He could not persuade them to remain to take lunch with him. The firmness of Hutchinson's declination was not unconnected with a private feeling that “them footmen chaps 'u'd be on the lookout to see the way you handled every bite you put in your mouth.” He couldn't have stood it, dang their impudence! Little Ann, on her part, frankly and calmly said, “It wouldn't DO.” That was all, and evidently covered everything.
After they had gone, the fog lifted somewhat, but though it withdrew from the windows, it remained floating about in masses, like huge ghosts, among the trees of the park. When Tembarom sat down alone to prolong his lunch with the aid of Burrill and the footmen, he was confronted by these unearthly shapes every time he lifted his eyes to the window he faced from his place at the table. It was an outlook which did not inspire to cheerfulness, and the fact that Ann and her father were going back to Manchester and later to America left him without even the simple consolation of a healthy appetite. Things were bound to get better after a while; they were BOUND to. A fellow would be a fool if he couldn't fix it somehow so that he could enjoy himself, with money to burn. If you made up your mind you couldn't stand the way things were, you didn't have to lie down under them, with a thousand or so “per” coming in. You could fix it so that it would be different. By jinks! there wasn't any law against your giving it all to the church but just enough to buy a flat in Harlem out-right, if you wanted to. But you weren't going to run crazy and do a lot of fool things in a minute, and be sorry the rest of your life. Money was money. And first and foremost there was Ann, with her round cheeks flushed and her voice all sweet and queer, saying, “You wouldn't be T. Tembarom; and it was T. Tembarom that—that was T. Tembarom.”
He couldn't help knowing what she had begun to say, and his own face flushed as he thought of it. He was at that time of life when there generally happens to be one center about which the world revolves. The creature who passes through this period of existence without watching it revolve about such a center has missed an extraordinary and singularly developing experience. It is sometimes happy, often disastrous, but always more or less developing. Speaking calmly, detachedly, but not cynically, it is a phase. During its existence it is the blood in the veins, the sight of the eyes, the beat of the pulse, the throb of the heart. It is also the day and the night, the sun, the moon, and the stars, heaven and hell, the entire universe. And it doesn't matter in the least to any one but the creatures living through it. T. Tembarom was in the midst of it. There was Ann. There was this new crazy thing which had happened to him—“this fool thing,” as he called it. There was this monstrous, magnificent house,—he knew it was magnificent, though it wasn't his kind,—there was old Palford and his solemn talk about ancestors and the name of Temple Barholm. It always reminded him of how ashamed he had been in Brooklyn of the “Temple Temple” and how he had told lies to prevent the fellows finding out about it. And there was seventy thousand pounds a year, and there was Ann, who looked as soft as a baby,—Good Lord! how soft she'd feel if you got her in your arms and squeezed her!—and yet was somehow strong enough to keep him just where she wanted him to stay and believed he ought to stay until “he had found out.” That was it. She wasn't doing it for any fool little idea of making herself seem more important: she just believed it. She was doing it because she wanted to let him “have his chance,” just as if she were his mother instead of the girl he was clean crazy about. His chance! He laughed outright—a short, confident laugh which startled Burrill exceedingly.
When he went back to the library and lighted his pipe he began to stride up and down as he continued to think it over.
“I wish she was as sure as I am,” he said. “I wish she was as sure of me as I am of myself—and as I am of her.” He laughed the short, confident laugh again. “I wish she was as sure as I am of us both. We're all right. I've got to get through this, and find out what it's best to do, and I've got to show her. When I've had my chance good and plenty, us two for little old New York! Gee! won't it be fine!” he exclaimed imaginatively. “Her going over her bills, looking like a peach of a baby that's trying to knit its brows, and adding up, and thinking she ought to economize. She'd do it if we had ten million.” He laughed outright joyfully. “Good Lord! I should kiss her to death!”
The simplest process of ratiocination would lead to a realization of the fact that though he was lonely and uncomfortable, he was not in the least pathetic or sorry for himself. His normal mental and physical structure kept him steady on his feet, and his practical and unsentimental training, combining itself with a touch of iron which centuries ago had expressed itself through some fighting Temple Barholm and a medium of battle-axes, crossbows, and spears, did the rest.
“It'd take more than this to get me where I'd be down and out. I'm feeling fine,” he said. “I believe I'll go and 'take a walk,' as Palford says.”
The fog-wreaths in the park were floating away, and he went out grinning and whistling, giving Burrill and the footman a nod as he passed them with a springing young stride. He got the door open so quickly that he left them behind him frustrated and staring at each other.
“It wasn't our fault,” said Burrill, gloomily. “He's never had a door opened for him in his life. This won't do for me.”
He was away for about an hour, and came back in the best of spirits. He had found out that there was something in “taking a walk” if a fellow had nothing else to do. The park was “fine,” and he had never seen anything like it. When there were leaves on the trees and the grass and things were green, it would be better than Central Park itself. You could have base-ball matches in it. What a cinch it would be if you charged gate-money! But he supposed you couldn't if it belonged to you and you had three hundred and fifty thousand a year. You had to get used to that. But it did seem a fool business to have all that land and not make a cent out of it. If it was just outside New York and you cut it up into lots, you'd just pile it up. He was quite innocent—calamitously innocent and commercial and awful in his views. Thoughts such as these had been crammed into his brain by life ever since he had gone down the staircase of the Brooklyn tenement with his twenty-five cents in his ten-year-old hand.
The stillness of the house seemed to have accentuated itself when he returned to it. His sense of it let him down a little as he entered. The library was like a tomb—a comfortable luxurious tomb with a bright fire in it. A new Punch and the morning papers had been laid upon a table earlier in the day, and he sat down to look at them.
“I guess about fifty-seven or eight of the hundred and thirty-six hours have gone by,” he said. “But, gee! ain't it lonesome!”
He sat so still trying to interest himself in “London Day by Day” in the morning paper that the combination of his exercise in the fresh air and the warmth of the fire made him drowsy. He leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes without being aware that he did so. He was on the verge of a doze.
He remained upon the verge for a few minutes, and then a soft, rustling sound made him open his eyes.
An elderly little lady had timidly entered the room. She was neatly dressed in an old-fashioned and far-from-new black silk dress, with a darned lace collar and miniature brooch at her neck. She had also thin, gray side-ringlets dangling against her cheeks from beneath a small, black lace cap with pale-purple ribbons on it. She had most evidently not expected to find any one in the room, and, having seen Tembarom, gave a half-frightened cough.
