august wore itself out in parched tedium, and a september began which seemed even more unbearable in town,—and still thorpe did not get away from london.
so far as the payment of an exorbitant rent in advance, and the receipt of innumerable letters from a restless and fussy steward whom he had not yet seen, went as evidence, he knew himself to be the tenant in possession of a great shooting in morayshire. he had several photographs of what was called the lodge, but looked like something between a mansion and a baronial castle, on the mantel of the board room. the reflection that this sumptuous residence had been his for a month, and that it daily stood waiting for him, furnished and swept and provisioned for his coming, did nothing to help the passing of time in the hot, fagged city. more than once he had said resolutely that, on the morrow, or at the worst the next day, he would go—but in the event he had not gone. in the last week of august he had proceeded to the length of sending his niece and nephew northward, and shutting up the house in ovington square, and betaking himself to the savoy hotel. this had appeared at the time to be almost equivalent to his getting away himself,—to be at least a first stage in the progress of his own journey. but at the hotel he had stuck fast,—and now, on the tenth of september, was no nearer the moors and the deer-forest than he had been a month before.
a novel sense of loneliness,—of the fatuity of present existence,—weighed grievously upon him. the ladies of grafton street had left town upon a comprehensive itinerary of visits which included the malvern country, and a ducal castle in shropshire, and a place in westmoreland. there was nothing very definite about the date of their coming to him in scotland. the lady who had consented to marry him had, somehow, omitted to promise that she would write to him. an arrangement existed, instead, by which she and his niece julia were to correspond, and to fix between themselves the details of the visit to morayshire.
thorpe hardly went to the point of annoyance with this arrangement. he was conscious of no deep impulse to write love-letters himself, and there was nothing in the situation which made his failure to receive love-letters seem unnatural. the absence of moonshine, at least during this preliminary season, had been quite taken for granted between them, and he did not complain even to himself. there was even a kind of proud satisfaction for him in the thought that, though he had all but completed the purchase of the noble pellesley estate for edith cressage, he had never yet kissed her. the reserve he imposed upon himself gave him a certain aristocratic fineness in his own eyes. it was the means by which he could feel himself to be most nearly her equal. but he remained very lonely in london, none the less.
it is true that a great deal of society was continually offered to him, and even thrust upon him. in the popular phrase, london was empty, but there seemed to be more people than ever who desired mr. stormont thorpe' s presence at their dinner-tables, or their little theatre or card or river parties. he clung sullenly to his rule of going nowhere, but it was not so simple a matter to evade the civilities and importunities of those who were stopping at the hotel, or who came there to waylay him at the entrance, or to encounter him in the restaurant. he could not always refuse to sit down at tables when attractively-dressed and vivacious women made room for him, or to linger over cigars and wine with their husbands and escorts later on.
an incessant and spirited court was paid to him by many different groups of interested people who were rarely at the pains to dissemble their aims. he formed a manner for the reception of these advances, compounded of joviality, cynicism, and frank brutality, which nobody, to his face at least, resented. if women winced under his mocking rudenesses of speech and smile, if men longed to kill him for the cold insolence of his refusal to let them inside his guard, they sedulously kept it from him. the consciousness that everybody was afraid of him,—that everybody would kneel to him, and meekly take insult and ignominy from him, if only hope remained to them of getting something out of him,—hardened like a crust upon his mind.
it was impossible to get a sense of companionship from people who cringed to him, and swallowed his affronts and cackled at his jokes with equal docility. sometimes he had a passing amusement in the rough pleasantries and cruelties which they drew from him. there were two or three bright jewish women, more gayly clever and impudent, perhaps, than beautiful, with whom he found it genuine fun to talk, and concerning whom he was perpetually conceiving projects which could not have been discussed with their husbands, and as perpetually doing nothing to test their feasibility. but these diversions were in their essence unsubstantial. there was not even the semblance of a real friendship among them,—and loneliness became an increasing burden.
