When she was alone Joan sat and gazed not at her wall but at the pictures that came back to her out of a part of her life which seemed to have been lived centuries ago. They were the pictures that came back continually without being called, the clearness of which always startled her afresh. Sometimes she thought they sprang up to add to her torment, but sometimes it seemed as if they came to save her from herself—her mad, wicked self. After all, there were moments when to know that she had been the girl whose eighteen-year-old heart had leaped so when she turned and met Jem's eyes, as he stood gazing at her under the beech-tree, was something to cling to. She had been that girl and Jem had been—Jem. And she had been the girl who had joined him in that young, ardent vow that they would say the same prayers at the same hour each night together. Ah! how young it had been—how YOUNG! Her throat strained itself because sobs rose in it, and her eyes were hot with the swell of tears.
She could hear voices and laughter and the click of balls from the billiard-room. Her mother and Palliser laughed the most, but she knew the sound of her mother's voice would cease soon, because she would come back to her. She knew she would not leave her long, and she knew the kind of scene they would pass through together when she returned. The old things would be said, the old arguments used, but a new one would be added. It was a pleasant thing to wait here, knowing that it was coming, and that for all her fierce pride and fierce spirit she had no defense. It was at once horrible and ridiculous that she must sit and listen—and stare at the growing wall. It was as she caught her breath against the choking swell of tears that she heard Lady Mallowe returning. She came in with an actual sweep across the room. Her society air had fled, and she was unadornedly furious when she stopped before Joan's chair. For a few seconds she actually glared; then she broke forth in a suppressed undertone:
“Come into the billiard-room. I command it!”
Joan lifted her eyes from her book. Her voice was as low as her mother's, but steadier.
“No,” she answered.
“Is this conduct to continue? Is it?” Lady Mallowe panted.
“Yes,” said Joan, and laid her book on the table near her. There was nothing else to say. Words made things worse.
Lady Mallowe had lost her head, but she still spoke in the suppressed voice.
“You SHALL behave yourself!” she cried, under her breath, and actually made a passionate half-start toward her. “You violent-natured virago! The very look on your face is enough to drive one mad!”
“I know I am violent-natured,” said Joan. “But don't you think it wise to remember that you cannot make the kind of scene here that you can in your own house? We are a bad-tempered pair, and we behave rather like fishwives when we are in a rage. But when we are guests in other people's houses—”
Lady Mallowe's temper was as elemental as any Billingsgate could provide.
“You think you can take advantage of that!” she said. “Don't trust yourself too far. Do you imagine that just when all might go well for me I will allow you to spoil everything?”
“How can I spoil everything?”
“By behaving as you have been behaving since we came here—refusing to make a home for yourself; by hanging round my neck so that it will appear that any one who takes me must take you also.”
“There are servants outside,” Joan warned her.
“You shall not stop me!” cried Lady Mallowe.
“You cannot stop yourself,” said Joan. “That is the worst of it. It is bad enough when we stand and hiss at each other in a stage whisper; but when you lose control over yourself and raise your voice—”
“I came in here to tell you that this is your last chance. I shall never give you another. Do you know how old you are?”
“I shall soon be twenty-seven,” Joan answered. “I wish I were a hundred. Then it would all be over.”
“But it will not be over for years and years and years,” her mother flung back at her. “Have you forgotten that the very rags you wear are not paid for?”
“No, I have not forgotten.” The scene was working itself up on the old lines, as Joan had known it would. Her mother never failed to say the same things, every time such a scene took place.
“You will get no more such rags—paid or unpaid for. What do you expect to do? You don't know how to work, and if you did no decent woman would employ you. You are too good-looking and too bad-tempered.”
Joan knew she was perfectly right. Knowing it, she remained silent, and her silence added to her mother's helpless rage. She moved a step nearer to her and flung the javelin which she always knew would strike deep.
“You have made yourself a laughing-stock for all London for years. You are mad about a man who disgraced and ruined himself.”
She saw the javelin quiver as it struck; but Joan's voice as it answered her had a quality of low and deadly steadiness.
“You have said that a thousand times, and you will say it another thousand—though you know the story was a lie and was proved to be one.”
Lady Mallowe knew her way thoroughly.
“Who remembers the denials? What the world remembers is that Jem Temple Barholm was stamped as a cheat and a trickster. No one has time to remember the other thing. He is dead—dead! When a man's dead it's too late.”
She was desperate enough to drive her javelin home deeper than she had ever chanced to drive it before. The truth—the awful truth she uttered shook Joan from head to foot. She sprang up and stood before her in heart-wrung fury.
“Oh! You are a hideously cruel woman!” she cried. “They say even tigers care for their young! But you—you can say that tome. 'When a man's dead, it's too late.'”
“Itistoo late—it IS too late!” Lady Mallowe persisted. Why had not she struck this note before? It was breaking her will: “I would say anything to bring you to your senses.”
Joan began to move restlessly to and fro.
“Oh, what a fool I am!” she exclaimed. “As if you could understand—as if you could care!”
Struggle as she might to be defiant, she was breaking, Lady Mallowe repeated to herself. She followed her as a hunter might have followed a young leopardess with a wound in its flank.
“I came here because itisyour last chance. Palliser knew what he was saying when he made a joke of it just now. He knew it wasn't a joke. You might have been the Duchess of Merthshire; you might have been Lady St. Maur, with a husband with millions. And here you are. You know what's before you—when I am out of the trap.”
Joan laughed. It was a wild little laugh, and she felt there was no sense in it.
“I might apply for a place in Miss Alicia's Home for Decayed Gentlewomen,” she said.
Lady Mallowe nodded her head fiercely.
“Apply, then. There will be no place for you in the home I am going to live in,” she retorted.
Joan ceased moving about. She was about to hear the one argument that was new.
“You may as well tell me,” she said, wearily.
“I have had a letter from Sir Moses Monaldini. He is to be at Broome Haughton. He is going there purposely to meet me. What he writes can mean only one thing. He means to ask me to marry him. I'm your mother, and I'm nearly twenty years older than you; but you see that I'm out of the trap first.”
“I knew you would be,” answered Joan.
