A fugitive fine day which had strayed into the month from the approaching spring appeared the next morning, and Miss Alicia was uplifted by the enrapturing suggestion that she should join her new relative in taking a walk, in fact that it should be she who took him to walk and showed him some of his possessions. This, it had revealed itself to him, she could do in a special way of her own, because during her life at Temple Barholm she had felt it her duty to “try to do a little good” among the villagers. She and her long-dead mother and sister had of course been working adjuncts of the vicarage, and had numerous somewhat trying tasks to perform in the way of improving upon “dear papa's” harrying them into attending church, chivying the mothers into sending their children to Sunday-school, and being unsparing in severity of any conduct which might be construed into implying lack of appreciation of the vicar or respect for his eloquence.
It had been necessary for them as members of the vicar's family—always, of course, without adding a sixpence to the household bills—to supply bowls of nourishing broth and arrowroot to invalids and to bestow the aid and encouragement which result in a man of God's being regarded with affection and gratitude by his parishioners. Many a man's career in the church, “dear papa” had frequently observed, had been ruined by lack of intelligence and effort on the part of the female members of his family.
“No man could achieve proper results,” he had said, “if he was hampered by the selfish influence and foolishness of his womenkind. Success in the church depends in one sense very much upon the conduct of a man's female relatives.”
After the deaths of her mother and sister, Miss Alicia had toiled on patiently, fading day by day from a slim, plain, sweet-faced girl to a slim, even plainer and sweeter-faced middle-aged and at last elderly woman. She had by that time read aloud by bedsides a great many chapters in the Bible, had given a good many tracts, and bestowed as much arrowroot, barley-water, and beef-tea as she could possibly encompass without domestic disaster. She had given a large amount of conscientious, if not too intelligent, advice, and had never failed to preside over her Sunday-school class or at mothers' meetings. But her timid unimpressiveness had not aroused enthusiasm or awakened comprehension. “Miss Alicia,” the cottage women said, “she's well meanin', but she's not one with a head.” “She reminds me,” one of them had summed her up, “of a hen that lays a' egg every day, but it's too small for a meal, and 'u'd never hatch into anythin'.”
During her stay at Temple Barholm she had tentatively tried to do a little “parish work,” but she had had nothing to give, and she was always afraid that if Mr. Temple Barholm found her out, he would be angry, because he would think she was presuming. She was aware that the villagers knew that she was an object of charity herself, and a person who was “a lady” and yet an object of charity was, so to speak, poaching upon their own legitimate preserves. The rector and his wife were rather grand people, and condescended to her greatly on the few occasions of their accidental meetings. She was neither smart nor influential enough to be considered as an asset.
It was she who “conversed” during their walk, and while she trotted by Tembarom's side looking more early-Victorian than ever in a neat, fringed mantle and a small black bonnet of a fashion long decently interred by a changing world, Tembarom had never seen anything resembling it in New York; but he liked it and her increasingly at every moment.
It was he who made her converse. He led her on by asking her questions and being greatly interested in every response she made. In fact, though he was quite unaware of the situation, she was creating for him such an atmosphere as he might have found in a book, if he had had the habit of books. Everything she told him was new and quaint and very often rather touching. She related anecdotes about herself and her poor little past without knowing she was doing it. Before they had talked an hour he had an astonishing clear idea of “poor dear papa” and “dearest Emily” and “poor darling mama” and existence at Rowcroft Vicarage. He “caught on to” the fact that though she was very much given to the word “dear,”—people were “dear,” and so were things and places,—she never even by chance slipped into saying “dear Rowcroft,” which she would certainly have done if she had ever spent a happy moment in it.
As she talked to him he realized that her simple accustomedness to English village life and all its accompaniments of county surroundings would teach him anything and everything he might want to know. Her obscurity had been surrounded by stately magnificence, with which she had become familiar without touching the merest outskirts of its privileges. She knew names and customs and families and things to be cultivated or avoided, and though she would be a little startled and much mystified by his total ignorance of all she had breathed in since her birth, he felt sure that she would not regard him either with private contempt or with a lessened liking because he was a vandal pure and simple.
And she had such a nice, little, old polite way of saying things. When, in passing a group of children, he failed to understand that their hasty bobbing up and down meant that they were doing obeisance to him as lord of the manor, she spoke with the prettiest apologetic courtesy.
“I'm sure you won't mind touching your hat when they make their little curtsies, or when a villager touches his forehead,” she said.
“Good Lord! no,” he said, starting. “Ought I? I didn't know they were doing it at me.” And he turned round and made a handsome bow and grinned almost affectionately at the small, amazed party, first puzzling, and then delighting, them, because he looked so extraordinarily friendly. A gentleman who laughed at you like that ought to be equal to a miscellaneous distribution of pennies in the future, if not on the spot. They themselves grinned and chuckled and nudged one another, with stares and giggles.
“I am sorry to say that in a great many places the villagers are not nearly so respectful as they used to be,” Miss Alicia explained. “In Rowcroft the children were very remiss about curtseying. It's quite sad. But Mr. Temple Barholm was very strict indeed in the matter of demanding proper respectfulness. He has turned men off their farms for incivility. The villagers of Temple Barholm have much better manners than some even a few miles away.”
“Must I tip my hat to all of them?” he asked.
“If you please. It really seems kinder. You—you needn't quite lift it, as you did to the children just now. If you just touch the brim lightly with your hand in a sort of military salute—that is what they are accustomed to.”
After they had passed through the village street she paused at the end of a short lane and looked up at him doubtfully.
“Would you—I wonder if you would like to go into a cottage,” she said.
“Go into a cottage?” he asked. “What cottage? What for?”
He had not the remotest idea of any reason why he should go into a cottage inhabited by people who were entire strangers to him, and Miss Alicia felt a trifle awkward at having to explain anything so wholly natural.
“You see, they are your cottages, and the people are your tenants, and—”
“But perhaps they mightn't like it. It might make 'em mad,” he argued. “If their water-pipes had busted, and they'd asked me to come and look at them or anything; but they don't know me yet. They might think I was Mr. Buttinski.”
“I don't quite—” she began. “Buttinski is a foreign name; it sounds Russian or Polish. I'm afraid I don't quite understand why they should mistake you for him.”
Then he laughed—a boyish shout of laughter which brought a cottager to the nearest window to peep over the pots of fuchsias and geraniums blooming profusely against the diamond panes.
“Say,” he apologized, “don't be mad because I laughed. I'm laughing at myself as much as at anything. It's a way of saying that they might think I was 'butting in' too much—pushing in where I wasn't asked. See? I said they might think I was Mr. Butt-in-ski! It's just a bit of fool slang. You're not mad, are you?”