his sister at the old book-shop exasperated him nowadays to a degree which often provoked within him the resolution to have done with her. he had a score of projects for her betterment, each capable of as many variations and eager adaptations to suit her fancy, but to them all and sundry she opposed a barrier of stupidly passive negation. there was nothing she wanted done for her. she would not exchange the work she had been brought up in for a life of idleness. she did not want, and would not know what to do with, a bigger shop than she had. an augmentation of her capital would be of no use, because there was no room in the crowded little shop for a larger stock than it contained. she was entirely satisfied with the dingy home overhead, and declined to think even of moving elsewhere. over and over again she met his propositions with a saying which he could recall having particularly hated on their father's lips,—“it's ill teaching an old dog new tricks.”
“you ought to have them taught you with a stick,” he had told her roundly, on the last occasion.
she had merely shrugged her gaunt shoulders at him. “you think you can bully everybody and make them crawl to you,—but there's no good your trying it on with me,” she had told him, and he had pushed his way out of the shop almost stamping his feet. it was clear to him at that moment that he would never darken her door again.
yet now, on this afternoon of the tenth, as he lounged with a cigar and a city paper in his apartment at the hotel after luncheon, wondering whether it were too hot to issue forth for a walk to the park, the irrelevant idea of going round to see his sister kept coming into his mind. he seated himself and fastened his attention upon the paper,—but off it slipped again to the old book-shop, and to that curious, cross-grained figure, its mistress. he abandoned himself to thinking about her—and discovered that a certain unique quality in her challenged his admiration. she was the only absolutely disinterested person he knew—the only creature in the world, apparently, who did not desire to make something out of him. she was not at all well-off,—was indeed rather poor than otherwise,—and here was her only brother a millionaire, and in her dumb way she had a sisterly affection for him, and yet she could not be argued or cajoled into touching a penny of his money. surely there could be no other woman like her.
thorpe realized that it was a distinction to have such a sister,—and behind this thought rose obscurely the suggestion that there must be wonderful blood in a race which had produced such a daughter. and for that matter, such a son too! he lifted his head, and looked abstractedly before him, as if he were gazing at some apotheosis of himself in a mirror.
he beheld all at once something concrete and personal, obtruded into the heart of his reverie, the sight of which dimly astounded him. for the moment, with opened lips he stared at it,—then slowly brought himself to comprehend what had happened. an old man had by some oversight of the hotel servants been allowed to enter the room unannounced. he had wandered in noiselessly, and had moved in a purblind fashion to the centre of the apartment. the vagueness of the expression on his face and of his movements hinted at a vacant mind or too much drink,—but thorpe gave no thought to either hypothesis. the face itself—no—yes—it was the face of old tavender.
“in the name of god! what are you doing here?” thorpe gasped at this extraordinary apparition. still staring, he began to push back his chair and put his weight upon his feet.
“well—thorpe”—the other began, thrusting forward his head to look through his spectacles—“so it is you, after all. i didn't know whether i was going to find you or not. this place has got so many turns and twists to it——”
“but good heavens!” interposed the bewildered thorpe. he had risen to his feet. he mechanically took the hand which the other had extended to him. “what in hell”—he began, and broke off again. the aroma of alcohol on the air caught his sense, and his mind stopped at the perception that tavender was more or less drunk. he strove to spur it forward, to compel it to encompass the meanings of this new crisis, but almost in vain.
“thought i'd look you up,” said the old man, buoyantly. “nobody in london i'd rather see than you. how are you, anyway?”
“what did you come over for? when did you get here?” thorpe put the questions automatically. his self-control was returning to him; his capable brain pushed forward now under something like disciplined direction.
“why i guess i owe it all to you,” replied tavender. traces of the old quaker effect which had been so characteristic of him still hung about his garb and mien, but there shone a new assurance on his benignant, rubicund face. prosperity had visibly liberalized and enheartened him. he shook thorpe's hand again. “yes, sir—it must have been all through you!” he repeated. “i got my cable three weeks ago—'hasten to london, urgent business, expenses and liberal fee guaranteed, rubber consols'—that's what the cable said, that is, the first one and of course you're the man that introduced me to those rubber people. and so don't you see i owe it all to you?”
his insistence upon his obligation was suddenly almost tearful. thorpe thought hard as he replied: “oh—that's all right. i'm very glad indeed to have helped you along. and so you came over for the rubber consols people, eh? well—that's good. seen 'em yet? you haven't told me when you landed.”
