"I want you," he said, "to transcribe some pencil notes of mine."
"You want _me_ to transcribe them?" said Rendel, with an involuntary inflection of surprise in his tone.
"Yes, if you will," said Stamfordham. "The fact is, Marchmont, the only man I have had since you left me who can read my writing when I take rough pencil notes in a hurry, has collapsed just to-day, out of sheer excitement I believe, and because he sat up for one night writing."
"Poor fellow!" said Rendel, half to himself.
"Yes," said Stamfordham drily; and then he went on, as one who knows that he must leave the sick and wounded behind without waiting to pity them. "These," unfolding the paper, "are notes of a conversation that I have just had at the German Emba.s.sy with Bergowitz." Rendel"s quick movement as he heard the name showed that he realised what that juxtaposition meant at such a moment. "Every moment is precious,"
Stamfordham went on, "and it suddenly dawned on me as I left the Emba.s.sy that you were close at hand and might be willing to do it."
The German Emba.s.sy was at the moment, during some building operations, occupying temporary premises near Belgrave Square.
"I should think so indeed," Rendel said eagerly.
"The notes are very short, as you see," said Stamfordham. "You know, of course, what has been happening. I needn"t go into that." And as he spoke a boy pa.s.sed under the windows crying the evening papers, and they distinctly heard "Panic on the Stock Exchange." The two men"s eyes met.
"Yes, there is a panic on the Stock Exchange," Stamfordham said, "because every one thinks there will be war--but there probably won"t."
"Not?" said Rendel. "Can it be stopped?"
Stamfordham answered him by unfolding the piece of paper and laying it down before him on the table. It was a map of Africa, roughly outlined, but still clearly enough to show unmistakably what it was intended to convey, for all down the map from north to south there was a thick line drawn to the west of the Cape to Cairo Railway--the latter being indicated, but more faintly, in pencil--starting at Alexandria and running down through the whole of the continent, bending slightly to the southward between Bechua.n.a.land and Namaqualand, and ending at the Orange River. East of that line was written ENGLAND, west of it GERMANY, and below it some lines of almost illegible writing in pencil.
Rendel almost gasped.
"What?" he said; "a part.i.tion of Africa?"
"Yes," said Stamfordham. Then he said with a sort of half smile, "The part.i.tion, that is to say, so far as it is in our own hands. But,"
speaking rapidly, "I will just put you in possession of the facts of the case and give you the clue. We abandon to Germany everything that we have a claim to west of this line. It does not come to very much," in answer to an involuntary movement on Rendel"s part; and he swept his hand across the coast of the Gulf of Guinea as though wiping out of existence the Gold Coast, Ashanti, Sierra Leone, and all that had mattered before. "Germany abandons to us everything that she lays claim to on the east of it, including therefore the whole course of the Cape to Cairo Railway."
"But has Germany agreed?" said Rendel, stupefied with surprise.
"Germany has agreed," said Stamfordham. "We have just heard from Berlin."
Rendel felt as if his breath were taken away by the rapid motion of the events.
"That means peace, then?" he said.
"Yes," Stamfordham said; "peace."
"Then when is this going to be given to the world?" said Rendel.
"Some of it possibly to-morrow," said Stamfordham. "The Cabinet Council will meet this evening, and the King"s formal sanction obtained. Of course," he went on, "the broad outlines only will be published--the fact of the understanding at any rate, not necessarily the terms of the part.i.tion. But it is important for financial reasons that the country should know as soon as possible that war is averted."
"Of course, of course," said Rendel. "Immeasurably important."
Stamfordham took up his hat and held out his hand with his air of courtly politeness as he turned towards the door.
"I may count upon you to do this for me immediately?"
"This instant," said Rendel, taking up the papers. "Shall I take them to your house as soon as they are done?"
"Please," said Stamfordham. "No, stay--I am going back to the German Emba.s.sy now, then probably to the Foreign Office. You had better simply send a messenger you can rely upon, and tell him to wait at my house to give them into my own hand, as I am not sure where I shall be for the next hour. Rendel, I must ask you by all you hold sacred to take care of those papers. If that map were to be caught sight of before the time----"
Rendel involuntarily held it tighter at the thought of such a catastrophe.
"Good Heavens!--yes," he said. "But that shan"t happen. Look," and he dropped the paper through the slit in the closed revolving corner of his large writing-table, a cover that was solidly locked with his own key so that, though papers could be put in through the slit, it was impossible to take them out again without unlocking the cover and lifting it up. "This is the only key," he said, showing his bunch. "Now then, they are perfectly safe while I go across the hall with you."
Stamfordham nodded.
"By the way," he said, pausing, "you are married now, Rendel...."
"I am, yes, I am glad to say," Rendel replied.
"To be sure," said Stamfordham, with a little bow conveying discreet congratulation. "But--remember that a married man sometimes tells secrets to his wife."
"Does he, sir?" said Rendel, with an air of a.s.sumed innocence.
"I believe I have heard so," said Stamfordham.
"On the other hand," said Rendel, "I also have heard that a married man sometimes keeps secrets from his wife."
"Oh well, that is better," said Stamfordham.
"From some points of view, perhaps," said Rendel. Then he added more seriously, "You may be quite sure, sir, that no one--_no one_--in this house shall know about those papers. I would give you my word of honour, but I don"t suppose it would make my a.s.sertion any stronger."
