Thorpe

“ The roofs were covered with snow. One day Thorpe saw it sink into itself and gradually run away. The tinkle tinkle tank tank of drops sounded from his own eaves. Down the far-off river, sluggish reaches of ice drifted. Then in a night the blue disappeared from the stream. It became a menacing gray, and even from his distance Thorpe could catch the swirl of its rising waters. A day or two later dark masses drifted or shot across the field of his vision, and twice he thought he distinguished men standing upright and bold on single logs as they rushed down the current. ”

“ The summer was passing at Thorpe very much as other summers had passed, and yet with the difference that dogs our footsteps whether we will or no. The grass waves, the forget-me-nots look up from the brink of cool brown streams, the roses are as sweet as ever,—we wonder as we touch them how there can be a change and what it is, but we know in our hearts that it has come, and that things can never more be what they once have been.
As for Anthony, all things considered, he seemed to be leading a pleasant life enough. ”

“ But even Great Fosters, with all the charm of its gables, its chimneys and its mullioned windows, does not stand in quite such sharp contrast to the garishness of the Holloway buildings as the little village of Thorpe itself. Thorpe has been little written about. It lacks its sacred bard. But neither Shere, nor Gomshall, nor Thursley, nor Chiddingfold, which have been compared and criticised as the most beautiful of all Surrey villages, can surpass Thorpe for richness of peace of ancient homes and quiet brooding over the past. ”

“ Thorpe's outraged soul were depicted upon her face and gleamed from her dilated eyes. She had trained her mind to dwell on the divine attributes in man; but alas, how human, how very human, she felt this passion to be that possessed her now! Her blood was like fire in her veins, a strange noise was in her ears and hot, scathing words leaped to her lips.
"Dr. Eldrige," she said, and the words came keen and sharp; all her anguish and passionate anger were there, but she caught her breath sharply and stopped. Then again: "Dr. Eldrige--" Her voice wavered, fell and broke. ”

“ One might study her very closely, however, and catch no hint that these facts in any degree disconcerted her.
Thorpe studied her a good deal, in a furtive way, with a curiosity born of his knowledge that the Duke had preferred her, when he might have married his widowed cousin, who was now Thorpe's own wife. How he had come to know this, he could never have told. He had breathed it in, somehow, with the gossip-laden atmosphere of that one London season of his. ”

“ Now that the strain was over, Thorpe experienced a great weariness. The long journey through the forest, his sleepless night on the train, the mental alertness of playing the game with shrewd foes all these stretched his fibers out one by one and left them limp. He accepted stupidly the clerk's congratulations on his success, left the name of the little hotel off Fort Street as the address to which to send the deeds, and dragged himself off with infinite fatigue to his bed-room. ”

“ Always, so long as life should be with him, Thorpe was destined to see in this tall graceful girl with the red lips and the white skin and the corn-silk hair, more beauty, more of the great mysterious spiritual beauty which is eternal, than her father or her mother or her dearest and best. ”

“ As Thorpe entered, she was standing at the head of the long parlour; and with her high-piled hair, poudré, her gown of dark-red velvet, and her haughty carriage, she looked as if she had just stepped from an old French canvas. ”

“ During that instant Thorpe had become possessed of a weapon It came hurling through the air from above to fall at his feet. Shearer, with the cool calculation of the pioneer whom no excitement can distract from the main issue, had seen that it would be impossible to follow his chief, and so had done the next best thing,—thrown him a heavy iron belaying pin.
Thorpe was active, alert, and strong. The men could come at him only in front. As offset, he could not give ground, even for one step. Still, in the hands of a powerful man, the belaying pin is by no means a despicable weapon. ”

“ Thorpe's first pheasant reeled in the air, described a somersault, and fell like a plummet.
He stirred not a step, but reloaded the barrel with a hand shaking for joy. From where he stood he could see the dead bird; there could never have been a cleaner “kill.” In the warming glow of his satisfaction in himself, there kindled a new liking of a different sort for Plowden and Balder. ”