“I—I beg your pardon,” she faltered. “I really did not mean to intrude—really.”
Tembarom jumped up, awkward, but good-natured. Was she a kind of servant who was a lady?
“Oh, that's all right,” he said.
But she evidently did not feel that it was all right. She looked as though she felt that she had been caught doing something wrong, and must properly propitiate by apology.
“I'm so sorry. I thought you had gone out—Mr. Temple Barholm.”
“I did go out—to take a walk; but I came in.”
Having been discovered in her overt act, she evidently felt that duty demanded some further ceremony from her. She approached him very timidly, but with an exquisite, little elderly early-Victorian manner. She was of the most astonishingly perfect type, though Tembarom was not aware of the fact. The manner, a century earlier, would have expressed itself in a curtsy.
“It is Mr. Temple Barholm, isn't it?” she inquired.
“Yes; it has been for the last few weeks,” he answered, wondering why she seemed so in awe of him and wishing she didn't.
“I ought to apologize for being here,” she began.
“Say, don't, please!” he interrupted. “What I feel is, that it ought to be up to me to apologize for being here.”
She was really quite flurried and distressed.
“Oh, please, Mr. Temple Barholm!” she fluttered, proceeding to explain hurriedly, as though he without doubt understood the situation. “I should of course have gone away at once after the late Mr. Temple Barholm died, but—but I really had nowhere to go—and was kindly allowed to remain until about two months ago, when I went to make a visit. I fully intended to remove my little belongings before you arrived, but I was detained by illness and could not return until this morning to pack up. I understood you were in the park, and I remembered I had left my knitting-bag here.” She glanced nervously about the room, and seemed to catch sight of something on a remote corner table. “Oh, there it is. May I take it?” she said, looking at him appealingly. “It was a kind present from a dear lost friend, and—and—” She paused, seeing his puzzled and totally non-comprehending air. It was plainly the first moment it had dawned upon her that he did not know what she was talking about. She took a small, alarmed step toward him.
“Oh, I BEG your pardon,” she exclaimed in delicate anguish. “I'm afraid you don't know who I am. Perhaps Mr. Palford forgot to mention me. Indeed, why should he mention me? There were so many more important things. I am a sort of distant—VERY distant relation of yours. My name is Alicia Temple Barholm.”
Tembarom was relieved. But she actually hadn't made a move toward the knitting-bag. She seemed afraid to do it until he gave her permission. He walked over to the corner table and brought it to her, smiling broadly.
“Here it is,” he said. “I'm glad you left it. I'm very happy to be acquainted with you, Miss Alicia.”
He was glad just to see her looking up at him with her timid, refined, intensely feminine appeal. Why she vaguely brought back something that reminded him of Ann he could not have told. He knew nothing whatever of types early-Victorian or late.
He took her hand, evidently to her greatest possible amazement, and shook it heartily. She knew nothing whatever of the New York street type, and it made her gasp for breath, but naturally with an allayed terror.
“Gee!” he exclaimed whole-heartedly, “I'm glad to find out I've got a relation. I thought I hadn't one in the world. Won't you sit down?” He was drawing her toward his own easy-chair. But he really didn't know, she was agitatedly thinking. She really must tell him. He seemed so good tempered and—and DIFFERENT. She herself was not aware of the enormous significance which lay in that word “different.” There must be no risk of her seeming to presume upon his lack of knowledge.
“It is MOST kind of you,” she said with grateful emphasis, “but I mustn't sit down and detain you. I can explain in a few words—if I may.”
He positively still held her hand in the oddest, natural, boyish way, and before she knew what she was doing he had made her take the chair—quite MADE her.
“Well, just sit down and explain,” he said. “I wish to thunder you would detain me. Take all the time you like. I want to hear all about it—honest Injun.”
There was a cushion in the chair, and as he talked, he pulled it out and began to arrange it behind her, still in the most natural and matter-of-fact way—so natural and matter-of-fact, indeed, that its very natural matter-of-factedness took her breath away.
“Is that fixed all right?” he asked.
Being a little lady, she could only accept his extraordinary friendliness with grateful appreciation, though she could not help fluttering a little in her bewilderment.
“Oh, thank you, thank you, Mr. Temple Barholm,” she said.
He sat down on the square ottoman facing her, and leaned forward with an air of making a frank confession.
“Guess what I was thinking to myself two minutes before you came in? I was thinking, `Lord, I'm lonesome—just sick lonesome!' And then I opened my eyes and looked—and there was a relation! Hully gee! I call that luck!”
“Dear me!” she said, shyly delighted. “DO you, Mr. Temple Barholm—REALLY?”
Her formal little way of saying his name was like Ann's.
“Do I? I'm tickled to death. My mother died when I was ten, and I've never had any women kin-folks.”
“Poor bo—” She had nearly said “Poor boy!” and only checked the familiarity just in time—“Poor Mr. Temple Barholm!”
“Say, what are we two to each other, anyhow?” He put it to her with great interest.
“It is a very distant relationship, if it is one at all,” she answered. “You see, I was only a second cousin to the late Mr. Temple Barholm, and I had not really the SLIGHTEST claim upon him.” She placed pathetic emphasis on the fact. “It was most generous of him to be so kind to me. When my poor father died and I was left quite penniless, he gave me a—a sort of home here.”
“A sort of home?” Tembarom repeated.
“My father was a clergyman in VERY straitened circumstances. We had barely enough to live upon—barely. He could leave me nothing. It actually seemed as if I should have to starve—it did, indeed.” There was a delicate quiver in her voice. “And though the late Mr. Temple Barholm had a great antipathy to ladies, he was so—so noble as to send word to me that there were a hundred and fifty rooms in his house, and that if I would keep out of his way I might live in one of them.”
“That was noble,” commented her distant relative.
“Oh, yes, indeed, especially when one considers how he disliked the opposite sex and what a recluse he was. He could not endure ladies. I scarcely ever saw him. My room was in quite a remote wing of the house, and I never went out if I knew he was in the park. I was most careful. And when he died of course I knew I must go away.”
Tembarom was watching her almost tenderly.
“Where did you go?”
“To a kind clergyman in Shropshire who thought he might help me.”
“How was he going to do it?”
She answered with an effort to steady a somewhat lowered and hesitating voice.