“came up from southampton this morning. my brother-in-law was down there to meet me. we came up to london together.” “your brother-in-law,” observed thorpe, meditatively. some shadowy, remote impression of having forgotten something troubled his mind for an instant. “is your brother-in-law in the rubber business?”
“extraor'nary thing,” explained tavender, beamingly, “he don't know no more about the whole affair than the man 'n the moon. i asked him today—but he couldn't tell me anything about the business—what it was i'd been sent for, or anything.”
“but he—he knew you'd been sent for,” thorpe commented upon brief reflection.
“why, he sent the second cable himself——”
“what second cable?”
“why it was the next day,—or maybe it was sent that same night, and not delivered till morning,—i got another cable, this time from my brother-in-law, telling me to cable him what ship i sailed on and when. so of course he knew all about it—but now he says he don't. he's a curious sort of fellow, anyway.”
“but how is he mixed up in it?” demanded thorpe, impatiently.
“well, as nearly as i can figure it out, he works for one of the men that's at the head of this rubber company. it appears that he happened to show this man—he's a man of title, by the way—a letter i wrote to him last spring, when i got back to mexico—and so in that way this man, when he wanted me to come over, just told gafferson to cable to me.”
“gafferson,” thorpe repeated, very slowly, and with almost an effect of listlessness. he was conscious of no surprise; it was as if he had divined all along the sinister shadows of lord plowden and lord plowden's gardener, lurking in the obscurity behind this egregious old ass of a tavender.
“he's a tremendous horticultural sharp,” said the other. “probably you've heard tell of him. he's taken medals for new flowers and things till you can't rest. he's over at—what do you call it?—the royal aquarium, now, to see the dahlia show. i went over there with him, but it didn't seem to be my kind of a show, and so i left him there, and i'm to look in again for him at 5:30. i'm going down to his place in the country with him tonight, to meet his boss—the nobleman i spoke of.”
“that's nice,” thorpe commented, slowly. “i envy anybody who can get into the country these days. but how did you know i was here?” “the woman in the book-store told me—i went there the first thing. you might be sure i'd look you up. nobody was ever a better friend than you've been to me, thorpe. and do you know what i want you to do? i want you to come right bang out, now, and have a drink with me.”
“i was thinking of something of the sort myself,” the big man replied. “i'll get my hat, and be with you in a minute.”
in the next room he relinquished his countenance to a frown of fierce perplexity. more than a minute passed in this scowling preoccupation. then his face lightened with the relief of an idea, and he stepped confidently back into the parlour.
“come along,” he said, jovially. “we'll have a drink downstairs, and then we'll drive up to hanover square and see if we can't find a friend of mine at his club.”
in the office below he stopped long enough to secure a considerable roll of bank-notes in exchange for a cheque. a little later, a hansom deposited the couple at the door of the asian club, and thorpe, in the outer hallway of this institution, clicked his teeth in satisfaction at the news that general kervick was on the premises.
the general, having been found by a boy and brought down, extended to his guests a hospitality which was none the less urbane for the evidences of surprise with which it was seasoned. he concealed so indifferently his inability to account for tavender, that the anxious thorpe grew annoyed with him, but happily tavender's perceptions were less subtle. he gazed about him in his dim-eyed way with childlike interest, and babbled cheerfully over his liquor. he had not been inside a london club before, and his glimpse of the reading-room, where, isolated, purple-faced, retired old empire-makers sat snorting in the silence, their gouty feet propped up on foot-rests, their white brows scowling over the pages of french novels, particularly impressed him. it was a new and halcyon vision of the way to spend one's declining years. and the big smoking-room—where the leather cushions were so low and so soft, and the connection between the bells and the waiters was so efficient—that was even better.
