The prettiest and most charming of rooms it seemed to him to be--spacious and quaintly rambling in shape, with a delicately-figured chintz repeating the dainty effects of the walls upon the curtains and carpet and bed-hangings and chair-covers, and with a bright fire in the grate throwing its warm, cozy glow over everything.
He looked at the pictures on the walls, at the photographs and little ornaments on the writing desk, and the high posts and silken coverlet of the big bed, and, secure in the averted face of the servant, smiled richly to himself.
This servant, kneeling, had unstrapped and opened the new bags. Thorpe looked to see him quit the room, this task accomplished, and was conscious of something like dismay at the discovery that he intended to unpack them as well. Pangbourn began gravely to unwrap one paper parcel after another and to assort their contents in little heaps on the sofa beside him. He did it deftly, imperturbably, as if all the gentlemen he had ever seen carried their belongings in packages done up by tradesmen.
Thorpe's impulse to bid him desist framed itself in words on the tip of his tongue--but he did not utter these words.
After circling idly, hands in pockets, about the man and the bags for a little time, he invented something which it seemed better for him to say.
"I don't know what you'll be able to make of those things,"he remarked, casually. "My man has been buying them today--and I don't know what he mayn't have forgotten.
My whole outfit of that sort of thing went astray or was stolen at some station or other--the first part of the week--I think it must have been Leeds.""Yes, sir," said Pangbourn, without emotion.
"They're very careless, sir."
He went on impassively, shaking out the black garments and spreading them on the bed, laying out a shirt and tie beside them, and arranging the razors, strop, and brushes on the dressing-table. He seemed to foresee everything--for there was not an instant's hesitation in the clock-like assiduity of his movements, as he bestowed handkerchiefs, in one drawer, socks in another, hung pyjamas before the fire, and set the patent-leather pumps against the fender.
Even the old Mexican shooting-suit seemed in no way to disconcert him. He drew forth its constituent elements as with a practised hand; when he had hung them up, sombrero and all, in the wardrobe against the wall, they had the trick of making that venerable oaken receptacle look as if it had been fashioned expressly for them.
Thorpe's earlier uneasiness quite lost itself in his admiration for Pangbourn's resourceful dexterity.
The delighted thought that now he would be needing a man like this for himself crossed his mind. Conceivably he might even get this identical Pangbourn--treasure though he were.
Money could command everything on this broad globe--and why not Pangbourn? He tentatively felt of the coins in his pocket, as it became apparent that the man's task was nearing completion--and then frowned at himself for forgetting that these things were always reserved for the end of a visit.
"Will you dress now, sir?" asked Pangbourn. His soft, distinct enunciation conveyed the suggestion of centuries of training.
"Eh?" said Thorpe, finding himself for the moment behind the other's thought.
"Shall you require me any further, sir?" the man reframed the question, deferentially.
"Oh! Oh--no," replied Thorpe. "No--I'll get along all right."Left to himself, he began hurriedly the task of shaving and dressing. The candles on either side of the thick, bevelled swinging mirror presented a somewhat embarrassing contrast to the electric light he was used to--but upon second thought he preferred this restrained aristocratic glimmer.
He had completed his toilet, and was standing at the bay-window, with his shoulder holding back the edge of the curtain, looking out upon the darkened lawn and wondering whether he ought to go downstairs or wait for someone to summon him, when he heard a knock at his door.
Before he could answer, the door opened, and he made out in the candle-and firelight that it was Lord Plowden who had come in. He stepped forward to meet his host who, clad now in evening-clothes, was smoking a cigarette.
"Have they looked after you all right?" said Plowden, nonchalantly. "Have a cigarette before we go down? Light it by the candle. They never will keep matches in a bedroom."He seated himself in an easy-chair before the fire, as he spoke, and stretched out his shining slippers toward the grate. "I thought I'd tell you before we went down"--he went on, as Thorpe, with an elbow on the mantel, looked down at his handsome head--"my sister has a couple of ladies visiting her. One of them I think you know.
Do you remember on shipboard a Miss Madden--an American, you know--very tall and fine, with bright red hair--rather remarkable hair it was?""I remember the lady," said Thorpe, upon reflection, "but we didn't meet." He could not wholly divest his tone of the hint that in those days it by no means followed that because he saw ladies it was open to him to know them.
Lord Plowden smiled a little. "Oh, you'll like her.
She's great fun--if she's in the mood. My mother and sister--Ihad them call on her in London last spring--and they took a great fancy to her. She's got no end of money, you know--at least a million and a half--dollars, unfortunately.
Her parents were Irish--her father made his pile in the waggon business, I believe--but she's as American as if they'd crossed over in--what was it, the 'Sunflower'?--no, the 'Mayflower.' Marvelous country for assimilation, that America is! You remember what I told you--it's put such a mark on you that I should never have dreamt you were English."Thorpe observed his companion, through a blue haze of smoke, in silence. This insistence upon the un-English nature of the effect he produced was not altogether grateful to his ears.
"The other one," continued Plowden, "is Lady Cressage.
