The Market-Place. Frederic Harold
“Do you mind telling me—you see I'm quite in the dark as to details—how much further ahead we are likely to go? I comprehend the general nature of our advance—but how far off is the goal you have in sight?”
“God knows!” answered Thorpe, with a rising thrill of excitement in his voice. “I don't give it any limit. I don't see why we should stop at all. We've got them in such a position that—why, good heavens! we can squeeze them to death, crush them like quartz.” He chuckled grimly at the suggestion of his simile. “We'll get more ounces to the ton out of our crushings than they ever heard of on the Rand, too.”
“Might I ask,” interposed the other, “who may 'they' be?”
Thorpe hesitated, and knitted his brows in the effort to remember names. “Oh, there are a lot of them,” he said, vaguely. “I think I told you of the way that Kaffir crowd pretended to think well of me, and let me believe they were going to take me up, and then, because I wouldn't give them everything—the very shirt off my back—turned and put their knife into me. I don't know them apart, hardly—they've all got names like Rhine wines—but I know the gang as a whole, and if I don't lift the roof clean off their particular synagogue, then my name is mud.”
Lord Plowden smiled. “I've always the greatest difficulty to remember that you are an Englishman—a Londoner born,” he declared pleasantly. “You don't talk in the least like one. On shipboard I made sure you were an American—a very characteristic one, I thought—of some curious Western variety, you know. I never was more surprised in my life than when you told me, the other day, that you only left England a few years ago.”
“Oh, hardly a 'few years'; more like fifteen,” Thorpe corrected him. He studied his companion's face with slow deliberation.
“I'm going to say something that you mustn't take amiss,” he remarked, after a little pause. “If you'd known that I was an Englishman, when we first met, there on the steamer, I kind o' suspect that you and I'd never have got much beyond a nodding acquaintance—and even that mostly on my side. I don't mean that I intended to conceal anything—that is, not specially—but I've often thought since that it was a mighty good thing I did. Now isn't that true—that if you had taken me for one of your own countrymen you'd have given me the cold shoulder?”
“I dare say there's a good deal in what you say,” the other admitted, gently enough, but without contrition. “Things naturally shape themselves that way, rather, you know. If they didn't, why then the whole position would become difficult. But you are an American, to all intents and purposes.”
“Oh, no—I never took any step towards getting naturalized,” Thorpe protested. “I always intended to come back here. Or no, I won't say that—because most of the time I was dog-poor—and this isn't the place for a poor man. But I always said to myself that if ever I pulled it off—if I ever found my self a rich man—THEN I'd come piking across the Atlantic as fast as triple-expansion engines would carry me.”
The young man smiled again, with a whimsical gleam in his eye. “And you ARE a rich man, now,” he observed, after a momentary pause.
“We are both rich men,” replied Thorpe, gravely.
He held up a dissuading hand, as the other would have spoken. “This is how it seems to me the thing figures itself out: It can't be said that your name on the Board, or the Marquis's either, was of much use so far as the public were concerned. To tell the truth, I saw some time ago that they wouldn't be. Titles on prospectuses are played out in London. I've rather a notion, indeed, that they're apt to do more harm than good—just at present, at least. But all that aside—you are the man who was civil to me at the start, when you knew nothing whatever about my scheme, and you are the man who was good to me later on, when I didn't know where to turn for a friendly word. Very well; here I am! I've made my coup! And I'd be a sweep, wouldn't I? to forget to-day what I was so glad to remember a week ago. But you see, I don't forget! The capital of the Company is 500,000 pounds, all in pound shares. We offered the public only a fifth of them. The other four hundred thousand shares are mine as vendor—and I have ear-marked in my mind one hundred thousand of them to be yours.”
Lord Plowden's face paled at the significance of these words. “It is too much—you don't reflect what it is you are saying,” he murmured confusedly. “Not a bit of it,” the other reassured him. “Everything that I've said goes.”
The peer, trembling a little, rose to his feet. “It is a preposterously big reward for the merest act of courtesy,” he insisted. “Of course it takes my breath away for joy—and yet I feel I oughtn't to be consenting to it at all. And it has its unpleasant side—it buries me under a mountain of obligation. I don't know what to do or what to say.”
“Well, leave the saying and doing to me, then,” replied Thorpe, with a gesture before which the other resumed his seat. “Just a word more—and then I suppose we'd better be going. Look at it in this way. Your grandfather was Lord Chancellor of England, and your father was a General in the Crimea. My grandfather kept a small second-hand book-shop, and my father followed him in the business. In one sense, that puts us ten thousand miles apart. But in another sense, we'll say that we like each other, and that there are ways in which we can be of immense use to each other, and that brings us close together. You need money—and here it is for you. I need—what shall I say?—a kind of friendly lead in the matter of establishing myself on the right footing, among the right people—and that's what you can do for me. Mind—I'd prefer to put it all in quite another way; I'd like to say it was all niceness on your part, all gratitude on mine. But if you want to consider it on a business basis—why there you have it also—perfectly plain and clear.”
He got up as he finished, and Lord Plowden rose as well. The two men shook hands in silence.
When the latter spoke, it was to say: “Do you know how to open one of those soda-water bottles? I've tried, but I can never get the trick. I think I should like to have a drink—after this.”
When they had put down their glasses, and the younger man was getting into his great-coat, Thorpe bestowed the brandy and cigars within a cabinet at the corner of the room, and carefully turned a key upon them.
“If you're going West, let me give you a lift,” said Lord Plowden, hat in hand. “I can set you down wherever you like. Unfortunately I've to go out to dinner, and I must race, as it is, to get dressed.”
Thorpe shook his head. “No, go along,” he bade him. “I've some odds and ends of things to do on the way.”
“Then when shall I see you?”—began the other, and halted suddenly with a new thought in his glance. “But what are you doing Saturday?” he asked, in a brisker tone. “It's a dies non here. Come down with me to-morrow evening, to my place in Kent. We will shoot on Saturday, and drive about on Sunday, if you like—and there we can talk at our leisure. Yes, that is what you must do. I have a gun for you. Shall we say, then—Charing Cross at 9:55? Or better still, say 5:15, and we will dine at home.”
The elder man pondered his answer—frowning at the problem before him with visible anxiety. “I'm afraid I'd better not come—it's very good of you all the same.”
“Nonsense,” retorted the other. “My mother will be very glad indeed to see you. There is no one else there—unless, perhaps, my sister has some friend down. We shall make a purely family party.”
Thorpe hesitated for only a further second. “All right. Charing Cross, 5:15,” he said then, with the grave brevity of one who announces a momentous decision.
He stood still, looking into the fire, for a few moments after his companion had gone. Then, going to a closet at the end of the room, he brought forth his coat and hat; something prompted him to hold them up, and scrutinize them under the bright light of the electric globe. He put them on, then, with a smile, half-scornful, half-amused, playing in his beard.
The touch of a button precipitated darkness upon the Board Room. He made his way out, and downstairs to the street. It was a rainy, windy October night, sloppy underfoot, dripping overhead.