"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 nobody 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.