No hint of a recollection that there were such things as the Company and the Board, or that he was nominally the head of both, expressed itself in his Lordship's demeanour as he advanced, his hand a little extended.
The noble Chairman was white of beard and hair, and extremely courteous of manner--a small, carefully-clad, gracious old gentleman, whose mild pink countenance had, with years of anxiety about ways and means, disposed itself in lines which produced a chronic expression of solicitude.
A nervous affection of the eyelids lent to this look, at intervals, a beseeching quality which embarrassed the beholder. All men had liked him, and spoken well of him throughout his long and hard-worked career.
Thorpe was very fond of him indeed, and put a respectful cordiality into his grasp of the proffered hand.
Then he looked, with a certain thinly-veiled bluntness of enquiry, past the Marquis to his companion.
"You were very kind to give me the appointment,"said Lord Chaldon, with a little purring gloss of affability upon the earnestness of his tone. "I wish very much to introduce to you my friend, my old friend I may say, Monsieur Alexandre Fromentin. We slept together under the same tent, in the Persian country beyond Bagdad--oh, it must have been quite forty years ago. We were youngsters looking to win our first spurs then--I in my line, he in his.
And often since we have renewed that old friendship--at many different places--India, and Constantinople, and Egypt.
I wish heartily to commend him to your--your kindness."Thorpe had perfunctorily shaken hands with the stranger--a tall, slender, sharp-faced, clean-shaven, narrow-shouldered man, who by these accounts of his years ought not to have such excessively black hair. He bowed in a foreign fashion, and uttered some words which Thorpe, though he recognized them as English in intent, failed to follow. The voice was that of an elderly man, and at a second glance there were plenty of proofs that he might have been older than the Marquis, out there in Persia, forty years ago.
But Thorpe did not like old men who dyed their hair, and he offered his visitors chairs, drawn up from the table toward his desk, with a certain reserve of manner.
Seating himself in the revolving chair at the desk itself, he put the tips of his fingers together, and looked this gentleman with the Continental name and experience in the face.
"Is there something you wish me to do?" he asked, passively facilitating the opening of conversation.
"Ah, my God! 'Something'!"--repeated the other, with a fluttering gesture of his hands over his thin, pointed knees--"everything, Mr. Thorpe!""That's a tolerably large order, isn't it?"
Thorpe asked, calmly, moving a slow, inscrutable glance from one to the other of his callers.
"I could ask for nothing that would be a greater personal favour--and kindness"--Lord Chaldon interposed.
His tone bore the stress of sincerity.
"That means a great deal to me, as you know, my Lord,"replied Thorpe, "but I don't in the least understand--what is it that your friend wants?"
"Only that I shall not be buried in a bankrupt's grave,"the suppliant answered, with a kind of embittered eagerness of utterance. "That I shall not see disgraced the honoured name that my father and his father bequeathed to my care!"Thorpe's large, composed countenance betrayed a certain perplexity. "There must be a mistake,"he observed. "I don't even know this name of yours.
I never heard it before."
The other's mobile face twisted itself in a grimace of incredulity. He had a conspicuously wide mouth, and its trick of sidelong extension at this moment was very unpleasant. "Ah, Herr Je! He never heard it,"he ejaculated, turning nervously to the Marquis.
"Would to the good God you never had!" he told Thorpe, with suppressed excitement.
Lord Chaldon, his own voice shaken a little, interposed with an explanation. "My friend is the head--the respected head--of the firm of Fromentin Brothers.
I think you have--have dealings with them."
Thorpe, after a furtive instant of bewilderment, opened his mouth. "Oh! I see," he said. "I know what you mean now. With the French pronunciation, I didn't recognize the name. I've always heard it called 'Fromen'-tin' here in London. Oh, yes, of course--Fromen'tin Brothers."His lips shut tight again at this. The listeners had caught no helpful clue from the tone of his words.
They exchanged a glance, and then M. Fromentin spoke.
"Mr. Thorpe," he began, slowly, with an obvious effort at self-repression. "It is a very simple story. Our house is an old one. My father's grandfather organized the finance of the commissariat of General Bonaparte in Egypt.
He created the small beginnings of the carpet and rug importation from Asia Minor. His son, and in turn his son, followed him. They became bankers as well as importers.
They helped very greatly to develop the trade of the Levant. They were not avaricious men, or usurers.
It is not in our blood. Your Chairman, Lord Chaldon, who honours me so highly by calling me his friend--he will assure you that we have a good name in the East.
Our banks have befriended the people, and never oppressed or injured them. For that reason--I will say perhaps for that reason--we have never become a very rich house.
It is possible to name bankers who have made large fortunes out of Egypt. It was different with us. Lord Chaldon will tell you that of our own free will--my two brothers and I--of our own choice we consented to lose a fifth of all our possessions, rather than coin into gold by force the tears and blood of the wretched fellaheen.""Yes--I have never known a more honourable or humane action,"put in the Marquis, fervently.
"And then my brothers die--Polydor, who lived mostly at Smyrna, and whose estate was withdrawn from the business by his widow, and Augustin, who lived here in London after 1870, and died--it is now six years ago.
He left a son, Robert, who is my nephew, and my partner.
