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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of T. Tembarom, by Frances Hodgson Burnett
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: T. Tembarom
+
+Author: Frances Hodgson Burnett
+
+
+Release Date: February, 2001  [Etext #2514]
+The actual date this file first posted: 03/10/01
+Last Updated: March 2, 2018
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK T. TEMBAROM ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+T. TEMBAROM
+
+By Frances Hodgson Burnett
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I:
+
+
+The boys at the Brooklyn public school which he attended did not know
+what the “T.” stood for. He would never tell them. All he said in reply
+to questions was: “It don't stand for nothin'. You've gotter have
+a' 'nitial, ain't you?” His name was, in fact, an almost inevitable
+school-boy modification of one felt to be absurd and pretentious. His
+Christian name was Temple, which became “Temp.” His surname was Barom,
+so he was at once “Temp Barom.” In the natural tendency to avoid
+waste of time it was pronounced as one word, and the letter p being
+superfluous and cumbersome, it easily settled itself into “Tembarom,”
+ and there remained. By much less inevitable processes have surnames
+evolved themselves as centuries rolled by. Tembarom liked it, and soon
+almost forgot he had ever been called anything else.
+
+His education really began when he was ten years old. At that time
+his mother died of pneumonia, contracted by going out to sew, at
+seventy-five cents a day, in shoes almost entirely without soles, when
+the remains of a blizzard were melting in the streets. As, after her
+funeral, there remained only twenty-five cents in the shabby bureau
+which was one of the few articles furnishing the room in the tenement in
+which they lived together, Tembarom sleeping on a cot, the world spread
+itself before him as a place to explore in search of at least one meal
+a day. There was nothing to do but to explore it to the best of his
+ten-year-old ability.
+
+His father had died two years before his mother, and Tembarom had
+vaguely felt it a relief. He had been a resentful, domestically
+tyrannical immigrant Englishman, who held in contempt every American
+trait and institution. He had come over to better himself, detesting
+England and the English because there was “no chance for a man there,”
+ and, transferring his dislikes and resentments from one country to
+another, had met with no better luck than he had left behind him.
+This he felt to be the fault of America, and his family, which was
+represented solely by Tembarom and his mother, heard a good deal about
+it, and also, rather contradictorily, a good deal about the advantages
+and superiority of England, to which in the course of six months he
+became gloomily loyal. It was necessary, in fact, for him to have
+something with which to compare the United States unfavorably. The
+effect he produced on Tembarom was that of causing him, when he entered
+the public school round the corner, to conceal with determination
+verging on duplicity the humiliating fact that if he had not been born
+in Brooklyn he might have been born in England. England was not popular
+among the boys in the school. History had represented the country to
+them in all its tyrannical rapacity and bloodthirsty oppression of the
+humble free-born. The manly and admirable attitude was to say, “Give me
+liberty or give me death”--and there was the Fourth of July.
+
+Though Tembarom and his mother had been poor enough while his father
+lived, when he died the returns from his irregular odd jobs no longer
+came in to supplement his wife's sewing, and add an occasional day or
+two of fuller meals, in consequence of which they were oftener than ever
+hungry and cold, and in desperate trouble about the rent of their room.
+Tembarom, who was a wiry, enterprising little fellow, sometimes found an
+odd job himself. He carried notes and parcels when any one would trust
+him with them, he split old boxes into kindling-wood, more than once he
+“minded” a baby when its mother left its perambulator outside a store.
+But at eight or nine years of age one's pay is in proportion to one's
+size. Tembarom, however, had neither his father's bitter eye nor his
+mother's discouraged one. Something different from either had been
+reincarnated in him from some more cheerful past. He had an alluring
+grin instead--a grin which curled up his mouth and showed his sound,
+healthy, young teeth,--a lot of them,--and people liked to see them.
+
+At the beginning of the world it is only recently reasonable to suppose
+human beings were made with healthy bodies and healthy minds. That of
+course was the original scheme of the race. It would not have been
+worth while to create a lot of things aimlessly ill made. A journeyman
+carpenter would not waste his time in doing it, if he knew any better.
+Given the power to make a man, even an amateur would make him as
+straight as he could, inside and out. Decent vanity would compel him to
+do it. He would be ashamed to show the thing and admit he had done it,
+much less people a world with millions of like proofs of incompetence.