“He detests you,” Lady Mallowe went on. “He will not hear of your living with us—or even near us. He says you are old enough to take care of yourself. Take my advice. I am doing you a good turn in giving it. This New York newsboy is mad over you. If he hadn't been we should have been bundled out of the house before this. He never has spoken to a lady before in his life, and he feels as if you were a goddess. Go into the billiard-room this instant, and do all a woman can. Go!” And she actually stamped her foot on the carpet.
Joan's thunder-colored eyes seemed to grow larger as she stared at her. Her breast lifted itself, and her face slowly turned pale. Perhaps—she thought it wildly—people sometimes did die of feelings like this.
“He would crawl at your feet,” her mother went on, pursuing what she felt sure was her advantage. She was so sure of it that she added words only a fool or a woman half hysteric with rage would have added. “You might live in the very house you would have lived in with Jem Temple Barholm, on the income he could have given you.”
She saw the crassness of her blunder the next moment. If she had had an advantage, she had lost it. Wickedly, without a touch of mirth, Joan laughed in her face.
“Jem's house and Jem's money—and the New York newsboy in his shoes,” she flung at her. “T. Tembarom to live with until one lay down on one's deathbed. T. Tembarom!”
Suddenly, something was giving way in her, Lady Mallowe thought again. Joan slipped into a chair and dropped her head and hidden face on the table.
“Oh! Mother! Mother!” she ended. “Oh! Jem! Jem!”
Was she sobbing or trying to choke sobbing back? There was no time to be lost. Her mother had never known a scene to end in this way before.
“Crying!” there was absolute spite in her voice. “That shows you know what you are in for, at all events. But I've said my last word. What does it matter to me, after all? You're in the trap. I'm not. Get out as best you can. I've done with you.”
She turned her back and went out of the room—as she had come into it—with a sweep Joan would have smiled at as rather vulgar if she had seen it. As a child in the nursery, she had often seen that her ladyship was vulgar.
But she did not see the sweep because her face was hidden. Something in her had broken this time, as her mother had felt. That bitter, sordid truth, driven home as it had been, had done it. Who had time to remember denials, or lies proved to be lies? Nobody in the world. Who had time to give to the defense of a dead man? There was not time enough to give to living ones. It was true—true! When a man is dead, it is too late. The wall had built itself until it reached her sky; but it was not the wall she bent her head and sobbed over. It was that suddenly she had seen again Jem's face as he had stood with slow-growing pallor, and looked round at the ring of eyes which stared at him; Jem's face as he strode by her without a glance and went out of the room. She forgot everything else on earth. She forgot where she was. She was eighteen again, and she sobbed in her arms as eighteen sobs when its heart is torn from it.
“Oh Jem! Jem!” she cried. “If you were only in the same world with me! If you were just in the same world!”
She had forgotten all else, indeed. She forgot too long. She did not know how long. It seemed that no more than a few minutes had passed before she was without warning struck with the shock of feeling that some one was in the room with her, standing near her, looking at her. She had been mad not to remember that exactly this thing would be sure to happen, by some abominable chance. Her movement as she rose was almost violent, she could not hold herself still, and her face was horribly wet with shameless, unconcealable tears. Shameless she felt them—indecent—a sort of nudity of the soul. If it had been a servant who had intruded, or if it had been Palliser it would have been intolerable enough. But it was T. Tembarom who confronted her with his common face, moved mysteriously by some feeling she resented even more than she resented his presence. He was too grossly ignorant to know that a man of breeding, having entered by chance, would have turned and gone away, professing not to have seen. He seemed to think—the dolt!—that he must make some apology.
“Say! Lady Joan!” he began. “I beg your pardon. I didn't want to butt in.”
“Then go away,” she commanded. “Instantly—instantly!”
She knew he must see that she spoke almost through her teeth in her effort to control her sobbing breath. But he made no move toward leaving her. He even drew nearer, looking at her in a sort of meditative, obstinate way.
“N-no,” he replied, deliberately. “I guess—I won't.”
“You won't?” Lady Joan repeated after him. “Then I will.”
He made a stride forward and laid his hand on her arm.
“No. Not on your life. You won't, either—if I can help it. And you're going to LET me help it.”
Almost any one but herself—any one, at least, who did not resent his very existence—would have felt the drop in his voice which suddenly struck the note of boyish, friendly appeal in the last sentence. “You're going to LET me,” he repeated.
She stood looking down at the daring, unconscious hand on her arm.
“I suppose,” she said, with cutting slowness, “that you do not evenknowthat you are insolent. Take your hand away,” in arrogant command.
He removed it with an unabashed half-smile.
“I beg your pardon,” he said. “I didn't even know I'd put it there. It was a break—but I wanted to keep you.”
That he not only wanted to keep her, but intended to do so was apparent. His air was neither rough nor brutal, but he had ingeniously placed himself in the outlet between the big table and the way to the door. He put his hands in his pockets in his vulgar, unconscious way, and watched her.
“Say, Lady Joan!” he broke forth, in the frank outburst of a man who wants to get something over. “I should be a fool if I didn't see that you're up against it—hard! What's the matter?” His voice dropped again.
There was something in the drop this time which—perhaps because of her recent emotion—sounded to her almost as if he were asking the question with the protecting sympathy of the tone one would use in speaking to a child. How dare he! But it came home to her that Jem had once said “What's the matter?” to her in the same way.
“Do you think it likely that I should confide in you?” she said, and inwardly quaked at the memory as she said it.
“No,” he answered, considering the matter gravely. “It's not likely—the way things look to you now. But if you knew me better perhaps it would be likely.”
“I once explained to you that I do not intend to know you better,” she gave answer.
He nodded acquiescently.
“Yes. I got on to that. And it's because it's up to me that I came out here to tell you something I want you to know before you go away. I'm going to confide in you.”
“Cannot even you see that I am not in the mood to accept confidences?” she exclaimed.
“Yes, I can. But you're going to accept this one,” steadily. “No,” as she made a swift movement, “I'm not going to clear the way till I've done.”
“I insist!” she cried. “If you were—”
He put out his hand, but not to touch her.
“I know what you're going to say. If I were a gentleman—Well, I'm not laying claim to that—but I'm a sort of a man, anyhow, though you mayn't think it. And you're going to listen.”
She began to stare at him. It was not the ridiculous boyish drop in his voice which arrested her attention. It was a fantastic, incongruous, wholly different thing. He had suddenly dropped his slouch and stood upright. Did he realize that he had slung his words at her as if they were an order given with the ring of authority?
