After this came a pause. Each man sat thinking his own thoughts, which, while marked with difference in form, were doubtless subtly alike in the line they followed. During the silence T. Tembarom looked out at the late afternoon shadows lengthening themselves in darkening velvet across the lawns.
At last he said:
“I never told you that I've been reading some of the 'steen thousand books in the library. I started it about a month ago. And somehow they've got me going.”
The slightly lifted eyebrows of his host did not express surprise so much as questioning interest. This man, at least, had discovered that one need find no cause for astonishment in any discovery that he had been doing a thing for some time for some reason or through some prompting of his own, and had said nothing whatever about it until he was what he called “good and ready.” When he was “good and ready” he usually revealed himself to the duke, but he was not equally expansive with others.
“No, you have not mentioned it,” his grace answered, and laughed a little. “You frequently fail to mention things. When first we knew each other I used to wonder if you were naturally a secretive fellow; but you are not. You always have a reason for your silences.”
“It took about ten years to kick that into me—ten good years, I should say.” T. Tembarom looked as if he were looking backward at many episodes as he said it. “Naturally, I guess, I must have been an innocent, blab-mouthed kid. I meant no harm, but I just didn't know. Sometimes it looks as if just not knowing is about the worst disease you can be troubled with. But if you don't get killed first, you find out in time that what you've got to hold on to hard and fast is the trick of 'saying nothing and sawing wood.'”
The duke took out his memorandum-book and began to write hastily. T. Tembarom was quite accustomed to this. He even repeated his axiom for him.
“Say nothing and saw wood,” he said. “It's worth writing down. It means 'shut your mouth and keep on working.'”
“Thank you,” said the duke. “It is worth writing down. Thank you.”
“I did not talk about the books because I wanted to get used to them before I began to talk,” Tembarom explained. “I wanted to get somewhere. I'd never read a book through in my life before. Never wanted to. Never had one and never had time. When night came, I was dog-tired and dog-ready to drop down and sleep.”
Here was a situation of interest. A young man of odd, direct shrewdness, who had never read a book through in his existence, had plunged suddenly into the extraordinarily varied literary resources of the Temple Barholm library. If he had been a fool or a genius one might have guessed at the impression made on him; being T. Tembarom, one speculated with secret elation. The primitiveness he might reveal, the profundities he might touch the surface of, the unexpected ends he might reach, suggested the opening of vistas.
“I have often thought that if books attracted you the library would help you to get through a good many of the hundred and thirty-six hours a day you've spoken of, and get through them pretty decently,” commented the duke.
“That's what's happened,” Tembarom answered. “There's not so many now. I can cut 'em off in chunks.”
“How did it begin?”
He listened with much pleasure while Tembarom told him how it had begun and how it had gone on.
“I'd been having a pretty bad time one day. Strangeways had been worse—a darned sight worse—just when I thought he was better. I'd been trying to help him to think straight; and suddenly I made a break, somehow, and must have touched exactly the wrong spring. It seemed as if I set him nearly crazy. I had to leave him to Pearson right away. Then it poured rain steady for about eight hours, and I couldn't get out and `take a walk.' Then I went wandering into the picture-gallery and found Lady Joan there, looking at Miles Hugo. And she ordered me out, or blamed near it.”
“You are standing a good deal,” said the duke.
“Yes, I am—but so is she.” He set his hard young jaw and nursed his knee, staring once more at the velvet shadows. “The girl in the book I picked up—” he began.
“The first book?” his host inquired.
Tembarom nodded.
“The very first. I was smoking my pipe at night, after every one else had gone to bed, and I got up and began to wander about and stare at the names of the things on the shelves. I was thinking over a whole raft of things—a whole raft of them—and I didn't know I was doing it, until something made me stop and read a name again. It was a book called `Good-by, Sweetheart, Good-by,' and it hit me straight. I wondered what it was about, and I wondered where old Temple Barholm had fished up a thing like that. I never heard he was that kind.”
“He was a cantankerous old brute,” said the Duke of Stone with candor, “but he chanced to be an omnivorous novel-reader. Nothing was too sentimental for him in his later years.”
“I took the thing out and read it,” Tembarom went on, uneasily, the emotion of his first novel-reading stirring him as he talked. “It kept me up half the night, and I hadn't finished it then. I wanted to know the end.”
“Benisons upon the books of which one wants to know the end!” the duke murmured.
Tembarom's interest had plainly not terminated with “the end.” Its freshness made it easily revived. There was a hint of emotional indignation in his relation of the plot.