“ Thorpe's thoughts, however, were not upon types. “Well”—he said, from the opposite chair, in his roundest, heartiest voice, when the other had with diffidence suffered himself to be served, and had deferentially lighted on one side the big cigar pressed upon him—“Well—and how's the world been using you?”
“Not very handsomely, Mr. Thorpe,” the other responded, in a hushed, constrained tone.
“Oh, chuck the Misters!” Thorpe bade him. “Aren't we old pals, man? You're plain Tavender, and I'm plain Thorpe.” ”

“ In the days of her grandfather Thorpe, whom she remembered with an alarmed distinctness, there had existed a kind of tacit idea that his name alone accounted for and justified the most persistent and stormy bad temper. That old man with the scowling brows bullied everybody, suspected everybody, apparently disliked everybody, vehemently demanded his own will of everybody—and it was all to be explained, seemingly, by the fact that he was a Thorpe. ”

“ It was as though the Indian were made of steel springs. He never appeared to hurry; but neither did he ever rest.
At first Thorpe followed him with comparative ease, but at the end of three hours he was compelled to put forth decided efforts to keep pace. His walking was no longer mechanical, but conscious. When it becomes so, a man soon tires. Thorpe resented the inequalities, the stones, the roots, the patches of soft ground which lay in his way. ”

“ Thorpe believed that he had sacrificed every thought and effort to his sister. Helen was becoming convinced that he had considered only himself.
After finishing the letter which gave occasion to this train of thought, Thorpe lit his pipe and strolled out into the darkness. Opposite the little office he stopped amazed.
Through the narrow window he could see Radway seated in front of the stove. Every attitude of the man denoted the most profound dejection. ”

“ Thorpe? Estenega and Chonita go too.”
And Thorpe gratefully accepted.
As they returned, they saw the great company streaming down from the Mission, a mass of colour. Few were on foot. No Californian walked a mile, if he had a horse to ride.
Thorpe hastened to his room to make his morning toilet. When he left it, the court and corridors were crowded with the brilliantly plumaged men and women. Reinaldo, in blue silk, was strutting about among the girls, as proud and happy as a girl dressed for her first party. ”

“ Anthony, Winifred, and their children live in London, but are often in Thorpe, where there are both living and dead to draw them, besides its own quiet and tender beauty. Anthony’s life was, perhaps, too soon filled with the things it wanted to admit of its ever becoming great in the manner in which people talk of greatness. ”

“ But Thorpe had dived for it under the Yukon stove, and it was he who swung it on the 10-inch window, cutting into the sill to enlarge the space. The cabin was of logs. The sill log was big and stubbornly knotty. Thorpe wrestled with it for ten long minutes, and during every one of those minutes the other men hung upon his blows, their shoulders involuntarily heaving with his, their lips mumbling imprecations with his, for in the whipsawed bunk house only a dozen yards away they could hear the hurried movements and the rustling of dried pelts. ”

“ Mrs. Thorpe visited in these poor, barren homes; she became acquainted with the people and was a friend to all, and with tact and patience she presented to them the desirability of the school that she was about to open.
The boys, profane, reared in immorality, knew her and in their boyish hearts admired her. When she called upon them and solicited their aid they responded readily, and devastating war was waged upon the briers and brambles that cumbered the soil around the old Resort. ”

“ Thorpe blushed like a young girl.
"Oh, yes. Have you not heard? He has a parish in London, among the French weavers, where he is doing a great deal of good."
"I am right glad to hear it," said Amabel. "He is an excellent man."
"Then, perhaps, you will not be sorry to hear that he—that I—in short, we are going to be married!" said Mrs. Thorpe, smiling, in the midst of her confusion, at our astonishment. "You see, he is such a babe in the woods in respect of English ways, and needs some one to care for him, and I thought I could do as much good in that way as any other. ”

“ That Thorpe Regis was theirs and the London coach must stop there were facts as undeniable as the Church, the Squire’s house, and the Red lion itself, and needed no comment.
Even facts, however, come to an end sometimes. There arrived a day when the railway, which had gradually been drawing nearer and nearer, reached Underham, a little out-of-the-world village about five miles west of Thorpe, which had hitherto looked humbly up to its more important neighbour, and without a murmur had carried its little tribute of weekly budgets to deposit at the door of the Red Lion. ”

