Whatever he's going to do, it's time that he began getting his special start for it." He added, upon a luminous afterthought: "Perhaps his seeing the old Italian picture galleries and so on will cure him of wanting to be an artist."

The mother's air displayed resigned acquiescence rather than conviction.

"Well--if you really think it's best," she began, "I don't know that I ought to object. Goodness knows, I don't want to stand in their way.

Ever since you sent that four hundred pounds, it hasn't seemed as if they were my children at all. They've scarcely listened to me. And now you come, and propose to take them out of my hands altogether--and all I can say is--I hope you feel entirely justified. And so, shall I write them to come home? When do you think of starting? Julia ought to have some travelling clothes."

"I can wait till you get her ready--only you must hurry up about it."

Remembering something, he took out his cheque-book, and spread it on the desk. "I will give you back that thirty," he said, as he wrote, "and here's a hundred to get the youngsters ready. You won't waste any time, will you? and if you want more tell me."

A customer had entered the shop, and Thorpe made it the occasion for leaving.

His sister, looking after her brother with the cheque in her hand, was conscious of a thought which seemed to spell itself out in visible letters before her mental vision. "Even now I don't believe in him," the impalpable legend ran.

CHAPTER IX

GENERAL KERVICK was by habit a punctual man, and Thorpe found him hovering, carefully gloved and fur-coated, in the neighbourhood of the luncheon-room when he arrived. It indeed still lacked a few minutes of the appointed hour when they thus met and went in together. They were fortunate enough to find a small table out on the balcony, sufficiently removed from any other to give privacy to their conversation.

By tacit agreement, the General ordered the luncheon, speaking French to the waiter throughout. Divested of his imposing great-coat, he was seen to be a gentleman of meagre flesh as well as of small stature. He had the Roman nose, narrow forehead, bushing brows, and sharply-cut mouth and chin of a soldier grown old in the contemplation of portraits of the Duke of Wellington. His face and neck were of a dull reddish tint, which seemed at first sight uniformly distributed: one saw afterward that it approached pallor at the veined temples, and ripened into purple in minute patches on the cheeks and the tip of the pointed nose. Against this flushed skin, the closely-cropped hair and small, neatly-waxed moustache were very white indeed. It was a thin, lined, care-worn face, withal, which in repose, and particularly in profile, produced an effect of dignified and philosophical melancholy. The General's over-prominent light blue eyes upon occasion marred this effect, however, by glances of a bold, harsh character, which seemed to disclose unpleasant depths below the correct surface. His manner with the waiters was abrupt and sharp, but undoubtedly they served him very well--much better, in truth, than Thorpe had ever seen them serve anybody before.

Thorpe observed his guest a good deal during the repast, and formed numerous conclusions about him. He ate with palpable relish of every dish, and he emptied his gla.s.s as promptly as his host could fill it. There was hardly a word of explanation as to the purpose of their meeting, until the coffee was brought, and they pushed back their chairs, crossed their legs, and lighted cigars.

"I was lucky to catch you with my wire, at such short notice," Thorpe said then. "I sent two, you know--to your chambers and your club. Which of them found you?"

"Chambers," said the General. "I rarely dress till luncheon time. I read in bed. There's really nothing else to do. Idleness is the curse of my life."

"I've been wondering if you'd like a little occupation--of a well-paid sort," said Thorpe slowly. He realized that it was high time to invent some pretext for his hurried summons of the General.

"My dear sir," responded the other, "I should like anything that had money in it. And I should very much like occupation, too--if it were, of course, something that was--was suitable to me."

"Yes," said Thorpe, meditatively. "I've something in my mind--not at all definite yet--in fact, I don't think I can even outline it to you yet. But I'm sure it will suit you--that is, if I decide to go on with it--and there ought to be seven or eight hundred a year for you in it--for life, mind you."

The General's gaze, fastened strenuously upon Thorpe, shook a little.

"That will suit me very well," he declared, with feeling. "Whatever I can do for it"--he let the sentence end itself with a significant gesture.

"I thought so," commented the other, trifling with the spoon in his cup.

"But I want you to be open with me. I'm interested in you, and I want to be of use to you. All that I've said, I can do for you. But first, I'm curious to know everything that you can tell me about your circ.u.mstances. I'm right in a.s.suming, I suppose, that you're--that you're not any too well-fixed."

The General helped himself to another little gla.s.s of brandy. His mood seemed to absorb the spirit of the liqueur. "Fixed!" he repeated with a peevish snap in his tone. "I'm not 'fixed' at all, as you call it. Good G.o.d, sir! They no more care what becomes of me than they do about their old gloves. I gave them name and breeding and position--and everything--and they round on me like--like cuckoos." His pale, bulging eyes lifted their pa.s.sionless veil for an instant as he spoke, and flashed with the predatory fierceness of a hawk.