“I've not bucked against anything you've said or done since you've been here,” he went on, speaking fast and grimly. “I didn't mean to. I had my reasons. There were things that I'd have given a good deal to say to you and ask you about, but you wouldn't let me. You wouldn't give me a chance to square things for you—if they could be squared. You threw me down every time I tried!”
He was too wildly incomprehensible with his changes from humanness to folly. Remembering what he had attempted to say on the day he had followed her in the avenue, she was inflamed again.
“What in the name of New York slang does that mean?” she demanded.
“Never mind New York,” he answered, cool as well as grim. “A fellow that's learned slang in the streets has learned something else as well. He's learned to keep his eyes open. He's on to a way of seeing things. And what I've seen is that you're so doggone miserable that—that you're almost down and out.”
This time she spoke to him in the voice with the quality of deadliness in it which she had used to her mother.
“Do you think that because you are in your own house you can be as intrusively insulting as you choose?” she said.
“No, I don't,” he answered. “What I think is quite different. I think that if a man has a house of his own, and there's any one in big trouble under the roof of it—a woman most of all—he's a cheap skate if he don't get busy and try to help—just plain, straight help.”
He saw in her eyes all her concentrated disdain of him, but he went on, still obstinate and cool and grim.
“I guess 'help' is too big a word just yet. That may come later, and it mayn't. What I'm going to try at now is making it easier for you—just easier.”
Her contemptuous gesture registered no impression on him as he paused a moment and looked fixedly at her.
“You just hate me, don't you?” It was a mere statement which couldn't have been more impersonal to himself if he had been made of wood. “That's all right. I seem like a low-down intruder to you. Well, that's all right, too. But what ain't all right is what your mother has set you on to thinking about me. You'd never have thought it yourself. You'd have known better.”
“What,” fiercely, “is that?”
“That I'm mutt enough to have a mash on you.”
The common slangy crassness of it was a kind of shock. She caught her breath and merely stared at him. But he was not staring at her; he was simply looking straight into her face, and it amazingly flashed upon her that the extraordinary words were so entirely unembarrassed and direct that they were actually not offensive.
He was merely telling her something in his own way, not caring the least about his own effect, but absolutely determined that she should hear and understand it.
Her caught breath ended in something which was like a half-laugh. His queer, sharp, incomprehensible face, his queer, unmoved voice were too extraordinarily unlike anything she had ever seen or heard before.
“I don't want to be brash—and what I want to say may seem kind of that way to you. But it ain't. Anyhow, I guess it'll relieve your mind. Lady Joan, you're a looker—you're a beaut from Beautville. If I were your kind, and things were different, I'd be crazy about you—crazy! But I'm not your kind—and things are different.” He drew a step nearer still to her in his intentness. “They're this different. Why, Lady Joan! I'm dead stuck on another girl!”
She caught her breath again, leaning forward.
“Another—!”
“She says she's not a lady; she threw me down just because all this darned money came to me,” he hastened on, and suddenly he was imperturbable no longer, but flushed and boyish, and more of New York than ever. “She's a little bit of a quiet thing and she drops her h's, but gee—! You're a looker—you're a queen and she's not. But Little Ann Hutchinson—Why, Lady Joan, as far as this boy's concerned”—and he oddly touched himself on the breast—“she makes you look like thirty cents.”
Joan quickly sat down on the chair she had just left. She rested an elbow on the table and shaded her face with her hand. She was not laughing; she scarcely knew what she was doing or feeling.
“You are in love with Ann Hutchinson,” she said, in a low voice.
“Am I?” he answered hotly. “Well, I should smile!” He disdained to say more.
Then she began to know what she felt. There came back to her in flashes scenes from the past weeks in which she had done her worst by him; in which she had swept him aside, loathed him, set her feet on him, used the devices of an ingenious demon to discomfit and show him at his poorest and least ready. And he had not been giving a thought to the thing for which she had striven to punish him. And he plainly did not even hate her. His mind was clear, as water is clear. He had come back to her this evening to do her a good turn—a good turn. Knowing what she was capable of in the way of arrogance and villainous temper, he had determined to do her—in spite of herself—a good turn.
“I don't understand you,” she faltered.
“I know you don't. But it's only because I'm so dead easy to understand. There's nothing to find out. I'm just friendly—friendly—that's all.”
“You would have been friends with me!” she exclaimed. “You would have told me, and I wouldn't let you! Oh!” with an impulsive flinging out of her hand to him, “you good—good fellow!”
“Good be darned!” he answered, taking the hand at once.
“You are good to tell me! I have behaved like a devil to you. But oh! if you only knew!”
His face became mature again; but he took a most informal seat on the edge of the table near her.
“I do know—part of it. That's why I've been trying to be friends with you all the time.” He said his next words deliberately. “If I was the woman Jem Temple Barholm had loved wouldn't it have driven me mad to see another man in his place—and remember what was done to him. I never even saw him, but, good God! “—she saw his hand clench itself—“when I think of it I want to kill somebody! I want to kill half a dozen. Why didn't they know it couldn't be true of a fellow like that!”
She sat up stiffly and watched him.
“Do—you—feel like that—about him?”
“Do I!” red-hotly. “There were men there that knew him! There were women there that knew him! Why wasn't there just one to stand by him? A man that's been square all his life doesn't turn into a card-sharp in a night. Damn fools! I beg your pardon,” hastily. And then, as hastily again: “No, I mean it. Damn fools!”
“Oh!” she gasped, just once.
Her passionate eyes were suddenly blinded with tears. She caught at his clenched hand and dragged it to her, letting her face drop on it and crying like a child.
The way he took her utter breaking down was just like him and like no one else. He put the other hand on her shoulder and spoke to her exactly as he had spoken to Miss Alicia on that first afternoon.
“Don't you mind me, Lady Joan,” he said. “Don't you mind me a bit. I'll turn my back. I'll go into the billiard-room and keep them playing until you get away up-stairs. Now we understand each other, it'll be better for both of us.”
“No, don't go! Don't!” she begged. “It is so wonderful to find some one who sees the cruelty of it.” She spoke fast and passionately. “No one would listen to any defense of him. My mother simply raved when I said what you are saying.”
“Do you want “—he put it to her with a curious comprehending of her emotion—“to talk about him? Would it do you good?”
