“I'm a Liberal myself, in English politics,” interposed Thorpe.
Plowden seemed not to perceive the connection. They had left London Bridge behind, and he put his feet up on the cushions, and leant back comfortably. “Of course there was the City,” he went on, speaking diagonally across to his companion, between leisurely intervals of absorption in his cigar. “There have been some directors' fees, no doubt, and once or twice I've come very near to what promised to be a big thing--but I never quite pulled it off. Really, without capital what can one do?--I'm curious to know--did you bring much ready money with you to England?”
“And if it's a fair question--how much of it have you got left?”
Thorpe had some momentary doubts as to whether this was a fair question, but he smothered them under the smile with which he felt impelled to answer the twinkle in Plowden's eyes. “Oh, less than a hundred,” he said, and laughed aloud.
Plowden also laughed. “By George, that's fine!” he cried. “It's splendid. There's drama in it. I felt it was like that, you know. Something told me it was your last cartridge that rang the bell. It was that that made me come to you as I did--and tell you that you were a great man, and that I wanted to enlist under you. Ah, that kind of courage is so rare! When a man has it, he can stand the world on its head.” “But I was plumb scared, all the while, myself,” Thorpe protested, genially. “Courage? I could feel it running out of my boots.”
“Ah, yes, but that's the great thing,” insisted the other. “You didn't look as if you were frightened. From all one could see, your nerve was sublime. And nothing else matters--it was sublime.”
“Curious--that thing happened to me once before,” commented Thorpe, with ruminating slowness. “It was out on the plains, years ago, and I was in pretty hard luck, and was making my way alone from Tucson north, and some cowboys held me up, and were going to make kindling wood of me, they being under the impression that I was a horse-thief they were looking after. There was five or six minutes there when my life wasn't worth a last year's bird's-nest--and I tell you, sir, I was the scaredest man that ever drew the breath of life. And then something happened to be said that put the matter right--they saw I was the wrong man--and then--why then they couldn't be polite enough to me. They half emptied their flasks down my throat, and they rode with me all the way to the next town, and there they wanted to buy everything liquid in the place for me. But what I was speaking of--do you know, those fellows got a tremendous notion of my nerve. It wasn't so much that they told me so, but they told others about it. They really thought I was game to the core--when in reality, as I tell you, I was in the deadliest funk you ever heard of.”