“Oh, no!” she said. “Dear me! no. It is very funny, of course. I'm afraid I'm extremely ignorant about—about foreign humor” It seemed more delicate to say “foreign” than merely “American.” But her gentle little countenance for a few seconds wore a baffled expression, and she said softly to herself, “Mr. Buttinski, Butt-in—to intrude. It sounds quite Polish; I think even more Polish than Russian.”
He was afraid he would yell with glee, but he did not. Herculean effort enabled him to restrain his feelings, and present to her only an ordinary-sized smile.
“I shouldn't know one from the other,” he said; “but if you say it sounds more Polish, I bet it does.”
“Would you like to go into a cottage?” she inquired. “I think it might be as well. They will like the attention.”
“Will they? Of course I'll go if you think that. What shall I say?” he asked somewhat anxiously.
“If you think the cottage looks clean, you might tell them so, and ask a few questions about things. And you must be sure to inquire about Susan Hibblethwaite's legs.”
“What?” ejaculated Tembarom.
“Susan Hibblethwaite's legs,” she replied in mild explanation. “Susan is Mr. Hibblethwaite's unmarried sister, and she has very bad legs. It is a thing one notices continually among village people, more especially the women, that they complain of what they call `bad legs.' I never quite know what they mean, whether it is rheumatism or something different, but the trouble is always spoken of as `bad legs' And they like you to inquire about them, so that they can tell you their symptoms.”
“Why don't they get them cured?”
“I don't know, I'm sure. They take a good deal of medicine when they can afford it. I think they like to take it. They're very pleased when the doctor gives them `a bottle o' summat,' as they call it. Oh, I mustn't forget to tell you that most of them speak rather broad Lancashire.”
“Shall I understand them?” Tembarom asked, anxious again. “Is it a sort of Dago talk?”
“It is the English the working-classes speak in Lancashire. 'Summat' means 'something.' 'Whoam' means 'home.' But I should think you would be very clever at understanding things.”
“I'm scared stiff,” said Tembarom, not in the least uncourageously; “but I want to go into a cottage and hear some of it. Which one shall we go into?”
There were several whitewashed cottages in the lane, each in its own bit of garden and behind its own hawthorn hedge, now bare and wholly unsuggestive of white blossoms and almond scent to the uninitiated. Miss Alicia hesitated a moment.
“We will go into this one, where the Hibblethwaites live,” she decided. “They are quite clean, civil people. They have a naughty, queer, little crippled boy, but I suppose they can't keep him in order because he is an invalid. He's rather rude, I'm sorry to say, but he's rather sharp and clever, too. He seems to lie on his sofa and collect all the gossip of the village.”
They went together up the bricked path, and Miss Alicia knocked at the low door with her knuckles. A stout, apple-faced woman opened it, looking a shade nervous.
“Good morning, Mrs. Hibblethwaite,” said Miss Alicia in a kind but remote manner. “The new Mr. Temple Barholm has been kind enough to come to see you. It's very good of him to come so soon, isn't it?”
“It is that,” Mrs. Hibblethwaite answered respectfully, looking him over. “Wilt tha coom in, sir?”
Tembarom accepted the invitation, feeling extremely awkward because Miss Alicia's initiatory comment upon his goodness in showing himself had “rattled” him. It had made him feel that he must appear condescending, and he had never condescended to any one in the whole course of his existence. He had, indeed, not even been condescended to. He had met with slanging and bullying, indifference and brutality of manner, but he had not met with condescension.
“I hope you're well, Mrs. Hibblethwaite,” he answered. “You look it.”
“I deceive ma looks a good bit, sir,” she answered. “Mony a day ma legs is nigh as bad as Susan's.”
“Tha 'rt jealous o' Susan's legs,” barked out a sharp voice from a corner by the fire.
The room had a flagged floor, clean with recent scrubbing with sandstone; the whitewashed walls were decorated with pictures cut from illustrated papers; there was a big fireplace, and by it was a hard-looking sofa covered with blue-and-white checked cotton stuff. A boy of about ten was lying on it, propped up with a pillow. He had a big head and a keen, ferret-eyed face, and just now was looking round the end of his sofa at the visitors. “Howd tha tongue, Tummas!” said his mother. “I wunnot howd it,” Tummas answered. “Ma tongue's th' on'y thing about me as works right, an' I'm noan goin' to stop it.”
“He's a young nowt,” his mother explained; “but, he's a cripple, an' we conna do owt wi' him.”
“Do not be rude, Thomas,” said Miss Alicia, with dignity.
“Dunnot be rude thysen,” replied Tummas. “I'm noan o' thy lad.”
Tembarom walked over to the sofa.
“Say,” he began with jocular intent, “you've got a grouch on, ain't you?”
Tummas turned on him eyes which bored. An analytical observer or a painter might have seen that he had a burning curiousness of look, a sort of investigatory fever of expression.
“I dunnot know what tha means,” he said. “Happen tha'rt talkin' 'Merican?”
“That's just what it is,” admitted Tembarom. “What are you talking?”
“Lancashire,” said Tummas. “Theer's some sense i' that.”
Tembarom sat down near him. The boy turned over against his pillow and put his chin in the hollow of his palm and stared.
“I've wanted to see thee,” he remarked. “I've made mother an' Aunt Susan an' feyther tell me every bit they've heared about thee in the village. Theer was a lot of it. Tha coom fro' 'Meriker?”
“Yes.” Tembarom began vaguely to feel the demand in the burning curiosity.
“Gi' me that theer book,” the boy said, pointing to a small table heaped with a miscellaneous jumble of things and standing not far from him. “It's a' atlas,” he added as Tembarom gave it to him. “Yo' con find places in it.” He turned the leaves until he found a map of the world. “Theer's 'Meriker,” he said, pointing to the United States. “That theer's north and that theer's south. All th' real 'Merikens comes from the North, wheer New York is.”
“I come from New York,” said Tembarom.
“Tha wert born i' th' workhouse, tha run about th' streets i' rags, tha pretty nigh clemmed to death, tha blacked boots, tha sold newspapers, tha feyther was a common workin'-mon—and now tha's coom into Temple Barholm an' sixty thousand a year.”
“The last part's true all right,” Tembarom owned, “but there's some mistakes in the first part. I wasn't born in the workhouse, and though I've been hungry enough, I never starved to death—if that's what `clemmed' means.”
Tummas looked at once disappointed and somewhat incredulous.
“That's th' road they tell it i' th' village,” he argued.
“Well, let them tell it that way if they like it best. That's not going to worry me,” Tembarom replied uncombatively.