“It was about a couple of fools who were dead stuck on each other—dead. There was no mistake about that. It was all real. But what do they do but work up a fool quarrel about nothing, and break away from each other. There was a lot of stuff about pride. Pride be damned! How's a man going to be proud and put on airs when he loves a woman? How's a woman going to be proud and stick out about things when she loves a man? At least, that's the way it hit me.”
“That's the way it hit me—once,” remarked his grace.
“There is only once,” said Tembarom, doggedly.
“Occasionally,” said his host. “Occasionally.”
Tembarom knew what he meant.
“The fellow went away, and neither of them would give in. It's queer how real it was when you read it. You were right there looking on, and swallowing hard every few minutes—though you were as mad as hops. The girl began to die—slow—and lay there day after day, longing for him to come back, and knowing he wouldn't. At the very end, when there was scarcely a breath left in her, a young fellow who was crazy about her himself, and always had been, put out after the hard-headed fool to bring him to her anyhow. The girl had about given in then. And she lay and waited hour after hour, and the youngster came back by himself. He couldn't bring the man he'd gone after. He found him getting married to a nice girl he didn't really care a darn for. He'd sort of set his teeth and done it—just because he was all in and down and out, and a fool. The girl just dropped her head back on the pillow and lay there, dead! What do you think of that?” quite fiercely. “I guess it was sentimental all right, but it got you by the throat.”
“'Good-bye, Sweetheart, Good-bye,”' his grace quoted. “First-class title. We are all sentimental. And that was the first, was it?”
“Yes, but it wasn't the last. I began to read the others. I've been reading them ever since. I tell you, for a fellow that knows nothing it's an easy way of finding out a lot of things. You find out what different kinds of people there are, and what different kinds of ways. If you've lived in one place, and been up against nothing but earning your living, you think that's all there is of it—that it's the whole thing. But it isn't, by gee!” His air became thoughtful. “I've begun to kind of get on to what all this means”—glancing about him—“to you people; and how a fellow like T. T. must look to you. I've always sort of guessed, but reading a few dozen novels has helped me to see WHY it's that way. I've yelled right out laughing over it many a time. That fellow called Thackeray—I can't read his things right straight through—but he 's an eye-opener.”
“You have tried nothing BUT novels?” his enthralled hearer inquired.
“Not yet. I shall come to the others in time. I'm sort of hungry for these things about PEOPLE. It's the ways they're different that gets me going. There was one that stirred me all up—but it wasn't like that first one. It was about a man “—he spoke slowly, as if searching for words and parallels—“well, I guess he was one of the early savages here. It read as if they were like the first Indians in America, only stronger and fiercer. When Palford was explaining things to me he'd jerk in every now and then something about 'coming over with the Conqueror' or being here 'before the Conqueror.' I didn't know what it meant. I found out in this book I'm telling about. It gave me the whole thing so that you SAW it. Here was this little country, with no one in it but these first savage fellows it'd always belonged to. They thought it was the world.” There was a humorous sense of illumination in his half-laugh. “It was their New York, by jings,” he put in. “Their little old New York that they'd never been outside of! And then first one lot slams in, and then another, and another, and tries to take it from them. Julius Caesar was the first Mr. Buttinski; and they fought like hell. They were fighters from Fightersville, anyhow. They fought each other, took each other's castles and lands and wives and jewelry—just any old thing they wanted. The only jails were private ones meant for their particular friends. And a man was hung only when one of his neighbors got mad enough at him, and then he had to catch him first and run the risk of being strung up himself, or have his head chopped off and stuck up on a spike somewhere for ornament. But fight! Good Lord! They were at it day and night. Did it for fun, just like folks go to the show. They didn't know what fear was. Never heard of it. They'd go about shouting and bragging and swaggering, with their heads hanging half off. And the one in this book was the bulliest fighter of the lot. I guess I don't know how to pronounce his name. It began with H.”
“Was it Hereward the Wake, by chance?” exclaimed his auditor. “Hereward the Last of the English?”
“That's the man,” cried Tembarom.
“An engaging ruffian and thief and murderer, and a touching one also,” commented the duke. “You liked him?” He really wanted to know.
“I like the way he went after what he wanted to get, and the way he fought for his bit of England. By gee! When he went rushing into a fight, shouting and boasting and swinging his sword, I got hot in the collar. It was his England. What was old Bill doing there anyhow, darn him! Those chaps made him swim in their blood before they let him put the thing over. Good business! I'm glad they gave him all that was coming to him—hot and strong.”
