Part 31 (1/2)

And she looked as if something else that she did not say were on the tip of her tongue.

”It must have been delightful in the woods to-day,” said Pateley, hardly knowing what he answered. He also was preoccupied by the story he had heard and wondering how much she knew of it. ”Are you going home now?”

he said, as Rachel turned away from the promenade in the direction she had pointed out.

”I think so. I am a little tired,” said Rachel, holding out her hand.

”May I come and see you?” Pateley said.

”Please do,” said Rachel.

”I certainly shall,” Pateley said. ”It will be delightful to get away for a little while from this seething ma.s.s of humanity.”

And he again gave one of his loud laughs as he also went towards the tent, to plunge with the greatest zest into the seething ma.s.s whose company he had been contemning.

CHAPTER XXIV

Rachel turned in the other direction and walked slowly back to the pavilion. What had happened? What had she been hearing? The slightest mental exertion still made her head ache, but she was conscious that if she once let herself go and made the effort it would be possible for her to understand. But that moment had not come yet.

She had not been many minutes in her quiet shady garden when the little gate at the bottom of it was thrown open, and her husband came quickly in, looking round him with an anxious, hurried glance as though not knowing what he might find. What had he expected? He could hardly have told. But as he drew nearer and nearer he had been gradually nerving himself for the worst. He had been dreading to find he knew not what.

Wentworth might be sitting with Rachel, the faces of both telling that Wentworth's would-be explanations had been of no avail; or Rachel herself might have been absent--she might have strolled out into the crowd and there unawares heard rumours of what he felt convinced must by this time be in every one's mind, on every one's lips. It was therefore for the moment an unmeasured relief to find that all seemed as usual, that Rachel was sitting there quiet and cool before her little tea-table.

”Ah!” he almost gasped, with a long sigh, as he sank into a chair and leant his head against the back of it with a weary, hunted look.

”Frank!” said Rachel anxiously, ”what is the matter? What has happened?”

”What do you mean?” he said, sitting up, with again the startled, haggard expression on his face. ”What should have happened?”

”I don't know,” Rachel said, startled too at his look and manner. ”You look so tired, so ill.”

”Oh, I'm all right,” he said, taking up and drinking eagerly the cup of tea that almost mechanically she had poured out and pushed towards him, and as he did so he realised that he had had no food since the morning.

He ate and drank and then again lay back in his chair and was silent. As Rachel looked at him the absolute conviction swept over her--she knew not why--that he had been concerned in the terrible catastrophe of which she had heard the broken accounts. It began to dawn upon her that in some inconceivable way the thing had happened to him; that it was of him those women were speaking. She still heard Lady Adela saying: ”Did you ever see any one look so awful?” And yet what could it be? What horrible misunderstanding was it? What horrible mistake could have been made?

She sat and waited. Not the least of her charms was that she knew, what many women do not know, how to sit absolutely quiet. She knew when to refrain from questioning, how to sit by her companion in so peaceful, so final a manner, as it were, that he did not feel that she was simply waiting for what he would do next.

The band blared out again with renewed vigour. Rendel leant his elbows on his knees, his face between his hands.

”Oh! that miserable noise!” he said. ”Will it never leave off? The hideousness of it all!--those people, that band! Oh! to get away from it all!” he muttered half to himself.

”Frank,” said Rachel entreatingly, touching his arm, ”if you don't like it why shouldn't we go away from it? I think it is horrible, too. I went out of the garden to-day to where the people were walking.”

Rendel looked up quickly.

”Did you? Did you see any one you knew?”

”Yes,” said Rachel; ”I saw Mr. Pateley.”

”Pateley!” said her husband. ”Did you have any talk with him? What did he say?”