+Logically considered, the race was built straight and clean and healthy
+and happy. How, since then, it has developed in multitudinous less sane
+directions, and lost its normal straightness and proportions, I am,
+singularly enough, not entirely competent to explain with any degree of
+satisfactory detail. But it cannot be truthfully denied that this has
+rather generally happened. There are human beings who are not beautiful,
+there are those who are not healthy, there are those who hate people and
+things with much waste of physical and mental energy, there are people
+who are not unwilling to do others an ill turn by word or deed, and
+there are those who do not believe that the original scheme of the race
+was ever a decent one.
+
+This is all abnormal and unintelligent, even the not being beautiful,
+and sometimes one finds oneself called upon passionately to resist
+a temptation to listen to an internal hint that the whole thing is
+aimless. Upon this tendency one may as well put one's foot firmly, as it
+leads nowhere. At such times it is supporting to call to mind a certain
+undeniable fact which ought to loom up much larger in our philosophical
+calculations. No one has ever made a collection of statistics regarding
+the enormous number of perfectly sane, kind, friendly, decent creatures
+who form a large proportion of any mass of human beings anywhere and
+everywhere--people who are not vicious or cruel or depraved, not as a
+result of continual self-control, but simply because they do not want to
+be, because it is more natural and agreeable to be exactly the opposite
+things; people who do not tell lies because they could not do it with
+any pleasure, and would, on the contrary, find the exertion an annoyance
+and a bore; people whose manners and morals are good because their
+natural preference lies in that direction. There are millions of them
+who in most essays on life and living are virtually ignored because
+they do none of the things which call forth eloquent condemnation or
+brilliant cynicism. It has not yet become the fashion to record them.
+When one reads a daily newspaper filled with dramatic elaborations
+of crimes and unpleasantness, one sometimes wishes attention might be
+called to them--to their numbers, to their decencies, to their normal
+lack of any desire to do violence and their equally normal disposition
+to lend a hand. One is inclined to feel that the majority of persons do
+not believe in their existence. But if an accident occurs in the street,
+there are always several of them who appear to spring out of the earth
+to give human sympathy and assistance; if a national calamity, physical
+or social, takes place, the world suddenly seems full of them. They are
+the thousands of Browns, Joneses, and Robinsons who, massed
+together, send food to famine-stricken countries, sustenance to
+earthquake-devastated regions, aid to wounded soldiers or miners or
+flood-swept homelessness. They are the ones who have happened naturally
+to continue to grow straight and carry out the First Intention. They
+really form the majority; if they did not, the people of the earth would
+have eaten one another alive centuries ago. But though this is surely
+true, a happy cynicism totally disbelieves in their existence. When a
+combination of circumstances sufficiently dramatic brings one of them
+into prominence, he is either called an angel or a fool. He is neither.
+He is only a human creature who is normal.
+
+After this manner Tembarom was wholly normal. He liked work and rejoiced
+in good cheer, when he found it, however attenuated its form. He was a
+good companion, and even at ten years old a practical person. He took
+his loose coppers from the old bureau drawer, and remembering that he
+had several times helped Jake Hutchins to sell his newspapers, he went
+forth into the world to find and consult him as to the investment of his
+capital.
+
+“Where are you goin', Tem?” a woman who lived in the next room said when
+she met him on the stairs. “What you goin' to do?”
+
+“I'm goin' to sell newspapers if I can get some with this,” he replied,
+opening his hand to show her the extent of his resources.
+
+She was almost as poor as he was, but not quite. She looked him over
+curiously for a moment, and then fumbled in her pocket. She drew out two
+ten-cent pieces and considered them, hesitating. Then she looked again
+at him. That normal expression in his nice ten-year-old eyes had its
+suggestive effect.
+
+“You take this,” she said, handing him the two pieces. “It'll help you
+to start.”
+
+“I'll bring it back, ma'am,” said Tem. “Thank you, Mis' Hullingworth.”
+
+In about two weeks' time he did bring it back. That was the beginning.
+He lived through all the experiences a small boy waif and stray would be
+likely to come in contact with. The abnormal class treated him ill, and
+the normal class treated him well. He managed to get enough food to eat
+to keep him from starvation. Sometimes he slept under a roof and much
+oftener out-of-doors. He preferred to sleep out-of-doors more than half
+of the year, and the rest of the time he did what he could. He saw and
+learned many strange things, but was not undermined by vice because he
+unconsciously preferred decency. He sold newspapers and annexed any old
+job which appeared on the horizon. The education the New York streets
+gave him was a liberal one. He became accustomed to heat and cold and
+wet weather, but having sound lungs and a tough little body combined
+with the normal tendencies already mentioned, he suffered no more
+physical deterioration than a young Indian would suffer. After selling
+newspapers for two years he got a place as “boy” in a small store. The
+advance signified by steady employment was inspiring to his energies. He
+forged ahead, and got a better job and better pay as he grew older. By
+the time he was fifteen he shared a small bedroom with another boy.
