THORPE took a long, thoughtful pull at the beer his sister brought him.
“Ah, I didn't know I was so thirsty,” he said, when he put the glass down. “Truth is—I've lost track of myself altogether since—since the big thing happened. I seem to be somebody else—a comparative stranger, so to speak. I've got to get acquainted with myself, all over again. You can't imagine what an extraordinary feeling it is—this being hit every few minutes with the recollection that you're worth half a million. It's like being struck over the head. It knocks you down. There are such thousands of things to do—you dance about, all of a flutter. You don't know where to begin.”
“Begin where you left off,” suggested Louisa. “You were going to tell me how—how 'the big thing' happened. You're always coming to it—and never getting any further.”
Nodding comprehension of the rebuke's justification, he plunged forthwith into the tale.
“You remember my telling you at the time how I got my Board together. I'm speaking now of the present Company—after I'd decided to be my own promoter, and have at least some kind of 'a look-in' for my money. There wasn't much money left, by the way; it was considerably under three thousand. But I come to that later. First there was the Board. Here was where that Lord Plowden that I told you about—the man that came over on the ship with me—came in. I went to him. I—God! I was desperate—but I hadn't much of an idea he'd consent. But he did! He listened to me, and I told him how I'd been robbed, and how the Syndicate would have cut my throat if I hadn't pulled away,—and he said, 'Why, yes, I'll go on your Board.' Then I told him more about it, and presently he said he'd get me another man of title—a sky-scraper of a title too—to be my Chairman. That's the Marquis of Chaldon, a tremendous diplomatic swell, you know, Ambassador at Vienna in his time, and Lord Lieutenant and all sorts of things, but willing to gather in his five hundred a year, all the same.”
“Do you mean that YOU pay HIM five hundred pounds a year?” asked the sister.
“Yes, I've got a live Markiss who works for me at ten quid a week, and a few extras. The other Directors get three hundred. This Lord Plowden is one of them—but I'll tell you more about him later on. Then there's Watkin, he's a small accountant Finsbury way; and Davidson, he's a wine-merchant who used to belong to a big firm in Dundee, but gets along the best way he can on a very dicky business here in London, now. And then there's General Kervick, awfully well-connected old chap, they say, but I guess he needs all he can get. He's started wearing his fur-coat already. Well, that's my Board. I couldn't join it, of course, till after allotment—that's because I'm the vendor, as they call it—but that hasn't interfered at all with my running the whole show. The Board doesn't really count, you know. It only does what I want it to do. It's just a form that costs me seventeen hundred a year, that's all.”
“Seventeen hundred a year,” she repeated, mechanically.
“Well, then we got out the prospectus, d'ye see. Or first, there were other things to be done. I saw that a good broker's name counted for a lot on a prospectus. I picked out one that I'd heard was reasonable—it'd been a splendid name if I could have got it—but he calmly said his price was two thousand pounds, all cash down—and I came away. Finally I got a fellow who hadn't done much of anything yet, and so wasn't so stiff about his figure. He agreed to take 500 pounds cash, and 2,000 in shares. It was God's luck that I hit on him, for he turned out, at the pinch, to be the one man in a million for me. But I'll tell you about him later. He's the Broker, mind; you mustn't forget him. Well, then, he and I got a Solicitor—he took 200 pounds cash, but he had to have 2,000 shares—and the firm of Auditors—they were 100 pounds cash and 1,000 shares. Every company has to have these people pasted on to it, by law. Oh yes, and then you must have your Bankers. You don't pay them anything, though, thank God! Well, then, there was the machinery complete, all ready to start. I took a handsome set of offices, and furnished them up to the nines—but that I was able to do pretty well on credit. You see, ready money was getting short.
“And now came the biggest pull of all. There was the press to be worked.”
He spoke as if there were no other papers in London but the financial journals.
“I didn't sleep much while that was being fixed up. You've got no more idea of what the press means, Louisa, than you have of—of a coil of snakes thawing out hungry in the spring. Why, if one blackmailer came to me, I swear a hundred did. They scared the life out of me, the first month or so. And then there's a swarm of advertising agents, who say they can keep these blackmailers off, if you'll make it worth their while. But they all wanted too much money for me—and for a while I was at my wits' ends. At last I got a fellow—he's not behaved so badly, all things considered—who had some sporting blood in his veins, and he was willing to do the whole thing for 5,000 pounds, if I could pay 1,500 pounds down, and the rest in shares. But that was just what I couldn't do, you see, so finally he took 1,000 pounds down and 5,000 in shares—and as I say he's done it tolerably well. There was one editor that I had to square personally—that is to say, 100 pounds cash—it had to be in sovereigns, for notes could be traced—and a call of 2,000 shares at par,—he's the boss pirate that everybody has to square—and of course there were odd ten-pound notes here and there, but as a rule I just opened the door and fired the black-mailers out. The moment a fellow came in, and handed me his card, and said he had proofs of two kinds of articles in his pocket, one praising me, one damning me, I told him to go and see my advertising agent, and if he wouldn't do that, then to go to hell. That's the way you've got to talk in the City,” he added, as if in apologetic explanation.
Louisa looked impassively at her brother. “Oh, I've heard the expression as far west as the Strand,” she remarked.
