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.”