His sharp face had reddened and his voice rose high and nasal. There was a look of roused blood in him.
“Are you a fighter from Fightersville?” the duke asked, far from unstirred himself. These things had become myths to most people, but here was Broadway in the midst of them unconsciously suggesting that it might not have done ill in the matter of swinging “Brain-Biter” itself. The modern entity slipped back again through the lengthened links of bygone centuries—back until it became T. Tembarom once more—casual though shrewd; ready and jocular. His eyes resumed their dry New York humor of expression as they fixed themselves on his wholly modern questioner.
“I'll fight,” he said, “for what I've got to fight for, but not for a darned thing else. Not a darned thing.”
“But you would fight,” smiled the duke, grimly. “Did you happen to remember that blood like that has come down to you? It was some drop of it which made you `hot in the collar' over that engaging savage roaring and slashing about him for his `bit of England.”'
Tembarom seemed to think it out interestedly.
“No, I did not,” he answered. “But I guess that's so. I guess it's so. Great Jakes! Think of me perhaps being sort of kin to fellows just like that. Some way, you couldn't help liking him. He was always making big breaks and bellowing out `The Wake! The Wake!' in season and out of season; but the way he got there—just got there!”
He was oddly in sympathy with “the early savages here,” and as understandingly put himself into their places as he had put himself into Galton's. His New York comprehension of their berserker furies was apparently without limit. Strong partizan as he was of the last of the English, however, he admitted that William of Normandy had “got in some good work, though it wasn't square.”
“He was a big man,” he ended. “If he hadn't been the kind he was I don't know how I should have stood it when the Hereward fellow knelt down before him, and put his hands between his and swore to be his man. That's the way the book said it. I tell you that must have been tough—tough as hell!”
From “Good-bye, Sweetheart” to “Hereward the Last of the English” was a far cry, but he had gathered a curious collection of ideas by the way, and with characteristic everyday reasoning had linked them to his own experiences.
“The women in the Hereward book made me think of Lady Joan,” he remarked, suddenly.
“Torfreda?” the duke asked.
He nodded quite seriously.
“She had ways that reminded me of her, and I kept thinking they must both have had the same look in their eyes—sort of fierce and hungry. Torfreda had black hair and was a winner as to looks; but people were afraid of her and called her a witch. Hereward went mad over her and she went mad over him. That part of it was 'way out of sight, it was so fine. She helped him with his fights and told him what to do, and tried to keep him from drinking and bragging. Whatever he did, she never stopped being crazy about him. She mended his men's clothes, and took care of their wounds, and lived in the forest with him when he was driven out.”
“That sounds rather like Miss Hutchinson,” his host suggested, “though the parallel between a Harlem flat and an English forest in the eleventh century is not exact.”
“I thought that, too,” Tembarom admitted. “Ann would have done the same things, but she'd have done them in her way. If that fellow had taken his wife's advice, he wouldn't have ended with his head sticking on a spear.”
“Another lady, if I remember rightly,” said the duke.
“He left her, the fool!” Tembarom answered. “And there's where I couldn't get away from seeing Lady Joan; Jem Temple Barholm didn't go off with another woman, but what Torfreda went through, this one has gone through, and she's going through it yet. She can't dress herself in sackcloth, and cut off her hair, and hide herself away with a bunch of nuns, as the other one did. She has to stay and stick it out, however bad it is. That's a darned sight worse. The day after I'd finished the book, I couldn't keep my eyes off her. I tried to stop it, but it was no use. I kept hearing that Torfreda one screaming out, `Lost! Lost! Lost!' It was all in her face.”
“But, my good fellow,” protested the duke, despite feeling a touch of the thrill again, “unfortunately, she would not suspect you of looking at her because you were recalling Torfreda and Hereward the Wake. Men stare at her for another reason.”
“That's what I know about half as well again as I know anything else,” answered Tembarom. He added, with a deliberation holding its own meaning, “That's what I'm coming to.”
The duke waited. What was it he was coming to?
“Reading that novel put me wise to things in a new way. She's been wiping her feet on me hard for a good while, and I sort of made up my mind I'd got to let her until I was sure where I was. I won't say I didn't mind it, but I could stand it. But that night she caught me looking at her, the way she looked back at me made me see all of a sudden that it would be easier for her if I told her straight that she was mistaken.”
“That she is mistaken in thinking—?”
