The Market-Place Part 40

"All the same," Thorpe stuck to his point, "you are not happy."

The Duke frowned faintly, as if at the other's persistency. Then he shrugged his shoulders and answered in a lighter tone. "It hardly amounts to that, I think. I confess that there are alleviations to my lot. In the opinion of the world I am one of its most fortunate citizens--and it is not for me to say that the world is altogether wrong. The chief point is--I don't know if you will quite follow me--there are limits to what position and fortune can give a man. And so easily they may deprive him of pleasures which poorer men enjoy! I may be wrong, but it seems impossible to me that any rich man who has acres of gardens and vineries and gla.s.s can get up the same affection for it all that the cottager will have for his little flower-plot, that he tends with his own hands. One seems outside the realities of life--a mere spectator at the show."

"Ah, but why not DO things?" Thorpe demanded of him. "Why merely stand, as you say, and look on?"

The other leant his head back again. "Pray what do you recommend?" he asked almost listlessly.

"Why--politics, for example."

The Duke nodded, with an air of according to the suggestion a certain respect. "Unhappily I am too much of a foreigner," he commented. "I know Englishmen and their affairs too imperfectly. Sometime--perhaps."

"And philanthropic work--you don't care about that," pursued the other.

"Oh--we go not so far as that," said his Grace, with a deprecatory wave of the hands. "My wife finds many interests in it, only she would not like to have you call it philanthropical. She is London-born, and it is a great pleasure to her to be of a.s.sistance to poorer young women in London, who have so little done for them by the community, and can do so little for themselves. I am much less skeptical about that particular work, I may tell you, than about philanthropy in general. In fact, I am quite clear that it is doing good. At least it is doing a kindness, and that is a pleasant occupation. We are really not so idle as one might think. We work at it a good deal, my wife and I."

"So am I London-born," Thorpe remarked, with a certain irrelevancy.

After a moment's pause he turned a sharply enquiring glance upon his guest. "This thing that you're doing in London--does it give you any 'pull' there?" "Pull?" repeated the other helplessly.

"If there was something you wanted the people of London to do, would they do it for you because of what you've been doing for them--or for their girls?"

The Duke looked puzzled for a moment. "But it isn't conceivable that I should want London to do anything--unless it might be to consume its own smoke," he observed.

"Quite so!" said Thorpe, rising bulkily to his feet, but signifying by a gesture that his companion was to remain seated. He puffed at his cigar till its tip gleamed angrily through the smoke about him, and moved a few steps with his hands in his pockets. "That is what I wanted to get at. Now I'm London-born, I've got the town in my blood. The Thorpes have been booksellers there for generations. The old name is over the old shop still. I think I know what Londoners are like; I ought to. It's my belief that they don't want gifts. They'll take 'em, but it isn't what they want. They're a trading people--one of the oldest in the world.

Commercial traditions, the merchant's pride--these are bred in their bones. They don't want something for nothing. They like an honest bargain--fair on both sides. 'You help me and I'll help you.' And it's the only way you can do anything worth doing."

"Well," said the Duke, pa.s.sively.

Thorpe halted, and still with the cigar between his teeth, looked down at him.

"I can go into London, and study out the things that are to be done--that need to be done--and divide these into two parts, those that belong to private enterprise and those that ought to be done publicly.

And I can say to Londoners--not in so many words, mind you, but in a way the sharper ones will understand: 'Here, you fellows. I'll begin doing out of my own pocket one set of these things, and you in turn must put yourselves at my back, and stand by me, and put me in a position where I can make the Government do this other set of things.' That will appeal to them. A poor man couldn't lead them any distance, because he could always be killed by the cry that he was filling his pockets. They will believe in a man whose ambition is to win an earldom and five thousand a year out of politics, but they will stone to death the man who merely tries to get a few hundreds a year out of it for his wife and children.

And a man like you can't do anything in London, because they can't see that there's anything you want in return--and besides, in their hearts, they don't like your cla.s.s. Don't forget it! This is the city that chopped off the king's head!"

"Ah, but this is also the city," retorted the other, with placid pleasure in his argument, "which decked itself in banners and ribbons to welcome back the son of that same king. And if you think of it, he was rather a quaint thing in sons, too."

"It was the women did that," Thorpe affirmed with readiness. "They get their own way once in a while, when the men are tired out, and they have their little spell of nonsense and monkey-s.h.i.+nes, but it never lasts long. Charles II. doesn't matter at all--but take my word for it, his father matters a great deal. There was a Thorpe among the judges who voted to behead him. I am descended in a straight line from him."

His Grace shrugged his slight shoulders again. "It happens that my ancestors had extremely large facilities for doing unpleasant things, and, G.o.d knows, they did them--but I don't quite see what that goes to prove, now."

"No, you don't grasp the idea," said Thorpe, resignedly. After a moment's pause he took the cigar from his lips, and straightened himself "All the same," he declared roundly, "I am going to do the trick. London has been waiting for an organizer--a leader--for a hundred years. The right kind of a man, going the right way to work, can stand London on its head, as surely as I can burn this cigar. And I'm going to have a try at it."

"It is very interesting," remarked the Duke, with vagueness. "But--are the ladies waiting for us? And if so, aren't we keeping them up unconscionably?"

As if in comment upon his words, there was the sound of a faint rap at the door. Then it opened, and through the dense blue haze of the room they saw some shadowed forms softly indistinct save where the light from the ceiling outside shone down upon a group of coiffured heads. A noise of mingled coughing and laughter specifically completed the introduction.

"Oh, I'm--it's unendurable in there," spoke the voice of the hostess.

"We WERE coming in to smoke with you," she called out through the cloud, "since you wouldn't stop with us."

"Come along!" answered Thorpe, cheerily. He strode to the end of the room and raised a window. From the same corner he turned on some added lights.

Under this more effective illumination, the lady of the house advanced, with Miss Madden and the Hon. Winifred close behind her. "Frank has gone to bed," she explained to the Duke, who had risen. Then she turned to her husband a bright-eyed glance: "You don't mind--our coming?" she asked.

"Mind!" he called out, with robust impressiveness. "Mind!" As if to complete the expression of his meaning, he threw his arm loosely about her, where she stood, and brought her to his side. They remained standing thus, before the fireplace, after the others were all seated.

"Mr. Thorpe has been outlining to me the most wonderful plans," said the Duke, looking from one face to another, with a reserved smile. "It seems that philanthropy fails unless it is combined with very advanced politics. It is a new idea to me--but he certainly states it with vigour. Do you understand it, Edith?"

"Oh, perfectly," replied the wife, smilingly. "I am his first convert.

Behold in me the original disciple."

"The worst of that is," commented Thorpe, with radiant joviality, "she would subscribe to any other new doctrine of mine just as readily." He tightened the arm encircling her by a perceptible trifle. "Wouldn't you, sweetheart?" he demanded.

She seemed in nowise embarra.s.sed by these overt endearments.

There was indeed the dimmest suggestion in her face and voice of a responsive mood. "Really," she began, with a soft glance, half-deprecation, half-pride, bent upon the others, and with thoughtful deliberation,--"really the important thing is that he should pursue some object--have in view something that he is determined to master. Without that, he is not contented--not at his best. He should have been a soldier. He has a pa.s.sion for battle in his blood. And now that he sees something he is eager to do--I am very glad. It makes it none the less acceptable that good is to come from it."

"I still maintain," said Miss Madden, interpolating her words through the task of lighting a cigarette, and contriving for them an effect of drollery which appealed to Thorpe most of all--"I shall always insist, just the same, that crime was his true vocation."