+In whatsoever quarter he lived, friends seemed sporadic. Other boy's
+congregated about him. He did not know he had any effect at all, but
+his effect, in fact, was rather like that of a fire in winter or a cool
+breeze in summer. It was natural to gather where it prevailed.
+
+There came a time when he went to a night class to learn stenography.
+Great excitement had been aroused among the boys he knew best by a
+rumor that there were “fellows” who could earn a hundred dollars a week
+“writing short.” Boyhood could not resist the florid splendor of the
+idea. Four of them entered the class confidently looking forward to
+becoming the recipients of four hundred a month in the course of six
+weeks. One by one they dropped off, until only Tembarom remained, slowly
+forging ahead. He had never meant anything else but to get on in the
+world--to get as far as he could. He kept at his “short,” and by the
+time he was nineteen it helped him to a place in a newspaper office.
+He took dictation from a nervous and harried editor, who, when he
+was driven to frenzy by overwork and incompetencies, found that the
+long-legged, clean youth with the grin never added fuel to the flame
+of his wrath. He was a common young man, who was not marked by special
+brilliancy of intelligence, but he had a clear head and a good temper,
+and a queer aptitude for being able to see himself in the other man's
+shoes--his difficulties and moods. This ended in his being tried with
+bits of new work now and then. In an emergency he was once sent out to
+report the details of a fire. What he brought back was usable, and his
+elation when he found he had actually “made good” was ingenuous enough
+to spur Galton, the editor, into trying him again.
+
+To Tembarom this was a magnificent experience. The literary suggestion
+implied by being “on a newspaper” was more than he had hoped for. If you
+have sold newspapers, and slept in a barrel or behind a pile of lumber
+in a wood-yard, to report a fire in a street-car shed seems a flight of
+literature. He applied himself to the careful study of newspapers--their
+points of view, their style of phrasing. He believed them to be perfect.
+To attain ease in expressing himself in their elevated language he felt
+to be the summit of lofty ambition. He had no doubts of the exaltation
+of his ideal. His respect and confidence almost made Galton cry at
+times, because they recalled to him days when he had been nineteen and
+had regarded New York journalists with reverence. He liked Tembarom more
+and more. It actually soothed him to have him about, and he fell into
+giving him one absurd little chance after another. When he brought in
+“stuff” which bore too evident marks of utter ignorance, he actually
+touched it up and used it, giving him an enlightening, ironical hint or
+so. Tembarom always took the hints with gratitude. He had no mistaken
+ideas of his own powers. Galton loomed up before him a sort of god, and
+though the editor was a man with a keen, though wearied, brain and a
+sense of humor, the situation was one naturally productive of harmonious
+relations. He was of the many who unknowingly came in out of the cold
+and stood in the glow of Tembarom's warm fire, or took refuge from the
+heat in his cool breeze. He did not know of the private, arduous study
+of journalistic style, and it was not unpleasing to see that the nice
+young cub was gradually improving. Through pure modest fear or ridicule,
+Tembarom kept to himself his vaulting ambition. He practised reports of
+fires, weddings, and accidents in his hall bedroom.
+
+A hall bedroom in a third-rate boarding-house is not a cheerful place,
+but when Tembarom vaguely felt this, he recalled the nights spent in
+empty trucks and behind lumber-piles, and thought he was getting spoiled
+by luxury. He told himself that he was a fellow who always had luck.
+He did not know, neither did any one else, that his luck would have
+followed him if he had lived in a coal-hole. It was the concomitant
+of his normal build and outlook on life. Mrs. Bowse, his hard-worked
+landlady, began by being calmed down by his mere bearing when he came
+to apply for his room and board. She had a touch of grippe, and had
+just emerged from a heated affray with a dirty cook, and was inclined to
+battle when he presented himself. In a few minutes she was inclined to
+battle no longer. She let him have the room. Cantankerous restrictions
+did not ruffle him.
+
+“Of course what you say GOES,” he said, giving her his friendly grin.
+“Any one that takes boarders has GOT to be careful. You're in for a bad
+cold, ain't you?”
+
+“I've got grippe again, that's what I've got,” she almost snapped.
+
+“Did you ever try Payson's 'G. Destroyer'? G stands for grippe, you
+know. Catchy name, ain't it? They say the man that invented it got ten
+thousand dollars for it. 'G. Destroyer.' You feel like you have to find
+out what it means when you see it up on a boarding. I'm just over grippe
+myself, and I've got half a bottle in my pocket. You carry it about with
+you, and swallow one every half-hour. You just try it. It set me right
+in no time.”