“Yes! Yes! I have never talked to any one. There has been no one to listen.”
“Talk all you want,” he answered, with immense gentleness. “I'm here.”
“I can't understand it even now, but he would not see me!” she broke out. “I was half mad. I wrote, and he would not answer. I went to his chambers when I heard he was going to leave England. I went to beg him to take me with him, married or unmarried. I would have gone on my knees to him. He was gone! Oh, why? Why?”
“You didn't think he'd gone because he didn't love you?” he put it to her quite literally and unsentimentally. “You knew better than that?”
“How could I be sure of anything! When he left the room that awful night he would not look at me! He would not look at me!”
“Since I've been here I've been reading a lot of novels, and I've found out a lot of things about fellows that are not the common, practical kind. Now, he wasn't. He'd lived pretty much like a fellow in a novel, I guess. What's struck me about that sort is that they think they have to make noble sacrifices, and they'll just walk all over a woman because they won't do anything to hurt her. There's not a bit of sense in it, but that was what he was doing. He believed he was doing the square thing by you—and you may bet your life it hurt him like hell. I beg your pardon—but that's the word—just plain hell.”
“I was only a girl. He was like iron. He went away alone. He was killed, and when he was dead the truth was told.”
“That's what I've remembered “—quite slowly—“every time I've looked at you. By gee! I'd have stood anything from a woman that had suffered as much as that.”
It made her cry—his genuineness—and she did not care in the least that the tears streamed down her cheeks. How he had stood things! How he had borne, in that odd, unimpressive way, insolence and arrogance for which she ought to have been beaten and blackballed by decent society! She could scarcely bear it.
“Oh! to think it should have been you,” she wept, “just you who understood!”
“Well,” he answered speculatively, “I mightn't have understood as well if it hadn't been for Ann. By jings! I used to lie awake at night sometimes thinking `supposing it bad been Ann and me!' I'd sort of work it out as it might have happened in New York—at the office of the Sunday Earth. Supposing some fellow that'd had a grouch against me had managed it so that Galton thought I'd been getting away with money that didn't belong to me—fixing up my expense account, or worse. And Galton wouldn't listen to what I said, and fired me; and I couldn't get a job anywhere else because I was down and out for good. And nobody would listen. And I was killed without clearing myself. And Little Ann was left to stand it—Little Ann! Old Hutchinson wouldn't listen, I know that. And it would be all shut up burning in her big little heart—burning. And T. T. dead, and not a word to say for himself. Jehoshaphat!”—taking out his handkerchief and touching his forehead—“it used to make the cold sweat start out on me. It's doing it now. Ann and me might have been Jem and you. That's why I understood.”
He put out his hand and caught hers and frankly squeezed it—squeezed it hard; and the unconventional clutch was a wonderful thing to her.
“It's all right now, ain't it?” he said. “We've got it straightened out. You'll not be afraid to come back here if your mother wants you to.” He stopped for a moment and then went on with something of hesitation: “We don't want to talk about your mother. We can't. But I understand her, too. Folks are different from each other in their ways. She's different from you. I'll—I'll straighten it out with her if you like.”
“Nothing will need straightening out after I tell her that you are going to marry Little Ann Hutchinson,” said Joan, with a half-smile. “And that you were engaged to her before you saw me.”
“Well, that does sort of finish things up, doesn't it?” said T. Tembarom.
He looked at her so speculatively for a moment after this that she wondered whether he had something more to say. He had.
“There's something I want to ask you,” he ventured.
“Ask anything.”
“Do you know any one—just any one—who has a photo—just any old photo—of Jem Temple Barholm?”
She was rather puzzled.
“Yes. I know a woman who has worn one for nearly eight years. Do you want to see it?”
“I'd give a good deal to,” was his answer.
She took a flat locket from her dress and handed it to him.
“Women don't wear lockets in these days.” He could barely hear her voice because it was so low. “But I've never taken it off. I want him near my heart. It's Jem!”
He held it on the palm of his hand and stood under the light, studying it as if he wanted to be sure he wouldn't forget it.
“It's—sorter like that picture of Miles Hugo, ain't it?” he suggested.
“Yes. People always said so. That was why you found me in the picture-gallery the first time we met.”
“I knew that was the reason—and I knew I'd made a break when I butted in,” he answered. Then, still looking at the photograph, “You'd know this face again most anywhere you saw it, I guess.”
“There are no faces like it anywhere,” said Joan.
“I guess that's so,” he replied. “And it's one that wouldn't change much either. Thank you, Lady Joan.”
He handed back the picture, and she put out her hand again.
“I think I'll go to my room now,” she said. “You've done a strange thing to me. You've taken nearly all the hatred and bitterness out of my heart. I shall want to come back here whether my mother comes or not—I shall want to.”
“The sooner the quicker,” he said. “And so long as I'm here I'll be ready and waiting.”
“Don't go away,” she said softly. “I shall need you.”
“Isn't that great?” he cried, flushing delightedly. “Isn't it just great that we've got things straightened so that you can say that. Gee! This is a queer old world! There's such a lot to do in it, and so few hours in the day. Seems like there ain't time to stop long enough to hate anybody and keep a grouch on. A fellow's got to keep hustling not to miss the things worth while.”
The liking in her eyes was actually wistful.
“That's your way of thinking, isn't it?” she said. “Teach it to me if you can. I wish you could. Good-night.” She hesitated a second. “God bless you!” she added, quite suddenly—almost fantastic as the words sounded to her. That she, Joan Fayre, should be calling down devout benisons on the head of T. Tembarom—T. Tembarom!
Her mother was in her room when she reached it. She had come up early to look over her possessions—and Joan's—before she began her packing. The bed, the chairs, and tables were spread with evening, morning, and walking-dresses, and the millinery collected from their combined wardrobes. She was examining anxiously a lace appliqued and embroidered white coat, and turned a slightly flushed face toward the opening door.
“I am going over your things as well as my own,” she said. “I shall take what I can use. You will require nothing in London. You will require nothing anywhere in future. What is the matter?” she said sharply, as she saw her daughter's face.
Joan came forward feeling it a strange thing that she was not in the mood to fight—to lash out and be glad to do it.
