Part 26 (2/2)
The sound of these figures in the air brought a constrained look to the faces of the women. Seemingly they confronted a subject which was not to their liking. The American, however, after a moment's pause, took it up in an indifferent manner.
”You speak of an 'absolute gratuity.' I know nothing of London City methods--but isn't ten thousand pounds a gratuity on a rather large scale?”
Thorpe hesitated briefly, then smiled, and, with slow deliberation, drew up a chair and seated himself before them. ”Perhaps I don't mind telling you about it,” he began, and paused again. ”I had a letter in my mail this morning,” he went on at last, giving a sentimental significance to both tone and glance--”a letter which changed everything in the world for me, and made me the proudest and happiest man above ground. And I put that letter in my pocket, right here on the left side--and it's there now, for that matter”--he put his hand to his breast, as if under the impulse to verify his words by the production of the missive, and then stopped and flushed.
The ladies, watching him, seemed by their eyes to condone the mawkishness of the demonstration which had tempted him. There was indeed a kind of approving interest in their joint regard, which he had not experienced before.
”I had it in my pocket,” he resumed, with an accession of mellow emotion in his voice, ”and none of the callers ever got my thoughts very far from that letter. And one of these was an old man--a French banker who must be seventy years old, but dyes his hair a kind of purple black--and it seems that his nephew had got the firm into a terrible kind of sc.r.a.pe, selling 2,000 of my shares when he hadn't got them to sell and couldn't get them--and the old man came to beg me to let him out at present market figures. He got Lord Chaldon--he's my Chairman, you know--to bring him, and introduce him as his friend, and plead for him--but I don't think all that, by itself, would have budged me an atom. But then the old man told how he was just able to sc.r.a.pe together money enough to buy the shares he needed, at the ruling price, and he happened to mention that his niece's marriage portion would have to be sacrificed. Well, then, do you know, that letter in my pocket said something to me....And--well, that's the story. The girl' s portion, I wormed it out of him, was ten thousand...and I struck that much off the figure that I allowed him to buy his shares, and save his firm, for....It was all the letter that did it, mind you!”
He concluded the halting narrative amid a marked silence. The ladies looked at him and at each other, but they seemed surprised out of their facility of comment. In this kind of fl.u.s.tered hush, the door was opened and dinner was announced.
Miss Madden welcomed the diversion by rising with ostentatious vigour.
”I will take myself out,” she declared, with cheerful promptness leading the way. Lady Cressage took the arm Thorpe offered her, and gave no token of comprehending that her wrist was being caressingly pressed against his side as they moved along.
At the little table s.h.i.+ning in the centre of the dark, cool dining-room, talk moved idly about among general topics. A thunderstorm broke over the town, at an early stage of the dinner, and the sound of the rus.h.i.+ng downpour through the open windows, and the breath of freshness which stirred the jaded air, were pleasanter than any speech. Thoughts roved intuitively country-ward, where the long-needed rain would be dowering the landscape with new life--where the earth at sunrise would be green again, and buoyant in reawakened energy, and redolent with the perfumes of sweetest summer. They spoke of the fields and the moors with the longing of tired town-folk in August.
”Oh, when I get away”--said Thorpe, fervently, ”it seems to me that I don't want ever to come back. These last few weeks have got terribly on my nerve. And really--why should I come back? I've been asking myself the question--more today than ever before. Of course everything has been different today. But if I'm to get any genuine good out of my--my fortune--I must pull away from the City altogether sometime--and why not now? Of course, some important things are still open--and they have to be watched night and day--but after all, Semple--that's my Broker--he could do it for me. At the most, it won't last more than another six weeks. There is a settlement-day next week, the 15th, and another a fortnight after, on the 29th, and another on September 12th. Well, those three days, if they're worked as I intend they shall be, and nothing unforeseen happens, will bring in over four hundred thousand pounds, and close the 'corner' in Rubber Consols for good. Then I need never see the City again, thank G.o.d! And for that matter--why, what is six weeks?
