Major-General Kervick's prominent blue eyes had bulged forth in rage till their appearance had disconcerted the other's gaze. They remained still too much in the foreground, as it were, and the angry scarlets and violets of the cheeks beneath them carried an unabated threat of apoplexy--but their owner, after a moment's silence, made a sign with his stiff white brows that the crisis was over. “You must remember that--that I have a father's feelings,” he gasped then, huskily.
Thorpe nodded, with a nonchalance which was not wholly affected. He had learned what he wanted to know about this veteran. If he had the fierce meannesses of a famished old dog, he had also a dog's awe of a stick. It was almost too easy to terrorize him.
“Oh, I make allowances for all that,” Thorpe began, vaguely. “But it's important that you should understand me. I'm this sort of a man: whatever I set out to do, and put my strength into it, that I do! I kill every pheasant I fire at; Plowden will tell you that! It's a way I have. To those that help me, and are loyal to me, I'm the best friend in the world. To those that get in my way, or try to trip me up, I'm the devil--just plain devil. Now then--you're getting three hundred a year from my Company, that is to say from me, simply to oblige my friend Plowden. You don't do anything to earn this money; you're of no earthly use on the Board. If I chose, I could put you off at the end of the year as easily as I can blow out this match. But I propose not only to keep you on, but to make you independent. Why do I do that? You should ask yourself that question. It can't be on account of anything you can do for the Company. What else then? Why, first and foremost, because you are the father of your daughter.”
“Let me tell you the kind of man I am,” said the General, inflating his chest, and speaking with solemnity.
“Oh, I know the kind of man you are,” Thorpe interrupted him, coolly. “I want to talk now.”
“It was merely,” Kervick ventured, in an injured tone, “that I can be as loyal as any man alive to a true friend.”
“Well, I'll be the true friend, then,” said Thorpe, with impatient finality. “And now this is what I want to say. I'm going to be a very rich man. You're not to say so to anybody, mind you, until the thing speaks for itself. We're keeping dark for a few months, d'ye see?--lying low. Then, as I say, I shall be a very rich man. Well now, I wouldn't give a damn to be rich, unless I did with my money the things that I wanted to do, and got the things with it that I wanted to get. Whatever takes my fancy, that's what I'll do.”