IN the Board Room, next day, Thorpe awaited the coming of Lord Plowden
with the serene confidence of a prophet who not only knows that he
is inspired, but has had an illicit glimpse into the workings of the
machinery of events.
He sat motionless at his desk, like a big spider for who time has
no meaning. Before him lay two newspapers, folded so as to expose
paragraphs heavily indicated by blue pencil-marks. They were not
financial journals, and for that reason it was improbable that he would
have seen these paragraphs, if the Secretary of the Company had not
marked them, and brought them to him. That official had been vastly more
fluttered by them than he found it possible to be. In slightly-varying
language, these two items embedded in so-called money articles reported
the rumour that a charge of fraud had arisen in connection with the
Rubber Consols corner, and that sensational disclosures were believed to
be impending.
Thorpe looked with a dulled, abstracted eye at these papers, lying
on the desk, and especially at the blue pencil-lines upon them, as he
pondered many things. Their statement, thus scattered broadcast to the
public, seemed at once to introduce a new element into the situation,
and to leave it unchanged. That influence of some sort had been exerted
to get this story into these papers, it did not occur to him for an
instant to doubt. To his view, all things that were put into papers
were put there for a purpose--it would express his notion more clearly,
perhaps, to say for a price. Of the methods of Fleet Street, he was
profoundly ignorant, but his impressions of them were all cynical. Upon
reflection, however, it seemed unlikely to him that Lord Plowden had
secured the insertion of these rumours. So far as Thorpe could fathom
that nobleman's game, its aims would not be served by premature
publicity of this kind.
Gradually, the outlines of a more probable combination took shape in
his thoughts. There were left in the grip of the “corner” now only
two victims,--Rostocker and Aronson. They owed this invidious
differentiation to a number of causes: they had been the chief sellers
of stock, being between them responsible for the delivery of 8,500
Rubber Consols shares, which they could not get; they were men of larger
fortune than the other “shorts,” and therefore could with safety be
squeezed longest; what was fortunate for him under the circumstances,
they were the two men against whom Thorpe's personal grudge seemed able
to maintain itself most easily.
For these reasons, they had already been mulcted in differences to the
extent of, in round numbers, 165,000 pounds. On the morrow, the twelfth
of September, it was Thorpe's plan to allow them to buy in the shares
they needed, at 22 or 23 pounds per share--which would take from them
nearly 200,000 pounds more. He had satisfied himself that they could,
and would if necessary, pay this enormous ransom for their final escape
from the “corner.” Partly because it was not so certain that they could
pay more, partly because he was satiated with spoils and tired of the
strain of the business, he had decided to permit this escape.
He realized now, however, that they on their side had planned to escape
without paying any final ransom at all.
That was clearly the meaning of these paragraphs, and of the
representations which had yesterday been made to the Stock Exchange
Committee. He had additional knowledge today of the character of these
representations. Nothing definite had been alleged, but some of the
members of the Committee had been informally notified, so Semple had
this morning learned, that a specific charge of fraud, supported
by unanswerable proof, was to be brought against the Rubber Consols
management on the morrow. Thorpe reasoned out now, step by step, what
that meant. Lord Plowden had sought out Rostocker and Aronson, and
had told them that he had it in his power ignominiously to break the
“corner.” He could hardly have told them the exact nature of his power,
because until he should have seen Tavender he did not himself know what
it was. But he had given them to understand that he could prove fraud,
and they, scenting in this the chance of saving 200,000 pounds, and
seeing that time was so terribly short, had hastened to the Committeemen
with this vague declaration that, on the morrow, they could prove--they
did not precisely know what. Yes--plainly enough--that was what had
happened. And it would be these two Jew “wreckers,” eager to invest
their speculative notification to the Committee with as much of an
air of formality as possible, who had caused the allusions to it to be
published in these papers.
Thorpe's lustreless eye suddenly twinkled with mirth as he reached this
conclusion; his heavy face brightened into a grin of delight. A vision
of Lord Plowden's absurd predicament rose vividly before him, and he
chuckled aloud at it.
