Headpiece, T. TembaromT. TEMBAROMBY FRANCES HODGSON BURNETTAuthor of “That Lass o’ Lowrie’s,” “The Shuttle,” etc.WITH DECORATIVE PICTURES BY CHARLES S. CHAPMAN
Headpiece, T. Tembarom
BY FRANCES HODGSON BURNETT
Author of “That Lass o’ Lowrie’s,” “The Shuttle,” etc.
WITH DECORATIVE PICTURES BY CHARLES S. CHAPMAN
W
WHEN Tembarom repeated the words “and you’re going to listen,” Lady Joan 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 manhasa 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 doesn’t get busy and try to help—just plain, straighthelp.”
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 have a 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 whatain’tall 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,” she said 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 Beautsville. If I were your kind, and things were different, I’d be crazy about you—crazy. But I’mnotyour kind—and thingsaredifferent.” He drew a step nearer still to her in his intentness. “They’rethisdifferent: 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, despite herself, to do her 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.
“Youaregood 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’swhyI’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 drivenmemad 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 theyknowit couldn’t be true of a fellow like that!”
She sat up stiffly and watched him.
“Do—you—feel like that—abouthim?”
“Do I!” he said hotly. “There were men there thatknewhim, there were women there that knew him: why wasn’t there justoneto 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!” he said hastily. And then, as hastily again: “No, Imeanit. 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 breakdown 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—what you said of him just now.”
“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 wasgone! Oh, why? Why?”
“You didn’t think he’d gone because he didn’t love you?” he asked 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 notlookat me! He would notlookat 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,” he said 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 hehadstood things! How he had borne, in that odd, unimpressive way, insolence and arrogance for which she ought to have been blackballed by decent society! She could scarcely bear it.
“Oh! to think it should have beenyou,” she wept, “justyouwho understood!”
“Well,” he answered speculatively,“I mightn’t have understood as well if it hadn’t been for Ann. By jinks! I used to lie awake at night sometimes, thinking, ‘Supposing it had been Ann and me!’ 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 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.
“I know a woman who has worn one for eight years. Do you want to see it?”
“I’d give a good deal to,” he replied. 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, it was so low,—“but I’ve never taken it off. I wanted him near my heart. It’sJem!”
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, he said: “You’d know that face again most anywhere you saw it, I guess. A man would know a face like that again wherever he saw it. 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. “Godblessyou!” she added quite suddenly, almost fantastic the words sounded to her, that she, Joan Fayre, should be calling down devout benisons on the head of T. Tembarom—T. Tembarom!
HERmother 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 the tables were spread with evening, morning, and walking-dresses, and the millinery collected from their combined wardrobes. She was examining anxiously a laces-appliquéd-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. 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. “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 out. “You—you ought to have struck himdeadwith your answer.”
“Except poor Jem Temple Barholm,” was the amazing reply she received, “he is the onlyfriendI ever had in all my life.”