“What she does think. She wouldn't have thought it if the old lady hadn't been driving her mad by hammering it in. She'd have hated me all right, and I don't blame her when I think of how poor Jem was treated; but she wouldn't have thought that every time I tried to be decent and friendly to her I was butting in and making a sick fool of myself. She's got to stay where her mother keeps her, and she's got to listen to her. Oh, hell! She's got to be told!”
The duke set the tips of his fingers together.
“How would you do it?” he inquired.
“Just straight,” replied T. Tembarom. “There's no other way.”
From the old worldling broke forth an involuntary low laugh, which was a sort of cackle. So this was what he was coming to.
“I cannot think of any devious method,” he said, “which would make it less than a delicate thing to do. A beautiful young woman, whose host you are, has flouted you furiously for weeks, under the impression that you are offensively in love with her. You propose to tell her that her judgment has betrayed her, and that, as you say, `There's nothing doing.'”
“Not a darned thing, and never has been,” said T. Tembarom. He looked quite grave and not at all embarrassed. He plainly did not see it as a situation to be regarded with humor.
“If she will listen—” the duke began.
“Oh, she'll listen,” put in Tembarom. “I'll make her.”
His was a self-contradicting countenance, the duke reflected, as he took him in with a somewhat long look. One did not usually see a face built up of boyishness and maturity, simpleness which was baffling, and a good nature which could be hard. At the moment, it was both of these last at one and the same time.
“I know something of Lady Joan and I know something of you,” he said, “but I don't exactly foresee what will happen. I will not say that I should not like to be present.”
“There'll be nobody present but just me and her,” Tembarom answered.
The visits of Lady Mallowe and Captain Palliser had had their features. Neither of the pair had come to one of the most imposing “places” in Lancashire to live a life of hermit-like seclusion and dullness. They had arrived with the intention of availing themselves of all such opportunities for entertainment as could be guided in their direction by the deftness of experience. As a result, there had been hospitalities at Temple Barholm such as it had not beheld during the last generation at least. T. Tembarom had looked on, an interested spectator, as these festivities had been adroitly arranged and managed for him. He had not, however, in the least resented acting as a sort of figurehead in the position of sponsor and host.
“They think I don't know I'm not doing it all myself,” was his easy mental summing-up. “They've got the idea that I'm pleased because I believe I'm It. But that's all to the merry. It's what I've set my mind on having going on here, and I couldn't have started it as well myself. I shouldn't have known how. They're teaching me. All I hope is that Ann's grandmother is keeping tab.”
“Do you and Rose know old Mrs. Hutchinson?” he had inquired of Pearson the night before the talk with the duke.
“Well, not to say exactly know her, sir, but everybody knows of her. She is a most remarkable old person, sir.” Then, after watching his face for a moment or so, he added tentatively, “Would you perhaps wish us to make her acquaintance for—for any reason?”
Tembarom thought the matter over speculatively. He had learned that his first liking for Pearson had been founded upon a rock. He was always to be trusted to understand, and also to apply a quite unusual intelligence to such matters as he became aware of without having been told about them.
“What I'd like would be for her to hear that there's plenty doing at Temple Barholm; that people are coming and going all the time; and that there's ladies to burn—and most of them lookers, at that,” was his answer.
How Pearson had discovered the exotic subtleties of his master's situation and mental attitude toward it, only those of his class and gifted with his occult powers could explain in detail. The fact exists that Pearson did know an immense number of things his employer had not mentioned to him, and held them locked in his bosom in honored security, like a little gentleman. He made his reply with a polite conviction which carried weight.
“It would not be necessary for either Rose or me to make old Mrs. Hutchinson's acquaintance with a view to informing her of anything which occurs on the estate or in the village, sir,” he remarked. “Mrs. Hutchinson knows more of things than any one ever tells her. She sits in her cottage there, and she just knows things and sees through people in a way that'd be almost unearthly, if she wasn't a good old person, and so respectable that there's those that touches their hats to her as if she belonged to the gentry. She's got a blue eye, sir—”
“Has she?” exclaimed Tembarom.
“Yes, sir. As blue as a baby's, sir, and as clear, though she's past eighty. And they tell me there's a quiet, steady look in it that ill-doers downright quail before. It's as if she was a kind of judge that sentenced them without speaking. They can't stand it. Oh, sir! you can depend upon old Mrs. Hutchinson as to who's been here, and even what they've thought about it. The village just flocks to her to tell her the news and get advice about things. She'd know.”