"If you said nothing," said Stamfordham, "it would be enough;" and Rendel"s heart glowed within him as their eyes met and the compact was ratified. "By the way, Rendel, there was one thing more I wanted to say to you. There will probably be a vacancy at Stoke Newton before long; aren"t you going into the House?"
"Some time," said Rendel. "When I get a chance."
"Well, there is going to be a chance now," said Stamfordham. "Old Crawley is going to resign. I hear it from private sources; the world doesn"t know it yet. It is a safe Imperialist seat, and in our part of the world."
"I should like very much to try," said Rendel, forcing himself to speak quietly.
"Suppose you write to our committee down there?" said Stamfordham. "That is, when you have done your more pressing business--I mean mine."
"That shall come before everything else," Rendel said. "I will do it at this moment."
He turned quickly back into his study after Stamfordham had left him, and unlocked and threw up the revolving cover of the writing-table hastily, for fear that something should have happened to the paper on which the destinies of the civilised world were hanging. There it was, safe in his keeping, his and n.o.body else"s. He took it in his hand and for a moment walked up and down the room, unable to control himself, trying to realise the tremendous change in the aspect of his fortunes that had taken place in the last half-hour. Then he had seemed to himself in the backwater, out of the throng of existence. He had been trying to reconcile himself to the idea that he was "out of it," as he had put it to himself--left behind. And now he shared with the two great potentates of the world the knowledge of what was going to take place; it was his hand that should transcribe the words that had decided it; he was a witness, and so far the only one. Then with an effort he forced himself to be calm. Every minute was of importance. He sat down at the writing-table, took up the paper, and pored over it to try to disentangle the strange dots, scratches, and lines which, flowing from Stamfordham"s pen, took the place of handwriting. Some ill-natured people said that Stamfordham was quite conscious of the advantage of having writing which could not be read without a close scrutiny. It was no doubt possible. However, having the clue to what the contents of the paper were, Rendel, to his immense relief, found that he could decipher it. As he was writing the first word of the fair copy the door of the study opened slowly, and Sir William Gore appeared on the threshold, a newspaper in his hand.
CHAPTER XIII
Sir William, who had not been able to come downstairs for a month, may be forgiven for unconsciously feeling that the occasion was one which demanded from his son-in-law a semblance of cordial welcome at any rate, if not of glad surprise. It is an extraordinarily difficult thing to learn that we are not looking each of us at the same aspect of life as our neighbour, especially our neighbour of a different time of life from ourselves. We appeal to him as a matter of course, and say, "Look! see how life appears to me to-day! see what existence is like in relation to myself!" But unfortunately the neighbour, who is standing on the outside of that particular circle, and not in its centre, does not see what we mean. Sir William had been shut up for a month in the room that he inhabited on the drawing-room floor of the house in Cosmo Place. He had simply not had mental energy to care about what was happening beyond the four walls of that room. If he had been asked at that moment what the universe was, he would have said that it was a succession of days and nights in which the important things of life were the hours and compositions of his meals, the probable hour of the doctor"s visit, and the steps to be made each day towards recovery and the resumption of ordinary habits.
Rachel had of course devoted herself to him. It was she who went up with his breakfast, who read to him during the morning, who tried to remember everything that happened out of doors to tell him on her return; it was she who had done many hundreds of patiences in the days when he was not well enough to play at chess. He was hardly well enough now, but he had set his heart upon the first day when he should come down and play chess with Rendel as a sort of pivot in his miserable existence. And now the moment had come. How should he know that for all practical purposes his son-in-law was a different being from the young man who had come upstairs to see him the day before? For yesterday Rendel had come up and talked to him about indifferent things, not telling him, lest he should be excited, of the evil rumours that were filling the air, and had gone downstairs again himself with a miserably unoccupied day in front of him--a day in which to remember and overcome the fact that, instead of being in the arena of which the echoes reached him, he was doomed to be a spectator from afar, who could take no part in the fray. But so much Sir William had not known. How should we any of us know what the inward counterpart is to the outward manifestation? know that the person who comes into the room may be, although appearing the same, different from the one who went out? He knew only that the Rendel of this morning had said with a smile, "I am looking forward to the moment when you will checkmate me again." And Sir William had a right to expect that, that moment having come, Rendel should feel the importance and pleasure of it as much as he did himself. But it was not the same Rendel who sat there, it was not the unoccupied spectator ready to join his leisure to that of another; it was a resolute combatant who had been suddenly called into a front post, and for whom the whole aspect of the world had changed. It was an absolute physical effort to Rendel, as the door opened and he saw Sir William, to bring his mind back to the conditions of a few hours before. The fact of any one coming in at that moment called him back to earth again, turned him violently about to face the commonplace importunities of existence. Sir William had probably not formulated to himself what he had vaguely expected, but it certainly was not the puzzled, half-questioning look, the indescribable air of being taken aback, altered at once by a quick impulse into something that tried not to look forbidding, and more strange and tell-tale than all the quick movement by which Rendel drew a large sheet of blotting-paper over what he was writing. Sir William"s whole being was jarred, his rejoicing in the small occasion of being on another stage towards recovery was gone; n.o.body cared, not one. Rachel was not in the house, and who else was there to care? n.o.body: there never would be again. Could it be possible that for the rest of his life he was doomed to be in a world so arranged that his comings and goings were not the most important of all? He stood still a moment, then tried to speak in his usual voice.