The Market-Place | Page 6

you what
a relief it is to find that you--that you're satisfied. Now I can go ahead."
"Ah, yes--ahead," said the younger man, thoughtfully. "Do you mind
telling me--you see I'm quite in the dark as to details--how much
further ahead we are likely to go? I comprehend the general nature of
our advance-- but how far off is the goal you have in sight?"
"God knows!" answered Thorpe, with a rising thrill of excitement in his
voice. "I don't give it any limit. I don't see why we should stop at all.
We've got them in such a position that--why, good heavens! we can
squeeze them to death, crush them like quartz." He chuckled grimly at
the suggestion of his simile. "We'll get more ounces to the ton out of
our crushings than they ever heard of on the Rand, too."
"Might I ask," interposed the other, "who may 'they' be?"
Thorpe hesitated, and knitted his brows in the effort to remember
names. "Oh, there are a lot of them," he said, vaguely. "I think I told
you of the way that Kaffir crowd pretended to think well of me, and let
me believe they were going to take me up, and then, because I wouldn't
give them everything--the very shirt off my back--turned and put their
knife into me. I don't know them apart, hardly--they've all got names
like Rhine wines--but I know the gang as a whole, and if I don't lift the
roof clean off their particular synagogue, then my name is mud."
Lord Plowden smiled. "I've always the greatest difficulty to remember
that you are an Englishman--a Londoner born," he declared pleasantly.
"You don't talk in the least like one. On shipboard I made sure you
were an American--a very characteristic one, I thought--of some
curious Western variety, you know. I never was more surprised in my
life than when you told me, the other day, that you only left England a

few years ago."
"Oh, hardly a 'few years'; more like fifteen," Thorpe corrected him. He
studied his companion's face with slow deliberation.
"I'm going to say something that you mustn't take amiss," he remarked,
after a little pause. "If you'd known that I was an Englishman, when we
first met, there on the steamer, I kind o' suspect that you and I'd never
have got much beyond a nodding acquaintance--and even that mostly
on my side. I don't mean that I intended to conceal anything--that is,
not specially--but I've often thought since that it was a mighty good
thing I did. Now isn't that true--that if you had taken me for one of your
own countrymen you'd have given me the cold shoulder?"
"I dare say there's a good deal in what you say," the other admitted,
gently enough, but without contrition. "Things naturally shape
themselves that way, rather, you know. If they didn't, why then the
whole position would become difficult. But you are an American, to all
intents and purposes."
"Oh, no--I never took any step towards getting naturalized," Thorpe
protested. "I always intended to come back here. Or no, I won't say
that--because most of the time I was dog-poor--and this isn't the place
for a poor man. But I always said to myself that if ever I pulled it off--if
I ever found my self a rich man--THEN I'd come piking across the
Atlantic as fast as triple-expansion engines would carry me."
The young man smiled again, with a whimsical gleam in his eye. "And
you ARE a rich man, now," he observed, after a momentary pause.
"We are both rich men," replied Thorpe, gravely.
He held up a dissuading hand, as the other would have spoken. "This is
how it seems to me the thing figures itself out: It can't be said that your
name on the Board, or the Marquis's either, was of much use so far as
the public were concerned. To tell the truth, I saw some time ago that
they wouldn't be. Titles on prospectuses are played out in London. I've
rather a notion, indeed, that they're apt to do more harm than good--just

at present, at least. But all that aside--you are the man who was civil to
me at the start, when you knew nothing whatever about my scheme,
and you are the man who was good to me later on, when I didn't know
where to turn for a friendly word. Very well; here I am! I've made my
coup! And I'd be a sweep, wouldn't I? to forget to-day what I was so
glad to remember a week ago. But you see, I don't forget! The capital
of the Company is 500,000 pounds, all in pound shares. We offered the
public only a fifth of them. The other four hundred thousand shares