It seemed only the most natural thing in the world that, at this
instant, a clerk should open the door and nod with meaning to the
master. The visitor whom he had warned the people in the outer office
he expected, had arrived. Thorpe was still laughing to himself when Lord
Plowden entered.
“Hallo! How d'ye do!” he called out to him from where he sat at his
desk.
The hilarity of the manner into which he had been betrayed, upon the
instant surprised and rather confused him. He had not been altogether
clear as to how he should receive Plowden, but certainly a warm
joviality had not occurred to him as appropriate.
The nobleman was even more taken aback. He stared momentarily at the
big man's beaming mask, and then, with nervous awkwardness, executed a
series of changes in his own facial expression and demeanour. He flushed
red, opened his lips to say “Ah!” and then twisted them into a doubting
and seemingly painful smile. He looked with very bright-eyed intentness
at Thorpe, as he advanced, and somewhat spasmodically put out his hand.
It occurred to Thorpe not to see this hand. “How are you!” he repeated
in a more mechanical voice, and withdrew his smile. Lord Plowden
fidgeted on his feet for a brief, embarrassed interval before the desk,
and then dropped into a chair at its side. With a deliberate effort at
nonchalance, he crossed his legs, and caressed the ankle on his knee
with a careless hand. “Anything new?” he asked.
Thorpe lolled back in his arm-chair. “I'm going to be able to get away
in a few days' time,” he said, indifferently. “I expect to finally wind
up the business on the Stock Exchange tomorrow.”
“Ah--yes,” commented Plowden, vacantly. He seemed to be searching after
thoughts which had wandered astray. “Yes--of course.”
“Yes--of course,” Thorpe said after him, with a latent touch of
significance.
The other looked up quickly, then glanced away again. “It's all going as
you expected, is it?” he asked.
“Better than I expected,” Thorpe told him, energetically. “Much better
than anybody expected.”
“Hah!” said Plowden. After a moment's reflection he went on
hesitatingly: “I didn't know. I saw something in one of the papers this
morning,--one of the money articles,--which spoke as if there were some
doubt about the result. That's why I called.”
“Well--it's damned good of you to come round, and show such a friendly
interest.” Thorpe's voice seemed candid enough, but there was an
enigmatic something in his glance which aroused the other's distrust.
“I'm afraid you don't take very much stock in the 'friendly interest,'”
he said, with a constrained little laugh.
“I'm not taking stock in anything new just now,” replied Thorpe, lending
himself lazily to the other's metaphor. “I'm loaded up to the gunnels
already.”
A minute of rather oppressive silence ensued. Then Plowden ventured upon
an opening. “All the same, it WAS with an idea of,--perhaps being of use
to you,--that I came here,” he affirmed. “In what way?” Thorpe put the
query almost listlessly.
Lord Plowden turned his hands and let his dark eyes sparkle in a gesture
of amiable uncertainty. “That depended upon what was needed. I got the
impression that you were in trouble--the paper spoke as if there were
no doubt of it--and I imagined that quite probably you would be glad to
talk with me about it.”
“Quite right,” said Thorpe. “So I should.”
This comprehensive assurance seemed not, however, to facilitate
conversation. The nobleman looked at the pattern of the sock on the
ankle he was nursing, and knitted his brows in perplexity. “What if the
Committee of the Stock Exchange decide to interfere?” he asked at last.
“Oh, that would knock me sky-high,” Thorpe admitted.
“Approximately, how much may one take 'sky-high' to mean?”
Thorpe appeared to calculate. “Almost anything up to a quarter of a
million,” he answered.
“Hah!” said Lord Plowden again. “Well--I understand--I'm given to
understand--that very likely that is what the Committee will decide.”
“Does it say that in the papers?” asked Thorpe. He essayed an effect of
concern. “Where did you see that?”
“I didn't see it,” the other explained. “It--it came to me.”
