"Four months," Rendel replied.

"As I told you, I am inexperienced in these matters," Stamfordham said, "but perhaps while one still counts by months it is more difficult to a.s.sert one's authority."

"My wife," said Rendel, "does not wish to leave her father, who is in delicate health. Sir William Gore, you know."

"Oh, Sir William Gore, yes," said Stamfordham, with an inflection which implied that Sir William Gore was not worth sacrificing any possible advantages for.

"I am very, very sorry," Rendel said gravely. "I would have given a great deal to have been going to Africa just now."

"Yes, indeed. There will be infinite possibilities over there as soon as things have settled down," said Stamfordham. And he looked at a table that was covered with papers of different kinds, among them some notes in his own handwriting, and said, "Pity my unfortunate secretaries! I don't think I have ever had any one who knew how to read those impossible hieroglyphics as you did."

"I don't know whether I ought to say I am glad or sorry to hear that,"

said Rendel, as he went towards the door.

"What are you going to do if you don't go to Africa?" Stamfordham said.

"Something else, I hope," said Rendel, with a look and an accent that carried conviction.

"Shan't you go into the House?" said Stamfordham.

"I mean to try," Rendel said. Then as he went out he turned round and said, "I daresay, sir, there are still possibilities in Europe, after all."

"Very likely," said Stamfordham; and they parted.

One of the most difficult tasks of the philosopher is not to regret his decisions. The mind that has been disciplined to determine quickly and to abide by its determination is one of the most valuable instruments of human equipment. But it certainly needed some philosophy on Rendel's part, during the period that elapsed between his refusal of Lord Belmont's offer and the departure of the newly appointed governor, not to regret that he himself was remaining behind. Day by day the papers were full of the administrators who were going out, of their qualifications, of their responsibilities. Day by day Rendel looked at the map hanging in his study and wondered what transformations the shifting of circ.u.mstances would bring to it.

Sir William Gore, in the meantime, had got better. He had slowly thrown off the fever that had prostrated him, although he was not able to resume his ordinary life. He had demurred a little at first to the proposal that he should take up his abode at Cosmo Place, then, not unwillingly, had yielded. In his ordinary state of health he would have been alive to the proverbial drawbacks of a joint household, but in his present state of weakness and depression he felt he could not be alone, and in his secret heart it was almost a relief to be away from Prince's Gate, its memories and a.s.sociations. It had been in one of these moments of insight, of revelation almost, that suddenly, like a blinding flash of light shows us in pitiless details the conditions that surround us, that with intense self-pity he had said to himself that there was actually no one in this whole world with whom he was ent.i.tled to come first. Rachel's solicitude certainly went far to persuade him of the contrary; but in his secret soul he bitterly resented the fact that there should now be someone to share Rachel's allegiance, although Rendel might well have contended that he was divided in Sir William's favour.

CHAPTER XI

The Miss Pateleys, sisters of Robert Pateley, lived together. The death of their parents, as we have said, had taken place when their brother was already launched on his successful career as a journalist. They had at first gone on living in the little country town in which their father had been a solicitor. It had not occurred to them to do anything else.

They were surrounded there by people who knew them, who considered them, towards whom their social position needed no explaining and by whom it was taken for granted. When they went shopping, the tradespeople would reply in a friendly way, "Yes, Miss Pateley,--No, Miss Jane. This is the stocking you generally prefer"; or, "These were the pens you had last time," with an intimate understanding of the needs of their customers, forming a most pleasing contrast to the detached att.i.tude of the staff of big shops. The sisters had a very small income between them, eked out by skilful management, and also, it must be said, by constant help from their brother, who represented to them the moving principle of the universe embodied in a visible form. He it was who knew things the female mind cannot grasp, how to read the gas meter, what to do when the cistern was blocked, or when the landlord said it was not his business to mend the roof. These things which appeared so preoccupying to Anna and Jane seemed to sit very lightly on their brother Robert, and when they saw him shoulder each detail and deal with it with instant and consummate ease they admired him as much as they did when they saw him carrying upstairs his own big portmanteau which the united female strength of the house was powerless to deal with. After a time Robert, devoted brother though he was, found that it complicated existence to have to settle these matters by correspondence, still more to have suddenly to take a journey of several hours from London in order to deal with them on the spot. He proposed to his sisters that they should come and live in London. With many misgivings, and yet not without some secret excitement, they a.s.sented, and for a few months before our story begins they had been established in the same house as their brother, on the floor above the lodgings he inhabited in Vernon Street, Bloomsbury.