“Well, then came the issue. That was last Saturday. You saw the prospectus in Saturday morning's papers, and in the weeklies. The list was to be kept open, it said, till Wednesday morning—that was yesterday. That is to say, during all that time, people could apply for shares.”
“Which they didn't do—according to your account,” the sister suggested, dryly.
Thorpe passed his fingers through his roughened hair, and eyed her with a momentary quizzical gleam in his eye. Then he became serious again. The recollection of what he was now to narrate brought a frown to his brows.
“On Tuesday afternoon,” he began, with portentous deliberation—“Or no, first I must explain something. You see, in bringing out a company, you can't put up too stout a bluff. I mean, you've got to behave as if you were rolling in wealth—as if everything was coming your way, and fortunes were to be made by fastening to you. I don't know that it often fools anybody very much, but it's part of the game, and you must play it. Well, accordingly, my Broker goes on 'change Saturday morning, and has his jobber shout out that he'll buy 'Rubber Consols'—that's what our shares are called on the street—at an eighth premium; that is to say, he offered to buy for twenty-two-and-six what we were offering to the public for twenty shillings. Of course, you see, the object of that was to create the impression that there was a regular God-almighty rush for our shares. As I say, I don't know whether that ever fooled anybody—but at least there was the chance that it might start up some dealing in the shares—and all those things help. Besides, you got the sales noticed in the papers, and that might start up applications from the public. Well, the Broker bought 1,000 shares this way on Saturday. On Monday, when it might still be possible to change the luck, he bought 3,500 more, still at that premium of an eighth. He bought some Tuesday morning too—say 4,000. Well, now, keep those figures in your head, and keep an eye on the Broker. He's worth watching—as you'll see.”
“What's his name?” asked the sister, with an accession of alertness in her face. “You call him 'Broker'—and that doesn't mean anything to me. They're all brokers, aren't they?”
“Semple—Colin Semple, that's his name. He's a young Scotchman—father's a Presbyterian minister. He's a little, insignificant runt of a chap to look at—but I learned a long time ago not to judge a singed cat by his looks. However—where was I?”
“You were going to tell about Tuesday afternoon, weren't you?”
He nodded gravely, and straightened himself, drawing a long breath in preparation for the dramatic recital before him. “On Tuesday afternoon,” he began again, with impressive slowness, “I was walking on Throgmorton Street, about four o'clock. It was raining a little—it had been raining on and off all day—a miserable, rotten sort of a day, with greasy mud everywhere, and everybody poking umbrellas into you. I was out walking because I'd 'a' cut my throat if I'd tried to stay in the office another ten minutes. All that day I hadn't eaten anything. I hadn't slept worth speaking of for three nights. The whole game was up for me. I was worse than ruined. I had half a crown in my pocket. I had ten or twelve pounds in the bank—and they wouldn't let me overdraw a farthing. I tell you, I was just plumb busted.
“There came along in the gutter a sandwich-man. I'd seen the cuss before during the day, walking up and down near my offices. I took notice of him, because he was the raggedest, dirtiest, most forlorn-looking cripple you ever saw in your life. Now I read what was on his boards. It was the bill of a paper that I had refused to be bled by, and there it was in big letters: 'The Rubber Bubble Burst!' 'Thorpe's Audacity Punished!' Those were the words. I can see them with my eyes shut. I stood there, looking at the fellow, and I suppose there was something in the way I looked, for he stopped too. Of course, he didn't know me from Adam, but all the same, I'm damned if he didn't wink his eye at me—as if we two had a joke between us. And at that I burst out laughing—I simply roared with laughter, like a boy at a pantomime—and I took that last half-crown out of my pocket, and I gave it to the sandwich-man. God! you should have seen his face.”
“I don't particularly mind, Joel,” said his sister, “but I never heard you swear so much before.”
“Oh, what the—what the deuce!” he protested, impatiently. “Don't interrupt me now! Well, I went on down the street. The members of the Stock Exchange were coming out of 'the house,' and making up little groups on the pavement. They do business inside, you know, until closing time—this day it happened to be four o'clock—and then they come out and deal in the street with one another, with the kerb-stone mob, who are not allowed inside, standing round to watch the thing. I came along into the thick of these fellows; they were yelling out all sorts of things—'East Rands,' 'Oroyas,' 'Lake View Centrals,' and what not, but these went in one ear and out the other. If there ever was a man with no stomach for the market it was me. But then someone roared out:
“'At seven-eighths, sell Rubber Consols! Sell five hundred Rubber at seven-eighths! Sell five hundred at three-quarters! At three-quarters you have 'em! Rubber Consols! Sell a thou. at three-quarters!'
“This thing went into my brain like a live coal. I stopped and looked up at the fellow—and by God, it was one of the men I've been talking about—one of those Kaffir scoundrels. I wish I was better at remembering names—but I knew his face. There were some of the others around him, and they laughed at me, and he laughed at me. Oh, they had a heap of fun out of me—for a minute or two. Pretty good fun, too! I guess they'll remember it quite a while.”
“Go on!” Louisa adjured him. The obvious proximity of the dramatic climax drew her forward in her chair, and brought a glow of expectation to her eyes.