“God!” said Thorpe. “That'll be awful! But are you really in earnest? Is
that what you hear? And does it come at all straight?”
Lord Plowden nodded portentously. “Absolutely straight,” he said, with
gravity.
Thorpe, after a momentary stare of what looked like bewilderment,
was seen to clutch at a straw. “But what was it you were saying?” he
demanded, with eagerness. “You talked about help--a minute ago. Did you
mean it? Have you got a plan? Is there something that you can do?”
Plowden weighed his words. “It would be necessary to have a very
complete understanding,” he remarked.
“Whatever you like,” exclaimed the other.
“Pardon me--it would have to be a good deal more definite than that,”
Plowden declared. “A 'burnt child'--you know.”
The big man tapped musingly with his finger-nails on the desk. “We won't
quarrel about that,” he said. “But what I'd like to know first,--you
needn't give anything away that you don't want to,--but what's your
plan? You say that they've got me in a hole, and that you can get me
out.” “In effect--yes.”
“But how do you know that I can't get myself out? What do you know about
the whole thing anyway? Supposing I tell you that I laugh at it--that
there's no more ground for raising the suspicion of fraud than there is
for--for suspecting that you've got wings and can fly.”
“I--I don't think you'll tell me that,” said Plowden, placidly.
“Well then, supposing I don't tell you that,” the other resumed,
argumentatively. “Supposing I say instead that it can't be proved. If
the Committee doesn't have proof NOW,--within twenty-one or twenty-two
hours,--they can't do anything at all. Tomorrow is settling day. All
along, I've said I would wind up the thing tomorrow. The market-price
has been made for me by the jobbers yesterday and today. I'm all ready
to end the whole business tomorrow--close it all out. And after that's
done, what do I care about the Stock Exchange Committee? They can
investigate and be damned! What could they do to me?”
“I think a man can always be arrested and indicted, and sent to penal
servitude,” said Lord Plowden, with a certain solemnity of tone. “There
are even well-known instances of extradition.”
Thorpe buried his chin deep in his collar, and regarded his companion
with a fixed gaze, in which the latter detected signs of trepidation.
“But about the Committee--and tomorrow,” he said slowly. “What do you
say about that? How can they act in that lightning fashion? And even if
proofs could be got, how do you suppose they are to be got on the drop
of the hat, at a minute's notice?”
“The case is of sufficient importance to warrant a special meeting
tomorrow morning,” the other rejoined. “One hour's notice, posted in the
House, is sufficient, I believe. Any three members of the Committee can
call such a meeting, and I understand that seven make a quorum. You will
see that a meeting could be held at noon tomorrow, and within half an
hour could make you a ruined man.”
“I don't know--would you call it quite ruined?” commented Thorpe. “I
should still have a few sovereigns to go on with.”
“A criminal prosecution would be practically inevitable--after such a
disclosure,” Plowden reminded him, with augmented severity of tone.
“Don't mix the two things up,” the other urged. There seemed to the
listener to be supplication in the voice. “It's the action of the
Committee that you said you could influence. That's what we were talking
about. You say there will be a special meeting at noon tomorrow----
“I said there could be one,” Plowden corrected him.
“All right. There CAN be one. And do you say that there can be
proof,--proof against me of fraud,--produced at that meeting?”
“Yes--I say that,” the nobleman affirmed, quietly.
“And further still--do you say that it rests with you whether that proof
shall be produced or not?”
Lord Plowden looked into the impassive, deep-eyed gaze which covered
him, and looked away from it again. “I haven't put it in just that
form,” he said, hesitatingly. “But in essentials--yes, that may be taken
as true.”
“And what is your figure? How much do you want for holding this proof
of yours back, and letting me finish scooping the money of your Hebrew
friends Aronson and Rostocker?”
The peer raised his head, and shot a keenly enquiring glance at the
other. “Are they my friends?” he asked, with challenging insolence.
“I'm bound to assume that you have been dealing with them, just as you
are dealing with me.” Thorpe explained his meaning dispassionately, as
if the transaction were entirely commonplace. “You tell them that you're
in a position to produce proof against me, and ask them what they'll
give for it. Then naturally enough you come to me, and ask what I'll be
willing to pay to have the proof suppressed. I quite understand that I
must bid against these men--and of course I take it for granted that,
since you know their figure, you've arranged in your mind what mine is
to be. I quite understand, too, that I am to pay more than they have
offered. That is on account of 'friendly interest.'”
“Since you allude to it,” Lord Plowden observed, with a certain calm
loftiness of tone, “there is no harm in saying that you WILL pay
something on that old score. Once you thrust the promise of something
like a hundred thousand pounds positively upon me. You insisted on my
believing it, and I did so, like a fool. I came to you to redeem the
promise, and you laughed in my face. Very well. It is my turn now. I
hold the whip-hand, and I should be an ass not to remember things. I
shall want that entire one hundred thousand pounds from you, and fifty
thousand added to it 'on account of the 'friendly interest,' as you so
intelligently expressed it.”
Thorpe's chin burrowed still deeper upon his breast. “It's an outrage,”
he said with feeling. Then he added, in tones of dejected resignation:
“When will you want it?”
“At the moment when the payments of Rostocker and Aronson are made to
you, or to your bankers or agents,” Lord Plowden replied, with prepared
facility. He had evidently given much thought to this part of the
proceedings. “And of course I shall expect you to draw up now an
agreement to that effect. I happen to have a stamped paper with me this
time. And if you don't mind, we will have it properly witnessed--this
time.”
Thorpe looked at him with a disconcertingly leaden stare, the while he
thought over what had been proposed. “That's right enough,” he announced
at last, “but I shall expect you to do some writing too. Since we're
dealing on this basis, there must be no doubt about the guarantee that
you will perform your part of the contract.”
“The performance itself, since payment is conditional upon it--” began
Plowden, but the other interrupted him.
“No, I want something better than that. Here--give me your stamped
paper.” He took the bluish sheet, and, without hesitation, wrote several
lines rapidly. “Here--this is my promise,” he said, “to pay you 150,000
pounds, upon your satisfactory performance of a certain undertaking to
be separately nominated in a document called 'A,' which we will jointly
draw up and agree to and sign, and deposit wherever you like--for
safe keeping. Now, if you'll sit here, and write out for me a similar
thing--that in consideration of my promise of 150,000 pounds, you
covenant to perform the undertaking to be nominated in the document
'A'--and so on.”
Lord Plowden treated as a matter of course the ready and business-like
suggestion of the other. Taking his place at the desk in turn, he wrote
out what had been suggested. Thorpe touched a bell, and the clerk who
came in perfunctorily attested the signatures upon both papers. Each
principal folded and pocketed the pledge of the other.
“Now,” said Thorpe, when he had seated himself again at the desk, “we
are all right so far as protection against each other goes. If you don't
mind, I will draw up a suggestion of what the separate document 'A'
should set forth. If you don't like it, you can write one.”
He took more time to this task, frowning laboriously over the fresh
sheet of foolscap, and screening from observation with his hand what he
was writing. Finally, the task seemed finished to his mind. He took up
the paper, glanced through it once more, and handed it in silence to the
other.
In silence also, and with an expression of arrested attention, Lord
Plowden read these lines:
“The undertaking referred to in the two documents of even date, signed
respectively by Lord Plowden and Stormont Thorpe, is to the effect
that at some hour between eleven A.M. and three P.M. of September 12th,
instant, Lord Plowden shall produce before a special meeting of the
Committee of the Stock Exchange, the person of one Jerome P. Tavender,
to explain to said Committee his share in the blackmailing scheme of
which Lord Plowden, over his own signature, has furnished documentary
evidence.”