Tummas's eyes bored deeper into him.
“Does na tha care?” he demanded.
“What should I care for? Let every fellow enjoy himself his own way.”
“Tha'rt not a bit like one o' th' gentry,” said Tummas. “Tha'rt quite a common chap. Tha'rt as common as me, for aw tha foine clothes.”
“People are common enough, anyhow,” said Tembarom. “There's nothing much commoner, is there? There's millions of 'em everywhere—billions of 'em. None of us need put on airs.”
“Tha'rt as common as me,” said Tummas, reflectively. “An' yet tha owns Temple Barholm an' aw that brass. I conna mak' out how th' loike happens.”
“Neither can I; but it does all samee.”
“It does na happen i' 'Meriker,” exulted Tummas. “Everybody's equal theer.”
“Rats!” ejaculated Tembarom. “What about multimillionaires?”
He forgot that the age of Tummas was ten. It was impossible not to forget it. He was, in fact, ten hundred, if those of his generation had been aware of the truth. But there he sat, having spent only a decade of his most recent incarnation in a whitewashed cottage, deprived of the use of his legs.
Miss Alicia, seeing that Tembarom was interested in the boy, entered into domestic conversation with Mrs. Hibblethwaite at the other side of the room. Mrs. Hibblethwaite was soon explaining the uncertainty of Susan's temper on wash-days, when it was necessary to depend on her legs.
“Can't you walk at all?” Tembarom asked. Tummas shook his head. “How long have you been lame?”
“Ever since I wur born. It's summat like rickets. I've been lyin' here aw my days. I look on at foak an' think 'em over. I've got to do summat. That's why I loike th' atlas. Little Ann Hutchinson gave it to me onct when she come to see her grandmother.”
Tembarom sat upright.
“Do you know her?” he exclaimed.
“I know her best o' onybody in th' world. An' I loike her best.”
“So do I,” rashly admitted Tembarom.
“Tha does?” Tummas asked suspiciously. “Does she loike thee?”
“She says she does.” He tried to say it with proper modesty.
“Well, if she says she does, she does. An' if she does, then yo an' me'll be friends.” He stopped a moment, and seemed to be taking Tembarom in with thoroughness. “I could get a lot out o' thee,” he said after the inspection.
“A lot of what?” Tembarom felt as though he would really like to hear.
“A lot o' things I want to know about. I wish I'd lived th' life tha's lived, clemmin' or no clemmin'. Tha's seen things goin' on every day o' thy loife.”
“Well, yes, there's been plenty going on, plenty,” Tembarom admitted.
“I've been lying here for ten year',” said Tummas, savagely. “An' I've had nowt i' th' world to do an' nowt to think on but what I could mak' foak tell me about th' village. But nowt happens but this chap gettin' drunk an' that chap deein' or losin' his place, or wenches gettin' married or havin' childer. I know everything that happens, but it's nowt but a lot o' women clackin'. If I'd not been a cripple, I'd ha' been at work for mony a year by now, 'arnin' money to save by an' go to 'Meriker.”
“You seem to be sort of stuck on America. How's that?”
“What dost mean?”
“I mean you seem to like it.”
“I dunnot loike it nor yet not loike it, but I've heard a bit more about it than I have about th' other places on th' map. Foak goes there to seek their fortune, an' it seems loike there's a good bit doin'.”
“Do you like to read newspapers?” said Tembarom, inspired to his query by a recollection of the vision of things “doin'” in the Sunday Earth.
“Wheer'd I get papers from?” the boy asked testily. “Foak like us hasn't got th' brass for 'em.”
“I'll bring you some New York papers,” promised Tembarom, grinning a little in anticipation. “And we'll talk about the news that's in them. The Sunday Earth is full of pictures. I used to work on that paper myself.”
“Tha did?” Tummas cried excitedly. “Did tha help to print it, or was it th' one tha sold i' th' streets?”
“I wrote some of the stuff in it.”
“Wrote some of th' stuff in it? Wrote it thaself? How could tha, a common chap like thee?” he asked, more excited still, his ferret eyes snapping.
“I don't know how I did it,” Tembarom answered, with increased cheer and interest in the situation. “It wasn't high-brow sort of work.”
Tummas leaned forward in his incredulous eagerness.
“Does tha mean that they paid thee for writin' it—paid thee?”
“I guess they wouldn't have done it if they'd been Lancashire,” Tembarom answered. “But they hadn't much more sense than I had. They paid me twenty-five dollars a week—that's five pounds.”
“I dunnot believe thee,” said Tummas, and leaned back on his pillow short of breath.
“I didn't believe it myself till I'd paid my board two weeks and bought a suit of clothes with it,” was Tembarom's answer, and he chuckled as he made it.
But Tummas did believe it. This, after he had recovered from the shock, became evident. The curiosity in his face intensified itself; his eagerness was even vaguely tinged with something remotely resembling respect. It was not, however, respect for the money which had been earned, but for the store of things “doin'” which must have been required. It was impossible that this chap knew things undreamed of.
“Has tha ever been to th' Klondike?” he asked after a long pause.
“No. I've never been out of New York.”
Tummas seemed fretted and depressed.
“Eh, I'm sorry for that. I wished tha'd been to th' Klondike. I want to be towd about it,” he sighed. He pulled the atlas toward him and found a place in it.
“That theer's Dawson,” he announced. Tembarom saw that the region of the Klondike had been much studied. It was even rather faded with the frequent passage of searching fingers, as though it had been pored over with special curiosity.
“There's gowd-moines theer,” revealed Tummas. “An' theer's welly newt else but snow an' ice. A young chap as set out fro' here to get theer froze to death on th' way.”
“How did you get to hear about it?”
“Ann she browt me a paper onet.” He dug under his pillow, and brought out a piece of newspaper, worn and frayed and cut with age and usage. “This heer's what's left of it.” Tembarom saw that it was a fragment from an old American sheet and that a column was headed “The Rush for the Klondike.”
“Why didna tha go theer?” demanded Tummas. He looked up from his fragment and asked his question with a sudden reflectiveness, as though a new and interesting aspect of things had presented itself to him.
“I had too much to do in New York,” said Tembarom. “There's always something doing in New York, you know.”
Tummas silently regarded him a moment or so.
“It's a pity tha didn't go,” he said. “Happen tha'd never ha' coom back.”
Tembarom laughed the outright laugh.
“Thank you,” he answered.
Tummas was still thinking the matter over and was not disturbed.
