The subject apparently interested her. "To win one's objects by sheer personal force is one thing. To merely secure them because one's purse is longer than other people's--that's quite another matter."He smiled grimly at her. "Well, I'll combine the two,"he said.
"Then I suppose you will be altogether irresistible,"she said, lightly. "There will be no pheasants left for other people at all.""I don't mind being chaffed," he told her, with gravity.
"So long as you're good-natured, you can make game of me all you like. But I'm in earnest, all the same.
I'm not going to play the fool with my money and my power.
I have great projects. Sometime I'll tell you about them.
They will all be put through--every one of them. And you wouldn't object to talking them over with me--would you?""My opinion on 'projects' is of no earthly value--to myself or anyone else.""But still you'd give me your advice if I asked it?"he persisted. "Especially if it was a project in which you were concerned?"After a moment's constrained silence she said to him, "You must have no projects, Mr. Thorpe, in which Iam concerned. This talk is all very wide of the mark.
You are not entitled to speak as if I were mixed up with your affairs. There is nothing whatever to warrant it.""But how can you help being in my projects if I put you there, and keep you there?" he asked her, with gleeful boldness.
"And just ask yourself whether you do really want to help it. Why should you? You've seen enough of me to know that I can be a good friend. And I'm the kind of friend who amounts to something--who can and will do things for those he likes. What obligation are you under to turn away that kind of a friend, when he offers himself to you? Put that question plainly to yourself.""But you are not in a position to nominate the questions that I am to put to myself," she said. The effort to import decision into her tone and manner was apparent.
"That is what I desire you to understand. We must not talk any more about me. I am not the topic of conversation.""But first let me finish what I wanted to say," he insisted.
"My talk won't break any bones. You'd be wrong not to listen to it--because it's meant to help you--to be of use to you. This is the thing, Lady Cressage:
You're in a particularly hard and unpleasant position.
Like my friend Plowden"--he watched her face narrowly but in vain, in the dull light, for any change at mention of the name--"like my friend Plowden you have a position and title to keep up, and next to nothing to keep it up on. But he can go down into the City and make money--or try to. He can accept Directorships and tips about the market and so on, from men who are disposed to be good to him, and who see how he can be of use to them--and in that way he can do something for himself.
But there is the difference: you can't do these things, or you think you can't, which is the same thing.
You're all fenced in; you're surrounded by notice-boards, telling you that you mustn't walk this way or look that way;that you mustn't say this thing or do the other.
Now your friend down ahead there--Miss Madden--she doesn't take much stock in notice-boards. In fact, she feeds the gulls, simply because she's forbidden to do it.
But you--you don't feed any gulls, and yet you're annoyed with yourself that you don't. Isn't that the case? Haven't I read you right?"She seemed to have submitted to his choice of a topic.
There was no touch of expostulation in the voice with which she answered him. "I see what you think you mean,"she said.
"Think!" he responded, with self-confident emphasis.
"I'm not 'thinking.' I'm reading an open book. As I say, you're not contented--you're not happy; you don't try to pretend that you are. But all the same, though you hate it, you accept it. You think that you really must obey your notice-boards. Now what I tell you you ought to do is to take a different view. Why should you put up all this barbed wire between yourself and your friends? It doesn't do anybody else any good--and it does you harm.