“I got myself away from that crowd somehow—I think I was afraid if I stayed I'd strangle the one who was shouting on the steps—and I went toward my office. But when I got to the door, I didn't have the courage to go in. I'd furnished it better, I suppose, than any other office in Austin Friars, and I had a kind of feeling that the sight of those carpets, and oak-tables and desks, and brass-railings and so on would make me sick. I owed for 'em all, bear in mind——”
“But—Joel,” the sister interposed. “One thing I don't understand. How many people had applied for shares? You haven't mentioned that.”
A fleeting smile lighted up the saturnine gloom of his present mood. “It was hardly worth mentioning,” he answered, with bitter mirth. “Between five and six thousand shares were subscribed, all told. I think the withdrawals by telegraph brought it down to practically five thousand. We offered a hundred thousand, you know.—But let me go on with my story. I stood there, in front of our street-door, in a kind of trance. The words of that Jew—'Sell Rubber Consols at three-quarters!'—buzzed inside my head as if they would burst it open. I turned—and I happened to see my Broker—the Scotchman, Semple, you know—coming along toward me. Right at that minute, like a flash, something dawned on me. In less than a second, I saw the whole damned rotten outfit turned upside down, with me on top. I made a jump, and ran to meet Semple.
“'How many shares of ours have you bought?' I asked him, with a grip tight on his arm.
“The little chap was looking mighty sick. He figured up in his mind. 'I'm afraid it's eight thousand five hundred, all told,' he said, in a sort of Presbyterian whimper.
“'Well—how would these gentlemen go about it to deliver their goods—that is, supposing we got a settlement?'
“I asked him this, and kept my eye on his face. He looked puzzled for a minute. Then he put out his lip. Then he shot me a glance as sharp as a razor, and we looked into one another's eyes.
“'They were shouting them out to me at three-quarters, a minute ago,' I told him.
“He was onto the game like lightning. 'Wait for me in the office,' he whispered. 'We'll go nap on this!'
“With that he was off like a streak. He stopped running just before he got to the corner, though, and began walking slowly, sauntering along, you know, as if his mind was on nothing but second-hand books. I watched him out of sight—and then I went back, and up to the offices. The furniture didn't scare me a bit this time. Why, I stopped and felt of the brass-railing just outside the Board Room, and I said to myself—'Pshaw! We could have you of solid gold, if we wanted to.'”
He paused here, and regarded his sister with what she felt was intended to be a significant look. She shrank from the confession that its meaning was Greek to her. “Well—and what next?” she asked, guardedly.
“Semple came back in twenty minutes or so—and the next morning he was at it again—and what with him and his jobber, by George, on the quiet, they picked up nearly eighteen thousand of our shares. Some they paid fifteen shillings for, some they got at twelve-and-six and even ten. That doesn't matter; it's of no more importance than the coppers you give to crossing-sweepers. The thing was to get the shares—and by God we've got them! Twenty-six thousand two hundred shares, that's what we've got. Now, do you see what that means?”
“Why yes,” she answered, with a faint-hearted assumption of confidence. “Of course, you know the property is so good that you'll make a profit on the shares you've bought far below their value. But I don't think I quite see——”
He interrupted her with an outburst of loud laughter. “Don't think you quite see?” he gurgled at her, with tears of pleasure in his eye. “Why, you dummy, you haven't got the faintest glimmer of a notion of what it's all about. The value of the property's got nothing in the world to do with it. That's neither here nor there. If there wasn't any such property in existence, it would be just the same.”
He had compassion upon her blank countenance, at this, and explained more gently: “Why, don't you see, Lou, it's this way. This is what has happened. We've got what's called a corner on the bears. They're caught short, and we can squeeze them to our hearts' content. What—you don't understand now? Why, see here! These fellows who've sold twenty-six thousand of our shares—they haven't got them to sell, and they can't get them. That is the point—they can't get them for love nor money—they must pay me my own price for them, or be ruined men. The moment they realize the situation, they will begin offering a premium for Rubber Consols. The price of a one-pound share will be two pounds, then four—six—ten—twenty—thirty—whatever I want to drive it to.”
Louisa stared up at him with wide open eyes. It seemed to her that she understood now. It was very exciting.
“You see,” he went on, taking approving note of the new light of comprehension in her glance, “we did something that Tuesday afternoon beside buy up these shares. Semple rushed off to his office, and he and his clerks got up a lot of dummy applications for shares, made out in all the different names they could be safe in using, and they put these into the bank with the application money—Semple found that—and next day he went and saw the advertising agent and the solicitor and the auditors—and got them to pool the shares that I've promised to give them. A pool? That means they agree to transfer their shares to me as trustee, and let me deal with them as I like—of course to their advantage. In any case, their shares are vendor's shares, and couldn't be dealt with in this transaction. So you see the thing is hermetically sealed. Nobody can get a share except from me, and at my price. But these fellows that have sold them—they've got to have them, don't you see. They had their little temporary joke with me on the street that afternoon—and now they must walk up to the captain's office and settle. They've got to pay me at least half a million pounds for that few minutes' fun of theirs. I may make it a good deal more; I don't know yet.”
“Oh, Joel!” she groaned at him, in awed stupefaction. His rather languid indecision as to whether half a million was going to be enough, impressed her more powerfully than had any detail of his narrative.
In a few comprehensive sentences he finished up for her what there was to tell. “This afternoon my Board met to allot the shares. They saw the applications, amounting in all to over ninety thousand shares. It took their breath away—they had heard that things were going quite the other way with us. They were so tickled that they asked no questions The allotment went through like a greased pig. About 5,000 shares went to those who had actually applied for them, and 88,000 were solemnly given to the dummy applicants. Of course, there wasn't a whisper about these dummies. Nobody winked so much as an eyelash. But I've found since that one of the directors—that Lord Plowden I told you about—was onto the thing all the while. But he's all right. Everybody's all right. Of course the dummies' shares still stand in their names—on paper—but in reality I've got them all in my safe—in my pocket you might say. They are really mine, you understand. So now there's nothing for us to do but to apply to the Stock Exchange for a special settlement date, and meanwhile lie quiet and watch the Jews stew in their own juice. Or fry in their own fat, eh? That's better.”
“But,” she commented slowly, “you say there are no shares to be bought—and yet as I understand it, there are those five thousand that were sent out to the people who really applied.”
“Bravo, Lou!” he answered her jovially. “You actually do understand the thing. You've put your finger straight on the point. It is true that those shares are out against us—or might be turned against us if they could be bought up. But in reality, they don't count at all. In the first place, you see, they're scattered about among small holders, country clergymen and old maids on an annuity and so on—all over the country. Even if these people were all traced, and hunted up, suppose it was worth the trouble and expense, they wouldn't sell. The bigger the price they were offered, the more mulish they would be about holding. That's always the way with them. But even if they did all sell, their five thousand would be a mere drop in the bucket. There would be over twenty thousand others to be accounted for. That would be quite enough for my purposes. Oh, I figured all that out very carefully. My own first notion was to have the dummies apply for the whole hundred thousand, and even a little over. Then, you see, we might have allotted everything to the dummies, and sent back the money and applications of the genuine ones. But that would have been rather hard to manage with the Board. The Markiss would have said that the returns ought to be made pro rata—that is, giving everybody a part of what they applied for—and that would have mixed everything up. And then, too, if anybody suspected anything, why the Stock Exchange Committee would refuse us a special settlement—and, of course, without that the whole transaction is moonshine. It was far too risky, and we didn't send back a penny.”
“It's all pretty risky, I should think,” she declared as she rose. “I should think you'd lie awake more than ever now—now that you've built your hopes so high and it'd be so awful to have them come to nothing.”
He smilingly shook his head. “No, it can no more fail than that gas can fail to burn when you put a light to it. It's all absolute. My half-million is as right as if it were lying to my credit in the Bank of England. Oh, that reminds me,” he went on in a slightly altered tone—“it's damned comical, but I've got to ask you for a little money. I've only got about seven pounds at my bank, and just at the minute it would give me away fearfully to let Semple know I was hard up. Of course he'd let me have anything I wanted—but, you can see—I don't like to ask him just at the moment.”
She hesitated visibly, and scanned his face with a wistful gaze. “You're quite sure, Joel?”—she began—“and you haven't told me—how long will it be before you come into some of this money?”
“Well,”—he in turn paused over his words—“well, I suppose that by next week things will be in such shape that my bank will see I'm good for an overdraft. Oh heavens, yes! there'll be a hundred ways of touching some ready. But if you've got twenty or thirty pounds handy just now—I tell you what I'll do, Lou. I'll give you a three months bill, paying one hundred pounds for every sovereign you let me have now. Come, old lady: you don't get such interest every day, I'll bet.”
“I don't want any interest from you, Joel,” she replied, simply. “If you're sure I can have it back before Christmas, I think I can manage thirty pounds. It will do in the morning, I suppose?”
He nodded an amused affirmative. “Why—you don't imagine, do you,” he said, “that all this gold is to rain down, and none of it hit you? Interest? Why of course you'll get interest—and capital thrown in. What did you suppose?”
“I don't ask anything for myself,” she made answer, with a note of resolution in her voice. “Of course if you like to do things for the children, it won't be me who'll stand in their light. They've been spoiled for my kind of life as it is.”
“I'll do things for everybody,” he affirmed roundly. “Let's see—how old is Alfred?”
“He'll be twenty in May—and Julia is fourteen months older than he is.”
“Gad!” was Thorpe's meditative comment. “How they shoot up! Why I was thinking she was a little girl.” “She never will be tall, I'm afraid,” said the literal mother. “She favours her father's family. But Alfred is more of a Thorpe. I'm sorry you missed seeing them last summer—but of course they didn't stop long with me. This was no place for them—and they had a good many invitations to visit schoolfellows and friends in the country. Alfred reminds me very much of what you were at his age: he's got the same good opinion of himself, too—and he's not a bit fonder of hard work.”
“There's one mighty big difference between us, though,” remarked Thorpe. “He won't start with his nose held down to the grindstone by an old father hard as nails. He'll start like a gentleman—the nephew of a rich man.”
“I'm almost afraid to have such notions put in his head,” she replied, with visible apprehension. “You mustn't encourage him to build too high hopes, Joel. It's speculation, you know—and anything might happen to you. And then—you may marry, and have sons of your own.”
He lifted his brows swiftly—as if the thought were new to his mind. A slow smile stole into the little wrinkles about his eyes. He opened his lips as if to speak, and then closed them again.
“Well,” he said at last, abruptly straightening himself, and casting an eye about for his coat and hat. “I'll be round in the morning—on my way to the City. Good-bye till then.”