+
+He took the bottle out of his waistcoat pocket and handed it to her. She
+took it and turned it over.
+
+“You're awful good-natured,”--She hesitated,--“but I ain't going to take
+your medicine. I ought to go and get some for myself. How much does it
+cost?”
+
+“It's on the bottle; but it's having to get it for yourself that's the
+matter. You won't have time, and you'll forget it.”
+
+“That's true enough,” said Mrs. Bowse, looking at him sharply. “I guess
+you know something about boarding-houses.”
+
+“I guess I know something about trying to earn three meals a day--or two
+of them. It's no merry jest, whichever way you do it.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+When he took possession of his hall bedroom the next day and came down
+to his first meal, all the boarders looked at him interestedly. They had
+heard of the G. Destroyer from Mrs. Bowse, whose grippe had disappeared.
+Jim Bowles and Julius Steinberger looked at him because they were about
+his own age, and shared a hall bedroom on his floor; the young woman
+from the notion counter in a down-town department store looked at him
+because she was a young woman; the rest of the company looked at him
+because a young man in a hall bedroom might or might not be noisy
+or objectionable, and the incident of the G. Destroyer sounded
+good-natured. Mr. Joseph Hutchinson, the stout and discontented
+Englishman from Manchester, looked him over because the mere fact that
+he was a new-comer had placed him by his own rash act in the position of
+a target for criticism. Mr. Hutchinson had come to New York because he
+had been told that he could find backers among profuse and innumerable
+multi-millionaires for the invention which had been the haunting vision
+of his uninspiring life. He had not been met with the careless
+rapture which had been described to him, and he was becoming violently
+antagonistic to American capital and pessimistic in his views of
+American institutions. Like Tembarom's father, he was the resentful
+Englishman.
+
+“I don't think much o' that chap,” he said in what he considered an
+undertone to his daughter, who sat beside him and tried to manage that
+he should not be infuriated by waiting for butter and bread and second
+helpings. A fine, healthy old feudal feeling that servants should be
+roared at if they did not “look sharp” when he wanted anything was one
+of his salient characteristics.
+
+“Wait a bit, Father; we don't know anything about him yet,” Ann
+Hutchinson murmured quietly, hoping that his words had been lost in the
+clatter of knives and forks and dishes.
+
+As Tembarom had taken his seat, he had found that, when he looked across
+the table, he looked directly at Miss Hutchinson; and before the meal
+ended he felt that he was in great good luck to be placed opposite an
+object of such singular interest. He knew nothing about “types,” but if
+he had been of those who do, he would probably have said to himself that
+she was of a type apart. As it was, he merely felt that she was of a
+kind one kept looking at whether one ought to or not. She was a little
+thing of that exceedingly light slimness of build which makes a girl a
+childish feather-weight. Few girls retain it after fourteen or fifteen.
+A wind might supposably have blown her away, but one knew it would not,
+because she was firm and steady on her small feet. Ordinary strength
+could have lifted her with one hand, and would have been tempted to do
+it. She had a slim, round throat, and the English daisy face it upheld
+caused it to suggest to the mind the stem of a flower. The roundness of
+her cheek, in and out of which totally unexpected dimples flickered,
+and the forget-me-not blueness of her eyes, which were large and rather
+round also, made her look like a nice baby of singularly serious and
+observing mind. She looked at one as certain awe-inspiring things in
+perambulators look at one--with a far and clear silence of gaze which
+passes beyond earthly obstacles and reserves a benign patience with
+follies. Tembarom felt interestedly that one really might quail before
+it, if one had anything of an inferior quality to hide. And yet it was
+not a critical gaze at all. She wore a black dress with a bit of white
+collar, and she had so much soft, red hair that he could not help
+recalling one or two women who owned the same quantity and seemed able
+to carry it only as a sort of untidy bundle. Hers looked entirely under
+control, and yet was such a wonder of burnished fullness that it tempted
+the hand to reach out and touch it. It became Tembarom's task during the
+meal to keep his eyes from turning too often toward it and its owner.
+
+If she had been a girl who took things hard, she might have taken her
+father very hard indeed. But opinions and feelings being solely a matter
+of points of view, she was very fond of him, and, regarding him as
+a sacred charge and duty, took care of him as though she had been a
+reverentially inclined mother taking care of a boisterous son. When his
+roar was heard, her calm little voice always fell quietly on indignant
+ears the moment it ceased. It was her part in life to act as a
+palliative: her mother, whose well-trained attitude toward the ruling
+domestic male was of the early Victorian order, had lived and died one.