“There was near his parish a very nice—charity,”—her breath caught itself pathetically,—“some most comfortable almshouses for decayed gentlewomen. He thought he might be able to use his influence to get me into one.” She paused and smiled, but her small, wrinkled hands held each other closely.
Tembarom looked away. He spoke as though to himself, and without knowing that he was thinking aloud.
“Almshouses!” he said. “Wouldn't that jolt you!” He turned on her again with a change to cheerful concern. “Say, that cushion of yours ain't comfortable. I 'm going to get you another one.” He jumped up and, taking one from a sofa, began to arrange it behind her dexterously.
“But I mustn't trouble you any longer. I must go, really,” she said, half rising nervously. He put a hand on her shoulder and made her sit again.
“Go where?” he said. “Just lean back on that cushion, Miss Alicia. For the next few minutes this is going to be MY funeral.”
She was at once startled and uncomprehending. What an extraordinary expression! What COULD it mean?
“F—funeral?” she stammered.
Suddenly he seemed somehow to have changed. He looked as serious as though he was beginning to think out something all at once. What was he going to say?
“That's New York slang,” he answered. “It means that I want to explain myself to you and ask a few questions.”
“Certainly, certainly, Mr. Temple Barholm.”
He leaned his back against the mantel, and went into the matter practically.
“First off, haven't you ANY folks?” Then, answering her puzzled look, added, “I mean relations.”
Miss Alicia gently shook her head.
“No sisters or brothers or uncles or aunts or cousins?”
She shook her head again.
He hesitated a moment, putting his hands in his pockets and taking them out again awkwardly as he looked down at her.
“Now here's where I'm up against it,” he went on. “I don't want to be too fresh or to butt in, but—didn't old Temple Barholm leave you ANY money?”
“Oh, no!” she exclaimed. “Dear me! no! I couldn't possibly EXPECT such a thing.”
He gazed at her as though considering the situation. “Couldn't you?” he said.
There was an odd reflection in his eyes, and he seemed to consider her and the situation again.
“Well,” he began after his pause, “what I want to know is what you expect ME to do.”
There was no unkindness in his manner, in fact, quite the contrary, even when he uttered what seemed to Miss Alicia these awful, unwarranted words. As though she had forced herself into his presence to make demands upon his charity! They made her tremble and turn pale as she got up quickly, shocked and alarmed.
“Oh, nothing! nothing! nothing WHATEVER, Mr. Temple Barholm!” she exclaimed, her agitation doing its best to hide itself behind a fine little dignity. He saw in an instant that his style of putting it had been “'way off,” that his ignorance had betrayed him, that she had misunderstood him altogether. He almost jumped at her.
“Oh, say, I didn't mean THAT!” he cried out. “For the Lord's sake! don't think I'm such a Tenderloin tough as to make a break like that! Not on your life!”
Never since her birth had a male creature looked at Miss Alicia with the appeal which showed itself in his eyes as he actually put his arm half around her shoulders, like a boy begging a favor from his mother or his aunt.
“What I meant was—” He broke off and began again quite anxiously, “say, just as a favor, will you sit down again and let me tell you what I did mean?”
It was that natural, warm, boyish way which overcame her utterly. It reminded her of the only boy she had ever really known, the one male creature who had allowed her to be fond of him. There was moisture in her eyes as she let him put her back into her chair. When he had done it, he sat down on the ottoman again and poured himself forth.
“You know what kind of a chap I am. No, you don't, either. You mayn't know a thing about me; and I want to tell you. I'm so different from everything you've ever known that I scare you. And no wonder. It's the way I've lived. If you knew, you'd understand what I was thinking of when I spoke just now. I've been cold, I've been hungry, I've walked the wet streets on my uppers. I know all about GOING WITHOUT. And do you expect that I am going to let a—a little thing like you—go away from here without friends and without money on the chance of getting into an almshouse that isn't vacant? Do you expect that of me? Not on your life! That was what I meant.”
Miss Alicia quivered; the pale-purple ribbons on her little lace cap quivered.
“I haven't,” she said, and the fine little dignity was piteous, “a SHADOW of a claim upon you.” It was necessary for her to produce a pocket-handkerchief. He took it from her, and touched her eyes as softly as though she were a baby.
“Claim nothing!” he said. “I've got a claim on YOU. I'm going to stake one out right now.” He got up and gesticulated, taking in the big room and its big furniture. “Look at all this! It fell on me like a thunderbolt. It's nearly knocked the life out of me. I'm like a lost cat on Broadway. You can't go away and leave me, Miss Alicia; it's your duty to stay. You've just GOT to stay to take care of me.” He came over to her with a wheedling smile. “I never was taken care of in my life. Just be as noble to me as old Temple Barholm was to you: give me a sort of home.”
If a little gentlewoman could stare, it might be said that Miss Alicia stared at him. She trembled with amazed emotion.
“Do you mean—” Despite all he had said, she scarcely dared to utter the words lest, after all, she might be taking for granted more than it was credible could be true. “Can you mean that if I stayed here with you it would make Temple Barholm seem more like HOME? Is it possible you—you mean THAT?”
“I mean just that very thing.”
It was too much for her. Finely restrained little elderly gentlewoman as she was, she openly broke down under it.
“It can't be true!” she ejaculated shakily. “It isn't possible. It is too—too beautiful and kind. Do forgive me! I c-a-n't help it.” She burst into tears.
She knew it was most stupidly wrong. She knew gentlemen did not like tears. Her father had told her that men never really forgave women who cried at them. And here, when her fate hung in the balance, she was not able to behave herself with feminine decorum.
Yet the new Mr. Temple Barholm took it in as matter-of-fact a manner as he seemed to take everything. He stood by her chair and soothed her in his dear New York voice.
“That's all right, Miss Alicia,” he commented. “You cry as much as you want to, just so that you don't say no. You've been worried and you're tired. I'll tell you there's been two or three times lately when I should like to have cried myself if I'd known how. Say,” he added with a sudden outburst of imagination, “I bet anything it's about time you had tea.”
The suggestion was so entirely within the normal order of things that it made her feel steadier, and she was able to glance at the clock.
