"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.
I was so fond of him, so proud of him! Why do you hesitate? If it is
bad news, and I suppose it is, do you think I can't bear it? Howard,
there is nothing that you could tell me that could move me, or hurt me.
Fate has dealt me its very worst blow in taking him from me, and
nothing else can matter. The cablegram, this that the paper says, what
does it mean?"
Howard sat on the table so that he could lay his hand, with a friend's
loving and consoling touch, on Stafford's arm.
"I've come to tell you, Staff," he said. "I know that you ought to
know--but it's hard work--that cablegram contained news that the Zulus
had risen _en masse_, and that for a time, perhaps for years, the
railway scheme was blocked, if not utterly ruined. It was the one weak
link in the chain, and your father was aware of it and had taken what
measures he could to guard against the danger; but Fate, circumstances,
were too much for him. A silly squabble, so silly as to be almost
childish, between some squatters on the border and the discontented
natives, upset all his carefully laid plans, and turned a gigantic
success, at its very zenith, into a tragic failure."
Stafford leant his head upon his hand and looked steadily at Howard.
"It was that that killed him?" he said. "It meant ruin, I suppose, ruin
for him and others?"