It was as a result of this that on his return from Stone Hover he dismissed the carriage at the gates and walked through them to make a visit in the village. Old Mrs. Hutchinson, sitting knitting in her chair behind the abnormally flourishing fuchsias, geraniums, and campanula carpaticas in her cottage-window, looked between the banked-up flower-pots to see that Mr. Temple Barholm had opened her wicket-gate and was walking up the clean bricked path to her front door. When he knocked she called out in the broad Lancashire she had always spoken, “Coom in!” When he entered he took off his hat and looked at her, friendly but hesitant, and with the expression of a young man who has not quite made up his mind as to what he is about to encounter.
“I'm Temple Temple Barholm, Mrs. Hutchinson,” he announced.
“I know that,” she answered. “Not that tha looks loike th' Temple Barholms, but I've been watchin' thee walk an' drive past here ever since tha coom to th' place.”
She watched him steadily with an astonishingly limpid pair of old eyes. They were old and young at the same time; old because they held deeps of wisdom, young because they were so alive and full of question.
“I don't know whether I ought to have come to see you or not,” he said.
“Well, tha'st coom,” she replied, going on with her knitting. “Sit thee doun and have a bit of a chat.”
“Say!” he broke out. “Ain't you going to shake hands with me?” He held his hand out impetuously. He knew he was all right if she'd shake hands.
“Theer's nowt agen that surely,” she answered, with a shrewd bit of a smile. She gave him her hand. “If I was na stiff in my legs, it's my place to get up an' mak' thee a curtsey, but th' rheumatics has no respect even for th' lord o' th' manor.”
“If you got up and made me a curtsey,” Tembarom said, “I should throw a fit. Say, Mrs. Hutchinson, I bet you know that as well as I do.”
The shrewd bit of a smile lighted her eyes as well as twinkled about her mouth.
“Sit thee doun,” she said again.
So he sat down and looked at her as straight as she looked at him.
“Tha 'd give a good bit,” she said presently, over her flashing needles, “to know how much Little Ann's tow'd me about thee.”
“I'd give a lot to know how much it'd be square to ask you to tell me about her,” he gave back to her, hesitating yet eager.
“What does tha mean by square?” she demanded.
“I mean `fair.' Can I talk to you about her at all? I promised I'd stick it out here and do as she said. She told me she wasn't going to write to me or let her father write. I've promised, and I'm not going to fall down when I've said a thing.”
“So tha coom to see her grandmother?”
He reddened, but held his head up.
“I'm not going to ask her grandmother a thing she doesn't want me to be told. But I've been up against it pretty hard lately. I read some things in the New York papers about her father and his invention, and about her traveling round with him and helping him with his business.”
“In Germany they wur,” she put in, forgetting herself. “They're havin' big doin's over th' invention. What Joe 'u'd do wi'out th' lass I canna tell. She's doin' every bit o' th' managin' an' contrivin' wi' them furriners—but he'll never know it. She's got a chap to travel wi' him as can talk aw th' languages under th' sun.”
Her face flushed and she stopped herself sharply.
“I'm talkin' about her to thee!” she said. “I would na ha' believed o' mysen'.”
He got up from his chair.
“I guess I oughtn't to have come,” he said, restlessly. “But you haven't told me more than I got here and there in the papers. That was what started me. It was like watching her. I could hear her talking and see the way she was doing things till it drove me half crazy. All of a sudden, I just got wild and made up my mind I'd come here. I've wanted to do it many a time, but I've kept away.”
“Tha showed sense i' doin' that,” remarked Mrs. Hutchinson. “She'd not ha' thowt well o' thee if tha'd coom runnin' to her grandmother every day or so. What she likes about thee is as she thinks tha's got a strong backbone o' thy own.”
She looked up at him over her knitting, looked straight into his eyes, and there was that in her own which made him redden and feel his pulse quicken. It was actually something which even remotely suggested that she was not—in the deeps of her strong old mind—as wholly unswerving as her words might imply. It was something more subtle than words. She was not keeping him wholly in the dark when she said “What she likes about thee.” If Ann said things like that to her, he was pretty well off.
“Happen a look at a lass's grandmother—when tha conna get at th' lass hersen—is a bit o' comfort,” she added. “But don't tha go walkin' by here to look in at th' window too often. She would na think well o' that either.”
“Say! There's one thing I'm going to get off my chest before I go,” he announced, “just one thing. She can go where she likes and do what she likes, but I'm going to marry her when she's done it—unless something knocks me on the head and finishes me. I'm going to marry her.”
“Tha art, art tha?” laconically; but her eyes were still on his, and the something in their depths by no means diminished.
