"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. n.o.body 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 t.i.tle 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 n.o.bleman 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 h.e.l.l-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 a.s.sured 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 embarra.s.sment. 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 rea.s.surance. "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 sn.o.bbishness--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 d.a.m.n 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."
CHAPTER V
FOR the next two hours, Thorpe"s thoughts were almost wholly occupied with various phases of the large subject of domestic service. He seemed suddenly to have been transported to some region populated exclusively by clean-shaven men in brown livery. One of these was holding a spirited horse outside the station, and when Lord Plowden had taken the reins, and Thorpe had gathered the rugs about his knees and feet, this menial silently a.s.sociated himself with the young man who had accompanied them from town, on the back seat of the trap. With these people so close behind him, Thorpe felt that any intimate conversation was out of the question. Indeed, talk of any sort was not invited; the big horse burst forth with high, sprawling strides upon a career through the twilight, once the main road was reached, which it taxed all Plowden"s energies to regulate. He kept up a continual murmuring monologue to the animal--"So--so--quiet, my pet,--so--so--easy, my beauty---so--so"--and his wrists and gloved hands were visibly under a tremendous tension of strain, as they held their own against the rigid arched neck and mouth of steel. Thorpe kept a grip on the side of the trap, and had only a modified pleasure in the drive. The road along which they sped seemed, in the gathering dusk, uncomfortably narrow, and he speculated a good deal as to how frightened the two mutes behind him must be. But silence was such a law of their life that, though he strained his ears, he could not so much as hear them sigh or gasp.
It seemed but a very few minutes before they turned off, with but the most fleeting diminution of pace, upon a private road, which speedily developed into an avenue of trees, quite dark and apparently narrower than ever. Down this they raced precipitately, and then, coming out all at once upon an open s.p.a.ce, swung smartly round the crescent of a gravel road, and halted before what seemed to be the door of a greenhouse.
Thorpe, as he stood up in the trap, got an uncertain, general idea of a low, pale-coloured mansion in the background, with lights showing behind curtains in several widely separated windows; what he had taken to be a conservatory revealed itself now to be a gla.s.s gallery, built along the front of the central portion of this house.
A profusion of hospitable lights--tall wax-candles in brackets among the vines against the trellised wall--gave to this outlying entrance what the stranger felt to be a delightful effect. Its smooth tiled floor, comfortably bestrewn with rugs, was on a level with the path outside.
There were low easy-chairs here, and a little wicker table bearing books and a lady"s work-basket. Further on, giant chrysanthemum blooms were ma.s.sed beneath the cl.u.s.ters of pale plumbago-flowers on the trellis.
Directly in front, across the dozen feet of this glazed vestibule, the broad doorway of the house proper stood open--with warm lights glowing richly upon dark woods in the luxurious obscurity within.
What Thorpe noted most of all, however, was the servants who seemed to swarm everywhere. The two who had alighted from the trap had contrived somehow mysteriously to multiply themselves in the darkness. All at once there were a number of young men--at the horse"s head, at the back and sides of the trap, at the first doorway, and the second, and beyond--each presenting such a smooth-faced, pallid, brown-clad replica of all the others that Thorpe knew he should never be able to tell them apart.
Lord Plowden paused for a moment under the candle-light to look at his watch. "We did it in a bit over eight minutes," he remarked, with obvious satisfaction. "With four people and heavy roads that"s not so bad--not so bad. But come inside."
They moved forward through the wide doorway into an apartment the like of which Thorpe had not seen before. It was a large, square room, with a big staircase at the end, which separated and went off to right and left, half-way up its visible course. Its floor was of inlaid woods, old and uneven from long use, and carpeted here and there by the skins of tigers and leopards. There were many other suggestions of the chase about the room: riding boots, whips, spurs, and some stands of archaic weapons caught the eye at various points; the heads of foxes and deer peeped out on the blackened panels of the walls, from among cl.u.s.ters of hooks crowded with coats, hats, and mackintoshes. At the right, where a fire glowed and blazed under a huge open chimney-place, there were low chairs and divans drawn up to mark off a s.p.a.ce for orderly domestic occupation. The irregularity of every thing outside--the great table in the centre of the hall strewn with an incongruous litter of caps, books, flasks, newspapers, gloves, tobacco-pouches; the shoes, slippers, and leggings scattered under the benches at the sides--all this self-renewing disorder of a careless household struck Thorpe with a profound surprise. It was like nothing so much as a Mexican ranch--and to find it in the ancestral home of an English n.o.bleman, filled to overflowing with servants, amazed him.
The glances that he cast about him, however, were impa.s.sive enough. His mind was charged with the ceaseless responsibility of being astonished at nothing. A man took his hat, and helped him off with his coat.
Another moved toward the staircase with his two bags.
"If you will follow Pangbourn," said his host, indicating this second domestic, "he will look after you. You would like to go up and change now, wouldn"t you? There"s a fire in your room."
Thus dismissed, he went up the stairs in the wake of his portmanteaus, taking the turning to the left, and then proceeding by a long, low pa.s.sage, round more than one corner, to what he conceived to be a wing of the house. The servant ushered him into a room--and, in despite of himself, he sighed with pleasure at the sight of it. The prettiest and most charming of rooms it seemed to him to be--s.p.a.cious and quaintly rambling in shape, with a delicately-figured chintz repeating the dainty effects of the walls upon the curtains and carpet and bed-hangings and chair-covers, and with a bright fire in the grate throwing its warm, cozy glow over everything. He looked at the pictures on the walls, at the photographs and little ornaments on the writing desk, and the high posts and silken coverlet of the big bed, and, secure in the averted face of the servant, smiled richly to himself.
This servant, kneeling, had unstrapped and opened the new bags. Thorpe looked to see him quit the room, this task accomplished, and was conscious of something like dismay at the discovery that he intended to unpack them as well. Pangbourn began gravely to unwrap one paper parcel after another and to a.s.sort their contents in little heaps on the sofa beside him. He did it deftly, imperturbably, as if all the gentlemen he had ever seen carried their belongings in packages done up by tradesmen.
Thorpe"s impulse to bid him desist framed itself in words on the tip of his tongue--but he did not utter these words. After circling idly, hands in pockets, about the man and the bags for a little time, he invented something which it seemed better for him to say.