The nobleman continued to look down at the paper, after the power to
hold it without shaking had left his hand. There came into his face,
mingling with and vitiating its rich natural hues of health, a kind of
grey shadow. It was as if clay was revealing itself beneath faded paint.
He did not lift his eyes.
Thorpe had been prepared to hail this consummation of his trick with
boisterous and scornful mirth. Even while the victim was deciphering the
fatal paper, he had restrained with impatience the desire to burst
out into bitter laughter. But now there was something in the aspect of
Plowden's collapse which seemed to forbid triumphant derision. He was
taking his blow so like a gentleman,--ashen-pale and quivering, but
clinging to a high-bred dignity of silence,--that the impulse to exhibit
equally good manners possessed Thorpe upon the instant.
“Well--you see how little business you've got, setting yourself to buck
against a grown-up man.”
He offered the observation in the tone of the school-teacher, affectedly
philosophical but secretly jubilant, who harangues a defeated and
humiliated urchin upon his folly.
“Oh, chuck it!” growled Lord Plowden, staring still at the calamitous
paper.
Thorpe accepted in good part the intimation that silence was after all
most decorous. He put his feet up on the corner of the desk, and tipping
back his chair, surveyed the discomfited Viscount impassively. He
forbore even to smile.
“So this swine of a Tavender came straight to you!” Lord Plowden had
found words at last. As he spoke, he lifted his face, and made a show of
looking the other in the eye.
“Oh, there are a hundred things in your own game, even, that you haven't
an inkling of,” Thorpe told him, lightly. “I've been watching every move
you've made, seeing further ahead in your own game than you did. Why, it
was too easy! It was like playing draughts with a girl. I knew you would
come today, for example. I told the people out there that I expected
you.”
“Yes-s,” said the other, with rueful bewilderment. “You seem to have
been rather on the spot--I confess.”
“On the spot? All over the place!” Thorpe lifted himself slightly in his
chair, and put more animation into his voice.
“It's the mistake you people make!” he declared oracularly. “You think
that a man can come into the City without a penny, and form great
combinations and carry through a great scheme, and wage a fight with the
smartest set of scoundrels on the London Stock Exchange and beat 'em,
and make for himself a big fortune--and still be a fool! You imagine
that a man like that can be played with, and hoodwinked by amateurs like
yourself. It's too ridiculous!”
The perception that apparently Thorpe bore little or no malice had begun
to spread through Plowden's consciousness. It was almost more surprising
to him than the revelation of his failure had been. He accustomed
himself to the thought gradually, and as he did so the courage crept
back into his glance. He breathed more easily.
“You are right!” he admitted. It cost him nothing to give a maximum of
fervid conviction to the tone of his words. The big brute's pride in his
own brains and power was still his weakest point. “You are right! I did
play the fool. And it was all the more stupid, because I was the first
man in London to recognize the immense forces in you. I said to you at
the very outset, 'You are going to go far. You are going to be a great
man.' You remember that, don't you?”
Thorpe nodded. “Yes--I remember it.”
The nobleman, upon reflection, drew a little silver box from his pocket,
and extracted a match. “Do you mind?” he asked, and scarcely waiting for
a token of reply, struck a flame upon the sole of his shoe, and applied
it to the sheet of foolscap he still held in his hand. The two men
watched it curl and blacken after it had been tossed in the grate,
without a word.
This incident had the effect of recalling to Thorpe the essentials of
the situation. He had allowed the talk to drift to a point where it
became almost affable. He sat upright with a sudden determination, and
put his feet firmly on the floor, and knitted his brows in austerity.
“It was not only a dirty trick that you tried to play me,” he said, in
an altered, harsh tone, “but it was a fool-trick. That drunken old bum
of a Tavender writes some lunatic nonsense or other to Gafferson, and
he's a worse idiot even than Tavender is, and on the strength of what
one of these clowns thinks he surmises the other clown means, you go and
spend your money,--money I gave you, by the way,--in bringing Tavender
over here. You do this on the double chance, we'll say, of using him
against me for revenge and profit combined, or of peddling him to me for
a still bigger profit. You see it's all at my fingers' ends.”