IN Charing Cross station, the next afternoon, Mr. Thorpe discovered by the big clock overhead that he had arrived fully ten minutes too soon. This deviation from his deeply-rooted habit of catching trains at the last possible moment did not take him by surprise. He smiled dryly, aud nodded to the illuminated dial, as if they shared the secret of some quaint novelty. This getting to the station ahead of time was of a piece with what had been happening all day—merely one more token of the general upheaval in the routine of his life.
From early morning he had been acutely conscious of the feeling that his old manners and usages and methods of thought—the thousand familiar things that made up the Thorpe he had been—were becoming strange to him. They fitted him no longer; they began to fall away from him. Now, as he stood here on the bustling platform, it was as if they had all disappeared—been left somewhere behind him outside the station. With the two large bags which the porter was looking after—both of a quite disconcerting freshness of aspect—and the new overcoat and shining hat, he seemed to himself a new kind of being, embarked upon a voyage of discovery in the unknown.
Even his face was new. A sudden and irresistible impulse had led him to the barber-shop in his hotel at the outset; he could not wait till after breakfast to have his beard removed. The result, when he beheld it in the mirror, had not been altogether reassuring. The over-long, thin, tawny moustasche which survived the razor assumed an undue prominence; the jaw and chin, revealed now for the first time in perhaps a dozen years, seemed of a sickly colour, and, in some inexplicable way, misshapen. Many times during the day, at his office, at the restaurant where he lunched, at various outfitters' shops which he had visited, he had pursued the task of getting reconciled to this novel visage in the looking-glass. The little mirrors in the hansom cabs had helped him most in this endeavour. Each returned to him an image so different from all the others—some cadaverous, some bloated, but each with a spontaneous distortion of its own—that it had become possible for him to strike an average tolerable to himself, and to believe in it.
His sister had recognized him upon the instant, when he entered the old book-shop to get the money promised overnight, but in the City his own clerks had not known him at first. There was in this an inspiring implication that he had not so much changed his appearance as revived his youth. The consciousness that he was in reality still a young man spread over his mind afresh, and this time he felt that it was effacing all earlier impressions. Why, when he thought of it, the delight he had had during the day in buying new shirts and handkerchiefs and embroidered braces, in looking over the various stocks of razors, toilet articles, studs and sleeve-links, and the like, and telling the gratified tradesmen to give him the best of everything—this delight had been distinctively boyish. He doubted, indeed, if any mere youth could have risen to the heights of tender satisfaction from which he reflected upon the contents of his portmanteaus. To apprehend their full value one must have been without them for such a weary time! He had this wonderful advantage—that he supplemented the fresh-hearted joy of the youth in nice things, with the adult man's knowledge of how bald existence could be without them. It was worth having lived all those forty obscure and mostly unpleasant years, for this one privilege now of being able to appreciate to the uttermost the touch of double-silk underwear.
It was an undoubted pity that there had not been time to go to a good tailor. The suit he had on was right enough for ordinary purposes, and his evening-clothes were as good as new, but the thought of a costume for shooting harassed his mind. He had brought along with him, for this eventful visit, an old Mexican outfit of yellowish-grey cloth and leather, much the worse for rough wear, but saved from the disreputable by its suggestion of picturesque experiences in a strange and romantic country. At least it had seemed to him, in the morning, when he had packed it, to be secure in this salvation. Uneasy doubts on the subject had soon risen, however, and they had increased in volume and poignancy as his conceptions of a wardrobe expanded in the course of the day's investigations and purchases. He had reached the point now of hoping that it would rain bitterly on the morrow.
It was doubly important to keep a close look-out for Lord Plowden, since he did not know the name of the station they were to book for, and time was getting short. He dwelt with some annoyance upon his oversight in this matter, as his watchful glance ranged from one entrance to another. He would have liked to buy the tickets himself, and have everything in readiness on the arrival of his host. As it was, he could not even tell the porter how his luggage was to be labelled, and there was now less than two minutes! He moved forward briskly, with the thought of intercepting his friend at the front of the station; then halted, and went back, upon the recollection that while he was going out one way, Plowden might come in by the other. The seconds, as they passed now, became severally painful to his nerves. The ringing of a bell somewhere beyond the barrier provoked within him an impulse to tearful profanity.
Then suddenly everything was all right. A smooth-faced, civilly-spoken young man came up, touched his hat, and asked: “Will you kindly show me which is your luggage, sir?”
Thorpe, even while wondering what business of his it was, indicated the glaringly new bags—and then only half repressed a cry of pleasure at discovering that Lord Plowden stood beside him.
“It's all right; my man will look out for your things,” said the latter, as they shook hands. “We will go and get our places.”
The fat policeman at the gate touched his helmet. A lean, elderly man in a sort of guard's uniform hobbled obsequiously before them down the platform, opened to them a first-class compartment with a low bow and a deprecatory wave of the hand, and then impressively locked the door upon them. “The engine will be the other way, my Lord, after you leave Cannon Street,” he remarked through the open window, with earnest deference. “Are there any of your bags that you want in the compartment with you?”
Plowden had nodded to the first remark. He shook his head at the second. The elderly man at this, with still another bow, flapped out a green flag which he had been holding furled behind his back, and extended it at arm's length. The train began slowly to move. Mr. Thorpe reflected to himself that the peerage was by no means so played-out an institution as some people imagined.
