Thorpe laughed, and relit his cigar. "Well, I couldn't have asked anything better than this, "he declared once again.
"It beats all the rest put together, to my mind.""Perhaps I don't quite follow your meaning," commented the other tentatively.
"Why man," Thorpe explained, hesitating a little in his choice of words, but speaking with evident fervour;"I was more anxious about you--and the way you'd take it--than about anything else. I give you my word I was.
I couldn't tell at all how you'd feel about the thing.
You might think that it was all right, and then again you might round on me--or no, I don't mean quite that--but you might say it wasn't good enough for you, and wash your hands of the whole affair. And I can't tell you what a relief it is to find that you--that you're satisfied.
Now I can go ahead."
"Ah, yes--ahead," said the younger man, thoughtfully.
"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 Idon'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 Iwas 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 Iwas 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.