“A cup of tea would be refreshing,” she said. “They will bring it in very soon, but before the servants come I must try to express—”
But before she could express anything further the tea appeared. Burrill and a footman brought it on splendid salvers, in massive urn and tea-pot, with chaste, sacrificial flame flickering, and wonderful, hot buttered and toasted things and wafers of bread and butter attendant. As they crossed the threshold, the sight of Miss Alicia's small form enthroned in their employer's chair was one so obviously unanticipated that Burrill made a step backward and the footman almost lost the firmness of his hold on the smaller tray. Each recovered himself in time, however, and not until the tea was arranged upon the table near the fire was any outward recognition of Miss Alicia's presence made. Then Burrill, pausing, made an announcement entirely without prejudice:
“I beg pardon, sir, but Higgins's cart has come for Miss Temple Barholm's box; he is asking when she wants the trap.”
“She doesn't want it at all,” answered Tembarom. “Carry her trunk up-stairs again. She's not going away.”
The lack of proper knowledge contained in the suggestion that Burrill should carry trunks upstairs caused Miss Alicia to quail in secret, but she spoke with outward calm.
“No, Burrill,” she said. “I am not going away.”
“Very good, Miss,” Burrill replied, and with impressive civility he prepared to leave the room. Tembarom glanced at the tea-things.
“There's only one cup here,” he said. “Bring one for me.”
Burrill's expression might perhaps have been said to start slightly.
“Very good, sir,” he said, and made his exit. Miss Alicia was fluttering again.
“That cup was really for you, Mr. Temple Barholm,” she ventured.
“Well, now it's for you, and I've let him know it,” replied Tembarom.
“Oh, PLEASE,” she said in an outburst of feeling—“PLEASE let me tell you how GRATEFUL—how grateful I am!”
But he would not let her.
“If you do,” he said, “I'll tell you how gratefulIam, and that'll be worse. No, that's all fixed up between us. It goes. We won't say any more about it.”
He took the whole situation in that way, as though he was assuming no responsibility which was not the simple, inevitable result of their drifting across each other—as though it was only what any man would have done, even as though she was a sort of delightful, unexpected happening. He turned to the tray.
“Say, that looks all right, doesn't it?” he said. “Now you are here, I like the way it looks. I didn't yesterday.”
Burrill himself brought the extra cup and saucer and plate. He wished to make sure that his senses had not deceived him. But there she sat who through years had existed discreetly in the most unconsidered rooms in an uninhabited wing, knowing better than to presume upon her privileges—there she sat with an awed and rapt face gazing up at this new outbreak into Temple Barholm's and “him joking and grinning as though he was as pleased as Punch.”
To employ the figure of Burrill, Tembarom was indeed “as pleased as Punch.” He was one of the large number of men who, apart from all sentimental relations, are made particularly happy by the kindly society of women; who expand with quite unconscious rejoicing when a woman begins to take care of them in one way or another. The unconsciousness is a touching part of the condition. The feminine nearness supplies a primeval human need. The most complete of men, as well as the weaklings, feel it. It is a survival of days when warm arms held and protected, warm hands served, and affectionate voices soothed. An accomplished male servant may perform every domestic service perfectly, but the fact that he cannot be a woman leaves a sense of lack. An accustomed feminine warmth in the surrounding daily atmosphere has caused many a man to marry his housekeeper or even his cook, as circumstances prompted.
Tembarom had known no woman well until he had met Little Ann. His feeling for Mrs. Bowse herself had verged on affection, because he would have been fond of any woman of decent temper and kindliness, especially if she gave him opportunities to do friendly service. Little Ann had seemed the apotheosis of the feminine, the warmly helpful, the subtly supporting, the kind. She had been to him an amazement and a revelation. She had continually surprised him by revealing new characteristics which seemed to him nicer things than he had ever known before, but which, if he had been aware of it, were not really surprising at all. They were only the characteristics of a very nice young feminine creature.
The presence of Miss Alicia, with the long-belated fashion of her ringlets and her little cap, was delightful to him. He felt as though he would like to take her in his arms and hug her. He thought perhaps it was partly because she was a little like Ann, and kept repeating his name in Ann's formal little way. Her delicate terror of presuming or intruding he felt in its every shade. Mentally she touched him enormously. He wanted to make her feel that she need not be afraid of him in the least, that he liked her, that in his opinion she had more right in the house than he had. He was a little frightened lest through ignorance he should say things the wrong way, as he had said that thing about wanting to know what she expected him to do. What he ought to have said was, “You're not expecting me to let that sort of thing go on.” It had made him sick when he saw what a break he'd made and that she thought he was sort of insulting her. The room seemed all right now that she was in it. Small and unassuming as she was, she seemed to make it less over-sized. He didn't so much mind the loftiness of the ceiling, the depth and size of the windows, and the walls covered with thousands of books he knew nothing whatever about. The innumerable books had been an oppressing feature. If he had been one of those “college guys” who never could get enough of books, what a “cinch” the place would have been for him—good as the Astor Library! He hadn't a word to say against books,—good Lord! no;—but even if he'd had the education and the time to read, he didn't believe he was naturally that kind, anyhow. You had to be “that kind” to know about books. He didn't suppose she—meaning Miss Alicia—was learned enough to make you throw a fit. She didn't look that way, and he was mighty glad of it, because perhaps she wouldn't like him much if she was. It would worry her when she tried to talk to him and found out he didn't know a darned thing he ought to.
They'd get on together easier if they could just chin about common sort of every-day things. But though she didn't look like the Vassar sort, he guessed that she was not like himself: she had lived in libraries before, and books didn't frighten her. She'd been born among people who read lots of them and maybe could talk about them. That was why she somehow seemed to fit into the room. He was aware that, timid as she was and shabby as her neat dress looked, she fitted into the whole place, as he did not. She'd been a poor relative and had been afraid to death of old Temple Barholm, but she'd not been afraid of him because she wasn't his sort. She was a lady; that was what was the matter with her. It was what made things harder for her, too. It was what made her voice tremble when she'd tried to seem so contented and polite when she'd talked about going into one of those “decayed alms-houses.” As if the old ladies were vegetables that had gone wrong, by gee! he thought.
He liked her little, modest, delicate old face and her curls and her little cap with the ribbons so much that he smiled with a twinkling eye every time he looked at her. He wanted to suggest something he thought would be mighty comfortable, but he was half afraid he might be asking her to do something which wasn't “her job,” and it might hurt her feelings. But he ventured to hint at it.
“Has Burrill got to come back and pour that out?” he asked, with an awkward gesture toward the tea-tray. “Has he just GOT to?”