“I was na thinkin' o' thee,” he said in an impersonal tone. “I was thinkin' o' t' other chap. If tha'd gon i'stead o' him, he'd ha' been here i'stead o' thee. Eh, but it's funny.” And he drew a deep breath like a sigh having its birth in profundity of baffled thought.
Both he and his evident point of view were “funny” in the Lancashire sense, which does not imply humor, but strangeness and the unexplainable. Singular as the phrasing was, Tembarom knew what he meant, and that he was thinking of the oddity of chance. Tummas had obviously heard of “poor Jem” and had felt an interest in him.
“You're talking about Jem Temple Barholm I guess,” he said. Perhaps the interest he himself had felt in the tragic story gave his voice a tone somewhat responsive to Tummas's own mood, for Tummas, after one more boring glance, let himself go. His interest in this special subject was, it revealed itself, a sort of obsession. The history of Jem Temple Barholm had been the one drama of his short life.
“Aye, I was thinkin' o' him,” he said. “I should na ha' cared for th' Klondike so much but for him.”
“But he went away from England when you were a baby.”
“Th' last toime he coom to Temple Barholm wur when I wur just born. Foak said he coom to ax owd Temple Barholm if he'd help him to pay his debts, an' th' owd chap awmost kicked him out o' doors. Mother had just had me, an' she was weak an' poorly an' sittin' at th' door wi' me in her arms, an' he passed by an' saw her. He stopped an' axed her how she was doin'. An' when he was goin' away, he gave her a gold sovereign, an' he says, `Put it in th' savin's-bank for him, an' keep it theer till he's a big lad an' wants it.' It's been in th' savin's-bank ever sin'. I've got a whole pound o' ma own out at interest. There's not many lads ha' got that.”
“He must have been a good-natured fellow,” commented Tembarom. “It was darned bad luck him going to the Klondike.”
“It was good luck for thee,” said Tummas, with resentment.
“Was it?” was Tembarom's unbiased reply. “Well, I guess it was, one way or the other. I'm not kicking, anyhow.”
Tummas naturally did not know half he meant. He went on talking about Jem Temple Barholm, and as he talked his cheeks flushed and his eyes lighted.
“I would na spend that sovereign if I was starvin'. I'm going to leave it to Ann Hutchinson in ma will when I dee. I've axed questions about him reet and left ever sin' I can remember, but theer's nobody knows much. Mother says he was fine an' handsome, an' gentry through an' through. If he'd coom into th' property, he'd ha' coom to see me again I'll lay a shillin', because I'm a cripple an' I canna spend his sovereign. If he'd coom back from th' Klondike, happen he'd ha' towd me about it.” He pulled the atlas toward him, and laid his thin finger on the rubbed spot. “He mun ha' been killed somewheer about here,” he sighed. “Somewheer here. Eh, it's funny.”
Tembarom watched him. There was something that rather gave you the “Willies” in the way this little cripple seemed to have taken to the dead man and worried along all these years thinking him over and asking questions and studying up the Klondike because he was killed there. It was because he'd made a kind of story of it. He'd enjoyed it in the way people enjoy stories in a newspaper. You always had to give 'em a kind of story; you had to make a story even if you were telling about a milk-wagon running away. In newspaper offices you heard that was the secret of making good with what you wrote. Dish it up as if it was a sort of story.
He not infrequently arrived at astute enough conclusions concerning things. He had arrived at one now. Shut out even from the tame drama of village life, Tummas, born with an abnormal desire for action and a feverish curiosity, had hungered and thirsted for the story in any form whatsoever. He caught at fragments of happenings, and colored and dissected them for the satisfying of unfed cravings. The vanished man had been the one touch of pictorial form and color in his ten years of existence. Young and handsome and of the gentry, unfavored by the owner of the wealth which some day would be his own possession, stopping “gentry-way” at a cottage door to speak good-naturedly to a pale young mother, handing over the magnificence of a whole sovereign to be saved for a new-born child, going away to vaguely understood disgrace, leaving his own country to hide himself in distant lands, meeting death amid snow and ice and surrounded by gold-mines, leaving his empty place to be filled by a boot-black newsboy—true there was enough to lie and think over and to try to follow with the help of maps and excited questions.
“I wish I could ha' seen him,” said Tummas. “I'd awmost gi' my sovereign to get a look at that picture in th' gallery at Temple Barholm.”
“What picture?” Tembarom asked. “Is there a picture of him there?”
“There is na one o' him, but there's one o' a lad as deed two hundred year' ago as they say wur th' spit an' image on him when he wur a lad hissen. One o' th' owd servants towd mother it wur theer.”
This was a natural stimulus to interest and curiosity.
“Which one is it? Jinks! I'd like to see it myself. Do you know which one it is? There's hundreds of them.”
“No, I dunnot know,” was Tummas's dispirited answer, “an' neither does mother. Th' woman as knew left when owd Temple Barholm deed.”
“Tummas,” broke in Mrs. Hibblethwaite from the other end of the room, to which she had returned after taking Miss Alicia out to complain about the copper in the “wash-'us'—” “Tummas, tha'st been talkin' like a magpie. Tha'rt a lot too bold an' ready wi' tha tongue. Th' gentry's noan comin' to see thee if tha clacks th' heads off theer showthers.”
“I'm afraid he always does talk more than is good for him,” said Miss Alicia. “He looks quite feverish.”
“He has been talking to me about Jem Temple Barholm,” explained Tembarom. “We've had a regular chin together. He thinks a heap of poor Jem.”
Miss Alicia looked startled, and Mrs. Hibblethwaite was plainly flustered tremendously. She quite lost her temper.
“Eh,” she exclaimed, “tha wants tha young yed knocked off, Tummas Hibblethwaite. He's fair daft about th' young gentleman as—as was killed. He axes questions mony a day till I'd give him th' stick if he wasna a cripple. He moithers me to death.”
“I'll bring you some of those New York papers to look at,” Tembarom said to the boy as he went away.
He walked back through the village to Temple Barholm, holding Miss Alicia's elbow in light, affectionate guidance and support, a little to her embarrassment and also a little to her delight. Until he had taken her into the dining-room the night before she had never seen such a thing done. There was no over-familiarity in the action. It merely seemed somehow to suggest liking and a wish to take care of her.
“That little fellow in the village,” he said after a silence in which it occurred to her that he seemed thoughtful, “what a little freak he is! He's got an idea that there's a picture in the gallery that's said to look like Jem Temple Barholm when he was a boy. Have you ever heard anything about it? He says a servant told his mother it was there.”
“Yes, there is one,” Miss Alicia answered. “I sometimes go and look at it. But it makes me feel very sad. It is the handsome boy who was a page in the court of Charles II. He died in his teens. His name was Miles Hugo Charles James. Jem could see the likeness himself. Sometimes for a little joke I used to call him Miles Hugo.”