“Ho-ho!” the younger man sighed a yawn, as he tossed his hat into the rack above his head. “We shall both be the better for some pure air. London quite does me up. And you—you've been sticking at it months on end, haven't you? You look rather fagged—or at all events you did yesterday. You've smartened yourself so—without your beard—that I can't say I'd notice it to-day. But I take it every sensible person is glad to get away from London.”
“Except for an odd Sunday, now and then, I haven't put my nose outside London since I landed here.” Thorpe rose as he spoke, to deposit his hat also in the rack. He noted with a kind of chagrin that his companion's was an ordinary low black bowler. “I can tell you, I SHALL be glad of the change. I would have bought the tickets,” he went on, giving words at random to the thought which he found fixed on the surface of his mind, “if I'd only known what our station was.”
Plowden waved his hand, and the gesture seemed to dismiss the subject. He took a cigar case from his pocket, and offered it to Thorpe.
“It was lucky, my not missing the train altogether,” he said, as they lighted their cigars. “I was up late last night—turned out late this morning, been late all day, somehow—couldn't catch up with the clock for the life of me. Your statement to me last night—you know it rather upset me.”
The other smiled. “Well, I guess I know something about that feeling myself. Why, I've been buzzing about today like a hen with her head cut off. But it's fun, though, aint it, eh? Just to happen to remember every once in a while, you know, that it's all true! But of course it means a thousand times more to me than it does to you.”
The train had come to a stop inside the gloomy, domed cavern of Cannon Street. Many men in silk hats crowded to and fro on the platform, and a number of them shook the handle of the locked door. There was an effect of curses in the sound of their remarks which came through the closed window. Mr. Thorpe could not quite restrain the impulse to grin at them.
“Ah, that's where you mistake,” said Plowden, contemplating the mouthful of smoke he slowly blew forth. “My dear man, you can't imagine anybody to whom it would mean more than it does to me—I hope none of those fellows have a key. They're an awful bore on this train. I almost never go by it, for that reason. Ah, thank God we're off!—But as I was saying, this thing makes a greater difference to me than you can think of. I couldn't sleep last night—I give you my word—the thing upset me so. I take it you—you have never had much money before; that is, you know from experience what poverty is?”
Thorpe nodded with eloquent gravity.
“Well—but you”—the other began, and then paused. “What I mean is,” he resumed, “you were never, at any rate, responsible to anybody but yourself. If you had only a sovereign a day, or a sovereign a week, for that matter, you could accommodate yourself to the requirements of the situation. I don't mean that you would enjoy it any more than I should—but at least it was open to you to do it, without attracting much attention. But with me placed in my ridiculous position—poverty has been the most unbearable torture one can imagine. You see, there is no way in which I can earn a penny. I had to leave the Army when I was twenty-three—the other fellows all had plenty of money to spend, and it was impossible for me to drag along with a title and an empty pocket. I daresay that I ought to have stuck to it, because it isn't nearly so bad now, but twelve years ago it was too cruel for any youngster who had any pride about him—and, of course, my father having made rather a name in the Army, that made it so much harder for me. And after that, what was there? Of course, the bar and medicine and engineering and those things were out of the question, in those days at least. The Church?—that was more so still. I had a try at politics—but you need money there as much as anywhere else—money or big family connections. I voted in practically every division for four years, and I made the rottenest speeches you ever heard of at Primrose League meetings in small places, and after all that the best thing the whips could offer me was a billet in India at four hundred a year, and even that you took in depreciated rupees. When I tried to talk about something at home, they practically laughed in my face. I had no leverage upon them whatever. They didn't care in the least whether I came up and voted or stopped at home. Their majority was ten to one just the same—yes, twenty to one. So that door was shut in my face. I've never been inside the House since—except once to show it to an American lady last summer—but when I do go again I rather fancy”—he stopped for an instant, and nodded his handsome head significantly—“I rather fancy I shall turn up on the other side.”
“I'm a Liberal myself, in English politics,” interposed Thorpe.
Plowden seemed not to perceive the connection. They had left London Bridge behind, and he put his feet up on the cushions, and leant back comfortably. “Of course there was the City,” he went on, speaking diagonally across to his companion, between leisurely intervals of absorption in his cigar. “There have been some directors' fees, no doubt, and once or twice I've come very near to what promised to be a big thing—but I never quite pulled it off. Really, without capital what can one do?—I'm curious to know—did you bring much ready money with you to England?”
“Between six and seven thousand pounds.”
“And if it's a fair question—how much of it have you got left?”
Thorpe had some momentary doubts as to whether this was a fair question, but he smothered them under the smile with which he felt impelled to answer the twinkle in Plowden's eyes. “Oh, less than a hundred,” he said, and laughed aloud.
Plowden also laughed. “By George, that's fine!” he cried. “It's splendid. There's drama in it. I felt it was like that, you know. Something told me it was your last cartridge that rang the bell. It was that that made me come to you as I did—and tell you that you were a great man, and that I wanted to enlist under you. Ah, that kind of courage is so rare! When a man has it, he can stand the world on its head.” “But I was plumb scared, all the while, myself,” Thorpe protested, genially. “Courage? I could feel it running out of my boots.”