+A nicer, warmer little woman had never existed. Joseph Hutchinson had
+adored and depended on her as much as he had harried her. When he had
+charged about like a mad bull because he could not button his collar, or
+find the pipe he had mislaid in his own pocket, she had never said more
+than “Now, Mr. Hutchinson,” or done more than leave her sewing to button
+the collar with soothing fingers, and suggest quietly that sometimes he
+DID chance to carry his pipe about with him. She was of the class which
+used to call its husband by a respectful surname. When she died she left
+him as a sort of legacy to her daughter, spending the last weeks of her
+life in explaining affectionately all that “Father” needed to keep him
+quiet and make him comfortable.
+
+Little Ann had never forgotten a detail, and had even improved upon
+some of them, as she happened to be cleverer than her mother, and had,
+indeed, a far-seeing and clear young mind of her own. She had been
+called “Little Ann” all her life. This had held in the first place
+because her mother's name had been Ann also, and after her mother's
+death the diminutive had not fallen away from her. People felt it
+belonged to her not because she was especially little, though she was a
+small, light person, but because there was an affectionate humor in the
+sound of it.
+
+Despite her hard needs, Mrs. Bowse would have faced the chance of losing
+two boarders rather than have kept Mr. Joseph Hutchinson but for Little
+Ann. As it was, she kept them both, and in the course of three months
+the girl was Little Ann to almost every one in the house. Her normalness
+took the form of an instinct which amounted to genius for seeing what
+people ought to have, and in some occult way filling in bare or trying
+places.
+
+“She's just a wonder, that girl,” Mrs. Bowse said to one boarder after
+another.
+
+“She's just a wonder,” Jim Bowles and Julius Steinberger murmured to
+each other in rueful confidence, as they tilted their chairs against
+the wall of their hall bedroom and smoked. Each of the shabby and
+poverty-stricken young men had of course fallen hopelessly in love with
+her at once. This was merely human and inevitable, but realizing in
+the course of a few weeks that she was too busy taking care of her
+irritable, boisterous old Manchester father, and everybody else, to have
+time to be made love to even by young men who could buy new boots when
+the old ones had ceased to be water-tight, they were obliged to resign
+themselves to the, after all, comforting fact that she became a mother
+to them, not a sister. She mended their socks and sewed buttons on for
+them with a firm frankness which could not be persuaded into meaning
+anything more sentimental than a fixed habit of repairing anything which
+needed it, and which, while at first bewildering in its serenity, ended
+by reducing the two youths to a dust of devotion.
+
+“She's a wonder, she is,” they sighed when at every weekend they found
+their forlorn and scanty washing resting tidily on their bed.
+
+In the course of a week, more or less, Tembarom's feeling for her would
+have been exactly that of his two hall-bedroom neighbors, but that his
+nature, though a practical one, was not inclined to any supine degree of
+resignation. He was a sensible youth, however, and gave no trouble. Even
+Joseph Hutchinson, who of course resented furiously any “nonsense” of
+which his daughter and possession was the object, became sufficiently
+mollified by his good spirits and ready good nature to refrain from open
+conversational assault.
+
+“I don't mind that chap as much as I did at first,” he admitted
+reluctantly to Little Ann one evening after a good dinner and a
+comfortable pipe. “He's not such a fool as he looks.”
+
+Tembarom was given, as Little Ann was, to seeing what people wanted. He
+knew when to pass the mustard and other straying condiments. He picked
+up things which dropped inconveniently, he did not interrupt the remarks
+of his elders and betters, and several times when he chanced to be
+in the hall, and saw Mr. Hutchinson, in irritable, stout Englishman
+fashion, struggling into his overcoat, he sprang forward with a light,
+friendly air and helped him. 'He did not do it with ostentatious
+politeness or with the manner of active youth giving generous aid to
+elderly avoirdupois. He did it as though it occurred to him as a natural
+result of being on the spot.
+
+It took Mrs. Bowse and her boarding-house less than a week definitely
+to like him. Every night when he sat down to dinner he brought news with
+him-news and jokes and new slang. Newspaper-office anecdote and talk
+gave a journalistic air to the gathering when he was present, and there
+was novelty in it. Soon every one was intimate with him, and interested
+in what he was doing. Galton's good-natured patronage of him was a thing
+to which no one was indifferent. It was felt to be the right thing in
+the right place. When he came home at night it became the custom to ask
+him questions as to the bits of luck which befell him. He became
+“T. T.” instead of Mr. Tembarom, except to Joseph Hutchinson and his
+'daughter. Hutchinson called him Tembarom, but Little Ann said “Mr.