“I believe I remember him,” said Tembarom. “I believe I asked Palford his name. I must go and have a look at him again. He hadn't much better luck than the fellow that looked like him, dying as young as that.”
Form, color, drama, and divers other advantages are necessary to the creation of an object of interest. Presenting to the world none of these assets, Miss Alicia had slipped through life a scarcely remarked unit. No little ghost of prettiness had attracted the wandering eye, no suggestion of agreeable or disagreeable power of self-assertion had arrested attention. There had been no hour in her life when she had expected to count as being of the slightest consequence. When she had knocked at the door of the study at Rowcroft Vicarage, and “dear papa” had exclaimed irritably: “Who is that? Who is that?” she had always replied, “It is only Alicia.”
This being the case, her gradual awakening to the singularity of her new situation was mentally a process full of doubts and sometimes of alarmed bewilderments. If in her girlhood a curate, even a curate with prominent eyes and a receding chin, had proposed to her that she should face with him a future enriched by the prospect of being called upon to bring up a probable family of twelve on one hundred and fifty pounds a year, with both parish and rectory barking and snapping at her worn-down heels, she would have been sure to assert tenderly that she was afraid she was “not worthy.” This was the natural habit of her mind, and in the weeks which followed the foggy afternoon when Tembarom “staked out his claim” she dwelt often upon her unworthiness of the benefits bestowed upon her.
First the world below-stairs, then the village, and then the county itself awoke to the fact that the new Temple Temple Barholm had “taken her up.” The first tendency of the world below-stairs was to resent the unwarranted uplifting of a person whom there had been a certain luxury in regarding with disdain and treating with scarcely veiled lack of consideration. To be able to do this with a person who, after all was said and done, was not one of the servant class, but a sort of lady of birth, was not unstimulating. And below-stairs the sense of personal rancor against “a 'anger-on” is strong. The meals served in Miss Alicia's remote sitting-room had been served at leisure, her tea had rarely been hot, and her modestly tinkled bell irregularly answered. Often her far from liberally supplied fire had gone out on chilly days, and she had been afraid to insist on its being relighted. Her sole defense against inattention would have been to complain to Mr. Temple Barholm, and when on one occasion a too obvious neglect had obliged her to gather her quaking being together in mere self-respect and say, “If this continues to occur, William, I shall be obliged to speak to Mr. Temple Barholm,” William had so looked at her and so ill hid a secret smile that it had been almost tantamount to his saying, “I'd jolly well like to see you.”
And now! Sitting at the end of the table opposite him, if you please! Walking here and walking there with him! Sitting in the library or wherever he was, with him talking and laughing and making as much of her as though she were an aunt with a fortune to leave, and with her making as free in talk as though at liberty to say anything that came into her head! Well, the beggar that had found himself on horseback was setting another one galloping alongside of him. In the midst of this natural resentment it was “a bit upsetting,” as Burrill said, to find it dawning upon one that absolute exactness of ceremony was as much to be required for “her” as for “him.” Miss Alicia had long felt secretly sure that she was spoken of as “her” in the servants' hall. That businesslike sharpness which Palford had observed in his client aided Tembarom always to see things without illusions. He knew that There was no particular reason why his army of servants should regard him for the present as much more than an intruder; but he also knew that if men and women had employment which was not made hard for them, and were well paid for doing, they were not anxious to lose it, and the man who paid their wages might give orders with some certainty of finding them obeyed. He was “sharp” in more ways than one. He observed shades he might have been expected to overlook. He observed a certain shade in the demeanor of the domestics when attending Miss Alicia, and it was a shade which marked a difference between service done for her and service done for himself. This was only at the outset, of course, when the secret resentment was felt; but he observed it, mere shade though it was.
He walked out into the hall after Burrill one morning. Not having yet adjusted himself to the rule that when one wished to speak to a man one rang a bell and called him back, fifty times if necessary, he walked after Burrill and stopped him.
“This is a pretty good place for servants, ain't it?” he said.
“Yes, sir.”
“Good pay, good food, not too much to do?”
“Certainly, sir,” Burrill replied, somewhat disturbed by a casualness which yet suggested a method of getting at something or other.
“You and the rest of them don't want to change, do you?”
“No, sir. There is no complaint whatever as far as I have heard.”
“That's all right.” Mr. Temple Barholm had put his hands into his pockets, and stood looking non-committal in a steady sort of way. “There's something I want the lot of you to get on to—right away. Miss Temple Barholm is going to stay here. She's got to have everything just as she wants it. She's got to be pleased. She's the lady of the house. See?”
“I hope, sir,” Burrill said with professional dignity, “that Miss Temple Barholm has not had reason to express any dissatisfaction.”
“I'm the one that would express it—quick,” said Tembarom. “She wouldn't have time to get in first. I just wanted to make sure I shouldn't have to do it. The other fellows are under you. You've got a head on your shoulders, I guess. It's up to you to put 'em on to it. That's all.”
“Thank you, sir,” said Burrill.
His master went back into the library smiling genially, and Burrill stood still a moment or so gazing at the door he closed behind him.
Be sure the village, and finally circles not made up of cottagers, heard of this, howsoever mysteriously. Miss Alicia was not aware that the incident had occurred. She could not help observing, however, that the manners of the servants of the household curiously improved; also, when she passed through the village, that foreheads were touched without omission and the curtseys of playing children were prompt. When she dropped into a cottage, housewives polished off the seats of chairs vigorously before offering them, and symptoms and needs were explained with a respectful fluency which at times almost suggested that she might be relied on to use influence.
“I'm afraid I have done the village people injustice,” she said leniently to Tembarom. “I used to think them so disrespectful and unappreciative. I dare say it was because I was so troubled myself. I'm afraid one's own troubles do sometimes make one unfair.”
“Well, yours are over,” said Tembarom. “And so are mine as long as you stay by me.”
Never had Miss Alicia been to London. She had remained, as was demanded of her by her duty to dear papa, at Rowcroft, which was in Somersetshire. She had only dreamed of London, and had had fifty-five years of dreaming. She had read of great functions, and seen pictures of some of them in the illustrated papers. She had loyally endeavored to follow at a distance the doings of her Majesty,—she always spoke of Queen Victoria reverentially as “her Majesty,”—she rejoiced when a prince or a princess was born or christened or married, and believed that a “drawing-room” was the most awe-inspiring, brilliant, and important function in the civilized world, scarcely second to Parliament. London—no one but herself or an elderly gentlewoman of her type could have told any one the nature of her thoughts of London.