Vernon Street, Bloomsbury, was perhaps a fortunate place for them to begin their London life in, if London life, except as a geographical term, it can be called, for two poor little ladies living more absolutely outside what is commonly described by that name it would be hard to find. Indeed, if it had not been for the courage and adventurous spirit of Jane, the younger of the two, their hearts might well have failed them during those first months in which the autumn days shortened over the district of Bloomsbury. Since they knew no one, they had n.o.body to visit, and n.o.body came to see them. They were still not a little bewildered by London. There were, it was true, a great many sights of an inanimate kind; but how to get at them? They did not consider themselves justified in taking cabs, and omnibuses were at first, to two people who had lived all their lives in a tramless town, a disconcerting and complicated means of locomotion. However, as the time went on they shook down, they found their little niche in existence; they made acquaintance with the clergyman's wife and some of the district visitors, and when the first summer of their London life came round, the summer following Rachel's marriage, everything seemed to them more possible. London was bright, sunshiny, and welcoming, instead of being austere and repellent. Pateley had succeeded in obtaining a key of the square close to which they lived, and they sat there and revelled in the summer weather. The mere fact of having him so near them, of knowing that at any moment in the day he might come in with the loud voice and heartiness of manner which always cheered and uplifted them, albeit some of his acquaintances ventured to find it too audible, gave them a fresh sense of being in touch with all the great things happening in the world. Then came a moment in which, indeed, the larger issues of life seemed to present themselves to be dealt with. Pateley, under whose auspices the _Arbiter_ had prospered exceedingly, and who had an interest in it from the point of view of a commercial enterprise as well as of a political organ, found himself one day the possessor of a larger sum of ready money than he had expected. He made up his mind that some of it should be given to his sisters, and that the rest should join their own savings invested in the "Equator," which seemed to present every prospect of succeeding when once the moment should come to work it. Pateley was altogether in a high state of jubilation in those days.

The Cape to Cairo railway was actually on the verge of being completed.

In a week more the gigantic scheme would be an accomplished fact. The excitement in London respecting it was immense. A small piece of German territory still remained to be crossed, but if no unforeseen incident arose to jeopardise the situation at the last moment all would yet be well. The rejoicings of Englishmen commonly take a st.u.r.dy and obvious form, and two days after the great junction was expected to take place, the _Arbiter_ was to give a dinner at the Colossus Hotel in the Strand to the representatives of the Cape to Cairo Railway in London, after which the Hotel would be illuminated on all sides, and fireworks over the river were to proclaim to the whole town that Africa had been spanned. Pateley was to take the chair at the dinner. He had some shares in the railway himself, although the rush upon it had been too great for him to secure any large amount of them. He had golden hopes, however, in the future of the "Equator," when once the railway was at its doors. Anderson had gone back again to Africa, this time with an eager staff of companions, and was only waiting for his time to come.

"Now then," Pateley said jovially, one evening, as he went into the lodgings in Vernon Street and found his sisters sitting over their somewhat inadequate evening meal, "Times are looking up, I must tell you. I shouldn't wonder if you were better off before long. When the railway's finished, and if the "Equator" mine is all we believe it to be, you ought to get something handsome out of it--and I have got something for you to go on with which will keep you going in the meantime. So now I hope you will think yourselves justified in sitting down to a decent dinner every evening, instead of that kind of thing,"

and he pointed, with his loud, jovial laugh, to the cocoa and eggs on the rather dingily appointed table.

Jane's eyes sparkled and her cheeks flushed with an incredulous joy.

Anna's breath came quickly. What a fairy prince of a brother this was!

"But, Robert, we had better not make much difference in our way of living at first, had we?" Anna said, timidly, calling to mind the instances in fiction of imprudent persons who had launched out wildly on an accession of fortune and then been overtaken by ruin.

"Well, I don't suppose you are either of you likely to want to cut a big dash," he said with another loud laugh. "At least, I don't see you doing it."

"It is a great responsibility," Anna said timidly. "I hope we shall use it the right way."

"Right way!" said Pateley. "Of course you will. Go to the play with it, get yourself a fur cloak, have a fire in your bedroom----"

"Oh!" said Jane.

"But, Robert," Anna said, "I don't feel it is sent to us for that."

"Sent!" said Pateley. "Well, that is one way of putting it."

But he did not enlarge upon the point. He accepted his sisters just as they were, with their limitations, their principles, and everything. He was not particularly susceptible to beauty and distinction, in the sense of these qualities being necessary to his belongings, and perhaps it was as well. Anna and Jane, though they looked undeniably like gentlewomen, had nothing else about them that was particularly agreeable to look upon. Nor were they either of them very strikingly ugly, or, indeed, strikingly anything. Jane was the better looking of the two. It was, perhaps, a rather heartless freak of destiny that life should have ordained her to live with somebody who was like a parody of herself, older, rounder, thicker, plainer. Living apart they might each have pa.s.sed muster; living together they somehow made their ugliness, like their income, go further. But in the composite photograph it was Anna who predominated. It was a pity, for she was the stumpier of the two.

Long and earnest were the discussions the little sisters had that night after their splendid brother had departed, until by the time they went to bed they were prepared, or so it seemed to them, to launch their existence on a dizzy career of extravagance. They were going, as they expressed it, to put their establishment on another footing, which meant that instead of being attended by an inexperienced young person of eighteen they were to have an arrogant one of twenty-five. Their own elderly servant had declined to face the temptations of London, and had remained behind, living close to their old home. And, greatest event of all, they had at length--it was now summer, but that didn't matter, furs were cheaper--yielded to the thought which they had been alternately caressing and dismissing for months, and they were each going to buy a Fur Cloak. The days in which this all important purchase was being considered were to the Miss Pateleys days of pure enjoyment. Days of walks along Oxford Street, no longer so bewildered by the noise of London traffic, the discovery of some shop in an out of the way place whose wares were about half the price of the more fashionable quarters.

The days were full of glorious possibilities.

It was two days after that evening visit of Pateley's to his sisters, which had so gilded and transformed their existence, that sinister rumours began to float over London, bringing deadly anxiety in their wake. Telegrams kept pouring in, and were posted all over the town, becoming more and more serious as the day went on: "Disturbances in South Africa. Hostile encounter between English and Germans. Cape to Cairo Railway stopped. Collapse of the 'Equator, Ltd.,'" until by nightfall the whole of England knew the pitifully unimportant incidents from which such tragic consequences were springing--that a group of travelling missionaries, halting unawares on German territory and chanting their evening hymns, had been disturbed by a rough fellow who came jeering into their midst, that one of the devout group had finally ejected him, with such force that he had rolled over with his head on a stone and died then and there; and that the Germans were insisting upon having vengeance. As for the "Equator, Ltd.," n.o.body knew exactly in what the collapse consisted. The wildest reports were circulated respecting it; one saying that it was in the hands of the Germans, another that they had destroyed the plant that was ready to work it, another again, and it was the one that gained the most credence, that there was no gold in the mine at all, and that the whole thing was a swindle. The offices of the "Equator" were closed for the night. They would probably be besieged the next morning by an angry crowd eager to sell out, but the shares would now be hardly worth the paper they were written upon. Pateley, in a frenzy of anxiety, in whichever direction he looked--for his sisters, for himself, for his party, for the Cape to Cairo Railway--spent the night at his office to see which way events were going to turn. In his unreasoning anger, as the day of misfortune dawned next morning, against destiny, against the far-away unknown missionaries, against all the adverse forces that were standing in the way of his wishes, there was one concrete figure in the foreground upon whom he could justifiably pour out his wrath: Sir William Gore, the Chairman of the "Equator," who, in the public opinion, was responsible for the undertaking. He would go to see Sir William that very day as soon as it was possible. In the meantime he would go round to his sisters to try to prepare them for the unfavourable turn that their circ.u.mstances after all might possibly take. As, sorely troubled at what he had to say, he came up into their little sitting-room, he found it bright with flowers; the fragrance of sweet peas filled the air. Anna, who had longed for flowers all her life and had welcomed with tremulous grat.i.tude the rare opportunities that had come in her way of receiving any, had suddenly realised that it might not be sinful to buy them. The joy that she had in the handful bought from a street vendor was cheap, after all, at the price that might have seemed exorbitant if it had been spent on the flowers alone.

