We've got a spare room here, haven't we?" Thorpe asked his niece, when she came out to greet him in the hall of their new home in Ovington Square. He spoke with palpable eagerness before even unbuttoning his damp great-coat, or putting off his hat. "I mean it's all in working order ready for use?""Why yes, uncle," Julia answered, after a moment's thought.
"Is someone coming?"
"I think so," he replied, with a grunt of relief.
He seemed increasingly pleased with the project he had in mind, as she helped him off with his things.
The smile he gave her, when she playfully took his arm to lead him into the adjoining library, was clearly but a part of the satisfied grin with which he was considering some development in his own affairs.
He got into his slippers and into the easy-chair before the bright fire and lit a cigar with a contented air.
"Well, my little girl?" he said, with genial inconsequence, and smiled again at her, where she stood beside the mantel.
"It will be such a lark to play the hostess to a stranger!"she exclaimed. "When is he coming?--I suppose it is a 'he,'" she added, less buoyantly.
"Oh--that fellow," Thorpe said, as if he had been thinking of something else. "Well--I can't tell just when he will turn up. I only learned he was in town--or in England--a couple of hours ago. I haven't seen him yet at all.
I drove round to his lodgings, near the British Museum, but he wasn't there. He only comes there to sleep, but they told me he turned in early--by nine o'clock or so.
Then I went round to a hotel and wrote a note for him, and took it back to his lodgings, and left it for him.
I told him to pack up his things as soon as he got it, and drive here, and make this his home--for the time being at least.""Then it's some old friend of yours?" said the girl.
"I know I shall like him."
Thorpe laughed somewhat uneasily. "Well--yes--he's a kind of a friend of mine," he said, with a note of hesitation in his voice. "I don't know, though, that you'll think much of him. He aint what you'd call a ladies' man."He laughed again at some thought the words conjured up.
"He's a curious, simple old party, who'd just like a comfortable corner somewhere by himself, and wouldn't expect to be talked to or entertained at all. If he does come, he'll keep to himself pretty well. He wouldn't be any company for you. I mean,--for you or Alfred either.
I think he's a Canadian or West Indian,--British subject, at all events,--but he's lived all his life in the West, and he wouldn't know what to do in a drawing-room, or that sort of thing. You'd better just not pay any attention to him. Pass the time of day, of course, but that's all."Julia's alert, small-featured face expressed some vague disappointment at what she heard, but her words were cheerful enough. "Oh of course--whatever he likes best,"she said. "I will tell Potter to make everything ready.
I suppose there's no chance of his being here in time for dinner?"Thorpe shook his head, and then lifted his brows over some new perplexity. "I guess he'd want to eat his meals out, anyway," he said, after some thought.
"I don't seem to remember much about him in that respect--of course, everything was so different in camp out in Mexico--but I daresay he wouldn't be much of an ornament at the table. However, that'll be all right. He's as easy to manage as a rabbit. If I told him to eat on the roof, he'd do it without a murmur. You see it's this way, Julia: he's a scientific man--a kind of geologist, and mining expert and rubber expert--and chemical expert and all sort of things. I suppose he must have gone through college--very likely he'll turn out to have better manners than I was giving him credit for.
I've only seen him in the rough, so to speak. We weren't at all intimate then,--but we had dealings together, and there are certain important reasons why I should keep close in touch with him while he's here in London.
But I'll try and do that without letting you be bothered.""What an idea!" cried Julia. "As if that wasn't what we had the house for--to see the people you want to see."Her uncle smiled rather ruefully, and looked in a rather dubious way at his cigar. "Between you and me and the lamp-post, Jule," he said, with a slow, whimsical drawl, "there isn't a fellow in the world that I wanted to see less than I did him. But since he's here--why, we've got to make the best of it."After dinner, Thorpe suffered the youngsters to go up to the drawing-room in the tacit understanding that he should probably not see them again that night.
He betook himself then once more to the library, as it was called--the little, cozy, dark-panelled room off the hall, where the owner of the house had left two locked bookcases, and where Thorpe himself had installed a writing-desk and a diminutive safe for his papers. The chief purpose of the small apartment, however, was indicated by the two big, round, low-seated easy-chairs before the hearth, and by the cigar boxes and spirit-stand and tumblers visible behind the glass of the cabinet against the wall.
Thorpe himself called the room his "snuggery," and spent many hours there in slippered comfort, smoking and gazing contentedly into the fire. Sometimes Julia read to him, as he sat thus at his ease, but then he almost invariably went to sleep.
Now, when he had poured out some whiskey and water and lit a cigar, the lounging chairs somehow did not attract him.
He moved about aimlessly in the circumscribed space, his hands in his pockets, his burly shoulders rounded, his face dulled and heavy as with a depression of doubt.
