"Would have been?" said Rendel, still amazed. "Why don"t you say "will be"? Do you mean to say you don"t want to go?"
"I don"t think _I_ could go," Rachel said, with a slight surprise in her voice. "How could I?"
Rendel said nothing, but still looked at her as though finding it difficult to realise her point of view.
"How could I leave my father?" she said, putting into words the thing that seemed to her so absolutely obvious that she had hardly thought it necessary to speak it.
"Do you think you couldn"t?" Rendel said slowly.
"Oh, Frank, how would it be possible?" she said. "We could not leave him alone here, and it would be much, much too far for him to go."
"Of course. I had not thought of his attempting it," said Rendel, truthfully enough, with a sinking dread at his heart that perhaps after all the fair prospect he had been gazing upon was going to prove nothing but a mirage.
"You do agree, don"t you?" she said, looking at him anxiously. "You do see?"
"I am trying to see," Rendel said quietly. For a moment neither spoke.
"Oh, I couldn"t," Rachel said. "I simply couldn"t!" in a heartfelt tone that told of the unalterable conviction that lay behind it. There was another silence. Rendel stood looking straight before him, Rachel watching him timidly. Rendel made as though to speak, then he checked himself.
"Oh, isn"t it a pity it was suggested!" Rachel cried involuntarily.
Rendel gave a little laugh. It was deplorable, truly, that such an opportunity should have come to a man who was not going to use it.
"But could not _you_----" she began, then stopped. "How long would it be for?"
"Oh, about five years, I suppose," said Rendel, with a sort of aloofness of tone with which people on such occasions consent to diverge for the moment from the main issue.
"Five years," she repeated. "That would be too long."
"Yes, five years seems a long time, I daresay," said Rendel, "as one looks on to it."
"I was wondering," she said hesitatingly, "if it wouldn"t have been better that you should have gone."
"I? Without you, do you mean?" Rendel said. "No, certainly not. That I am quite clear about."
"Oh, Frank, I should not like it if you did," she said, looking up at him.
"I need not say that I should not." There was another silence.
"Should you like it very, very much?" she said.
"Like what?" said Rendel, coming back with an effort.
"Going to Africa."
There had been a moment when Rendel had told Lady Gore how glad he was that Rachel had no ambitions, as producing the ideal character. No doubt that lack has its advantages--but the world we live in is not, alas, exclusively a world of ideals.
"Yes, I should like it," he replied quietly. "If you went too, that is--I should not like it without you."
"Oh, Frank, it _is_ a pity," she said, looking up at him wistfully. But there was evidently not in her mind the shadow of a possibility that the question could be decided other than in one way.
"Come, it is getting late," Rendel said. And they left the room with the outward air of having postponed the decision till the morning. But the decision was not postponed; that Rachel took for granted, and Rendel had made up his mind. This was, after all, not a new sacrifice he was called upon to make: it was part of the same, of that sacrifice which he had recognised that he was willing to make in order to marry Rachel, and which was so much less than that other great and impossible sacrifice of giving her up.
He came down early the next morning and wrote to Lord Belmont, meaning when Rachel came down to breakfast to show her the letter, in which he had most gratefully but quite decisively declined the honour that had been done him. He read the letter over feeling as if he were in a dream, and almost smiled to himself at the incredible thought that here was the first big opportunity of his life and that he was calmly putting it away from him. Perhaps when he came to talk it over with Rachel again she might see it differently. Might she? No. He knew in his heart that she would not. It was probable that Rendel"s ambition, his determined purpose, would always be hampered by his old-fashioned, almost quixotic ideas of loyalty, his conception of the seemliness, the dignity of the relations between husband and wife. In a matter that he felt was a question of right or wrong he would probably without hesitation have used his authority and decided inflexibly that such and such a course was the one to pursue; but here he felt it was impossible. It would not be consistent with his dignity to use his authority to insist upon a course which, though it might be to his own advantage, was undeniably an infringement of the tacit compact that he had accepted when he married.
With the letter in his hand he went slowly out of the study. Rachel was coming swiftly down the stairs into the hall, dressed for walking, looking perturbed and anxious.
"Frank," she said hurriedly, "I have just had a message from Prince"s Gate, my father is ill."
"I am very sorry," Rendel said with concern.
"I must go there directly," she said.
"Have you breakfasted?" asked Rendel.
"Yes," she said. "At least I have had a cup of tea--quite enough."
"No," said Rendel, "that isn"t enough. Come, it"s absurd that you should go out without breakfasting."
"I couldn"t really," Rachel said entreatingly. "I must go."
"Nonsense!" Rendel said decidedly. "You are not to go till you have had some breakfast." And he took her into the dining-room and made her eat.
But this, as he felt, was not the moment for further discussion of his own plans. He saw how absolutely they had faded away from her view.
"I shall follow you shortly," he said, "to know how Sir William is."
"Oh, do," she said. "You can"t come now, I suppose?"
"I have a letter to write first. I must write to Lord Belmont."
"Oh yes, of course," she said, with a sympathetic inflection in her voice. "Oh, Frank, how terrible it would have been if you had been going away now!" And she drew close to him as though seeking shelter against the anxieties and troubles of the world.
"But I am not," said Rendel quietly. And she looked back at him as she drove off with a smile flickering over her troubled face.
Rendel turned back into the house. There was nothing more to do, that was quite evident. He fastened up the letter to Belmont and sent it round to his house, also writing to Stamfordham a brief letter of thanks for his good offices and regrets at not being able to avail himself of them.
Later he went to Prince"s Gate. Sir William was a little better. It was a sharp, feverish attack brought on by a chill the night before. It lasted several days, during which time Rachel was constantly backwards and forwards at Prince"s Gate, and at the end of which she proposed to Rendel that her father should, for the moment, as she put it, come to them to Cosmo Place.
In the meantime Stamfordham, surprised at Rendel"s refusal of the opportunity he had put in his way, had sent for him to urge him to re-consider his decision while there was yet time. Rendel found it very hard to explain his reasons in such a way that they should seem in the least valid to his interlocutor. Stamfordham, although he was well aware that Rendel had married during the spring, had but dimly realised the practical difference that this change of condition might bring into the young man"s life and into the code by which his actions were governed.
He himself had not married. He had had, report said, one pa.s.sing fancy and then another, but they had never amounted to more than an impulse which had set him further on his way; there had never been an attraction strong enough to deflect him from his...o...b..t. With such, he was quite clear, the statesman should have nothing to do.
"Of course," he said, after listening to what Rendel had to say, "I should be the last person to wish to persuade you to take a course contrary to Mrs. Rendel"s wishes, but still such an opportunity as this does not come to every man."
"I know," said Rendel.
"I never was married," Stamfordham went on, "but I have not understood that matrimony need necessarily be a bar to a successful career."
"Nor have I," Rendel said, with a smile.
"Let"s see. How long have you been married?"