Let, therefore, those of vivid imagination make an effort to depict to themselves the effect produced upon her mind by Tembarom's casually suggesting at breakfast one morning that he thought it might be rather a good “stunt” for them to run up to London. By mere good fortune she escaped dropping the egg she had just taken from the egg-stand.
“London!” she said. “Oh!”
“Pearson thinks it would be a first-rate idea,” he explained. “I guess he thinks that if he can get me into the swell clothing stores he can fix me up as I ought to be fixed, if I'm not going to disgrace him. I should hate to disgrace Pearson. Then he can see his girl, too, and I want him to see his girl.”
“Is—Pearson—engaged?” she asked; but the thought which was repeating itself aloud to her was “London! London!”
“He calls it 'keeping company,' or 'walking out,'” Tembarom answered. “She's a nice girl, and he's dead stuck on her. Will you go with me, Miss Alicia?”
“Dear Mr. Temple Barholm,” she fluttered, “to visit London would be a privilege I never dreamed it would be my great fortune to enjoy—never.”
“Good business!” he ejaculated delightedly. “That's luck for me. It gave me the blues—what I saw of it. But if you are with me, I'll bet it'll be as different as afternoon tea was after I got hold of you. When shall we start? To-morrow?”
Her sixteen-year-old blush repeated itself.
“I feel so sorry. It seems almost undignified to mention it, but—I fear I should not look smart enough for London. My wardrobe is so very limited. I mustn't,” she added with a sweet effort at humor, “do the new Mr. Temple Barholm discredit by looking unfashionable.”
He was more delighted than before.
“Say,” he broke out, “I'll tell you what we'll do: we'll go together and buy everything 'suitable' in sight. The pair of us'll come back here as suitable as Burrill and Pearson. We'll paint the town red.”
He actually meant it. He was like a boy with a new game. His sense of the dreariness of London had disappeared. He knew what it would be like with Miss Alicia as a companion. He had really seen nothing of the place himself, and he would find out every darned thing worth looking at, and take her to see it—theaters, shops, every show in town. When they left the breakfast-table it was agreed upon that they would make the journey the following day.
He did not openly refer to the fact that among the plans for their round of festivities he had laid out for himself the attending to one or two practical points. He was going to see Palford, and he had made an appointment with a celebrated nerve specialist. He did not discuss this for several reasons. One of them was that his summing up of Miss Alicia was that she had had trouble enough to think over all her little life, and the thing for a fellow to do for her, if he liked her, was to give her a good time and make her feel as if she was at a picnic right straight along—not let her even hear of a darned thing that might worry her. He had said comparatively little to her about Strangeways. His first mention of his condition had obviously made her somewhat nervous, though she had been full of kindly interest. She was in private not sorry that it was felt better that she should not disturb the patient by a visit to his room. The abnormality of his condition seemed just slightly alarming to her.
“But, oh, how good, how charitable, you are!” she had murmured.
“Good,” he answered, the devout admiration of her tone rather puzzling him. “It ain't that. I just want to see the thing through. I dropped into it by accident, and then I dropped into this by accident, and that made it as easy as falling off a log. I believe he's going to get well sometime. I guess I kind of like him because he holds on to me so and believes I'm just It. Maybe it's because I'm stuck on myself.”
His visit to Strangeways was longer than usual that afternoon. He explained the situation to him so that he understood it sufficiently not to seem alarmed by it. This was one of the advances Tembarom had noticed recently, that he was less easily terrified, and seemed occasionally to see facts in their proper relation to one another. Sometimes the experiments tried on him were successful, sometimes they were not, but he never resented them.
“You are trying to help me to remember,” he said once. “I think you will sometime.”
“Sure I will,” said Tembarom. “You're better every day.”
Pearson was to remain in charge of him until toward the end of the London visit. Then he was to run up for a couple of days, leaving in his place a young footman to whom the invalid had become accustomed.
The visit to London was to Miss Alicia a period of enraptured delirium. The beautiful hotel in which she was established, the afternoons at the Tower, the National Gallery, the British Museum, the evenings at the play, during which one saw the most brilliant and distinguished actors, the mornings in the shops, attended as though one were a person of fortune, what could be said of them? And the sacred day on which she saw her Majesty drive slowly by, glittering helmets, splendid uniforms, waving plumes, and clanking swords accompanying and guarding her, and gentlemen standing still with their hats off, and everybody looking after her with that natural touch of awe which royalty properly inspires! Miss Alicia's heart beat rapidly in her breast, and she involuntarily made a curtsey as the great lady in mourning drove by. She lost no shade of any flavor of ecstatic pleasure in anything, and was to Tembarom, who knew nothing about shades and flavors, indeed a touching and endearing thing.
He had never got so much out of anything. If Ann had just been there, well, that would have been the limit. Ann was on her way to America now, and she wouldn't write to him or let him write to her. He had to make a fair trial of it. He could find out only in that way, she said. It was not to be denied that the youth and longing in him gave him some half-hours to face which made him shut himself up in his room and stare hard at the wall, folding his arms tightly as he tilted his chair.
There arrived a day when one of the most exalted shops in Bond Street was invaded by an American young man of a bearing the peculiarities of which were subtly combined with a remotely suggested air of knowing that if he could find what he wanted, there was no doubt as to his power to get it. What he wanted was not usual, and was explained with a frankness which might have seemed unsophisticated, but, singularly, did not. He wanted to have a private talk with some feminine power in charge, and she must be some one who knew exactly what ladies ought to have.
Being shown into a room, such a feminine power was brought to him and placed at his service. She was a middle-aged person, wearing beautifully fitted garments and having an observant eye and a dignified suavity of manner. She looked the young American over with a swift inclusion of all possibilities. He was by this time wearing extremely well-fitting garments himself, but she was at once aware that his tailored perfection was a new thing to him.
He went to his point without apologetic explanation.
“You know all the things any kind of a lady ought to have,” he said—“all the things that would make any one feel comfortable and as if they'd got plenty? Useful things as well as ornamental ones?”
“Yes, sir,” she replied, with rising interest. “I have been in the establishment thirty years.”
“Good business,” Tembarom replied. Already he felt relieved. “I've got a relation, a little old lady, and I want her to fix herself out just as she ought to be fixed. Now, what I'm afraid of is that she won't get everything she ought to unless I manage it for her somehow beforehand. She's got into a habit of—well, economizing. Now the time's past for that, and I want her to get everything a woman like you would know she really wants, so that she could look her best, living in a big country house, with a relation that thinks a lot of her.”
He paused a second or so, and then went further, fixing a clear and astonishingly shrewd eye upon the head of the department listening to him.