“Ah, yes, but that's the great thing,” insisted the other. “You didn't look as if you were frightened. From all one could see, your nerve was sublime. And nothing else matters—it was sublime.”
“Curious—that thing happened to me once before,” commented Thorpe, with ruminating slowness. “It was out on the plains, years ago, and I was in pretty hard luck, and was making my way alone from Tucson north, and some cowboys held me up, and were going to make kindling wood of me, they being under the impression that I was a horse-thief they were looking after. There was five or six minutes there when my life wasn't worth a last year's bird's-nest—and I tell you, sir, I was the scaredest man that ever drew the breath of life. And then something happened to be said that put the matter right—they saw I was the wrong man—and then—why then they couldn't be polite enough to me. They half emptied their flasks down my throat, and they rode with me all the way to the next town, and there they wanted to buy everything liquid in the place for me. But what I was speaking of—do you know, those fellows got a tremendous notion of my nerve. It wasn't so much that they told me so, but they told others about it. They really thought I was game to the core—when in reality, as I tell you, I was in the deadliest funk you ever heard of.”
“That's just it,” said Plowden, “the part of you which was engaged in making mental notes of the occasion thought you were frightened; we will say that it was itself frightened. But the other part of you, the part that was transacting business, so to speak—that wasn't in the least alarmed. I fancy all born commanders are built like that. Did you ever see General Grant?”
Thorpe shook his head.
“What reminded me of him—there is an account in his Memoirs of how he felt when he first was given a command, at the beginning of the Civil War. He was looking about for the enemy, who was known to be in the vicinity, and the nearer he got to where this enemy probably was, the more he got timid and unnerved, he says, until it seemed as if cowardice were getting complete mastery of him. And then suddenly it occurred to him that very likely the enemy was just as afraid of him as he was of the enemy, and that moment his bravery all returned to him. He went in and gave the other man a terrible thrashing. It doesn't apply to your case, particularly—but I fancy that all really brave men have those inner convictions of weakness, even while they are behaving like lions. Those must have been extraordinarily interesting experiences of yours—on the plains. I wish I could have seen something of that part of America when I was there last year. Unfortunately, it didn't come my way.”
“I thought I remembered your saying you'd been West.”
Plowden smiled. “I'm afraid I did think it was West at the time. But since my return I've been warned that I mustn't call Chicago West. That was as far as I went. I had some business there, or thought I had. When my father died, that was in 1884, we found among his papers a lot of bonds of some corporation purporting to be chartered by the State of Illinois. Our solicitors wrote several letters, but they could find out nothing about them, and there the matter rested. Finally, last year, when I decided to make the trip, I recollected these old bonds, and took them with me. I thought they might at least pay my expenses. But it wasn't the least good. Nobody knew anything about them. It seems they related to something that was burned up in the Great Fire—either that, or had disappeared before that time. That fire seems to have operated like the Deluge—it cancelled everything that had happened previously. My unhappy father had a genius for that kind of investment. I shall have great pleasure in showing you tomorrow, a very picturesque and comprehensive collection of Confederate Bonds. Their face value is, as I remember it, eighty thousand dollars—that is, sixteen thousand pounds. I would entertain with joy an offer of sixteen shillings for the lot. My dear father bought them—I should not be surprised to learn that he bought them at a premium. If they ever touched a premium for a day, that is certainly the day that he would have hit upon to buy. Oh, it was too rare! Too inspired! He left nearly a hundred thousand pounds' worth of paper—that is, on its face—upon which the solicitors realized, I think it was thirteen hundred pounds. It's hard to imagine how he got them—but there were actually bonds among them issued by Kossuth's Hungarian Republic in 1848. Well—now you can see the kind of inheritance I came into, and I have a brother and sister more or less to look after, too.”
Thorpe had been listening to these details with an almost exaggerated expression of sympathy upon his face. The voice in which he spoke now betrayed, however, a certain note of incredulity.
“Yes, I see that well enough,” he remarked. “But what I don't perhaps quite understand—well, this is it. You have this place of yours in the country, and preserve game and so on—but of course I see what you mean. It's what you've been saying. What another man would think a comfortable living, is poverty to a man in your position.”
“Oh, the place,” said Plowden. “It isn't mine at all. I could never have kept it up. It belongs to my mother. It was her father's place; it has been in their family for hundreds of years. Her father, I daresay you know, was the last Earl of Hever. The title died with him. He left three daughters, who inherited his estates, and my mother, being the eldest, got the Kentish properties. Of course Hadlow House will come to me eventually, but it is hers during her lifetime. I may speak of it as my place, but that is merely a facon de parler; it isn't necessary to explain to everybody that it's my mother's. It's my home, and that's enough. It's a dear old place. I can't tell you how glad I am that you're going to see it.”
“I'm very glad, too,” said the other, with unaffected sincerity.
