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,”