thorpe presently made an excuse for taking kervick apart. “i brought this old jackass here for a purpose,” he said in low, gravely mandatory tones. “he thinks he's got an appointment at 5:30 this afternoon—but he's wrong. he hasn't. he's not going to have any appointment at all—for a long time yet. i want you to get him drunk, there where he sits, and then take him away with you, and get him drunker still, and then take a train with him somewhere—any station but charing cross or that line—and i don't care where you land with him—scotland or ireland or france—whatever you like. here's some money for you—and you can write to me for more. i don't care what you say to him—make up any yarn you like—only keep him pacified, and keep him away from london, and don't let a living soul talk to him—till i give you the word. you'll let me know where you are. i'll get away now—and mind, general, a good deal depends on the way you please me in this thing.”
the soldier's richly-florid face and intent, bulging blue eyes expressed vivid comprehension. he nodded with eloquence as he slipped the notes into his trousers pocket. “absolutely,” he murmured with martial brevity, from under his white, tight moustache.
with only a vague word or two of meaningless explanation to tavender, thorpe took his departure, and walked back to the hotel. from what he had learned and surmised, it was not difficult to put the pieces of the puzzle together. this ridiculous old fool, he remembered now, had reproached himself, when he was in england before, for his uncivil neglect of his brother-in-law. by some absurd chance, this damned brother-in-law happened to be gafferson. it was clear enough that, when he returned to mexico, tavender had written to gafferson, explaining the unexpected pressure of business which had taken up all his time in england. probably he had been idiot enough to relate what he of course regarded as the most wonderful piece of good news—how the worthless concession he had been deluded into buying had been bought back from him. as likely as not he had even identified the concession, and given thorpe's name as that of the man who had first impoverished and then mysteriously enriched him. at all events, he had clearly mentioned that he had a commission to report upon the rubber consols property, and had said enough else to create the impression that there were criminal secrets connected with its sale to the london company. the rest was easy. gafferson, knowing lord plowden's relation to the company, had shown him tavender's letter. lord plowden, meditating upon it, had seen a way to be nasty—and had vindictively plunged into it. he had brought tavender from mexico to london, to use him as a weapon. all this was as obvious as the nose on one's face.
but a weapon for what? thorpe, as this question put itself in his mind, halted before a shop-window full of soft-hued silk fabrics, to muse upon an answer. the delicate tints and surfaces of what was before his eyes seemed somehow to connect themselves with the subject. plowden himself was delicately-tinted and refined of texture. vindictiveness was too plain and coarse an emotion to sway such a complicated and polished organism. he reasoned it out, as he stood with lack-lustre gaze before the plate-glass front, aloof among a throng of eager and talkative women who pressed around him—that plowden would not have spent his money on a mere impulse of mischief-making. he would be counting upon something more tangible than revenge—something that could be counted and weighed and converted into a bank-balance. he smiled when he reached this conclusion—greatly surprising and confusing a matronly lady into whose correct face he chanced to be looking at the instant—and turning slowly, continued his walk.
at the office of the hotel, he much regretted not having driven instead, for he learned that semple had twice telephoned from the city for him. it was late in the afternoon—he noted with satisfaction that the clock showed it to be already past the hour of the tavender-gafferson appointment,—but he had semple's office called up, upon the chance that someone might be there. the clerk had not consumed more than ten minutes in the preliminaries of finding out that no one was there—thorpe meanwhile passing savage comments to the other clerks about the british official conception of the telephone as an instrument of discipline and humiliation—when semple himself appeared in the doorway.
the broker gave an exclamation of relief at seeing thorpe, and then, apparently indifferent to the display of excitement he was exhibiting, drew him aside.
