A little later, in Colin Semple's office, he sat down to await the coming of that gentleman. "Then he doesn't get here so early nowadays?" he suggested to the head-clerk who, with instant recognition and exaggerated deference, had ushered him into this furthermost private room.
It pleased him to assume that prosperity had relaxed the Scotchman's vigilance.
"Oh yes, sir," the clerk replied. "A bit earlier if anything, as a rule. But I think he is stopping at his solicitors on his way to the City. I hope you are very well, sir.""Yes--I'm very fit--thanks," Thorpe said, listlessly, and the other left him.
Mr. Semple, when at last he arrived, bustled into the room with unaffected gratification at the news he had heard without. "Well, well, Thorpe man!"he cried, and shook hands cordially. "This is fine!
If I'd only known you were in town! Why wouldn't you have told me you were coming? I'd never have kept you waiting."Thorpe laughed wearily. "I hardly knew I was in town myself.
I only ran up last night. I thought it would amuse me to have a look round--but things seem as dull as ditchwater.""Oh no," said Semple, "the autumn is opening verra well indeed. There are more new companies, and a better public subscription all round, than for any first week of October I remember. Westralians appear bad on the face of things, it's true--but don't believe all you hear of them. There's more than the suspicion of a 'rig' there. Besides, you haven't a penny in them.""I wasn't thinking of that," Thorpe told him, with comprehensive vagueness. "Well, I suppose you're still coining money," he observed, after a pause.
"Keeping along--keeping along," the broker replied, cheerfully. "I canna complain." Thorpe looked at him with a meditative frown. "Well, what are you going to do with it, after you've got it?" he demanded, almost with sharpness.
The Scotchman, after a surprised instant, smiled. "Oh, I'll just keep my hands on it," he assured him, lightly.
"That isn't what I mean," Thorpe said, groping after what he did mean, with sullen tenacity, among his thoughts.
His large, heavy face exhibited a depressed gravity which attracted the other's attention.
"What's the matter?" Semple asked quickly. "Has anything gone wrong with you?"Thorpe slowly shook his head. "What better off do you think you'll be with six figures than you are with five?"he pursued, with dogmatic insistence.
Semple shrugged his shoulders. He seemed to have grown much brighter and gayer of mood in this past twelvemonth.
Apparently he was somewhat stouter, and certainly there was a mellowed softening of his sharp glance and shrewd smile.
It was evident that his friend's mood somewhat nonplussed him, but his good-humour was unflagging.
"It's the way we're taught at school," he hazarded, genially.
"In all the arithmetics six beats five, and seven beats six.""They're wrong," Thorpe declared, and then consented to laugh in a grudging, dogged way at his friend's facial confession of puzzlement. "What I mean is--what's the good of piling up money, while you can't pile up the enjoyments it will buy? What will a million give you, that the fifth of it, or the tenth of it, won't give you just as well?""Aye," said Semple, with a gleam of comprehension in his glance.
"So you've come to that frame of mind, have you?
Why does a man go on and shoot five hundred pheasants, when he can eat only one?""Oh, if you like the mere making of money, I've nothing more to say," Thorpe responded, with a touch of resentment.
"I've always thought of you as a man like myself, who wanted to make his pile and then enjoy himself."The Scotchman laughed joyously. "Enjoy myself! Like you!"he cried. "Man, you're as doleful as a mute at a laird's funeral! What's come over you? I know what it is.
You go and take a course of German waters----""Oh, that be damned!" Thorpe objected, gloomily. "I tell you I'm all right. Only--only--God! I've a great notion to go and get drunk."Colin Semple viewed his companion with a more sympathetic expression. "I'm sorry you're so hipped," he said, in gentle tones. "It can't be more than some passing whimsy.
You're in no real trouble, are you?--no family trouble?"Thorpe shook his head. "The whole thing is rot!"he affirmed, enigmatically.
"What whole thing?" The broker perched on the edge of his desk, and with patient philosophy took him up.
"Do you mean eighty thousand a year is rot? That depends upon the man who has it.""I know that well enough," broke in the other, heavily.
"That's what I'm kicking about. I'm no good!"Semple, looking attentively down upon him, pursed his lips in reflection. "That's not the case," he observed with argumentative calmness. "You're a great deal of good.
I'm not so sure that what you've been trying to do is any good, though. Come!--I read you like large print.