Lord Plowden nodded an unqualified assent.
“Well then--Tavender arrives. What do you do? Are you at the wharf to
meet him? Have you said to yourself: 'I've set out to fight one of the
smartest and strongest men in England, and I've got to keep every atom
of wits about me, and strain every nerve to the utmost, and watch every
point of the game as a tiger watches a snake'? Not a bit of it! You
snooze in bed, and you send Gafferson--Gafferson!--the mud-head of the
earth! to meet your Tavender, and loaf about with him in London, and
bring him down by a slow train to your place in the evening. My God!
You've only got two clear days left to do the whole thing in--and
you don't even come up to town to get ready for them! You send
Gafferson--and he goes off to see a flower-show--Mother of Moses! think
of it! a FLOWER-show!--and your Tavender aud I are left to take a stroll
together, and talk over old times and arrange about new times, and so
on, to our hearts' content. Really, it's too easy! You make me tired!”
The nobleman offered a wan, appealing shadow of a smile. “I confess to a
certain degree of weariness myself,” he said, humbly.
Thorpe looked at him in his old apathetic, leaden fashion for a little.
“I may tell you that if you HAD got hold of Tavender,” he decided to
tell him, “he shouldn't have been of the faintest use to you. I know
what it was that he wrote to Gafferson,--I couldn't understand it when
he first told me, but afterwards I saw through it,--and it was merely a
maudlin misapprehension of his. He'd got three or four things all mixed
up together. You've never met your friend Tavender, I believe? You'd
enjoy him at Hadlow House. He smells of rum a hundred yards off. What
little brain he's got left is soaked in it. The first time I was ever
camping with him, I had to lick him for drinking the methylated spirits
we were using with our tin stove. Oh, you'd have liked him!”
“Evidently,” said Lord Plowden, upon reflection, “it was all a most
unfortunate and--ah--most deplorable mistake.” With inspiration, he made
bold to add: “The most amazing thing, though--to my mind--is that you
don't seem--what shall I say?--particularly enraged with me about it.”
“Yes--that surprises me, too,” Thorpe meditatively admitted. “I was
entitled to kill you--crush you to jelly. Any other man I would. But
you,--I don't know,--I do funny things with you.”
“I wish you would give me a drink, now--as one of them,” Plowden
ventured to suggest, with uneasy pleasantry.
Thorpe smiled a little as he rose, and heavily moved across the room.
He set out upon the big official table in the middle, that mockingly
pretentious reminder of a Board which never met, a decanter and two
glasses and some recumbent, round-bottomed bottles. He handed one of
these last to Plowden, as the latter strolled toward the table.
“You know how to open these, don't you?” he said, languidly. “Somehow I
never could manage it.”
The nobleman submissively took the bottle, and picked with awkwardness
at its wire and cork, and all at once achieved a premature and not
over-successful explosion. He wiped his dripping cuff in silence, when
the tumblers were supplied.
“Well--here's better luck to you next time,” Thorpe said, lifting his
glass. The audacious irony of his words filled Plowden with an instant
purpose.
“What on earth did you round on me in that way for, Thorpe--when I was
here last?” He put the question with bravery enough, but at sight of the
other's unresponsive face grew suddenly timorous aud explanatory. “No
man was ever more astounded in the world than I was. To this day I'm as
unable to account for it as a babe unborn. What conceivable thing had I
done to you?”
Thorpe slowly thought of something that had not occurred to him before,
and seized upon it with a certain satisfaction.
“That day that you took me shooting,” he said, with the tone of one
finally exposing a long-nursed grievance, “you stayed in bed for hours
after you knew I was up and waiting for you--and when we went out, you
had a servant to carry a chair for you, but I--by God!--I had to stand
up.”
“Heavens above!” ejaculated Plowden, in unfeigned amazement.