+Tembarom” with quaint frequency when she spoke to him.
+
+“Landed anything to-day, T. T.?” some one would ask almost every
+evening, and the interest in his relation of the day's adventures
+increased from week to week. Little Ann never asked questions and seldom
+made comments, but she always listened attentively. She had gathered,
+and guessed from what she had gathered, a rather definite idea of what
+his hard young life had been. He did not tell pathetic stories about
+himself, but he and Jim Bowles and Julius Steinberger had become fast
+friends, and the genial smoking of cheap tobacco in hall bedrooms tends
+to frankness of relation, and the various ways in which each had found
+himself “up against it” in the course of their brief years supplied
+material for anecdotal talk.
+
+“But it's bound to be easier from now on,” he would say. “I've got the
+'short' down pretty fine--not fine enough to make big money, but enough
+to hold down a job with Galton. He's mighty good to me. If I knew more,
+I believe he'd give me a column to take care of--Up-town Society column
+perhaps. A fellow named Biker's got it. Twenty per. Goes on a bust twice
+a month, the fool. Gee! I wish I had his job!”
+
+Mrs. Bowse's house was provided with a parlor in which her boarders
+could sit in the evening when so inclined. It was a fearsome room,
+which, when the dark, high-ceilinged hall was entered, revealed depths
+of dingy gloom which appeared splashed in spots with incongruous
+brilliancy of color. This effect was produced by richly framed
+department-store chromo lithographs on the walls, aided by lurid
+cushion-covers, or “tidies” representing Indian maidens or chieftains
+in full war paint, or clusters of poppies of great boldness of hue.
+They had either been Christmas gifts bestowed upon Mrs. Bowse or
+department-store bargains of her own selection, purchased with thrifty
+intent. The red-and-green plush upholstered walnut chairs arid sofa had
+been acquired by her when the bankruptcy of a neighboring boarding-house
+brought them within her means. They were no longer very red or very
+green, and the cheerfully hopeful design of the tidies and cushions had
+been to conceal worn places and stains. The mantelpiece was adorned by a
+black-walnut-and-gold-framed mirror, and innumerable vases of the ornate
+ninety-eight-cents order. The centerpiece held a large and extremely
+soiled spray of artificial wistaria. The end of the room was rendered
+attractive by a tent-like cozy-corner built of savage weapons and
+Oriental cotton stuffs long ago become stringy and almost leprous in
+hue. The proprietor of the bankrupt boarding-house had been “artistic.”
+ But Mrs. Bowse was a good-enough soul whose boarders liked her and her
+house, and when the gas was lighted and some one played “rag-time” on
+the second-hand pianola, they liked the parlor.
+
+Little Ann did not often appear in it, but now and then she came down
+with her bit of sewing,--she always had a “bit of sewing,”--and she sat
+in the cozy-corner listening to the talk or letting some one confide
+troubles to her. Sometimes it was the New England widow, Mrs. Peck, who
+looked like a spinster school-ma'am, but who had a married son with a
+nice wife who lived in Harlem and drank heavily. She used to consult
+with Little Ann as to the possible wisdom of putting a drink deterrent
+privately in his tea. Sometimes it was Mr. Jakes, a depressed little
+man whose wife had left him, for no special reason he could discover.
+Oftenest perhaps it was Julius Steinberger or Jim Bowles who did
+their ingenuous best to present themselves to her as energetic, if not
+successful, young business men, not wholly unworthy of attention and
+always breathing daily increasing devotion. Sometimes it was Tembarom,
+of whom her opinion had never been expressed, but who seemed to have
+made friends with her. She liked to hear about the newspaper office and
+Mr. Galton, and never was uninterested in his hopes of “making good.”
+ She seemed to him the wisest and most direct and composed person he had
+ever known. She spoke with the broad, flat, friendly Manchester accent,
+and when she let drop a suggestion, it carried a delightfully sober
+conviction with it, because what she said was generally a revelation of
+logical mental argument concerning details she had gathered through her
+little way of listening and saying nothing whatever.
+
+“If Mr. Biker drinks, he won't keep his place,” she said to Tembarom one
+night. “Perhaps you might get it yourself, if you persevere.”
+
+Tembarom reddened a little. He really reddened through joyous
+excitement.
+
+“Say, I didn't know you knew a thing about that,” he answered. “You're
+a regular wonder. You scarcely ever say anything, but the way you get on
+to things gets me.”