“All the ambitions I have in the world,” the nobleman went on, sitting upright now, and speaking with a confidential seriousness, “centre round Hadlow. That is the part of me that I'm keen about. The Plowdens are things of yesterday. My grandfather, the Chancellor, began in a very small way, and was never anything more than a clever lawyer, with a loud voice and a hard heart, and a talent for money-making and politics. He got a peerage and he left a fortune. My father, for all he was a soldier, had a mild voice and a soft heart. He gave a certain military distinction to the peerage, but he played hell-and-tommy with the fortune. And then I come: I can't be either a Chancellor or a General, and I haven't a penny to bless myself with. You can't think of a more idiotic box for a man to be in. But now—thanks to you—there comes this prospect of an immense change. If I have money at my back—at once everything is different with me. People will remember then promptly enough that I am a Hadlow, as well as a Plowden. I will make the party whips remember it, too. It won't be a Secretary's billet in India at four hundred a year that they'll offer me, but a Governorship at six thousand—that is, if I wish to leave England at all. And we'll see which set of whips are to have the honour of offering me anything. But all that is in the air. It's enough, for the moment, to realize that things have really come my way. And about that—about the success of the affair—I suppose there can be no question whatever?”
“Not the slightest,” Thorpe assured him. “Rubber Consols can go up to any figure we choose to name.”
Lord Plowden proffered the cigar case again, and once more helped himself after he had given his companion a light. Then he threw himself back against the cushions, with a long sigh of content. “I'm not going to say another word about myself,” he announced, pleasantly. “I've had more than my legitimate innings. You mustn't think that I forget for a moment the reverse of the medal. You're doing wonderful things for me. I only wish it were clearer to me what the wonderful things are that I can do for you.”
“Oh, that'll be all right,” said the other, rather vaguely.
“Perhaps it's a little early for you to have mapped out in your mind just what you want to do,” Plowden reflected aloud. “Of course it has come suddenly upon you—just as it has upon me. There are things in plenty that we've dreamed of doing, while the power to do them was a long way off. It doesn't at all follow that these are the things we shall proceed to do, when the power is actually in our hands. But have you any plans at all? Do you fancy going into Parliament, for example?”
“Yes,” answered Thorpe, meditatively. “I think I should like to go into Parliament. But that would be some way ahead. I guess I've got my plans worked out a trifle more than you think. They may not be very definite, as regards details, but their main direction I know well enough. I'm going to be an English country gentleman.”
Lord Plowden visibly winced a little at this announcement. He seemed annoyed at the consciousness that he had done so, turning abruptly first to stare out of the window, then shifting his position on the seat, and at last stealing an uneasy glance toward his companion. Apparently his tongue was at a loss for an appropriate comment.
Thorpe had lost none of these unwilling tokens of embarrassment. Plowden saw that at once, but it relieved even more than it surprised him to see also that Thorpe appeared not to mind. The older man, indeed, smiled in good-natured if somewhat ironical comprehension of the dumb-show.
“Oh, that'll be all right, too,” he said, with the evident intention of reassurance. “I can do it right enough, so far as the big things are concerned. It'll be in the little things that I'll want some steering.”
“I've already told you—you may command me to the utmost of my power,” the other declared. Upon reflection, he was disposed to be ashamed of himself. His nerves and facial muscles had been guilty of an unpardonable lapse into snobbishness—and toward a man, too, who had been capable of behaviour more distinguished in its courtesy and generosity than any he had encountered in all the “upper circles” put together. He recalled all at once, moreover, that Thorpe's “h's” were perfect—aud, for some occult reason, this completed his confusion.
“My dear fellow”—he began again, confronting with verbal awkwardness the other's quizzical smile—“don't think I doubt anything about you. I know well enough that you can do anything—be anything—you like.”
Thorpe laughed softly.
“I don't think you know, though, that I'm a public-school man,” he said.
Plowden lifted his brows in unfeigned surprise. “No—I didn't know that,” he admitted, frankly.
“Yes, I'm a Paul's Pigeon,” Thorpe went on, “as they called them in my day. That's gone out now, I'm told, since they've moved to the big buildings in Hammersmith. I did very well at school, too; came out in the first fourteen. But my father wouldn't carry the thing any further. He insisted on my going into the shop when I left St. Paul's and learning the book-business. He had precisely the same kind of dynastic idea, you know, that you fellows have. His father and his grand-father had been booksellers, and he was going to hand on the tradition to me, and my son after me. That was his idea. And he thought that Paul's would help this—but that Oxford would kill it.
“Of course, he was right there—but he was wrong in supposing there was a bookseller in me. I liked the books well enough, mind you—but damn the people that came to buy them, I couldn't stand it. You stood two hours watching to see that men didn't put volumes in their pockets, and at the end of that time you'd made a profit of ninepence. While you were doing up the parcel, some fellow walked off with a book worth eighteen-pence. It was too slow for me. I didn't hit it off with the old man, either. We didn't precisely quarrel, but I went off on my own hook. I hung about London for some years, trying this thing and that. Once I started a book-shop of my own—but I did no good here. Finally I turned it up altogether, and went to Australia. That was in 1882. I've been in almost every quarter of the globe since; I've known what it was to be shipwrecked in a monsoon, and I've lain down in a desert not expecting to get up again, with my belt tightened to its last hole for hunger—but I can't remember that I ever wished myself back in my father's book-shop.”
Plowden's fine eyes sparkled his appreciation of the other's mood. He was silent for a moment, then lifted his head as if something had occurred to him. “You were speaking of the plan that you should succeed to your father's business—and your son after you—you're not married, are you?”
Thorpe slowly shook his head.
“Our station is the next,” said the younger man. “It's a drive of something under two miles. You'd better light another cigar.” He added, as if upon a casual afterthought: “We can both of us think of marrying now.”