“come somewhere where we can talk,” he whispered nervously.
thorpe had never seen the little scotchman in such a flurry. “we'll go up to my rooms,” he said, and led the way to the lift.
upstairs, semple bolted the door of the sitting-room behind them, and satisfied himself that there was no one in the adjoining bedroom. then, unburdening himself with another sigh, he tossed aside his hat, and looked keenly up at the big man. “there's the devil to pay,” he said briefly.
thorpe had a fleeting pride in the lethargic, composed front he was able to present. “all right,” he said with forced placidity. “if he's got to be paid, we'll pay him.” he continued to smile a little.
“it's nah joke,” the other hastened to warn him. “i have it from two different quarters. an application has been made to the stock exchange committee, this afternoon, to intervene and stop our business, on the ground of fraud. it comes verra straight to me.”
thorpe regarded his broker contemplatively. the news fitted with precision into what he had previously known; it was rendered altogether harmless by the precautions he had already taken. “well, keep your hair on,” he said, quietly. “if there were fifty applications, they wouldn't matter the worth of that soda-water cork. won't you have a drink?”
semple, upon reflection, said he would. the unmoved equipoise of the big man visibly reassured him. he sipped at his bubbling tumbler and smacked his thin lips. “man, i've had an awful fright,” he said at last, in the tone of one whose ease of mind is returning.
“i gave you credit for more nerve,” observed the other, eyeing him in not unkindly fashion over his glass. “you've been so plumb full of sand all the while—i didn't think you'd weaken now. why, we're within two days of home, now—and for you to get rattled at this late hour—you ought to be ashamed of yourself.”
the scotchman looked into the bottom of his glass, as he turned it thoughtfully round. “i'm relieved to see the way you take it,” he said, after a pause. with increased hesitation he went dryly on: “i've never enquired minutely into the circumstances of the flotation. it has not seemed to be my business to do so, and upon advice i may say that the committee would not hold that such was my business. my position is quite clear, upon that point.”
“oh, perfectly,” thorpe assented. “it couldn't possibly be any of your business—either then, or now.” he gave a significant touch of emphasis to these last two words.
“precisely,” said semple, with a glance of swift comprehension. “you must not think i am asking any intrusive questions. if you tell me that—that there is no ground for uneasiness—i am verra pleased indeed to accept the assurance. that is ample information for my purposes.”
“you can take it from me,” thorpe told him. he picked up a red book from a side table, and turned over its pages with his thick thumb. “this is what rule 59 says,” he went on: “'no application which has for its object to annul any bargain in the stock exchange shall be entertained by the committee, unless upon a specific allegation of fraud or wilful misrepresentation.' shall be entertained, d'ye see? they can't even consider anything of the sort, because it says 'specific,' and i tell you plainly that anything 'specific' is entirely out of the question.”
the broker lifted his sandy brows in momentary apprehension. “if it turns upon the precise definition of a word,” he remarked, doubtingly.
“ah, yes,—but it doesn't,” thorpe reassured him. “see here—i'll tell you something. you're not asking any questions. that's as it should be. and i'm not forcing information upon you which you don't need in your business. that's as it should be, too. but in between these two, there's a certain margin of facts that there's no harm in your knowing. a scheme to blackmail me is on foot. it's rather a fool-scheme, if you ask me, but it might have been a nuisance if it had been sprung on us unawares. it happened, however, that i twigged this scheme about two hours ago. it was the damnedest bit of luck you ever heard of——”
“you don't have luck,” put in semple, appreciatively. “other men have luck. you have something else—i don't give it a name.”
thorpe smiled upon him, and went on. “i twigged it, anyway. i went out, and i drove the biggest kind of spike through that fool-scheme—plumb through its heart. tomorrow a certain man will come to me—oh, i could almost tell you the kind of neck-tie he'll wear—and he'll put up his bluff to me, and i'll hear him out—and then—then i'll let the floor drop out from under him.”
“aye!” said semple, with relish.
“stay and dine with me tonight,” thorpe impulsively suggested, “and we'll go to some music hall afterward. there's a knock-about pantomime outfit at the canterbury—martinetti i think the name is—that's damned good. you get plenty of laugh, and no tiresome blab to listen to. the older i get, the more i think of people that keep their mouths shut.”
“aye,” observed semple again.