“Oh, no, unless you wish it,” she answered. “Shall—may I give it to you?”
“Will you?” he exclaimed delightedly. “That would be fine. I shall feel like a regular Clarence.”
She was going to sit at the table in a straight-backed chair, but he sprang at her.
“This big one is more comfortable,” he said, and he dragged it forward and made her sit in it. “You ought to have a footstool,” he added, and he got one and put it under her feet. “There, that's all right.”
A footstool, as though she were a royal personage and he were a gentleman in waiting, only probably gentlemen in waiting did not jump about and look so pleased. The cheerful content of his boyish face when he himself sat down near the table was delightful.
“Now,” he said, “we can ring up for the first act.”
She filled the tea-pot and held it for a moment, and then set it down as though her feelings were too much for her.
“I feel as if I were in a dream,” she quavered happily. “I do indeed.”
“But it's a nice one, ain't it?” he answered. “I feel as if I was in two. Sitting here in this big room with all these fine things about me, and having afternoon tea with a relation! It just about suits me. It didn't feel like this yesterday, you bet your life!”
“Does it seem—nicer than yesterday?” she ventured. “Really, Mr. Temple Barholm?”
“Nicer!” he ejaculated. “It's got yesterday beaten to a frazzle.”
It was beyond all belief. He was speaking as though the advantage, the relief, the happiness, were all on his side. She longed to enlighten him.
“But you can't realize what it is to me,” she said gratefully, “to sit here, not terrified and homeless and—a beggar any more, with your kind face before me. Do forgive me for saying it. You have such a kind young face, Mr. Temple Barholm. And to have an easy-chair and cushions, and actually a buffet brought for my feet!” She suddenly recollected herself. “Oh, I mustn't let your tea get cold,” she added, taking up the tea-pot apologetically. “Do you take cream and sugar, and is it to be one lump or two?”
“I take everything in sight,” he replied joyously, “and two lumps, please.”
She prepared the cup of tea with as delicate a care as though it had been a sacramental chalice, and when she handed it to him she smiled wistfully.
“No one but you ever thought of such a thing as bringing a buffet for my feet—no one except poor little Jem,” she said, and her voice was wistful as well as her smile.
She was obviously unaware that she was introducing an entirely new acquaintance to him. Poor little Jem was supposed to be some one whose whole history he knew.
“Jem?” he repeated, carefully transferring a piece of hot buttered crumpet to his plate.
“Jem Temple Barholm,” she answered. “I say little Jem because I remember him only as a child. I never saw him after he was eleven years old.”
“Who was he?” he asked. The tone of her voice, and her manner of speaking made him feel that he wanted to hear something more.
She looked rather startled by his ignorance. “Have you—have you never heard of him?” she inquired.
“No. Is he another distant relation?”
Her hesitation caused him to neglect his crumpet, to look up at her. He saw at once that she wore the air of a sensitive and beautifully mannered elderly lady who was afraid she had made a mistake and said something awkward.
“I am so sorry,” she apologized. “Perhaps I ought not to have mentioned him.”
“Why shouldn't he be mentioned?”
She was embarrassed. She evidently wished she had not spoken, but breeding demanded that she should ignore the awkwardness of the situation, if awkwardness existed.
“Of course—I hope your tea is quite as you like it—of course there is no real reason. But—shall I give you some more cream? No? You see, if he hadn't died, he—he would have inherited Temple Barholm.”
Now he was interested. This was the other chap.
“Instead of me?” he asked, to make sure. She endeavored not to show embarrassment and told herself it didn't really matter—to a thoroughly nice person. But—
“He was the next of kin—before you. I'm so sorry I didn't know you hadn't heard of him. It seemed natural that Mr. Palford should have mentioned him.”
“He did say that there was a young fellow who had died, but he didn't tell me about him. I guess I didn't ask. There were such a lot of other things. I'd like to hear about him. You say you knew him?”
“Only when he was a little fellow. Never after he grew up. Something happened which displeased my father. I'm afraid papa was very easily displeased. Mr. Temple Barholm disliked him, too. He would not have him at Temple Barholm.”
“He hadn't much luck with his folks, had he?” remarked Tembarom.
“He had no luck with any one. I seemed to be the only person who was fond of him, and of course I didn't count.”
“I bet you counted with him,” said Tembarom.
“I do think I did. Both his parents died quite soon after he was born, and people who ought to have cared for him were rather jealous because he stood so near to Temple Barholm. If Mr. Temple Barholm had not been so eccentric and bitter, everything would have been done for him; but as it was, he seemed to belong to no one. When he came to the vicarage it used to make me so happy. He used to call me Aunt Alicia, and he had such pretty ways.” She hesitated and looked quite tenderly at the tea-pot, a sort of shyness in her face. “I am sure,” she burst forth, “I feel quite sure that you will understand and won't think it indelicate; but I had thought so often that I should like to have a little boy—if I had married,” she added in hasty tribute to propriety.
Tembarom's eyes rested on her in a thoughtfulness openly touched with affection. He put out his hand and patted hers two or three times in encouraging sympathy.
“Say,” he said frankly, “I just believe every woman that's the real thing'd like to have a little boy—or a little girl—or a little something or other. That's why pet cats and dogs have such a cinch of it. And there's men that's the same way. It's sort of nature.”
“He had such a high spirit and such pretty ways,” she said again. “One of his pretty ways was remembering to do little things to make one comfortable, like thinking of giving one a cushion or a buffet for one's feet. I noticed it so much because I had never seen boys or men wait upon women. My own dear papa was used to having women wait upon him—bring his slippers, you know, and give him the best chair. He didn't like Jem's ways. He said he liked a boy who was a boy and not an affected nincompoop. He wasn't really quite just.” She paused regretfully and sighed as she looked back into a past doubtlessly enriched with many similar memories of “dear papa.” “Poor Jem! Poor Jem!” she breathed softly.
Tembarom thought that she must have felt the boy's loss very much, almost as much as though she had really been his mother; perhaps more pathetically because she had not been his mother or anybody's mother. He could see what a good little mother she would have made, looking after her children and doing everything on earth to make them happy and comfortable, just the kind of mother Ann would make, though she had not Ann's steady wonder of a little head or her shrewd farsightedness. Jem would have been in luck if he had been her son. It was a darned pity he hadn't been. If he had, perhaps he would not have died young.