“These are little things--mere trifles,” continued Thorpe, dogmatically,
“but with men of my temper and make-up those are just the things that
aggravate and rankle and hurt. Maybe it's foolish, but that's the kind
of man I am. You ought to have had the intelligence to see that--and not
let these stupid little things happen to annoy me. Why just think what
you did. I was going to do God knows what for you--make your fortune and
everything else,--and you didn't show consideration enough for me to get
out of bed at a decent hour--much less see to it that I had a chair if
you were going to have one.”
“Upon my word, I can't tell how ashamed and sorry I am,” Lord Plowden
assured him, with fervent contrition in his voice.
“Well, those are the things to guard against,” said Thorpe, approaching
a dismissal of the subject. “People who show consideration for me;
people who take pains to do the little pleasant things for me, and see
that I'm not annoyed and worried by trifles--they're the people that
I, on my side, do the big things for. I can be the best friend in the
world, but only to those who show that they care for me, and do what
they know I'll like. I don't want toadies about me, but I do want people
who feel bound to me, and are as keen about me and my feelings and
interests as they are about their own.”
“It is delightfully feudal--all this,” commented the nobleman, smilingly
addressing the remark to nobody in particular. Then he looked at Thorpe.
“Let me be one of them--one of the people you speak of,” he said, with
directness.
Thorpe returned his look with the good-natured beginnings of a grin.
“But what would you be good for?” he queried, in a bantering tone.
“People I have about me have to be of some use. They require to have
heads on their shoulders. Why--just think what you've done. I don't mean
so much about your letting Tavender slip through your fingers--although
that was about the worst I ever heard of. But here in this room, at
that desk there, you allowed me to bounce you into writing and signing
a paper which you ought to have had your hand cut off rather than write,
much less sign. You come here trying to work the most difficult and
dangerous kind of a bluff,--knowing all the while that the witness you
depended entirely upon had disappeared, you hadn't the remotest idea
where,--and you actually let me lead you into giving me your signature
to your own declaration that you are blackmailing me! Thinking it all
over--you know--I can't see that you would be of much help to me in the
City.”
Lord Plowden joined perforce in the laughter with which the big man
enjoyed his own pleasantry. His mirth had some superficial signs of
shamefacedness, but it was hopeful underneath. “The City!” he echoed,
with meaning. “That's the curse of it. What do I know about the City?
What business have I in the City? As you said, I'm the amateur. A strong
man like you can make me seem any kind of a ridiculous fool he likes,
with the turn of his hand. I see that right enough. But what am I to do?
I have to make a shot at something. I'm so rotten poor!”
Thorpe had retired again behind the barrier of dull-eyed abstraction. He
seemed not to have heard this appealing explanation.
The other preserved silence in turn, and even made a pretence of looking
at some pamphlets on the table, as a token of his boundless deference to
the master's mood.
“I don't know. I'll see,” the big man muttered at last, doubtfully.
Lord Plowden felt warranted in taking an optimistic view of these vague
words. “It's awfully good of you”--he began, lamely, and then paused.
“I wonder,”--he took up a new thought with a more solicitous tone,--“I
wonder if you would mind returning to me that idiotic paper I signed.”
Thorpe shook his head. “Not just now, at any rate,” he said, still
musingly. With his head bowed, he took a few restless steps.
“But you are going to--to help me!” the other remarked, with an air of
confidence. He had taken up his hat, in response to the tacit warning of
his companion's manner.
Thorpe looked at him curiously, and hesitated over his answer. It was a
surprising and almost unaccountable conclusion for the interview to
have reached. He was in some vague way ashamed of himself, but he was
explicitly and contemptuously ashamed for Plowden, and the impulse to
say so was strong within him. This handsome young gentleman of title
ought not to be escaping with this restored buoyancy of mien, and this
complacency of spirit. He had deserved to be punished with a heavy hand,
and here he was blithely making certain of new benefits instead.
“I don't know--I'll see,” Thorpe moodily repeated--and there was no more
to be said.