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 Idoubt 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," he said.
Plowden lifted his brows in unfeigned surprise.
"No--I didn't know that," he admitted, frankly.
"Yes, I'm a Paul's Pigeon," Thorpe went on, "as they called them in my day. That's gone out now, I'm told, since they've moved to the big buildings in Hammersmith.
I did very well at school, too; came out in the first fourteen.
But my father wouldn't carry the thing any further.
He insisted on my going into the shop when I left St. Paul's and learning the book-business. He had precisely the same kind of dynastic idea, you know, that you fellows have.
His father and his grand-father had been booksellers, and he was going to hand on the tradition to me, and my son after me. That was his idea. And he thought that Paul's would help this--but that Oxford would kill it.
"Of course, he was right there--but he was wrong in supposing there was a bookseller in me. I liked the books well enough, mind you--but damn the people that came to buy them, I couldn't stand it. You stood two hours watching to see that men didn't put volumes in their pockets, and at the end of that time you'd made a profit of ninepence.
While you were doing up the parcel, some fellow walked off with a book worth eighteen-pence. It was too slow for me.
I didn't hit it off with the old man, either. We didn't precisely quarrel, but I went off on my own hook.
I hung about London for some years, trying this thing and that. Once I started a book-shop of my own--but Idid no good here. Finally I turned it up altogether, and went to Australia. That was in 1882. I've been in almost every quarter of the globe since; I've known what it was to be shipwrecked in a monsoon, and I've lain down in a desert not expecting to get up again, with my belt tightened to its last hole for hunger--but I can't remember that I ever wished myself back in my father's book-shop."Plowden's fine eyes sparkled his appreciation of the other's mood. He was silent for a moment, then lifted his head as if something had occurred to him.
"You were speaking of the plan that you should succeed to your father's business--and your son after you--you're not married, are you?"Thorpe slowly shook his head.
"Our station is the next," said the younger man.
"It's a drive of something under two miles. You'd better light another cigar." He added, as if upon a casual afterthought: "We can both of us think of marrying now."