"Robert," said Jane, almost before he was inside the room, "guess what we are going to do?"

"Something very naughty, I'm afraid," Anna said, excited and shy at the same time. She was generally less able than Jane to overcome the awe that they both felt of a relation so great and so beneficent, so altogether perfect, as their brother Robert, but at this moment she was intoxicated by the possession of wealth, by the sense of luxury, of well-being, by that fragrance of the spirit her imagination added to the fragrance of the flowers that stood near her. "We're each going to buy a fur cloak like that, look!" And she held out to him proudly the picture in the inside cover of the _Realm of Fashion_, representing a tall, slender, undulating lady, about as unlike herself as could well have been imagined, wrapped in a beautiful clinging garment of which the lining, turned back, displayed an exquisite fur. Pateley, as we have said, was not as a rule given to an excess of sensibility. He did not ridicule sentiment in others, but neither did he share it; that point of view was simply not visible to him. Suddenly, however, on this evening he had a moment of what felt to himself a most inconvenient access of emotion. There was a plain and obvious pathos in this particular situation that it needed no very fine sensibilities to grasp, in the sight of his sister, her small, thickset little figure encased in her ugly little gown, looking up appealingly to him over her spectacles with the joy of a child in the toy she was going to buy. It was probably the first, the very first time in her life, that she had had that particular experience. Added to the joy of getting the thing she coveted was the sense of having looked a conscientious scruple in the face, and seen it fly before her like an evil spirit before a spell. She had routed the enemy, pushed aside the obstacle in front of her, and, excited, and flushed with victory, was looking round on a bigger world and a fairer view. Pateley, to his own surprise, found himself absolutely incapable of putting into words what he had come to say, not a thing that often happened to him. In wonder at his not answering at once, Anna, misinterpreting his very slight pause, caught herself up quickly and said anxiously--

"That is what you suggested, isn't it, Robert? You are quite sure you approve of it?"

"Yes, yes, I approve," he said heartily, recovering himself. "Of course.

Go ahead."

"You must not think," she went on, rea.s.sured, "that we mean to spend all our money in things like this, but of course a fur cloak is useful; it is a possession, isn't it? and it is, after all, one's duty to keep one's health."

"Of course it is," Pateley said. "No need of any further argument."

"I am so glad," she said, "so glad you approve!" and she smiled again with delight.

Again Pateley felt an unreasoning fury rising in his mind that people who were so easily satisfied should not be allowed to have their heart's desire. Perhaps after all, it was not true about the "Equator"; perhaps things might be better than they seemed. At any rate, he would not say anything to his sisters until he had seen Gore. And with some hurried explanation of the number of engagements that obliged him to leave them, he strode out.

CHAPTER XII

In the meantime Lord Stamfordham, watching the situation, felt there was not a single instant to lose. There is one moment in the life of a conflagration when it can be stamped out: that moment pa.s.sed, no power can stop it. Stamfordham, his head clear, his determination strong and ready, resolved to act without hesitating on his own responsibility. He sent a letter round to Prince Bergowitz, the German Amba.s.sador, begging him to come and see him. Prince Bergowitz was laid up with an attack of gout which unfortunately prevented his coming, but he would be glad to receive Lord Stamfordham if he would come to see him.

It was a little later in the same day that Rendel, alone in his study, was standing, newspaper in hand, in front of the map of Africa looking to see the exact localities where the events were happening which might have such dire consequences. At that moment Wentworth, pa.s.sing through Cosmo Place, looked through the window and saw him thus engaged. He knocked at the hall door, and, after being admitted, walked into the study without waiting to be announced.

"Looking at the map of Africa, and I don't wonder," he said. "Isn't it awful?"

"It's terrible," said Rendel, "about as bad as it can be."

"Look here, why aren't you over there to help to settle it?" said Wentworth.