“Yes,” he answered sympathetically, “it's hard for a young fellow to die. How old was he, anyhow? I don't know.”
“Not much older than you are now. It was seven years ago. And if he had only died, poor dear! There are things so much worse than death.”
“Worse!”
“Awful disgrace is worse,” she faltered. She was plainly trying to keep moisture out of her eyes.
“Did he get into some bad mix-up, poor fellow?” If there had been anything like that, no wonder it broke her up to think of him.
It surely did break her up. She flushed emotionally.
“The cruel thing was that he didn't really do what he was accused of,” she said.
“He didn't?”
“No; but he was a ruined man, and he went away to the Klondike because he could not stay in England. And he was killed—killed, poor boy! And afterward it was found out that he was innocent—too late.”
“Gee!” Tembarom gasped, feeling hot and cold. “Could you beat that for rotten luck! What was he accused of?”
Miss Alicia leaned forward and spoke in a whisper. It was too dreadful to speak of aloud.
“Cheating at cards—a gentleman playing with gentlemen. You know what that means.”
Tembarom grew hotter and colder. No wonder she looked that way, poor little thing!
“But,”—he hesitated before he spoke,—“but he wasn't that kind, was he? Of course he wasn't.”
“No, no. But, you see,”—she hesitated herself here,—“everything looked so much against him. He had been rather wild.” She dropped her voice even lower in making the admission.
Tembarom wondered how much she meant by that.
“He was so much in debt. He knew he was to be rich in the future, and he was poor just in those reckless young days when it seemed unfair. And he had played a great deal and had been very lucky. He was so lucky that sometimes his luck seemed uncanny. Men who had played with him were horrible about it afterward.”
“They would be,” put in Tembarom. “They'd be sore about it, and bring it up.”
They both forgot their tea. Miss Alicia forgot everything as she poured forth her story in the manner of a woman who had been forced to keep silent and was glad to put her case into words. It was her case. To tell the truth of this forgotten wrong was again to offer justification of poor handsome Jem whom everybody seemed to have dropped talk of, and even preferred not to hear mentioned.
“There were such piteously cruel things about it,” she went on. “He had fallen very much in love, and he meant to marry and settle down. Though we had not seen each other for years, he actually wrote to me and told me about it. His letter made me cry. He said I would understand and care about the thing which seemed to have changed everything and made him a new man. He was so sorry that he had not been better and more careful. He was going to try all over again. He was not going to play at all after this one evening when he was obliged to keep an engagement he had made months before to give his revenge to a man he had won a great deal of money from. The very night the awful thing happened he had told Lady Joan, before he went into the card-room, that this was to be his last game.”
Tembarom had looked deeply interested from the first, but at her last words a new alertness added itself.
“Did you say Lady Joan?” he asked. “Who was Lady Joan?”
“She was the girl he was so much in love with. Her name was Lady Joan Fayre.”
“Was she the daughter of the Countess of Mallowe?”
“Yes. Have you heard of her?”
He recalled Ann's reflective consideration of him before she had said, “She'll come after you.” He replied now: “Some one spoke of her to me this morning. They say she's a beauty and as proud as Lucifer.”
“She was, and she is yet, I believe. Poor Lady Joan—as well as poor Jem!”
“She didn't believe it, did she?” he put in hastily. “She didn't throw him down?”
“No one knew what happened between them afterward. She was in the card-room, looking on, when the awful thing took place.”
She stopped, as though to go on was almost unbearable. She had been so overwhelmed by the past shame of it that even after the passing of years the anguish was a living thing. Her small hands clung hard together as they rested on the edge of the table. Tembarom waited in thrilled suspense. She spoke in a whisper again:
“He won a great deal of money—a great deal. He had that uncanny luck again, and of course people in the other rooms heard what was going on, and a number drifted in to look on. The man he had promised to give his revenge to almost showed signs of having to make an effort to conceal his irritation and disappointment. Of course, as he was a gentleman, he was as cool as possible; but just at the most exciting moment, the height of the game, Jem made a quick movement, and—and something fell out of his sleeve.”
“Something,” gasped Tembarom, “fell out of his sleeve!”
Miss Alicia's eyes overflowed as she nodded her beribboned little cap.
“It”—her voice was a sob of woe—“it was a marked card. The man he was playing against snatched it and held it up. And he laughed out loud.”
“Holy cats!” burst from Tembarom; but the remarkable exclamation was one of genuine horror, and he turned pale, got up from his seat, and took two or three strides across the room, as though he could not sit still.
“Yes, he laughed—quite loudly,” repeated Miss Alicia, “as if he had guessed it all the time. Papa heard the whole story from some one who was present.”
Tembarom came back to her rather breathless.
“What in thunder did he do—Jem?” he asked.
She actually wrung her poor little hands.
“What could he do? There was a dead silence. People moved just a little nearer to the table and stood and stared, merely waiting. They say it was awful to see his face—awful. He sprang up and stood still, and slowly became as white as if he were dying before their eyes. Some one thought Lady Joan Fayre took a step toward him, but no one was quite sure. He never uttered one word, but walked out of the room and down the stairs and out of the house.”
“But didn't he speak to the girl?”
“He didn't even look at her. He passed her by as if she were stone.”
“What happened next?”
“He disappeared. No one knew where at first, and then there was a rumor that he had gone to the Klondike and had been killed there. And a year later—only a year! Oh, if he had only waited in England!—a worthless villain of a valet he had discharged for stealing met with an accident, and because he thought he was going to die, got horribly frightened, and confessed to the clergyman that he had tucked the card in poor Jem's sleeve himself just to pay him off. He said he did it on the chance that it would drop out where some one would see it, and a marked card dropping out of a man's sleeve anywhere would look black enough, whether he was playing or not. But poor Jem was in his grave, and no one seemed to care, though every one had been interested enough in the scandal. People talked about that for weeks.”
Tembarom pulled at his collar excitedly.
“It makes me sort of strangle,” he said. “You've got to stand your own bad luck, but to hear of a chap that's had to lie down and take the worst that could come to him and know it wasn't his—just KNOW it! And die before he's cleared! That knocks me out.”
Almost every sentence he uttered had a mystical sound to Miss Alicia, but she knew how he was taking it, with what hot, young human sympathy and indignation. She loved the way he took it, and she loved the feeling in his next words,
“And the girl—good Lord!—the girl?”