“Captain Palliser told me as I came up that Mr. Temple Barholm had been talking to you,” her mother went on. “He heard you having some sort of scene as he passed the door. As you have made your decision, of course I know I needn't hope that anything has happened.”
“What has happened has nothing to do with my decision. He wasn't waiting for that,” Joan answered her. “We were both entirely mistaken, Mother.”
“What are you talking about?” cried Lady Mallowe, but she temporarily laid the white coat on a chair. “What do you mean by mistaken?”
“He doesn't want me—he never did,” Joan answered again. A shadow of a smile hovered over her face, and there was no derision in it, only a warming recollection of his earnestness when he had said the words she quoted: “He is what they call in New York `dead stuck on another girl.”'
Lady Mallowe sat down on the chair that held the white coat, and she did not push the coat aside.
“He told you that in his vulgar slang!” she gasped it out. “You—you ought to have struck him dead with your answer.”
“Except poor Jem Temple Barholm,” was the amazing reply she received, “he is the only friend I ever had in my life.”
It was business of serious importance which was to bring Captain Palliser's visit to a close. He explained it perfectly to Miss Alicia a day or so after Lady Mallowe and her daughter left them. He had lately been most amiable in his manner toward Miss Alicia, and had given her much valuable information about companies and stocks. He rather unexpectedly found it imperative that he should go to London and Berlin to “see people”—dealers in great financial schemes who were deeply interested in solid business speculations, such as his own, which were fundamentally different from all others in the impeccable firmness of their foundations.
“I suppose he will be very rich some day,” Miss Alicia remarked the first morning she and T. Tembarom took their breakfast alone together after his departure. “It would frighten me to think of having as much money as he seems likely to have quite soon.”
“It would scare me to death,” said Tembarom. She knew he was making a sort of joke, but she thought the point of it was her tremor at the thought of great fortune.
“He seemed to think that it would be an excellent thing for you to invest in—I'm not sure whether it was the India Rubber Tree Company, or the mahogany forests or the copper mines that have so much gold and silver mixed in them that it will pay for the expense of the digging—” she went on.
“I guess it was the whole lot,” put in Tembarom.
“Perhaps it was. They are all going to make everybody so rich that it is quite bewildering. He is very clever in business matters. And so kind. He even said that if I really wished it he might be able to invest my income for me and actually treble it in a year. But of course I told him that my income was your generous gift to me, and that it was far more than sufficient for my needs.”
Tembarom put down his coffee-cup so suddenly to look at her that she was fearful that she had appeared to do Captain Palliser some vague injustice.
“I am sure he meant to be most obliging, dear,” she explained. “I was really quite touched. He said most sympathetically and delicately that when women were unmarried, and unaccustomed to investment, sometimes a business man could be of use to them. He forgot”—affectionately—“that I had you.”
Tembarom regarded her with tender curiosity. She often opened up vistas for him as he himself opened them for the Duke of Stone.
“If you hadn't had me, would you have let him treble your income in a year?” he asked.
Her expression was that of a soft, woodland rabbit or a trusting spinster dove.
“Well, of course, if one were quite alone in the world and had only a small income, it would be nice to have it wonderfully added to in such a short time,” she answered. “But it was his friendly solicitude which touched me. I have not been accustomed to such interested delicacy on the part of—of gentlemen.” Her hesitance before the last word being the result of training, which had made her feel that it was a little bold for “ladies” to refer quite openly to “gentlemen.”
“You sometimes read in the newspapers,” said Tembarom, buttering his toast, “about ladies who are all alone in the world with a little income, but they're not often left alone with it long. It's like you said—you've got me; but if the time ever comes when you haven't got me just you make a dead-sure thing of it that you don't let any solicitous business gentleman treble your income in a year. If it's an income that comes to more than five cents, don't you hand it over to be made into fifteen. Five cents is a heap better—just plain five.”
“Temple!” gasped Miss Alicia. “You—you surely cannot mean that you do not think Captain Palliser is—sincere!”
Tembarom laughed outright, his most hilarious and comforting laugh. He had no intention of enlightening her in such a manner as would lead her at once to behold pictures of him as the possible victim of appalling catastrophes. He liked her too well as she was.
“Sincere?” he said. “He's sincere down to the ground—in what he's reaching after. But he's not going to treble your income, nor mine. If he ever makes that offer again, you just tell him I'm interested, and that I'll talk it over with him.”
“I could not help saying to him that I didn't think you could want any more money when you had so much,” she added, “but he said one never knew what might happen. He was greatly interested when I told him you had once said the very same thing yourself.”
Their breakfast was at an end, and he got up, laughing again, as he came to her end of the table and put his arm around her shoulders in the unconventional young caress she adored him for.
“It's nice to be by ourselves again for a while,” he said. “Let us go for a walk together. Put on the little bonnet and dress that are the color of a mouse. Those little duds just get me. You look so pretty in them.”
The sixteen-year-old blush ran up to the roots of her gray side-ringlets. Just imagine his remembering the color of her dress and bonnet, and thinking that anything could make her look pretty! She was overwhelmed with innocent and grateful confusion. There really was no one else in the least like him.
“You do look well, ma'am,” Rose said, when she helped her to dress. “You've got such a nice color, and that tiny bit of old rose Mrs. Mellish put in the bonnet does bring it out.”
“I wonder if it is wrong of me to be so pleased,” Miss Alicia thought. “I must make it a subject of prayer, and ask to be aided to conquer a haughty and vain-glorious spirit.”
She was pathetically serious, having been trained to a view of the Great First Cause as figuratively embodied in the image of a gigantic, irascible, omnipotent old gentleman, especially wrought to fury by feminine follies connected with becoming headgear.
“It has sometimes even seemed to me that our Heavenly Father has a special objection to ladies,” she had once timorously confessed to Tembarom. “I suppose it is because we are so much weaker than men, and so much more given to vanity and petty vices.”
He had caught her in his arms and actually hugged her that time. Their intimacy had reached the point where the affectionate outburst did not alarm her.
“Say!” he had laughed. “It's not the men who are going to have the biggest pull with the authorities when folks try to get into the place where things are evened up. What I'm going to work my passage with is a list of the few 'ladies' I've known. You and Ann will be at the head of it. I shall just slide it in at the box-office window and say, 'Just look over this, will you? These were friends of mine, and they were mighty good to me. I guess if they didn't turn me down, you needn't. I know they're in here. Reserved seats. I'm not expecting to be put with them but if I'm allowed to hang around where they are that'll be heaven enough for me.'”