+
+“Perhaps if I talked more I shouldn't notice as much,” she said, turning
+her bit of sewing round and examining it. “I never was much of a talker.
+Father's a good talker, and Mother and me got into the way of listening.
+You do if you live with a good talker.”
+
+Tembarom looked at the girl with a male gentleness, endeavoring to
+subdue open expression of the fact that he was convinced that she was as
+thoroughly aware of her father's salient characteristics as she was of
+other things.
+
+“You do,” said Tembarom. Then picking up her scissors, which had dropped
+from her lap, and politely returning them, he added anxiously: “To think
+of you remembering Biker! I wonder, if I ever did get his job, if I
+could hold it down?”
+
+“Yes,” decided Little Ann; “you could. I've noticed you're that kind of
+person, Mr. Tembarom.”
+
+“Have you?” he said elatedly. “Say, honest Injun?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“I shall be getting stuck on myself if you encourage me like that,”
+ he said, and then, his face falling, he added, “Biker graduated at
+Princeton.”
+
+“I don't know much about society,” Little Ann remarked,--“I never saw
+any either up-town or down-town or in the country,--but I shouldn't
+think you'd have to have a college education to write the things you see
+about it in the newspaper paragraphs.”
+
+Tembarom grinned.
+
+“They're not real high-brow stuff, are they,” he said. “'There was
+a brilliant gathering on Tuesday evening at the house of Mr. Jacob
+Sturtburger at 79 Two Hundredth Street on the occasion of the marriage
+of his daughter Miss Rachel Sturtburger to Mr. Eichenstein. The bride
+was attired in white peau de cygne trimmed with duchess lace.'”
+
+Little Ann took him up. “I don't know what peau de cygne is, and I
+daresay the bride doesn't. I've never been to anything but a village
+school, but I could make up paragraphs like that myself.”
+
+“That's the up-town kind,” said Tembarom. “The down-town ones wear
+their mothers' point-lace wedding-veils some-times, but they're not much
+different. Say, I believe I could do it if I had luck.”
+
+“So do I,” returned Little Ann.
+
+Tembarom looked down at the carpet, thinking the thing over. Ann went on
+sewing.
+
+“That's the way with you,” he said presently: “you put things into a
+fellow's head. You've given me a regular boost, Little Ann.”
+
+It is not unlikely that but for the sensible conviction in her voice he
+would have felt less bold when, two weeks later, Biker, having gone upon
+a “bust” too prolonged, was dismissed with-out benefit of clergy, and
+Galton desperately turned to Tembarom with anxious question in his eye.
+
+“Do you think you could take this job?” he said.
+
+Tembarom's heart, as he believed at the time, jumped into his throat.
+
+“What do you think, Mr. Galton?” he asked.
+
+“It isn't a thing to think about,” was Galton's answer. “It's a thing I
+must be sure of.”
+
+“Well,” said Tembarom, “if you give it to me, I'll put up a mighty hard
+fight before I fall down.”
+
+Galton considered him, scrutinizing keenly his tough, long-built body,
+his sharp, eager, boyish face, and especially his companionable grin.
+
+“We'll let it go at that,” he decided. “You'll make friends up in
+Harlem, and you won't find it hard to pick up news. We can at least try
+it.”
+
+Tembarom's heart jumped into his throat again, and he swallowed it once
+more. He was glad he was not holding his hat in his hand because he knew
+he would have forgotten himself and thrown it up into the air.
+
+“Thank you, Mr. Galton,” he said, flushing tremendously. “I'd like to
+tell you how I appreciate your trusting me, but I don't know how. Thank
+you, sir.”
+
+When he appeared in Mrs. Bowse's dining-room that evening there was a
+glow of elation about him and a swing in his entry which attracted all
+eyes at once. For some unknown reason everybody looked at him, and,
+meeting his eyes, detected the presence of some new exultation.
+
+“Landed anything, T. T.?” Jim Bowles cried out. “You look it.”
+
+“Sure I look it,” Tembarom answered, taking his napkin out of its
+ring with an unconscious flourish. “I've landed the up-town society
+page--landed it, by gee!”
+
+A good-humored chorus of ejaculatory congratulation broke forth all
+round the table.
+
+“Good business!” “Three cheers for T. T.!” “Glad of it!” “Here's luck!”
+ said one after another.
+
+They were all pleased, and it was generally felt that Galton had shown
+sense and done the right thing again. Even Mr. Hutchinson rolled about
+in his chair and grunted his approval.