“I never met her, and I know very little of her; but she has never married.”
“I'm glad of that,” he said. “I'm darned glad of it. How could she?” Ann wouldn't, he knew. Ann would have gone to her grave unmarried. But she would have done things first to clear her man's name. Somehow she would have cleared him, if she'd had to fight tooth and nail till she was eighty.
“They say she has grown very bitter and haughty in her manner. I'm afraid Lady Mallowe is a very worldly woman. One hears they don't get on together, and that she is bitterly disappointed because her daughter has not made a good match. It appears that she might have made several, but she is so hard and cynical that men are afraid of her. I wish I had known her a little—if she really loved Jem.”
Tembarom had thrust his hands into his pockets, and was standing deep in thought, looking at the huge bank of red coals in the fire-grate. Miss Alicia hastily wiped her eyes.
“Do excuse me,” she said.
“I'll excuse you all right,” he replied, still looking into the coals. “I guess I shouldn't excuse you as much if you didn't” He let her cry in her gentle way while he stared, lost in reflection.
“And if he hadn't fired that valet chap, he would be here with you now—instead of me. Instead of me,” he repeated.
And Miss Alicia did not know what to say in reply. There seemed to be nothing which, with propriety and natural feeling, one could say.
“It makes me feel just fine to know I'm not going to have my dinner all by myself,” he said to her before she left the library.
She had a way of blushing about things he noticed, when she was shy or moved or didn't know exactly what to say. Though she must have been sixty, she did it as though she were sixteen. And she did it when he said this, and looked as though suddenly she was in some sort of trouble.
“You are going to have dinner with me,” he said, seeing that she hesitated—“dinner and breakfast and lunch and tea and supper and every old thing that goes. You can't turn me down after me staking out that claim.”
“I'm afraid—” she said. “You see, I have lived such a secluded life. I scarcely ever left my rooms except to take a walk. I'm sure you understand. It would not have been necessary even if I could have afforded it, which I really couldn't—I'm afraid I have nothing—quite suitable—for evening wear.”
“You haven't!” he exclaimed gleefully. “I don't know what is suitable for evening wear, but I haven't got it either. Pearson told me so with tears in his eyes. It never was necessary for me either. I've got to get some things to quiet Pearson down, but until I do I've got to eat my dinner in a tweed cutaway; and what I've caught on to is that it's unsuitable enough to throw a man into jail. That little black dress you've got on and that little cap are just 'way out of sight, they're so becoming. Come down just like you are.”
She felt a little as Pearson had felt when confronting his new employer's entire cheerfulness in face of a situation as exotically hopeless as the tweed cutaway, and nothing else by way of resource. But there was something so nice about him, something which was almost as though he was actually a gentleman, something which absolutely, if one could go so far, stood in the place of his being a gentleman. It was impossible to help liking him more and more at every queer speech he made. Still, there were of course things he did not realize, and perhaps one ought in kindness to give him a delicate hint.
“I'm afraid,” she began quite apologetically. “I'm afraid that the servants, Burrill and the footmen, you know, will be—will think—”
“Say,” he took her up, “let's give Burrill and the footmen the Willies out and out. If they can't stand it, they can write home to their mothers and tell 'em they've got to take 'em away. Burrill and the footmen needn't worry. They're suitable enough, and it's none of their funeral, anyhow.”
He wasn't upset in the least. Miss Alicia, who, as a timid dependent either upon “poor dear papa” or Mr. Temple Barholm, had been secretly, in her sensitive, ladylike little way, afraid of superior servants all her life, knowing that they realized her utterly insignificant helplessness, and resented giving her attention because she was not able to show her appreciation of their services in the proper manner—Miss Alicia saw that it had not occurred to him to endeavor to propitiate them in the least, because somehow it all seemed a joke to him, and he didn't care. After the first moment of being startled, she regarded him with a novel feeling, almost a kind of admiration. Tentatively she dared to wonder if there was not something even rather—rather ARISTOCRATIC in his utter indifference.
If he had been a duke, he would not have regarded the servants' point of view; it wouldn't have mattered what they thought. Perhaps, she hastily decided, he was like this because, though he was not a duke, boot-blacking in New York notwithstanding he was a Temple Barholm. There were few dukes as old of blood as a Temple Barholm. That must be it. She was relieved.
Whatsoever lay at the root of his being what he was and as he was, he somehow changed the aspect of things for her, and without doing anything but be himself, cleared the atmosphere of her dread of the surprise and mental reservations of the footmen and Burrill when she came down to dinner in her high-necked, much-cleaned, and much-repaired black silk, and with no more distinguishing change in her toilet than a white lace cap instead of a black one, and with “poor dear mamma's” hair bracelet with the gold clasp on her wrist, and a weeping-willow made of “poor dear papa's” hair in a brooch at her collar.
It was so curious, though still “nice,” but he did not offer her his arm when they were going into the dining-room, and he took hold of hers with his hand and affectionately half led, half pushed, her along with him as they went. And he himself drew back her chair for her at the end of the table opposite his own. He did not let a footman do it, and he stood behind it, talking in his cheerful way all the time, and he moved it to exactly the right place, and then actually bent down and looked under the table.
“Here,” he said to the nearest man-servant, “where's there a footstool? Get one, please,” in that odd, simple, almost aristocratic way. It was not a rude dictatorial way, but a casual way, as though he knew the man was there to do things, and he didn't expect any time to be wasted.
And it was he himself who arranged the footstool, making it comfortable for her, and then he went to his own chair at the head of the table and sat down, smiling at her joyfully across the glass and silver and flowers.
“Push that thing in the middle on one side, Burrill,” he said. “It's too high. I can't see Miss Alicia.”
Burrill found it difficult to believe the evidence of his hearing.
“The epergne, sir?” he inquired.
“Is that what it's called, an apern? That's a new one on me. Yes, that's what I mean. Push the apern over.”
“Shall I remove it from the table, sir?” Burrill steeled himself to exact civility. Of what use to behave otherwise? There always remained the liberty to give notice if the worst came to the worst, though what the worst might eventually prove to be it required a lurid imagination to depict. The epergne was a beautiful thing of crystal and gold, a celebrated work of art, regarded as an exquisite possession. It was almost remarkable that Mr. Temple Barholm had not said, “Shove it on one side,” but Burrill had been spared the poignant indignity of being required to “shove.”