“I'm keeping up my end here, and it's no slouch of a job, but I'm not forgetting what she promised for one minute! And I'm not forgetting what her promise means,” he said obstinately.
“Tha'd like me to tell her that?” she said.
“If she doesn't know it, you telling her wouldn't cut any ice,” was his reply. “I'm saying it because I want you to know it, and because it does me good to say it out loud. I'm going to marry her.”
“That's for her and thee to settle,” she commented, impersonally.
“It is settled,” he answered. “There 's no way out of it. Will you shake hands with me again before I go?”
“Aye,” she consented, “I will.”
When she took his hand she held it a minute. Her own was warm, and there was no limpness about it. The secret which had seemed to conceal itself behind her eyes had some difficulty in keeping itself wholly in the background.
“She knows aw tha' does,” she said coolly, as if she were not suddenly revealing immensities. “She knows who cooms an' who goes, an' what they think o' thee, an' how tha gets on wi' 'em. Now get thee gone, lad, an' dunnot tha coom back till her or me sends for thee.”
Within an hour of this time the afternoon post brought to Lady Mallowe a letter which she read with an expression in which her daughter recognized relief. It was in fact a letter for which she had waited with anxiety, and the invitation it contained was a tribute to her social skill at its highest watermark. In her less heroic moments, she had felt doubts of receiving it, which had caused shudders to run the entire length of her spine.
“I'm going to Broome Haughton,” she announced to Joan.
“When?” Joan inquired.
“At the end of the week. I am invited for a fortnight.”
“Am I going?” Joan asked.
“No. You will go to London to meet some friends who are coming over from Paris.”
Joan knew that comment was unnecessary. Both she and her mother were on intimate terms with these hypothetical friends who so frequently turned up from Paris or elsewhere when it was necessary that she should suddenly go back to London and live in squalid seclusion in the unopened house, with a charwoman to provide her with underdone or burnt chops, and eggs at eighteen a shilling, while the shutters of the front rooms were closed, and dusty desolation reigned. She knew every detail of the melancholy squalor of it, the dragging hours, the nights of lying awake listening to the occasional passing of belated cabs, or the squeaks and nibbling of mice in the old walls.
“If you had conducted yourself sensibly you need not have gone,” continued her mother. “I could have made an excuse and left you here. You would at least have been sure of good food and decent comforts.”
“After your visit, are we to return here?” was Lady Joan's sole reply.
“Don't look at me like that,” said Lady Mallowe. “I thought the country would freshen your color at least; but you are going off more every day. You look like the Witch of Endor sometimes.”
Joan smiled faintly. This was the brandishing of an old weapon, and she understood all its significance. It meant that the time for opportunities was slipping past her like the waters of a rapid river.
“I do not know what will happen when I leave Broome Haughton,” her mother added, a note of rasped uncertainty in her voice. “We may be obliged to come here for a short time, or we may go abroad.”
“If I refuse to come, would you let me starve to death in Piers Street?” Joan inquired.
Lady Mallowe looked her over, feeling a sort of frenzy at the sight of her. In truth, the future was a hideous thing to contemplate if no rescue at all was in sight. It would be worse for her than for Joan, because Joan did not care what happened or did not happen, and she cared desperately. She had indeed arrived at a maddening moment.
“Yes,” she snapped, fiercely.
And when Joan faintly smiled again she understood why women of the lower orders beat one another until policemen interfere. She knew perfectly well that the girl had somehow found out that Sir Moses Monaldini was to be at Broome Haughton, and that when he left there he was going abroad. She knew also that she had not been able to conceal that his indifference had of late given her some ghastly hours, and that her play for this lagging invitation had been a frantically bold one. That the most ingenious efforts and devices had ended in success only after such delay made it all the more necessary that no straw must remain unseized on.
“I can wear some of your things, with a little alteration,” she said. “Rose will do it for me. Hats and gloves and ornaments do not require altering. I shall need things you will not need in London. Where are your keys?”
Lady Joan rose and got them for her. She even flushed slightly. They were often obliged to borrow each other's possessions, but for a moment she felt herself moved by a sort of hard pity.
“We are like rats in a trap,” she remarked. “I hope you will get out.”
“If I do, you will be left inside. Get out yourself! Get out yourself!” said Lady Mallowe in a fierce whisper.