“I found out this was a high-class place,” he explained. “I made sure of that before I came in. In a place that was second or third class there might be people who'd think they'd caught a 'sucker' that would take anything that was unloaded on to him, because he didn't know. The things are for Miss Temple Barholm, and she DOES know. I shall ask her to come here herself to-morrow morning, and I want you to take care of her, and show her the best you've got that's suitable.” He seemed to like the word; he repeated it—“Suitable,” and quickly restrained a sudden, unexplainable, wide smile.
The attending lady's name was Mrs. Mellish. Thirty years' experience had taught her many lessons. She was a hard woman and a sharp one, but beneath her sharp hardness lay a suppressed sense of the perfect in taste. To have a customer with unchecked resources put into her hands to do her best by was an inspiring incident. A quiver of enlightenment had crossed her countenance when she had heard the name of Temple Barholm. She had a newspaper knowledge of the odd Temple Barholm story. This was the next of kin who had blacked boots in New York, and the obvious probability that he was a fool, if it had taken the form of a hope, had been promptly nipped in the bud. The type from which he was furthest removed was that of the fortune-intoxicated young man who could be obsequiously flattered into buying anything which cost money enough.
“Not a thing's to be unloaded on her that she doesn't like,” he added, “and she's not a girl that goes to pink teas. She's a—a—lady—and not young—and used to quiet ways.”
The evidently New York word “unload” revealed him to his hearer as by a flash, though she had never heard it before.
“We have exactly the things which will be suitable, sir,” she said. “I think I quite understand.” Tembarom smiled again, and, thanking her, went away still smiling, because he knew Miss Alicia was safe.
There were of course difficulties in the way of persuading Miss Alicia that her duty lay in the direction of spending mornings in the most sumptuous of Bond Street shops, ordering for herself an entire wardrobe on a basis of unlimited resources. Tembarom was called upon to employ the most adroitly subtle reasoning, entirely founded on his “claim” and her affectionate willingness to give him pleasure.
He really made love to her in the way a joyful young fellow can make love to his mother or his nicest aunt. He made her feel that she counted for so much in his scheme of enjoyment that to do as he asked would be to add a glow to it.
“And they won't spoil you,” he said. “The Mellish woman that's the boss has promised that. I wouldn't have you spoiled for a farm,” he added heartily.
And he spoke the truth. If he had been told that he was cherishing her type as though it were a priceless bit of old Saxe, he would have stared blankly and made a jocular remark. But it was exactly this which he actually clung to and adored. He even had a second private interview with Mrs. Mellish, and asked her to “keep her as much like she was” as was possible.
Stimulated by the suppressed touch of artistic fervor, Mrs. Mellish guessed at something even before her client arrived; but the moment she entered the showroom all was revealed to her at once. The very hint of flush and tremor in Miss Alicia's manner was an assistance. Surrounded by a small and extremely select court composed of Mrs. Mellish and two low-voiced, deft-handed assistants, it was with a fine little effort that Miss Alicia restrained herself from exterior suggestion of her feeling that there was something almost impious in thinking of possessing the exquisite stuffs and shades displayed to her in flowing beauty on every side. Such linens and batistes and laces, such delicate, faint grays and lavenders and soft-falling blacks! If she had been capable of approaching the thought, such luxury might even have hinted at guilty splendor.
Mrs. Mellish became possessed of an “idea” To create the costume of an exquisite, early-Victorian old lady in a play done for the most fashionable and popular actor manager of the most “drawing-room” of West End theaters, where one saw royalty in the royal box, with bouquets on every side, the orchestra breaking off in the middle of a strain to play “God Save the Queen,” and the audience standing up as the royal party came in—that was her idea. She carried it out, steering Miss Alicia with finished tact through the shoals and rapids of her timidities. And the result was wonderful; color,—or, rather, shades,—textures, and forms were made subservient by real genius. Miss Alicia—as she was turned out when the wardrobe was complete—might have been an elderly little duchess of sweet and modest good taste in the dress of forty years earlier. It took time, but some of the things were prepared as though by magic, and the night the first boxes were delivered at the hotel Miss Alicia, on going to bed, in kneeling down to her devotions prayed fervently that she might not be “led astray by fleshly desires,” and that her gratitude might be acceptable, and not stained by a too great joy “in the things which corrupt.”
The very next day occurred Rose. She was the young person to whom Pearson was engaged, and it appeared that if Miss Alicia would make up her mind to oblige Mr. Temple Barholm by allowing the girl to come to her as lady's-maid, even if only temporarily, she would be doing a most kind and charitable thing. She was a very nice, well-behaved girl, and unfortunately she had felt herself forced to leave her place because her mistress's husband was not at all a nice man. He had shown himself so far from nice that Pearson had been most unhappy, and Rose had been compelled to give notice, though she had no other situation in prospect and her mother was dependent on her. This was without doubt not Mr. Temple Barholm's exact phrasing of the story, but it was what Miss Alicia gathered, and what moved her deeply. It was so cruel and so sad! That wicked man! That poor girl! She had never had a lady's-maid, and might be rather at a loss at first, but it was only like Mr. Temple Barholm's kind heart to suggest such a way of helping the girl and poor Pearson.
So occurred Rose, a pretty creature whose blue eyes suppressed grateful tears as she took Miss Alicia's instructions during their first interview. And Pearson arrived the same night, and, waiting upon Tembarom, stood before him, and with perfect respect, choked.
“Might I thank you, if you please, sir,” he began, recovering himself—“might I thank you and say how grateful—Rose and me, sir—” and choked again.
“I told you it would be all right,” answered Tembarom. “It is all right. I wish I was fixed like you are, Pearson.”
When the Countess of Mallowe called, Rose had just dressed Miss Alicia for the afternoon in one of the most perfect of the evolutions of Mrs. Mellish's idea. It was a definite creation, as even Lady Mallowe detected the moment her eyes fell upon it. Its hue was dull, soft gray, and how it managed to concede points and elude suggestions of modes interred, and yet remain what it did remain, and accord perfectly with the side ringlets and the lace cap of Mechlin, only dressmaking genius could have explained. The mere wearing of it gave Miss Alicia a support and courage which she could scarcely believe to be her own. When the cards of Lady Mallowe and Lady Joan Fayre were brought up to her, she was absolutely not really frightened; a little nervous for a moment, perhaps, but frightened, no. A few weeks of relief and ease, of cheery consideration, of perfectly good treatment and good food and good clothes, had begun a rebuilding of the actual cells of her.
