"Quite well, thanks," said Stafford, rather surprised by the question.
At that moment a servant brought a foreign cablegram to Falconer.
Falconer tore it open, glanced at it, and went pale.
"Anything the matter?" asked Stafford.
Falconer looked at him fixedly and curiously, then with a shake of his head moved away.
Stafford smoked a cigarette and sauntered back to the ballroom. He pa.s.sed the group of city men again, and caught a word or two in the baron"s gruff voice:
"I want to know how we shtand! The plow will shmash him; but the rest of us--us who are in de shwim. If de natives have risen--"
But Stafford paid little heed--forgot the words as soon as he had heard them; and went in search of his partner. While he was dancing, he was aware of that peculiar stir, that flutter and wave of excitement which agitates a crowd when something momentous is happening. He looked round and saw his father standing in the centre of a group of persons, men and women, who all seemed excited. There was loud talking, and sudden and spasmodic movements as fresh auditors to the restless group came up hurriedly and curiously.
"What is the matter, Mr. Orme?" asked the girl with whom he was dancing.
As she spoke he saw Maude detach herself from the group and approach them.
"Stafford--forgive me, Lady Blanche! but will you let him come to Sir Stephen? He has just heard news--"
They followed her, and Sir Stephen seeing Stafford, held out his hand.
The old man was flushed and his dark eyes sparkled.
"Stafford!" he said, and his rich voice shook. "I have just heard--they have just brought me--"
He held up an official-looking paper with the great red seal on the envelope.
"It is from the prime minister--it is the peerage," said Maude, in a voice thrilling with restrained triumph.
Stafford shook his father"s hand.
"I congratulate you, sir," he said, trying all he knew to force congratulation, rejoicing, into his voice.
Sir Stephen nodded, and smiled; his lips were quivering.
"Congratulations, Sir Stephen!" said a man, coming up. "I can see the good news in your face."
"Not Sir Stephen--Lord Highcliffe!" said another, correctingly.
Maude slid her arm in Stafford"s, and stood, her lovely face flushed, her eyes sparkling, as she looked round.
"And no t.i.tle has been more honourably gained," a voice said.
"Or will be more n.o.bly borne!" echoed another.
Stafford, with all a man"s hatred of fuss, and embarra.s.sment in its presence, drew nearer to his father.
"Won"t you come and sit down--out of the crowd?" he added, in a low voice.
Sir Stephen nodded, and was moving away--they made a kind of lane for him--when a servant came up to him with a cablegram on a salver. As he did so, Howard stepped forward quickly.
"Take it into the study!" he said, almost sharply, to the man; then to Stafford he whispered: "Don"t let him open it. It is bad news.
Griffenberg has just told me--quick! Take it!"
But before Stafford, in his surprise, could take the cablegram, Sir Stephen had got it. He stood with his head erect, the electric light falling on his handsome face: the embodiment of success. He opened the telegram with the smile still on his lips, and read the thing; then the crowd of staring--shall it be written, gaping?--persons saw the smile fade slowly, the flushed face grow paler, still paler, then livid. He looked up and round him as if he were searching for a face, and his eyes, full of anguish and terror, met Stafford"s.
"Stafford--my boy!" he cried, in accents of despair.
Stafford sprang to him.
"Father--I am here!" he said, for Sir Stephen"s gaze grew vacant as if he had been stricken blind.
The next moment he threw up his arms and, with a gasp, fell forward.
Stafford caught him as a cry of terror rose from the crowd which fell back as if suddenly awed by some dreadful presence; and forcing his way through it a famous doctor reached the father and son.
There was a moment of awful suspense, then--the music sounded like a mockery in the silence--all knew, though no word had been spoken, that the great Sir Stephen--pardon! the Right Honourable the Earl of Highcliffe--was dead.
CHAPTER x.x.xII.
By a stroke, as of Heaven"s lightning, the house of joy was turned into the house of mourning.
They bore the dead man to his room, plain and simple, even in that mansion of luxury; the guests departed, some of them flying as from a pestilence, some of them lingering with white and dazed faces and hushed whispers, and Stafford was left alone with his dead; for he had shut the door even upon Howard, who paced up and down outside, not daring to force his sympathy upon his beloved friend.
The morning papers gave a full account of the grand ball, the announcement of Sir Stephen"s peerage, and the sudden and tragic ending to a life which had been lived full in the public gaze, a life of struggle and success, which had been cut down at the very moment of extreme victory. They recited the man"s marvellous career, and held it up to the admiration and emulation of his fellow Englishmen. They called him a pioneer, one who had added to the Empire, they hinted at a public funeral--and they all discreetly ascribed telling upon a weak heart. Sir Stephen"s precarious condition had been known, they said, to his medical adviser, who had for some time past tried to persuade him to relinquish his arduous and nerve-racking occupations, and to take repose.
Not a word was said about the cablegram which had been delivered to him a few moments before his terribly sudden death; for it was felt by all that nothing should be allowed to blur the glory of such a successful career--not for the present, at any rate.
There was no need for an inquest; the great physician who had been in attendance, quite vainly, was prepared to certify to the cause of death, and Stafford"s feelings were spared thus far. Someone high in authority suggested the idea of a public funeral, through Howard, whom alone Stafford saw, but Stafford declined the honour, and the first Earl of Highcliffe was carried to his last rest as quietly as circ.u.mstances would permit.
The press and the men of the city, with whom the dead man had worked, kept silence about the catastrophe that had happened until after the funeral; then rumours arose, at first in whispers and then more loudly, and paragraphs and leaderettes appeared in the papers hinting at something wrong in connection with Lord Highcliffe"s last great scheme, and calling for an enquiry.
The morning after the funeral, Howard found Stafford sitting in a darkened room of the great house, his head in his hand, a morning paper lying open on the table before him. He raised his white and haggard face as Howard entered and took his friend"s hand in silence. Howard glanced at the paper and bit his lip.
"Yes," said Stafford, "I have been reading this. You have seen it?"
Howard nodded.
"You know what it means? I want you to tell me. I have been putting off the question day by day, selfishly; I could not face it until--until he was buried. But I can put it off no longer; I must know now. What was that cablegram which they brought him just before--which you tried to keep from him?"
"You have not read any of the newspapers?" asked Howard, gravely, bracing himself for the task from which his soul shrank.
Stafford shook his head.
"No; I have not been able to. I have not been able to do anything, scarcely to think. The blow came so suddenly that I have felt like a man in a dream--dazed, bewildered. If I have been able to think at all it is of his love for me, his goodness to me. There never was such a father--" His voice broke, and he made a gesture with his hand. "Even now I do not realise that he is gone, that I shall never see him again.