All at once Thorpe found himself disclosing the fact of his forthcoming marriage, though he did not mention the name of the lady's father, and under the gracious stress of this announcement they drank again, and clinked glasses fervently. When Semple at last took his leave, they shook hands with the deep-eyed earnestness of comrades who have been through battle and faced death together.
It was not until Thorpe stood alone that the full realizing sense of what the day meant seemed to come to him.
Fruition was finally complete: the last winnowing of the great harvest had been added to the pile.
Positively nothing remained for him but to enter and enjoy!
He found it curiously difficult to grasp the thought in its entirety. He stood the master of unlimited leisure for the rest of his life, and of power to enrich that life with everything that money could buy,--but there was an odd inability to feel about it as he knew he ought to feel.
Somehow, for some unaccountable reason, an absurd depression hovered about over his mind, darkening it with formless shadows. It was as if he were sorry that the work was all finished--that there was nothing more for him to do. But that was too foolish, and he tried to thrust it from him. He said with angry decision to himself that he had never liked the work;that it had all been unpleasant and grinding drudgery, tolerable only as a means to an end; that now this end had been reached, he wanted never to lay eyes on the City again.
Let him dwell instead upon the things he did want to lay eyes upon. Some travel no doubt he would like, but not too much; certainly no more than his wife would cheerfully accept as a minimum. He desired rather to rest among his own possessions. To be lord of the manor at Pellesley Court, with his own retinue of servants and dependents and tenants, his own thousands of rich acres, his own splendid old timber, his own fat stock and fleet horses and abundant covers and prize kennels--THAT was what most truly appealed to him. It was not at all certain that he would hunt;break-neck adventure in the saddle scarcely attracted him.
But there was no reason in the world why he should not breed racing horses, and create for himself a distinguished and even lofty position on the Turf. He had never cared much about races or racing folk himself, but when the Prince and Lord Rosebery and people like that went in for winning the Derby, there clearly must be something fascinating in it.
Then Parliament, of course; he did not waver at all from his old if vague conception of a seat in Parliament as a natural part of the outfit of a powerful country magnate.
And in a hundred other ways men should think of him as powerful, and look up to him. He would go to church every Sunday, and sit in the big Squire's pew.
He would be a magistrate as a matter of course, and he would make himself felt on the County Council.
He would astonish the county by his charities, and in bad years by the munificence of his reductions in rents.
Perhaps if there were a particularly bad harvest, he would decline all over his estate to exact any rent whatever.
Fancy what a noble sensation that would make! A Duke could do no more.
It was very clear to him now that he desired to have children of his own,--say two at least, a son and a daughter, or perhaps a son and two daughters: two little girls would be company for each other. As he prefigured these new beings, the son was to exist chiefly for purposes of distinction and the dignity of heirship, and the paternal relations with him would be always somewhat formal, and, though affectionate, unexpansive.
But the little girls--they would put their arms round their father's neck, and walk out with him to see the pigs and the dogs, and be the darlings of his heart.
He would be an old man by the time they grew up.
A beatific vision of himself took form in his mind--of himself growing grey and pleasurably tired, surrounded by opulence and the demonstrative respect of everybody, smiling with virtuous content as he strolled along between his two daughters, miracles of beauty and tenderness, holding each by a hand.
The entrance of a clerk broke abruptly upon this daydream.
He had a telegram in his hand, and Thorpe, rousing himself with an effort, took the liver-coloured envelope, and looked blankly at it. Some weird apprehension seized upon him, as if he belonged to the peasant class which instinctively yokes telegrams and calamities together. He deferred to this feeling enough to nod dismissal to the clerk, and then, when he was again alone, slowly opened the message, and read it:
