“Stick it out, Conlan,” he argued. “They’re expecting you to run away and die with humiliation. When they discover you are not a—what was the word you used?—ah—quitter—they’ll begin to appreciate you.”
Jim hung on. Even when Cholmondeley was not present he used the club. His personality began to have effect, and he soon made two or three firm friends. One of these was the Honorable Claude Featherstone, a healthy, good-looking youth, without a trace of snobbishness or social pride in his composition. He had been the first to come to Jim with extended hand.
“You’re American, aren’t you?”
“Nope, I’m English all right, but America’s my country.”
Claude’s eyes traveled over Jim’s muscular figure.
“Ye gods! they breed ’em big where you come from. I don’t think I’ll try catch-as-catch-can with you. What do you think of this menagerie of ours? That fat man over there is the Duke of 43 Aberdale. If he comes and tells you a tale about having left his purse at home—beware!”
Claude’s acquaintanceship ripened into intimate friendship. It may have been pure hero-worship, but the fact remained that he thought Jim the finest specimen of manhood he had ever known. Jim, on the other hand, began to drop a few of his early prejudices. He came to realize that all men have something in common, and that accident of birth placed no insuperable bar between one and another. Once penetrate that icy reserve, and more often than not there was a stout heart behind it.
Jim began to get popular. It was rumored he was fabulously wealthy—a slight exaggeration—and this helped him through, for the money-worship fetish prevailed even among “noble lords.” Cholmondeley, who knew all the ropes in this intricate mesh of British social life, intimated that a peerage might be bought for £50,000. But Jim wasn’t “taking any of that dope.”
“It won’t make my blood any bluer, I guess,” he said.
In two months he had thoroughly established 44 himself—a plebeian had taken root in a forest of belted earls and lisping aristocrats. But it stopped at that. A retired “cowboy” was all very well in a club. If he chose to take up “gun-throwing” or garrotting, there was always a score or two of hefty servants to deal with him; but in a man’s home, with wives and daughters present, well——! So Jim’s meteoric social ascent went no farther than that. Even Cholmondeley, who was his eternal debtor, never took him to house parties. Jim had introspection enough to see the barrier.