“I know you don't mean to be irreverent, dear Temple,” she gasped. “I am quite sure you don't! It is—it is only your American way of expressing your kind thoughts. And of course”—quite hastily—“the Almighty must understand Americans—as he made so many.” And half frightened though she was, she patted his arm with the warmth of comfort in her soul and moisture in her eyes. Somehow or other, he was always so comforting.
He held her arm as they took their walk. She had become used to that also, and no longer thought it odd. It was only one of the ways he had of making her feel that she was being taken care of. They had not been able to have many walks together since the arrival of the visitors, and this occasion was at once a cause of relief and inward rejoicing. The entire truth was that she had not been altogether happy about him of late. Sometimes, when he was not talking and saying amusing New York things which made people laugh, he seemed almost to forget where he was and to be thinking of something which baffled and tried him. The way in which he pulled himself together when he realized that any one was looking at him was, to her mind, the most disturbing feature of his fits of abstraction. It suggested that if he really had a trouble it was a private one on which he would not like her to intrude. Naturally, her adoring eyes watched him oftener than he knew, and she tried to find plausible and not too painful reasons for his mood. He always made light of his unaccustomedness to his new life; but perhaps it made him feel more unrestful than he would admit.
As they walked through the park and the village, her heart was greatly warmed by the way in which each person they met greeted him. They greeted no one else in the same way, and yet it was difficult to explain what the difference was. They liked him—really liked him, though how he had overcome their natural distrust of his newsboy and bootblack record no one but himself knew. In fact, she had reason to believe that even he himself did not know—had indeed never asked himself. They had gradually begun to like him, though none of them had ever accused him of being a gentleman according to their own acceptance of the word. Every man touched his cap or forehead with a friendly grin which spread itself the instant he caught sight of him. Grin and salute were synchronous. It was as if there were some extremely human joke between them. Miss Alicia had delightedly remembered a remark the Duke of Stone had made to her on his return from one of their long drives.
“He is the most popular man in the county,” he had chuckled. “If war broke out and he were in the army, he could raise a regiment at his own gates which would follow him wheresoever he chose to lead it—if it were into hottest Hades.”
Tembarom was rather silent during the first part of their walk, and when he spoke it was of Captain Palliser.
“He's a fellow that's got lots of curiosity. I guess he's asked you more questions than he's asked me,” he began at last, and he looked at her interestedly, though she was not aware of it.
“I thought—” she hesitated slightly because she did not wish to be critical—“I sometimes thought he asked me too many.”
“What was he trying to get on to mostly?”
“He asked so many things about you and your life in New York—but more, I think, about you and Mr. Strangeways. He was really quite persistent once or twice about poor Mr. Strangeways.”
“What did he ask?”
“He asked if I had seen him, and if you had preferred that I should not. He calls him your Mystery, and thinks your keeping him here is so extraordinary.”
“I guess it is—the way he'd look at it,” Tembarom dropped in.
“He was so anxious to find out what he looked like. He asked how old he was and how tall, and whether he was quite mad or only a little, and where you picked him up, and when, and what reason you gave for not putting him in some respectable asylum. I could only say that I really knew nothing about him, and that I hadn't seen him because he had a dread of strangers and I was a little timid.”
She hesitated again.
“I wonder,” she said, still hesitating even after her pause, “I wonder if I ought to mention a rather rude thing I saw him do twice?”
“Yes, you ought,” Tembarom answered promptly; “I've a reason for wanting to know.”
“It was such a singular thing to do—in the circumstances,” she went on obediently. “He knew, as we all know, that Mr. Strangeways must not be disturbed. One afternoon I saw him walk slowly backward and forward before the west room window. He had something in his hand and kept looking up. That was what first attracted my attention—his queer way of looking up. Quite suddenly he threw something which rattled on the panes of glass—it sounded like gravel or small pebbles. I couldn't help believing he thought Mr. Strangeways would be startled into coming to the window.”
Tembarom cleared his throat.
“He did that twice,” he said. “Pearson caught him at it, though Palliser didn't know he did. He'd have done it three times, or more than that, perhaps, but I casually mentioned in the smoking-room one night that some curious fool of a gardener boy had thrown some stones and frightened Strangeways, and that Pearson and I were watching for him, and that if I caught him I was going to knock his block off—bing! He didn't do it again. Darned fool! What does he think he's after?”
“I am afraid he is rather—I hope it is not wrong to say so—but he is rather given to gossip. And I dare say that the temptation to find something quite new to talk about was a great one. So few new things happen in the neighborhood, and, as the duke says, people are so bored—and he is bored himself.”
“He'll be more bored if he tries it again when he comes back,” remarked Tembarom.
Miss Alicia's surprised expression made him laugh.
“Do you think he will come back?” she exclaimed. “After such a long visit?”
“Oh, yes, he'll come back. He'll come back as often as he can until he's got a chunk of my income to treble—or until I've done with him.”
“Until you've done with him, dear?” inquiringly.
“Oh! well,”—casually—“I've a sort of idea that he may tell me something I'd like to know. I'm not sure; I'm only guessing. But even if he knows it he won't tell me until he gets good and ready and thinks I don't want to hear it. What he thinks he's going to get at by prowling around is something he can get me in the crack of the door with.”
“Temple”—imploringly—“are you afraid he wishes to do you an injury?”
“No, I'm not afraid. I'm just waiting to see him take a chance on it,” and he gave her arm an affectionate squeeze against his side. He was always immensely moved by her little alarms for him. They reminded him, in a remote way, of Little Ann coming down Mrs. Bowse's staircase bearing with her the tartan comforter.
How could any one—how could any one want to do him an injury? she began to protest pathetically. But he would not let her go on. He would not talk any more of Captain Palliser or allow her to talk of him. Indeed, her secret fear was that he really knew something he did not wish her to be troubled by, and perhaps thought he had said too much. He began to make jokes and led her to other subjects. He asked her to go to the Hibblethwaites' cottage and pay a visit to Tummas. He had learned to understand his accepted privileges in making of cottage visits by this time; and when he clicked any wicket-gate the door was open before he had time to pass up the wicket-path. They called at several cottages, and he nodded at the windows of others where faces appeared as he passed by.
