendel.
"But...." said Stamfordham. "Is this all you are going to say? Have you
thought of no possibility? Have you no suggestion to offer?"
"I am afraid," said Rendel again, "that I can offer none."
Lord Stamfordham sat silent for a moment, absolutely bewildered. Part of
his exceptional administrative ability was the almost unerring judgment
he displayed in choosing those he employed about him, and it was an
entirely new experience to him to have to suspect one of them, or to
impugn the ordinary code of honourable conduct. He found it extremely
difficult, autocrat as he was, to put it into words. He was sore and
angry at the grave indiscretion, if not something worse, that had been
committed, most of all that it should have been himself, the great
officer of state, in whom it was unpardonable to choose the wrong tool,
who had put that immeasurably important secret into the hands of a man
who had somehow or other let it escape from them; so much could not be
denied. It certainly seemed difficult to conceive that it should be
Rendel himself who had betrayed it, or that if he had betrayed it he
would not admit the fact. And yet--could it be?--there was something in
Rendel's demeanour now that made it more possible than it had been an
hour ago to credit him with the shameful possibility. The pause during
which all this had rushed through Stamfordham's mind seemed to Rendel to
have lasted through untold ages of time, when Stamfordham at last spoke
again.
"Rendel," he said, "I have a right to demand that you should give me
more satisfaction than this. You say you have learnt nothing, and can
tell me nothing, but this I find impossible to believe." Rendel made a
movement. "I am sorry, but I say this advisedly, since this disclosure
_must_ have taken place in your house," and he underlined the words
emphatically. "I can't think it possible that a man of your intelligence
should not have found some clue, some possible suggestion."
"I am very sorry," said Rendel. "I'm afraid I have not."
"Then, of course, it is obvious what conclusion I must come to," said
Lord Stamfordham. "That it is not that you cannot give any explanation,
but that you decline to give it."
Rendel, to his intense mortification, felt that he was changing colour.
Stamfordham, looking at him earnestly, felt absolutely certain that he
knew.
"Rendel," he said, gravely, "take my advice before it is too late. Don't
let a wish to screen some one else prevent you from speaking. If you
have had the misfortune to--let the secret escape you, don't, to shelter
the person who published it, withhold the truth now. But I must remind
you also," and his words fell like strokes from a hammer, "that I am
asking it for my own sake as well as yours. When I brought you those
papers, I trusted you fully and unreservedly, and now that this
catastrophe has happened in consequence of my confidence in you I am
entitled to know what has happened."
"Yes," Rendel said. "I quite see your position, and I know that you have
a right to resent mine, but all I can say is that--" he stopped, then
went on again with firmer accents, "I don't suppose I can expect you to
believe me, but as a matter of fact I can't begin to conceive the
possibility of knowingly handing on to some one else such a secret as
that."
"Knowingly," said Stamfordham, "perhaps not," and he waited, to give
Rendel one more chance of speaking. But Rendel was silent. Then
Stamfordham went on in a different tone and with a perceptibly harsher
note in his voice. "My time is so precious that I am afraid if you have
nothing further to tell me there is no good in prolonging the
interview."
"Perhaps not," said Rendel, who was deadly white, and he made a motion
as though to go.
"Do you realise," said Stamfordham, "what this will mean to you?"
"Yes," said Rendel, "I do."
"Of course," said Stamfordham, "what I ought to do is to insist on the
inquiry being continued until the matter is cleared up and brought to
light."
A strange expression passed over Rendel's face as there rose in his mind
a feeling that he instantly thrust out of sight again, that
supposing--supposing--Stamfordham himself investigated to the bottom all
that had happened, and that without any doing of his, Rendel's, the
truth were discovered? Then with horror he put the idea away. Rachel! it
would give Rachel just as great a pang, of course, whoever found it out.
The flash of impulse and recoil had passed swiftly through his mind
before he woke up, as it were, to find Stamfordham continuing--
"But I am willing for your sake to stop here."
Rendel tried to make some acknowledgment, but no words that he could
speak came to his lips.
"It might, as I told you before," Stamfordham went on, standing up as
though to show that the interview was over, "have been a national
disaster. That, however, has, I hope, been averted, and we shall simply
have done now something we meant to do a few days hence. But that does
not affect the point we have been discussing," and he looked at Rendel
as though with a forlorn hope that at the last moment he might speak.
But Rendel was silent still. "You understand, then," Stamfordham said,
looking him straight in the face, an embodiment of inexorable justice,
"what this means to a man in your position?"
"Yes," said Rendel again.
"I owe my colleagues an explanation," said Stamfordham. "Since one is
not to be had, I must repeat to them what has passed between us."
"Of course," said Rendel. And he went towards the door.
"There is another thing I must ask you," Stamfordham said, speaking with
cold courtesy. "I have a letter here about Stoke Newton. It will have to
be settled." And he waited for Rendel to answer the question which had
not been explicitly asked.
"I shall not stand," said Rendel.
"That is best," said Stamfordham quietly. "Will you telegraph to the
Committee, then?"
"I will," said Rendel, and with an inclination of the head, to which
Lord Stamfordham responded, he went out.