"I don't want to hear you abuse your daughter," he admonished him now, with a purpose glowing steadily in his firm glance.
"Damn it all, why shouldn't she go off by herself, and take care of her own money her own way? It's little enough, God knows, for such a lady as she is. Why should you expect her to support you out of it? No--sit still!
Listen to me!"--he stretched out his hand, and laid it with restraining heaviness upon the General's arm--"you don't want to have any row with me. You can't afford it.
Just think that over to yourself--you--can't--afford--it."Major-General Kervick's prominent blue eyes had bulged forth in rage till their appearance had disconcerted the other's gaze. They remained still too much in the foreground, as it were, and the angry scarlets and violets of the cheeks beneath them carried an unabated threat of apoplexy--but their owner, after a moment's silence, made a sign with his stiff white brows that the crisis was over.
"You must remember that--that I have a father's feelings,"he gasped then, huskily.
Thorpe nodded, with a nonchalance which was not wholly affected.
He had learned what he wanted to know about this veteran.
If he had the fierce meannesses of a famished old dog, he had also a dog's awe of a stick. It was almost too easy to terrorize him.
"Oh, I make allowances for all that," Thorpe began, vaguely.
"But it's important that you should understand me.
I'm this sort of a man: whatever I set out to do, and put my strength into it, that I do! I kill every pheasant Ifire at; Plowden will tell you that! It's a way I have.
To those that help me, and are loyal to me, I'm the best friend in the world. To those that get in my way, or try to trip me up, I'm the devil--just plain devil.
Now then--you're getting three hundred a year from my Company, that is to say from me, simply to oblige my friend Plowden. You don't do anything to earn this money;you're of no earthly use on the Board. If I chose, I could put you off at the end of the year as easily as Ican blow out this match. But I propose not only to keep you on, but to make you independent. Why do I do that?
You should ask yourself that question. It can't be on account of anything you can do for the Company. What else then? Why, first and foremost, because you are the father of your daughter.""Let me tell you the kind of man I am," said the General, inflating his chest, and speaking with solemnity.
"Oh, I know the kind of man you are," Thorpe interrupted him, coolly. "I want to talk now.""It was merely," Kervick ventured, in an injured tone, "that I can be as loyal as any man alive to a true friend.""Well, I'll be the true friend, then," said Thorpe, with impatient finality. "And now this is what I want to say.
I'm going to be a very rich man. You're not to say so to anybody, mind you, until the thing speaks for itself.
We're keeping dark for a few months, d'ye see?--lying low.
Then, as I say, I shall be a very rich man. Well now, I wouldn't give a damn to be rich, unless I did with my money the things that I wanted to do, and got the things with it that I wanted to get. Whatever takes my fancy, that's what I'll do."He paused for a moment, mentally to scrutinize a brand-new project which seemed, by some surreptitious agency, to have already taken his fancy. It was a curious project;there were attractive things about it, and objections to it suggested themselves as well.
"I may decide," he began speaking again, still revolving this hypothetical scheme in his thoughts--"I may want to--well, here's what occurs to me as an off-chance.
I take an interest in your daughter, d'ye see? and it seems a low-down sort of thing to me that she should be so poor. Well, then--I might say to you, here's two thousand a year, say, made over to you in your name, on the understanding that you turn over half of it, say, to her.
She could take it from you, of course, as her father.
You could say you made it out of the Company. Of course it might happen, later on, that I might like to have a gentle hint dropped to her, d'ye see, as to where it really came from. Mind, I don't say this is what is going to be done. It merely occurred to me."After waiting for a moment for some comment, he added a second thought: "You'd have to set about making friends with her, you know. In any case, you'd better begin at that at once."The General remained buried in reflection. He lighted a cigarette, and poured out for himself still another petit verre. His pursed lips and knitted brows were eloquent of intense mental activity.
"Well, do you see any objections to it?" demanded Thorpe, at last.
"I do not quite see the reasons for it," answered the other, slowly. "What would you gain by it?""How do you mean--gain?" put in the other, with peremptory intolerance of tone.
General Kervick spread his hands in a quick little gesture.
These hands were withered, but remarkably well-kept. "Isuppose one doesn't do something for nothing," he said.
"I see what I would gain, and what she would gain, but I confess I don't see what advantage you would get out of it.""No-o, I daresay you don't," assented Thorpe, with sneering serenity. "But what does that matter? You admit that you see what you would gain. That's enough, isn't it?"The older man's veined temples twitched for an instant.
He straightened himself in his chair, and looked hard at his companion. There was a glistening of moisture about his staring eyes.