Intuition helped Thorpe to guess whom "they" might mean. The temper visibly rising in the old man's mind was what he had hoped for. He proceeded with an informed caution. "Don't be annoyed if I touch upon family matters," he said. "It's a part of what I must know, in order to help you. I believe you're a widower, aren't you, General?"

The other, after a quick upward glance, shook his head resentfully.

"Mrs. Kervick lives in Italy with HER son-in-law--and her daughter.

He is a man of property--and also, apparently, a man of remarkable credulity and patience." He paused, to scan his companion's face.

"They divide him between them," he said then, from clenched teeth--"and I--mind you--I made the match! He was a young fellow that I found--and I brought him home and introduced him--and I haven't so much as an Italian postage-stamp to show for it. But what interest can you possibly take in all this?" The unamiable glance of his eyes was on the instant surcharged with suspicion.

"How many daughters have you?" Thorpe ventured the enquiry with inward doubts as to its sagacity.

"Three," answered the General, briefly. It was evident that he was also busy thinking.

"I ask because I met one of them in the country over Sunday," Thorpe decided to explain.

The old soldier's eyes asked many questions in the moment of silence.

"Which one--Edith?--that is, Lady Cressage?" he enquired. "Of course--it would have been her."

Thorpe nodded. "She made a tremendous impression upon me," he observed, watching the father with intentness as he let the slow words fall.

"Well she might," the other replied, simply. "She's supposed to be the most beautiful woman in England."

"Well--I guess she is," Thorpe a.s.sented, while the two men eyed each other.

"Is the third sister unmarried?" it occurred to him to ask. The tone of the question revealed its perfunctory character.

"Oh--Beatrice--she's of no importance," the father replied. "She goes in for writing, and all that--she's not a beauty, you know--she lives with an old lady in Scotland. The oldest daughter--Blanche--she has some good looks of her own, but she's a cat. And so you met Edith! May I ask where it was?"

"At Hadlow House--Lord Plowden's place, you know."

The General's surprise at the announcement was undoubted. "At Plowden's!" he repeated, and added, as if half to himself, "I thought that was all over with, long ago."

"I wish you'd tell me about it," said Thorpe, daringly. "I've made it plain to you, haven't I? I'm going to look out for you. And I want you to post me up, here, on some of the things that I don't understand. You remember that it was Plowden who introduced you to me, don't you? It was through him that you got on the Board. Well, certain things that I've seen lead me to suppose that he did that in order to please your daughter. Did you understand it that way?"

"It's quite likely, in one sense," returned the General. He spoke with much deliberation now, weighing all his words. "He may have thought it would please her; he may not have known how little my poor affairs concerned her."

"Well, then," pursued Thorpe, argumentatively, "he had an object in pleasing her. Let me ask the question--did he want to marry her?"

"Most men want to marry her," was the father's non-committal response.

His moustache lifted itself in the semblance of a smile, but the blue eyes above remained coldly vigilant.

"Well--I guess that's so too," Thorpe remarked. He made a fleeting mental note that there was something about the General which impelled him to think and talk more like an American than ever. "But was HE specially affected that way?"

"I think," said Kervick, judicially, "I think it was understood that if he had been free to marry a penniless wife, he would have wished to marry her."

"Do you know," Thorpe began again, with a kind of diffident hesitation--"do you happen to have formed an idea--supposing that had been the case--would she have accepted him?" "Ah, there you have me,"

replied the other. "Who can tell what women will accept, and what they will refuse? My daughter refused Lord Lingfield--and he is an Under-Secretary, and will be Earl Chobham, and a Cabinet Minister, and a rich man. After that, what are you to say?"

"You speak of her as penniless," Thorpe remarked, with a casual air.

"Six hundred a year," the father answered. "We could have rubbed along after a fashion on it, if she had had any notions at all of taking my advice. I'm a man of the world, and I could have managed her affairs for her to her advantage, but she insisted upon going off by herself. She showed not the slightest consideration for me--but then I am accustomed to that."

Thorpe smiled reflectively, and the old gentleman read in this an encouragement to expand his grievances.

"In my position," he continued, helping himself to still another tiny gla.s.s, "I naturally say very little. It is not my form to make complaints and advertise my misfortunes. I daresay it's a fault. I know it kept me back in India--while ever so many whipper-snappers were promoted over my head--because I was of the proud and silent sort. It was a mistake, but it was my nature. I might have put by a comfortable provision for my old age, in those days, if I had been willing to push my claims, and worry the Staff into giving me what was my due. But that I declined to do--and when I was retired, there was nothing for me but the ration of bread and salt which they serve out to the old soldier who has been too modest. I served my Queen, sir, for forty years--and I should be ashamed to tell you the allowance she makes me in my old age.

But I do not complain. My mouth is closed. I am an English gentleman and one of Her Majesty's soldiers. That's enough said, eh? Do you follow me?

And about my family affairs, I'm not likely to talk to the first comer, eh? But to you I say it frankly--they've behaved badly, d.a.m.ned badly, sir.