It's like tomorrow. I'm going to act as if I were free already. The rain fills me full of the country. Will you both come with me tomorrow or next day, and see the Pellesley place in Hertfords.h.i.+re? By the photographs it's the best thing in the market. The newest parts of it are Tudor--and that's what I've always wanted.”
”How unexpected you are!” commented Miss Madden. ”You are almost the last person I should have looked to for a sentiment about Tudor foundations.”
Thorpe put out his lips a trifle. ”Ah, you don't know me,” he replied, in a voice milder than his look had promised. ”Because I'm rough and practical, you mustn't think I don't know good things when I see them.
Why, all the world is going to have living proof very soon”--he paused, and sent a smile surcharged with meaning toward the silent member of the trio--”living proof that I'm the greatest judge of perfection in beauty of my time.”
He lifted his gla.s.s as he spoke, and the ladies accepted with an inclination of the head, and a touch of the wine at their lips, his tacit toast. ”Oh, I think I do know you,” said Celia Madden, calmly discursive. ”Up to a certain point, you are not so unlike other men. If people appeal to your imagination, and do not contradict you, or bore you, or get in your way, you are capable of being very nice indeed to them. But that isn't a very uncommon quality. What is uncommon in you--at least that is my reading--is something which according to circ.u.mstances may be nice, or very much the other way about. It's something which stands quite apart from standards of morals or ethics or the ordinary emotions. But I don't know, whether it is desirable for me to enter into this extremely personal a.n.a.lysis.”
”Oh yes, go on,” Thorpe urged her. He watched her face with an almost excited interest.
”Well--I should say that you possessed a capacity for sudden and capricious action in large matters, equally impatient of reasoning and indifferent to consequences, which might be very awkward, and even tragic, to people who happened to annoy you, or stand in your road. You have the kind of organization in which, within a second, without any warning or reason, a pa.s.sing whim may have worked itself up into an imperative law--something you must obey.”
The man smiled and nodded approvingly: ”You've got me down fine,” he said.
”I talk with a good deal of confidence,” she went on, with a cheerless, ruminative little laugh, ”because it is my own organization that I am describing, too. The difference is that I was allowed to exploit my capacity for mischief very early. I had my own way in my teens--my own money, my own power--of course only of a certain sort, and in a very small place. But I know what I did with that power. I spread trouble and misery about me--always of course on a small scale. Then a group of things happened in a kind of climax--a very painful climax--and it shook the nonsense out of me. My brother and my father died--some other sobering things happened...and luckily I was still young enough to stop short, and take stock of myself, and say that there were certain paths I would never set foot on again--and stick to it. But with you--do you see?--power only comes to you when you are a mature man. Experiences, no matter how unpleasant they are, will not change you now. You will not be moved by this occurrence or that to distrust yourself, or reconsider your methods, or form new resolutions. Oh no! Power will be terrible in your hands, if people whom you can injure provoke you to cruel courses----”
”Oh, dear--dear!” broke in Lady Cressage. ”What a distressing Mrs.
Gummidge-Ca.s.sandra you are, Celia! Pray stop it!”
”No--she's right enough,” said Thorpe, gravely. ”That's the kind of man I am.”
He seemed so profoundly interested in the contemplation of this portrait which had been drawn of him, that the others respected his reflective silence. He sat for some moments, idly fingering a fork on the table, and staring at a blotch of vivid red projected through a decanter upon the cloth.
”It seems to me that's the only kind of man it's worth while to be,”
he added at last, still speaking with thoughtful deliberation. ”There's nothing else in the world so big as power--strength. If you have that, you can get everything else. But if you have it, and don't use it, then it rusts and decays on your hands. It's like a thoroughbred horse. You can't keep it idle in the stable. If you don't exercise it, you lose it.”
He appeared to be commenting upon some ill.u.s.tration which had occurred to his own mind, but was not visible to his auditors. While they regarded him, he was prompted to admit them to his confidence.
”There was a case of it today,” he said, and then paused.
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