Over and over again she met his propositions with a saying which he could recall having particularly hated on their father's lips,--"It's ill teaching an old dog new tricks.""You ought to have them taught you with a stick,"he had told her roundly, on the last occasion.
She had merely shrugged her gaunt shoulders at him.
"You think you can bully everybody and make them crawl to you,--but there's no good your trying it on with me,"she had told him, and he had pushed his way out of the shop almost stamping his feet. It was clear to him at that moment that he would never darken her door again.
Yet now, on this afternoon of the tenth, as he lounged with a cigar and a City paper in his apartment at the hotel after luncheon, wondering whether it were too hot to issue forth for a walk to the Park, the irrelevant idea of going round to see his sister kept coming into his mind.
He seated himself and fastened his attention upon the paper,--but off it slipped again to the old book-shop, and to that curious, cross-grained figure, its mistress.
He abandoned himself to thinking about her--and discovered that a certain unique quality in her challenged his admiration.
She was the only absolutely disinterested person he knew--the only creature in the world, apparently, who did not desire to make something out of him. She was not at all well-off,--was indeed rather poor than otherwise,--and here was her only brother a millionaire, and in her dumb way she had a sisterly affection for him, and yet she could not be argued or cajoled into touching a penny of his money.
Surely there could be no other woman like her.
Thorpe realized that it was a distinction to have such a sister,--and behind this thought rose obscurely the suggestion that there must be wonderful blood in a race which had produced such a daughter. And for that matter, such a son too! He lifted his head, and looked abstractedly before him, as if he were gazing at some apotheosis of himself in a mirror.
He beheld all at once something concrete and personal, obtruded into the heart of his reverie, the sight of which dimly astounded him. For the moment, with opened lips he stared at it,--then slowly brought himself to comprehend what had happened. An old man had by some oversight of the hotel servants been allowed to enter the room unannounced. He had wandered in noiselessly, and had moved in a purblind fashion to the centre of the apartment. The vagueness of the expression on his face and of his movements hinted at a vacant mind or too much drink,--but Thorpe gave no thought to either hypothesis.
The face itself--no--yes--it was the face of old Tavender.
"In the name of God! What are you doing here?" Thorpe gasped at this extraordinary apparition. Still staring, he began to push back his chair and put his weight upon his feet.
"Well--Thorpe"--the other began, thrusting forward his head to look through his spectacles--"so it is you, after all.
I didn't know whether I was going to find you or not.
This place has got so many turns and twists to it----""But good heavens!" interposed the bewildered Thorpe.
He had risen to his feet. He mechanically took the hand which the other had extended to him. "What in hell"--he began, and broke off again. The aroma of alcohol on the air caught his sense, and his mind stopped at the perception that Tavender was more or less drunk. He strove to spur it forward, to compel it to encompass the meanings of this new crisis, but almost in vain.
"Thought I'd look you up," said the old man, buoyantly.
"Nobody in London I'd rather see than you. How are you, anyway?""What did you come over for? When did you get here?"Thorpe put the questions automatically. His self-control was returning to him; his capable brain pushed forward now under something like disciplined direction.
"Why I guess I owe it all to you," replied Tavender.
Traces of the old Quaker effect which had been so characteristic of him still hung about his garb and mien, but there shone a new assurance on his benignant, rubicund face. Prosperity had visibly liberalized and enheartened him. He shook Thorpe's hand again.
"Yes, sir--it must have been all through you!" he repeated.
"I got my cable three weeks ago--'Hasten to London, urgent business, expenses and liberal fee guaranteed, Rubber Consols'--that's what the cable said, that is, the first one and of course you're the man that introduced me to those rubber people. And so don't you see I owe it all to you?"His insistence upon his obligation was suddenly almost tearful.
Thorpe thought hard as he replied: "Oh--that's all right.
I'm very glad indeed to have helped you along.
And so you came over for the Rubber Consols people, eh? Well--that's good. Seen 'em yet? You haven't told me when you landed.""Came up from Southampton this morning. My brother-in-law was down there to meet me. We came up to London together.""Your brother-in-law," observed Thorpe, meditatively.
Some shadowy, remote impression of having forgotten something troubled his mind for an instant. "Is your brother-in-law in the rubber business?""Extraor'nary thing," explained Tavender, beamingly, "he don't know no more about the whole affair than the man 'n the moon.
I asked him today--but he couldn't tell me anything about the business--what it was I'd been sent for, or anything.""But he--he knew you'd been sent for," Thorpe commented upon brief reflection.
"Why, he sent the second cable himself----"
"What second cable?"
"Why it was the next day,--or maybe it was sent that same night, and not delivered till morning,--Igot another cable, this time from my brother-in-law, telling me to cable him what ship I sailed on and when.
So of course he knew all about it--but now he says he don't. He's a curious sort of fellow, anyway.""But how is he mixed up in it?" demanded Thorpe, impatiently.
"Well, as nearly as I can figure it out, he works for one of the men that's at the head of this rubber company.