“Yes, suppose you do. It's a fine enough thing when it isn't in the way, but I've got to see you while I talk, Miss Alicia,” said Mr. Temple Barholm. The episode of the epergne—Burrill's expression, and the rigidly restrained mouths of Henry and James as the decoration was removed, leaving a painfully blank space of table-cloth until Burrill silently filled it with flowers in a low bowl—these things temporarily flurried Miss Alicia somewhat, but the pleased smile at the head of the table calmed even that trying moment.
Then what a delightful meal it was, to be sure! How entertaining and cheerful and full of interesting conversation! Miss Alicia had always admired what she reverently termed “conversation.” She had read of the houses of brilliant people where they had it at table, at dinner and supper parties, and in drawing-rooms. The French, especially the French ladies, were brilliant conversationalists. They held “salons” in which the conversation was wonderful—Mme. de Stael and Mme. Roland, for instance; and in England, Lady Mary Wortley Montague, Sydney Smith, and Horace Walpole, and surely Miss Fanny Burney, and no doubt L. E. L., whose real name was Miss Letitia Elizabeth Landon—what conversation they must have delighted their friends with and how instructive it must have been even to sit in the most obscure corner and listen!
Such gifted persons seemed to have been chosen by Providence to delight and inspire every one privileged to hear them. Such privileges had been omitted from the scheme of Miss Alicia's existence. She did not know, she would have felt it sacrilegious to admit it even if the fact had dawned upon her, that “dear papa” had been a heartlessly arrogant, utterly selfish, and tyrannical old blackguard of the most pronounced type. He had been of an absolute morality as far as social laws were concerned. He had written and delivered a denunciatory sermon a week, and had made unbearable by his ministrations the suffering hours and the last moments of his parishioners during the long years of his pastorate. When Miss Alicia, in reading records of the helpful relationship of the male progenitors of the Brontes, Jane Austen, Fanny Burney, and Mrs. Browning, was frequently reminded of him, she revealed a perception of which she was not aware. He had combined the virile qualities of all of them. Consequently, brilliancy of conversation at table had not been the attractive habit of the household; “poor dear papa” had confined himself to scathing criticism of the incompetence of females who could not teach their menials to “cook a dinner which was not a disgrace to any decent household.” When not virulently aspersing the mutton, he was expressing his opinion of muddle-headed weakness which would permit household bills to mount in a manner which could only bring ruin and disaster upon a minister of the gospel who throughout a protracted career of usefulness had sapped his intellectual manhood in the useless effort to support in silly idleness a family of brainless and maddening fools. Miss Alicia had heard her character, her unsuccessful physical appearance, her mind, and her pitiful efforts at table-talk, described in detail with a choice of adjective and adverb which had broken into terrified fragments every atom of courage and will with which she had been sparsely dowered.
So, not having herself been gifted with conversational powers to begin with, and never having enjoyed the exhibition of such powers in others, her ideals had been high. She was not sure that Mr. Temple Barholm's fluent and cheerful talk could be with exactness termed “conversation.” It was perhaps not sufficiently lofty and intellectual, and did not confine itself rigorously to one exalted subject. But how it did raise one's spirits and open up curious vistas! And how good tempered and humorous it was, even though sometimes the humor was a little bewildering! During the whole dinner there never occurred even one of those dreadful pauses in which dead silence fell, and one tried, like a frightened hen flying from side to side of a coop, to think of something to say which would not sound silly, but perhaps might divert attention from dangerous topics. She had often thought it would be so interesting to hear a Spaniard or a native Hindu talk about himself and his own country in English. Tembarom talked about New York and its people and atmosphere, and he did not know how foreign it all was. He described the streets—Fifth Avenue and Broadway and Sixth Avenue—and the street-cars and the elevated railroad, and the way “fellows” had to “hustle” “to put it over.” He spoke of a boarding-house kept by a certain Mrs. Bowse, and a presidential campaign, and the election of a mayor, and a quick-lunch counter, and when President Garfield had been assassinated, and a department store; and the electric lights, and the way he had of making a sort of picture of everything was really instructive and, well, fascinating. She felt as though she had been taken about the city in one of the vehicles the conductor of which described things through a megaphone.
Not that Mr. Temple Barholm suggested a megaphone, whatsoever that might be, but he merely made you feel as if you had seen things. Never had she been so entertained and enlightened. If she had been a beautiful girl, he could not have seemed more as though in amusing her he was also really pleasing himself. He was so very funny sometimes that she could not help laughing in a way which was almost unladylike, because she could not stop, and was obliged to put her handkerchief up to her face and wipe away actual tears of mirth.
Fancy laughing until you cried, and the servants looking on!
Once Burrill himself was obliged to turn hastily away, and twice she heard him severely reprove an overpowered young footman in a rapid undertone.
Tembarom at least felt that the unlifting heaviness of atmosphere which had surrounded him while enjoying the companionship of Mr. Palford was a thing of the past.
The thrilled interest, the surprise and delight of Miss Alicia would have stimulated a man in a comatose condition, it seemed to him. The little thing just loved every bit of it—she just “eat it up.” She asked question after question, sometimes questions which would have made him shout with laughter if he had not been afraid of hurting her feelings. She knew as little of New York as he knew of Temple Barholm, and was, it made him grin to see, allured by it as by some illicit fascination. She did not know what to make of it, and sometimes she was obliged hastily to conceal a fear that it was a sort of Sodom and Gomorrah; but she wanted to hear more about it, and still more.
And she brightened up until she actually did not look frightened, and ate her dinner with an excellent appetite.
“I really never enjoyed a dinner so much in my life,” she said when they went into the drawing-room to have their coffee. “It was the conversation which made it so delightful. Conversation is such a stimulating thing!”
She had almost decided that it was “conversation,” or at least a wonderful substitute.
When she said good night to him and went beaming to bed, looking forward immensely to breakfast next morning, he watched her go up the staircase, feeling wonderfully normal and happy.
“Some of these nights, when she's used to me,” he said as he stuffed tobacco into his last pipe in the library—“some of these nights I'm darned if I sha'n't catch hold of the sweet, little old thing and hug her in spite of myself. I sha'n't be able to help it.” He lit his pipe, and puffed it even excitedly. “Lord!” he said, “there's some blame' fool going about the world right now that might have married her. And he'll never know what a break he made when he didn't.”