Lady Mallowe entered alone. She was a handsome person, and astonishingly young when considered as the mother of a daughter of twenty-seven. She wore a white veil, and looked pink through it. She swept into the room, and shook hands with Miss Alicia with delicate warmth.
“We do not really know each other at all,” she said. “It is disgraceful how little relatives see of one another.”
The disgrace, if measured by the extent of the relationship, was not immense. Perhaps this thought flickered across Miss Alicia's mind among a number of other things. She had heard “dear papa” on Lady Mallowe, and, howsoever lacking in graces, the vicar of Rowcroft had not lacked an acrid shrewdness. Miss Alicia's sensitively self-accusing soul shrank before a hasty realization of the fact that if he had been present when the cards were brought up, he would, on glancing over them through his spectacles, have jerked out immediately: “What does the woman want? She's come to get something.” Miss Alicia wished she had not been so immediately beset by this mental vision.
Lady Mallowe had come for something. She had come to be amiable to Miss Temple Barholm and to establish relations with her.
“Joan should have been here to meet me,” she explained. “Her dressmaker is keeping her, of course. She will be so annoyed. She wanted very much to come with me.”
It was further revealed that she might arrive at any moment, which gave Miss Alicia an opportunity to express, with pretty grace, the hope that she would, and her trust that she was quite well.
“She is always well,” Lady Mallowe returned. “And she is of course as interested as we all are in this romantic thing. It is perfectly delicious, like a three-volumed novel.”
“It is romantic,” said Miss Alicia, wondering how much her visitor knew or thought she knew, and what circumstances would present themselves to her as delicious.
“Of course one has heard only the usual talk one always hears when everybody is chattering about a thing,” Lady Mallowe replied, with a propitiating smile. “No one really knows what is true and what isn't. But it is nice to notice that all the gossip speaks so well of him. No one seems to pretend that he is anything but extremely nice himself, notwithstanding his disadvantages.”
She kept a fine hazel eye, surrounded by a line which artistically represented itself as black lashes, steadily resting on Miss Alicia as she said the last words.
“He is,” said Miss Alicia, with gentle firmness, “nicer than I had ever imagined any young man could be—far nicer.”
Lady Mallowe's glance round the luxurious private sitting-room and over the perfect “idea” of Mrs. Mellish was so swift as to be almost imperceptible.
“How delightful!” she said. “He must be unusually agreeable, or you would not have consented to stay and take care of him.”
“I cannot tell you how HAPPY I am to have been asked to stay with him, Lady Mallowe,” Miss Alicia replied, the gentle firmness becoming a soft dignity.
“Which of course shows all the more how attractive he must be. And in view of the past lack of advantages, what a help you can be to him! It is quite wonderful for him to have a relative at hand who is an Englishwoman and familiar with things he will feel he must learn.”
A perhaps singular truth is that but for the unmistakable nature of the surroundings she quickly took in the significance of, and but for the perfection of the carrying out of Mrs. Mellish's delightful idea, it is more than probable that her lady-ship's manner of approaching Miss Alicia and certain subjects on which she desired enlightenment would have been much more direct and much less propitiatory. Extraordinary as it was, “the creature”—she thought of Tembarom as “the creature”—had plainly been so pleased with the chance of being properly coached that he had put everything, so to speak, in the little old woman's hands. She had got a hold upon him. It was quite likely that to regard her as a definite factor would only be the part of the merest discretion. She was evidently quite in love with him in her early-Victorian, spinster way. One had to be prudent with women like that who had got hold of a male creature for the first time in their lives, and were almost unaware of their own power. Their very unconsciousness made them a dangerous influence.
With a masterly review of these facts in her mind Lady Mallowe went on with a fluent and pleasant talk, through the medium of which she managed to convey a large number of things Miss Alicia was far from being clever enough to realize she was talking about. She lightly waved wings of suggestion across the scene, she dropped infinitesimal seeds in passing, she left faint echoes behind her—the kind of echoes one would find oneself listening to and trying to hear as definitely formed sounds. She had been balancing herself on a precarious platform of rank and title, unsupported by any sordid foundation of a solid nature, through a lifetime spent in London. She had learned to catch fiercely at straws of chance, and bitterly to regret the floating past of the slightest, which had made of her a finished product of her kind. She talked lightly, and was sometimes almost witty. To her hearer she seemed to know every brilliant personage and to be familiar with every dazzling thing. She knew well what social habits and customs meant, what their value, or lack of value, was. There were customs, she implied skilfully, so established by time that it was impossible to ignore them. Relationships, for instance, stood for so much that was fine in England that one was sometimes quite touched by the far-reachingness of family loyalty. The head of the house of a great estate represented a certain power in the matter of upholding the dignity of his possessions, of caring for his tenantry, of standing for proper hospitality and friendly family feeling. It was quite beautiful as one often saw it. Throughout the talk there were several references to Joan, who really must come in shortly, which were very interesting to Miss Alicia. Lady Joan, Miss Alicia heard casually, was a great beauty. Her perfection and her extreme cleverness had made her perhaps a trifle difficile. She had not done—Lady Mallowe put it with a lightness of phrasing which was delicacy itself—what she might have done, with every exalted advantage, so many times. She had a profound nature. Here Lady Mallowe waved away, as it were, a ghost of a sigh. Since Miss Temple Barholm was a relative, she had no doubt heard of the unfortunate, the very sad incident which her mother sometimes feared prejudiced the girl even yet.
“You mean—poor Jem!” broke forth involuntarily from Miss Alicia's lips. Lady Mallowe stared a little.
“Do you call him that?” she asked. “Did you know him, then?”
“I loved him,” answered Miss Alicia, winking her eyes to keep back the moisture in them, “though it was only when he was a little boy.”
“Oh,” said Lady Mallowe, with a sudden, singular softness, “I must tell Joan that.”
Lady Joan had not appeared even after they had had tea and her mother went away, but somehow Miss Alicia had reached a vaguely yearning feeling for her and wished very much the dressmaker had released her. She was quite stirred when it revealed itself almost at the last moment that in a few weeks both she and Lady Mallowe were to pay a visit at no great distance from Temple Barholm itself, and that her ladyship would certainly arrange to drive over to continue her delightful acquaintance and to see the beautiful old place again.
“In any case one must, even if he lived in lonely state, pay one's respects to the head of the house. The truth is, of course, one is extremely anxious to meet him, and it is charming to know that one is not merely invading the privacy of a bachelor,” Lady Mallowe put it.
“She'll come for YOU,” Little Ann had soberly remarked.
Tembarom remembered the look in her quiet, unresentful blue eyes when he came in to dinner and Miss Alicia related to him the events of the afternoon.