They had a happy morning together, and he took her back to Temple Barholm beaming, and forgetting Captain Palliser's existence, for the time, at least. In the afternoon they drove out together, and after dining they read the last copy of the Sunday Earth, which had arrived that day. He found quite an interesting paragraph about Mr. Hutchinson and the invention. Little Miss Hutchinson was referred to most flatteringly by the writer, who almost inferred that she was responsible not only for the inventor but for the invention itself. Miss Alicia felt quite proud of knowing so prominent a character, and wondered what it could be like to read about oneself in a newspaper.
About nine o'clock he laid his sheet of the Earth down and spoke to her.
“I'm going to ask you to do me a favor,” he said. “I couldn't ask it if we weren't alone like this. I know you won't mind.”
Of course she wouldn't mind. She was made happier by the mere idea of doing something for him.
“I'm going to ask you to go to your room rather early,” he explained. “I want to try a sort of stunt on Strangeways. I'm going to bring him downstairs if he'll come. I'm not sure I can get him to do it; but he's been a heap better lately, and perhaps I can.”
“Is he so much better as that?” she said. “Will it be safe?”
He looked as serious as she had ever seen him look—even a trifle more serious.
“I don't know how much better he is,” was his answer. “Sometimes you'd think he was almost all right. And then—! The doctor says that if he could get over being afraid of leaving his room it would be a big thing for him. He wants him to go to his place in London so that he can watch him.”
“Do you think you could persuade him to go?”
“I've tried my level best, but so far—nothing doing.”
He got up and stood before the mantel, his back against it, his hands in his pockets.
“I've found out one thing,” he said. “He's used to houses like this. Every now and again he lets something out quite natural. He knew that the furniture in his room was Jacobean—that's what he called it—and he knew it was fine stuff. He wouldn't have known that if he'd been a piker. I'm going to try if he won't let out something else when he sees things here—if he'll come.”
“You have such a wonderfully reasoning mind, dear,” said Miss Alicia, as she rose. “You would have made a great detective, I'm sure.”
“If Ann had been with him,” he said, rather gloomily, “she'd have caught on to a lot more than I have. I don't feel very chesty about the way I've managed it.”
Miss Alicia went up-stairs shortly afterward, and half an hour later Tembarom told the footmen in the hall that they might go to bed. The experiment he was going to make demanded that the place should be cleared of any disturbing presence. He had been thinking it over for sometime past. He had sat in the private room of the great nerve specialist in London and had talked it over with him. He had talked of it with the duke on the lawn at Stone Hover. There had been a flush of color in the older man's cheek-bones, and his eyes had been alight as he took his part in the discussion. He had added the touch of his own personality to it, as always happened.
“We are having some fine moments, my good fellow,” he had said, rubbing his hands. “This is extremely like the fourth act. I'd like to be sure what comes next.”
“I'd like to be sure myself,” Tembarom answered. “It's as if a flash of lightning came sometimes, and then things clouded up. And sometimes when I am trying something out he'll get so excited that I daren't go on until I've talked to the doctor.”
It was the excitement he was dubious about to-night. It was not possible to be quite certain as to the entire safety of the plan; but there might be a chance—even a big chance—of wakening some cell from its deadened sleep. Sir Ormsby way had talked to him a good deal about brain cells, and he had listened faithfully and learned more than he could put into scientific English. Gradually, during the past months, he had been coming upon strangely exciting hints of curious possibilities. They had been mere hints at first, and had seemed almost absurd in their unbelievableness. But each one had linked itself with another, and led him on to further wondering and exploration. When Miss Alicia and Palliser had seen that he looked absorbed and baffled, it had been because he had frequently found himself, to use his own figures of speech, “mixed up to beat the band.” He had not known which way to turn; but he had gone on turning because he could not escape from his own excited interest, and the inevitable emotion roused by being caught in the whirl of a melodrama. That was what he'd dropped into—a whacking big play. It had begun for him when Palford butted in that night and told him he was a lost heir, with a fortune and an estate in England; and the curtain had been jerking up and down ever since. But there had been thrills in it, queer as it was. Something doing all the time, by gee!
He sat and smoked his pipe and wished Ann were with him because he knew he was not as cool as he had meant to be. He felt a certain tingling of excitement in his body; and this was not the time to be excited. He waited for some minutes before he went up-stairs. It was true that Strangeways had been much better lately. He had seemed to find it easier to follow conversation. During the past few days, Tembarom had talked to him in a matter-of-fact way about the house and its various belongings. He had at last seemed to waken to an interest in the picture-gallery. Evidently he knew something of picture-galleries and portraits, and found himself relieved by his own clearness of thought when he talked of them.
“I feel better,” he said, two or three times. “Things seem clearer—nearer.”
“Good business!” exclaimed Tembarom. “I told you it'd be that way. Let's hold on to pictures. It won't be any time before you'll be remembering where you've seen some.”
He had been secretly rather strung up; but he had been very gradual in approaching his final suggestion that some night, when everything was quiet, they might go and look at the gallery together.
“What you need is to get out of the way of wanting to stay in one place,” he argued. “The doctor says you've got to have a change, and even going from one room to another is a fine thing.”
Strangeways had looked at him anxiously for a few moments, even suspiciously, but his face had cleared after the look. He drew himself up and passed his hand over his forehead.
“I believe—perhaps he is right,” he murmured.
“Sure he's right!” said Tembarom. “He's the sort of chap who ought to know. He's been made into a baronet for knowing. Sir Ormsby Galloway, by jings! That's no slouch of a name Oh, he knows, you bet your life!”
This morning when he had seen him he had spoken of the plan again. The visitors had gone away; the servants could be sent out of sight and hearing; they could go into the library and smoke and he could look at the books. And then they could take a look at the picture-gallery if he wasn't too tired. It would be a change anyhow.
To-night, as he went up the huge staircase, Tembarom's calmness of being had not increased. He was aware of a quickened pulse and of a slight dampness on his forehead. The dead silence of the house added to the unusualness of things. He could not remember ever having been so anxious before, except on the occasion when he had taken his first day's “stuff” to Galton, and had stood watching him as he read it. His forehead had grown damp then. But he showed no outward signs of excitement when he entered the room and found Strangeways standing, perfectly attired in evening dress.