Her regrets at the necessity of their leaving Temple Barholm were expressed with fluent touchingness at the dinner-table. The visit had been so delightful. Mr. Temple Barholm and Miss Alicia had been so kind. The loveliness of the whole dear place had so embraced them that they felt as if they were leaving a home instead of ending a delightful visit. It was extraordinary what an effect the house had on one. It was as if one had lived in it always—and always would. So few places gave one the same feeling. They should both look forward—greedy as it seemed—to being allowed some time to come again. She had decided from the first that it was not necessary to go to any extreme of caution or subtlety with her host and Miss Alicia. Her method of paving the way for future visits was perhaps more than a shade too elaborate. She felt, however, that it sufficed. For the most part, Lady Joan sat with lids dropped over her burning eyes. She tried to force herself not to listen. This was the kind of thing which made her sick with humiliation. Howsoever rudimentary these people were, they could not fail to comprehend that a foothold in the house was being bid for. They should at least see that she did not join in the bidding. Her own visit had been filled with feelings at war with one another. There had been hours too many in which she would have been glad—even with the dingy horrors of the closed town house before her—to have flown from the hundred things which called out to her on every side. In the long-past three months of happiness, Jem had described them all to her—the rooms, gardens, pleached walks, pictures, the very furniture itself. She could enter no room, walk in no spot she did not seem to know, and passionately love in spite of herself. She loved them so much that there were times when she yearned to stay in the place at any cost, and others when she could not endure the misery it woke in her—the pure misery. Now it was over for the time being, and she was facing something new. There were endless varieties of wretchedness. She had been watching her mother for some months, and had understood her varying moods of temporary elation or prolonged anxiety. Each one had meant some phase of the episode of Sir Moses Monaldini. The people who lived at Broome Haughton were enormously rich Hebrews, who were related to him. They had taken the beautiful old country-seat and were filling it with huge parties of their friends. The party which Lady Mallowe was to join would no doubt offer opportunities of the most desirable kind. Among this special class of people she was a great success. Her amazingly achieved toilettes, her ripe good looks, her air of belonging to the great world, impressed themselves immensely.
T. Tembarom thought he never had seen Lady Joan look as handsome as she looked to-night. The color on her cheek burned, her eyes had a driven loneliness in them. She had a wonderfully beautiful mouth, and its curve drooped in a new way. He wished Ann could get her in a corner and sit down and talk sense to her. He remembered what he had said to the duke. Perhaps this was the time. If she was going away, and her mother meant to drag her back again when she was ready, it would make it easier for her to leave the place knowing she need not hate to come back. But the duke wasn't making any miss hit when he said it wouldn't be easy. She was not like Ann, who would feel some pity for the biggest fool on earth if she had to throw him down hard. Lady Joan would feel neither compunctions nor relentings. He knew the way she could look at a fellow. If he couldn't make her understand what he was aiming at, they would both be worse off than they would be if he left things as they were. But—the hard line showed itself about his mouth—he wasn't going to leave things as they were.
As they passed through the hall after dinner, Lady Mallowe glanced at a side-table on which lay some letters arrived by the late post. An imposing envelope was on the top of the rest. Joan saw her face light as she took it up.
“I think this is from Broome Haughton,” she said. “If you will excuse me, I will go into the library and read it. It may require answering at once.”
She turned hot and cold, poor woman, and went away, so that she might be free from the disaster of an audience if anything had gone wrong. It would be better to be alone even if things had gone right. The letter was from Sir Moses Monaldini. Grotesque and ignoble as it naturally strikes the uninitiated as seeming, the situation had its touch of hideous pathos. She had fought for her own hand for years; she could not dig, and to beg she was not ashamed; but a time had come when even the most adroit begging began to bore people. They saw through it, and then there resulted strained relations, slight stiffness of manner, even in the most useful and amiable persons, lack of desire to be hospitable, or even condescendingly generous. Cold shoulders were turned, there were ominous threatenings of icy backs presenting themselves. The very tradesmen had found this out, and could not be persuaded that the advertisement furnished by the fact that two beautiful women of fashion ate, drank, and wore the articles which formed the items in their unpaid bills, was sufficient return for the outlay of capital required. Even Mrs. Mellish, when graciously approached by the “relative of Miss Temple Barholm, whose perfect wardrobe you supplied,” had listened to all seductions with a civil eye fixed unmovedly and had referred to the “rules of the establishment.” Nearer and nearer the edge of the abyss the years had pushed them, and now if something did not happen—something—something—even the increasingly shabby small house in town would become a thing of the past. And what then? Could any one wonder she said to herself that she could have beaten Joan furiously. It would not matter to any one else if they dropped out of the world into squalid oblivion—oh, she knew that—she knew that with bitter certainty!—but oh, how it would matter to them!—at least to herself. It was all very well for Mudie's to pour forth streams of sentimental novels preaching the horrors of girls marrying for money, but what were you to do—what in heaven's name were you to do? So, feeling terrified enough actually to offer up a prayer, she took the imposingly addressed letter into the library.