“ Thorpe, A Quiet English Town, by William Mountford, is a Vague, Dreamy Story of Humble English Life, mystical in its tone, and languid in its movement—with little interest in its plot, though presenting some delicate portraitures of character—displaying less strength than beauty—and pervaded with a streak of tender sentiment, which sometimes borders on effeminacy. ”

“ Thorpe determined not to go to the house again until either Nina or Mr. Randolph sent for him. He would not run after any woman, he told himself angrily; and once or twice he was in a humour to snap the affair in two where it was and leave the country. But, on the whole, the separation whetted his passion. That airy fabric of sentiment, imagination, and civilisation called spiritual affinity, occasionally dominated him, but not for long. ”

“ Nina did not speak, nor did Thorpe. He was thankful for the respite. Once he touched his cheek mechanically, wondering if it had fallen into wrinkles.
They rode at a break-neck pace. The night had become very dark: a great ocean of fog had swept in from the Pacific, blotting out mountains and stars. The mustangs moderated their pace as they began to ascend the foot-hills. The long rush through the valley had quickened Thorpe’s blood without calming his brain. He did not speak. There seemed to be a thousand words struggling in his brain, but they would not combine properly. ”

“ Then there beneath the swirling gray sky, under the frowning jam, in the midst of flood waters, Thorpe had his second great Moment of Decision. He did not pause to weigh reasons or chances, to discuss with himself expediency, or the moralities of failure. His actions were foreordained, mechanical. All at once the great forces which the winter had been bringing to power, crystallized into something bigger than himself or his ideas. The trail lay before him; there was no choice.
Now clearly, with no shadow of doubt, he took the other view: There could be nothing better than Love. ”

“ Time drags wearily with the heavy-hearted, and all too quickly speeds with the gay. To Mr. Thorpe’s quiet home it has brought no sudden transformation. The head of the house has gone on in his matter-of-fact way, adding, year by year, to his well-filled coffers, until he has come to be acknowledged in business parlance, “one of the heaviest men of the town,” which is quite as true literally. Mrs. Thorpe, the matron, is as charming and pretty as the Mrs. Thorpe of earlier years; while March has grown from babyhood past childhood into dawning womanhood, the pet and idol of the home. ”

“ Thorpe seemed not to care about the Dabneys. “And what's Alfred like?” he asked.
“He wants to be an artist!” There was a perceptible note of apprehension in the mother's confession.
“Well—why shouldn't he—if he's got a bent that way?” demanded Thorpe, with reproof in his tone. “Did you want him to be a shop-keeper?”
“I should like to see him a doctor,” she replied with dignity. “It was always my idea for him.”
“Well, it's no good—even as an idea,” he told her. “Doctors are like parsons—they can't keep up with the times. The age is outgrowing them. ”

“ He was looking at Winifred as he spoke, and thinking that Thorpe had other pretty things to show Anthony. There was a soft gloom in the house, out of which seemed to spring the delicate green feathery ferns full of still strange life, and Winifred, standing among them, had a sweet light in her eyes and a half-smile on her lips. It was not very often that people agreed she was pretty, and then they were probably thinking of the fresh colouring, the bright hair, and that indescribable fairness of youth which, even without other claim to beauty, carries with it so great a charm ”

“ All at once there were a number of young men—at the horse's head, at the back and sides of the trap, at the first doorway, and the second, and beyond—each presenting such a smooth-faced, pallid, brown-clad replica of all the others that Thorpe knew he should never be able to tell them apart. ”

“ Its shape was beyond doubt uncommon, but it had big pockets, and it looked like business. Thorpe, as he glanced up and down his image in the tall mirror of the wardrobe, felt that he must kill a large number of birds to justify the effect of pitiless proficiency which this jacket lent to his appearance.
“We will find a cap below, sir,” Pangbourn announced, with serenity, and Thorpe, who had been tentatively fingering the big, flaring sombrero, thrust it back upon its peg as if it had proved too hot to handle. ”