Pearson, setting things in order at the other side of the room, was taking note of him furtively over his shoulder. Quite in the casual manner of the ordinary man, he had expressed his intention of dressing for the evening, and Pearson had thanked his stars for the fact that the necessary garments were at hand. From the first, he had not infrequently asked for articles such as only the resources of a complete masculine wardrobe could supply; and on one occasion he had suddenly wished to dress for dinner, and the lame excuses it had been necessary to make had disturbed him horribly instead of pacifying him. To explain that his condition precluded the necessity of the usual appurtenances would have been out of the question. He had been angry. What did Pearson mean? What was the matter? He had said it over and over again, and then had sunk into a hopelessly bewildered mood, and had sat huddled in his dressing-gown staring at the fire. Pearson had been so harrowed by the situation that it had been his own idea to suggest to his master that all possible requirements should be provided. There were occasions when it appeared that the cloud over him lifted for a passing moment, and a gleam of light recalled to him some familiar usage of his past. When he had finished dressing, Pearson had been almost startled by the amount of effect produced by the straight, correctly cut lines of black and white. The mere change of clothes had suddenly changed the man himself—had “done something to him,” Pearson put it. After his first glance at the mirror he had straightened himself, as if recognizing the fault of his own carriage. When he crossed the room it was with the action of a man who has been trained to move well. The good looks, which had been almost hidden behind a veil of uncertainty of expression and strained fearfulness, became obvious. He was tall, and his lean limbs were splendidly hung together. His head was perfectly set, and the bearing of his square shoulders was a soldierly thing. It was an extraordinarily handsome man Tembarom and Pearson found themselves gazing at. Each glanced involuntarily at the other.
“Now that's first-rate! I'm glad you feel like coming,” Tembarom plunged in. He didn't intend to give him too much time to think.
“Thank you. It will be a change, as you said,” Strangeways answered. “One needs change.”
His deep eyes looked somewhat deeper than usual, but his manner was that of any well-bred man doing an accustomed thing. If he had been an ordinary guest in the house, and his host had dropped into his room, he would have comported himself in exactly the same way.
They went together down the corridor as if they had passed down it together a dozen times before. On the stairway Strangeways looked at the tapestries with the interest of a familiarized intelligence.
“It is a beautiful old place,” he said, as they crossed the hall. “That armor was worn by a crusader.” He hesitated a moment when they entered the library, but it was only for a moment. He went to the hearth and took the chair his host offered him, and, lighting a cigar, sat smoking it. If T. Tembarom had chanced to be a man of an analytical or metaphysical order of intellect he would have found, during the past month, many things to lead him far in mental argument concerning the weird wonder of the human mind—of its power where its possessor, the body, is concerned, its sometime closeness to the surface of sentient being, its sometime remoteness. He would have known—awed, marveling at the blackness of the pit into which it can descend—the unknown shades that may enfold it and imprison its gropings. The old Duke of Stone had sat and pondered many an hour over stories his favorite companion had related to him. What curious and subtle processes had the queer fellow not been watching in the closely guarded quiet of the room where the stranger had spent his days; the strange thing cowering in its darkness; the ray of light piercing the cloud one day and seeming lost again the next; the struggles the imprisoned thing made to come forth—to cry out that it was but immured, not wholly conquered, and that some hour would arrive when it would fight its way through at last. Tembarom had not entered into psychological research. He had been entirely uncomplex in his attitude, sitting down before his problem as a besieger might have sat down before a castle. The duke had sometimes wondered whether it was not a good enough thing that he had been so simple about it, merely continuing to believe the best with an unswerving obstinacy and lending a hand when he could. A never flagging sympathy had kept him singularly alive to every chance, and now and then he had illuminations which would have done credit to a cleverer man, and which the duke had rubbed his hands over in half-amused, half-touched elation. How he had kept his head level and held to his purpose!
T. Tembarom talked but little as he sat in his big chair and smoked. Best let him alone and give him time to get used to the newness, he thought. Nothing must happen that could give him a jolt. Let things sort of sink into him, and perhaps they'd set him to thinking and lead him somewhere. Strangeways himself evidently did not want talk. He never wanted it unless he was excited. He was not excited now, and had settled down as if he was comfortable. Having finished one cigar he took another, and began to smoke it much more slowly than he had smoked his first. The slowness began to arrest Tembarom's attention. This was the smoking of a man who was either growing sleepy or sinking into deep thought, becoming oblivious to what he was doing. Sometimes he held the cigar absently between his strong, fine fingers, seeming to forget it. Tembarom watched him do this until he saw it go out, and its white ash drop on the rug at his feet. He did not notice it, but sat sinking deeper and deeper into his own being, growing more remote. What was going on under his absorbed stillness? Tembarom would not have moved or spoken “for a block of Fifth Avenue,” he said internally. The dark eyes seemed to become darker until there was only a pin's point of light to be seen in their pupils. It was as if he were looking at something at a distance—at a strangely long distance. Twice he turned his head and appeared to look slowly round the room, but not as normal people look—as if it also was at the strange, long distance from him, and he were somewhere outside its walls. It was an uncanny thing to be a spectator to.
“How dead still the room is!” Tembarom found himself thinking.
It was “dead still.” And it was a queer deal sitting, not daring to move—just watching. Something was bound to happen, sure! What was it going to be?
Strangeways' cigar dropped from his fingers and appeared to rouse him. He looked puzzled for a moment, and then stooped quite naturally to pick it up.
“I forgot it altogether. It's gone out,” he remarked.
“Have another,” suggested Tembarom, moving the box nearer to him.
“No, thank you.” He rose and crossed the room to the wall of book-shelves. And Tembarom's eye was caught again by the fineness of movement and line the evening clothes made manifest. “What a swell he looked when he moved about like that! What a swell, by jings!”
He looked along the line of shelves and presently took a book down and opened it. He turned over its leaves until something arrested his attention, and then he fell to reading. He read several minutes, while Tembarom watched him. The silence was broken by his laughing a little.
“Listen to this,” he said, and began to read something in a language totally unknown to his hearer. “A man who writes that sort of thing about a woman is an old bounder, whether he's a poet or not. There's a small, biting spitefulness about it that's cattish.”
“Who did it?” Tembarom inquired softly. It might be a good idea to lead him on.