The men had come into the drawing-room when she returned. As she entered, Joan did not glance up from the book she was reading, but at the first sound of her voice she knew what had occurred.
“I was obliged to dash off a note to Broome Haughton so that it would be ready for the early post,” Lady Mallowe said. She was at her best. Palliser saw that some years had slipped from her shoulders. The moment which relieves or even promises to relieve fears does astonishing things. Tembarom wondered whether she had had good news, and Miss Alicia thought that her evening dress was more becoming than any she had ever seen her wear before. Her brilliant air of social ease returned to her, and she began to talk fluently of what was being done in London, and to touch lightly upon the possibility of taking part in great functions. For some time she had rather evaded talk of the future. Palliser had known that the future had seemed to be closing in upon her, and leaving her staring at a high blank wall. Persons whose fortunate names had ceased to fall easily from her lips appeared again upon the horizon. Miss Alicia was impressed anew with the feeling that she had known every brilliant or important personage in the big world of social London; that she had taken part in every dazzling event. Tembarom somehow realized that she had been afraid of something or other, and was for some reason not afraid any more. Such a change, whatsoever the reason for it, ought to have had some effect on her daughter. Surely she would share her luck, if luck had come to her.
But Lady Joan sat apart and kept her eyes upon her book. This was one of the things she often chose to do, in spite of her mother's indignant protest.
“I came here because you brought me,” she would answer. “I did not come to be entertaining or polite.”
She was reading this evening. She heard every word of Lady Mallowe's agreeable and slightly excited conversation. She did not know exactly what had happened; but she knew that it was something which had buoyed her up with a hopefulness which exhilarated her almost too much—as an extra glass of wine might have done. Once or twice she even lost her head a little and was a trifle swaggering. T. Tembarom would not recognize the slip, but Joan saw Palliser's faint smile without looking up from her book. He observed shades in taste and bearing. Before her own future Joan saw the blank wall of stone building itself higher and higher. If Sir Moses had capitulated, she would be counted out. With what degree of boldness could a mother cast her penniless daughter on the world? What unendurable provision make for her? Dare they offer a pound a week and send her to live in the slums until she chose to marry some Hebrew friend of her step-father's? That she knew would be the final alternative. A cruel little smile touched her lips, as she reviewed the number of things she could not do to earn her living. She could not take in sewing or washing, and there was nothing she could teach. Starvation or marriage. The wall built itself higher and yet higher. What a hideous thing it was for a penniless girl to be brought up merely to be a beauty, and in consequence supposably a great lady. And yet if she was born to a certain rank and had height and figure, a lovely mouth, a delicate nose, unusual eyes and lashes, to train her to be a dressmaker or a housemaid would be a stupid investment of capital. If nothing tragic interfered and the right man wanted such a girl, she had been trained to please him. But tragic things had happened, and before her grew the wall while she pretended to read her book.
T. Tembarom was coming toward her. She had heard Palliser suggest a game of billiards.
“Will you come and play billiards with us?” Tembarom asked. “Palliser says you play splendidly.”
“She plays brilliantly,” put in Lady Mallowe. “Come, Joan.”
“No, thank you,” she answered. “Let me stay here and read.”
Lady Mallowe protested. She tried an air of playful maternal reproach because she was in good spirits. Joan saw Palliser smiling quietly, and there was that in his smile which suggested to her that he was thinking her an obstinate fool.
“You had better show Temple Barholm what you can do,” he remarked. “This will be your last chance, as you leave so soon. You ought never let a last chance slip by. I never do.”
Tembarom stood still and looked down at her from his good height. He did not know what Palliser's speech meant, but an instinct made him feel that it somehow held an ugly, quiet taunt.
“What I would like to do,” was the unspoken crudity which passed through his mind, “would be to swat him on the mouth. He's getting at her just when she ought to be let alone.”
“Would you like it better to stay here and read?” he inquired.
“Much better, if you please,” was her reply.
“Then that goes,” he answered, and left her.
He swept the others out of the room with a good-natured promptness which put an end to argument. When he said of anything “Then that goes,” it usually did so.