"It surely isn't necessary--among gentlemen"--he began, cautiously picking his phrases--"to have quite so much that's unpleasant, is it?""No--you're right--I didn't mean to be so rough,"Thorpe declared, with spontaneous contrition.
Upon the instant, however, he perceived the danger that advantage might be taken of his softness. "I'm a plain-spoken man," he went on, with a hardening voice, "and people must take me as they find me. All I said was, in substance, that I intended to be of service to you--and that that ought to interest you."The General seemed to have digested his pique.
"And what I was trying to say," he commented deferentially, "was that I thought I saw ways of being of service to you.
But that did not seem to interest you at all.""How--service?" Thorpe, upon consideration, consented to ask.
"I know my daughter so much better than you do,"explained the other; "I know Plowden so much better; I am so much more familiar with the whole situation than you can possibly be--I wonder that you won't listen to my opinion.
I don't suggest that you should be guided by it, but Ithink you should hear it."
"I think so, too," Thorpe declared, readily enough.
"What IS your opinion?"
General Kervick sipped daintily at his glass, and then gave an embarrassed little laugh. "But I can't form what you might call an opinion," he protested, apologetically, "till I understand a bit more clearly what it is you propose to yourself. You mustn't be annoyed if I return to that--'still harping on my daughter,' you know.
If I MUST ask the question--is it your wish to marry her?"Thorpe looked blankly at his companion, as if he were thinking of something else. When he spoke, it was with no trace of consciousness that the question had been unduly intimate.
"I can't in the least be sure that I shall ever marry,"he replied, thoughtfully. "I may, and I may not.
But--starting with that proviso--I suppose I haven't seen any other woman that I'd rather think about marrying than--than the lady we're speaking of. However, you see it's all in the air, so far as my plans go.""In the air be it," the soldier acquiesced, plausibly.
"Let us consider it as if it were in the air--a possible contingency. This is what I would say--My--'the lady we are speaking of' is by way of being a difficult lady--'uncertain, coy, and hard to please' as Scott says, you know--and it must be a very skilfully-dressed fly indeed which brings her to the surface.
She's been hooked once, mind, and she has a horror of it.
Her husband was the most frightful brute and ruffian, you know. I was strongly opposed to the marriage, but her mother carried it through. But--yes--about her--I think she is afraid to marry again. If she does ever consent, it will be because poverty has broken her nerve.
If she is kept on six hundred a year, she may be starved, so to speak, into taking a husband. If she had sixteen hundred--either she would never marry at all, or she would be free to marry some handsome young pauper who caught her fancy. That would be particularly like her. You would be simply endowing some needy fellow, beside losing her for yourself. D'ye follow me? If you'll leave it to me, I can find a much better way than that--better for all of us.""Hm!" said Thorpe, and pondered the paternal statement.
"I see what you mean," he remarked at last. "Yes--I see."The General preserved silence for what seemed a long time, deferring to the reverie of his host. When finally he offered a diversion, in the form of a remark about the hour, Thorpe shook himself, and then ponderously rose to his feet.
He took his hat and coat from the waiter, and made his way out without a word.
At the street door, confronting the waning foliage of the Embankment garden, Kervick was emboldened to recall to him the fact of his presence. "Which way are you going?"he asked.
"I don't know," Thorpe answered absently. "I think--Ithink I'll take a walk on the Embankment--by myself."The General could not repress all symptoms of uneasiness.
"But when am I to see you again?" he enquired, with an effect of solicitude that defied control.
"See me?" Thorpe spoke as if the suggestion took him by surprise.
"There are things to be settled, are there not?"the other faltered, in distressed doubt as to the judicious tone to take. "You spoke, you know, of--of some employment that--that would suit me."Thorpe shook himself again, and seemed by an effort to recall his wandering attention. "Oh yes," he said, with lethargic vagueness--"I haven't thought it out yet.
I'll let you know--within the week, probably."With the briefest of nods, he turned and crossed the road.
Walking heavily, with rounded shoulders and hands plunged deep in his overcoat pockets, he went through the gateway, and chose a path at random. To the idlers on the garden benches who took note of him as he passed, he gave the impression of one struggling with nausea.
To his own blurred consciousness, he could not say which stirred most vehemently within him, his loathing for the creature he had fed and bought, or his bitter self-disgust.
The General, standing with exaggerated exactness upon the doorstep, had followed with his bulging eyes the receding figure.
He stood still regarding the gateway, mentally summarizing the events of the day, after the other had vanished.
At last, nestling his chin comfortably into the fur of his collar, he smiled with self-satisfaction. "After all,"he said to himself, "there are always ways of making a cad feel that he is a cad, in the presence of a gentleman."