+
+After dinner Tembarom, Jim Bowles, and Julius Steinberger went
+upstairs stairs together and filled the hall bedroom with clouds of
+tobacco-smoke, tilting their chairs against the wall, smoking their
+pipes furiously, flushed and talkative, working themselves up with the
+exhilarated plannings of youth. Jim Bowles and Julius had been down on
+their luck for several weeks, and that “good old T. T.” should come in
+with this fairy-story was an actual stimulus. If you have never in your
+life been able to earn more than will pay for your food and lodging,
+twenty dollars looms up large. It might be the beginning of anything.
+
+“First thing is to get on to the way to do it,” argued Tembarom. “I
+don't know the first thing. I've got to think it out. I couldn't ask
+Biker. He wouldn't tell me, anyhow.”
+
+“He's pretty mad, I guess,” said Steinberger.
+
+“Mad as hops,” Tembarom answered. “As I was coming down-stairs from
+Galton's room he was standing in the hall talking to Miss Dooley, and
+he said: `That Tembarom fellow's going to do it! He doesn't know how to
+spell. I should like to see his stuff come in.' He said it loud, because
+he wanted me to hear it, and he sort of laughed through his nose.”
+
+“Say, T. T., can you spell?” Jim inquired thoughtfully.
+
+“Spell? Me? No,” Tembarom owned with unshaken good cheer. “What I've got
+to do is to get a tame dictionary and keep it chained to the leg of my
+table. Those words with two m's or two l's in them get me right down on
+the mat. But the thing that looks biggest to me is how to find out where
+the news is, and the name of the fellow that'll put me on to it. You
+can't go up a man's front steps and ring the bell and ask him if he's
+going to be married or buried or have a pink tea.”
+
+“Wasn't that a knock at the door?” said Steinberger.
+
+It was a knock, and Tembarom jumped up and threw the door open, thinking
+Mrs. Bowse might have come on some household errand. But it was Little
+Ann Hutchinson instead of Mrs. Bowse, and there was a threaded needle
+stuck into the front of her dress, and she had on a thimble.
+
+“I want Mr. Bowles's new socks,” she said maternally. “I promised I'd
+mark them for him.”
+
+Bowles and Steinberger sprang from their chairs, and came forward in the
+usual comfortable glow of pleasure at sight of her.
+
+“What do you think of that for all the comforts of a home?” said
+Tembarom. “As if it wasn't enough for a man to have new socks without
+having marks put on them! What are your old socks made of anyhow--solid
+gold? Burglars ain't going to break in and steal them.”
+
+“They won't when I've marked them, Mr. Tembarom,” answered Little Ann,
+looking up at him with sober, round, for-get-me-not blue eyes, but with
+a deep dimple breaking out near her lip; “but all three pairs would not
+come home from the wash if I didn't.”
+
+“Three pairs!” ejaculated Tembarom. “He's got three pairs of socks! New?
+That's what's been the matter with him for the last week. Don't you mark
+them for him, Little Ann. 'Tain't good for a man to have everything.”
+
+“Here they are,” said Jim, bringing them forward. “Twenty-five marked
+down to ten at Tracy's. Are they pretty good?”
+
+Little Ann looked them over with the practised eye of a connoisseur of
+bargains.
+
+“They'd be about a shilling in Manchester shops,” she decided, “and they
+might be put down to sixpence. They're good enough to take care of.”
+
+She was not the young woman who is ready for prolonged lively
+conversation in halls and at bedroom doors, and she had turned away with
+the new socks in her hand when Tembarom, suddenly inspired, darted after
+her.
+
+“Say, I've just thought of something,” he exclaimed eagerly. “It's
+something I want to ask you.”
+
+“What is it?”
+
+“It's about the society-page lay-out.” He hesitated. “I wonder if it'd
+be rushing you too much if--say,” he suddenly broke off, and standing
+with his hands in his pockets, looked down at her with anxious
+admiration, “I believe you just know about everything.”
+
+“No, I don't, Mr. Tembarom; but I'm very glad about the page.
+Everybody's glad.”
+
+One of the chief difficulties Tembarom found facing him when he talked
+to Little Ann was the difficulty of resisting an awful temptation to
+take hold of her--to clutch her to his healthy, tumultuous young breast
+and hold her there firmly. He was half ashamed of himself when he
+realized it, but he knew that his venial weakness was shared by Jim
+Bowles and Steinberger and probably others. She was so slim and light
+and soft, and the serious frankness of her eyes and the quaint air of
+being a sort of grown-up child of astonishing intelligence produced an
+effect it was necessary to combat with.
+
+“What I wanted to say,” he put it to her, “was that I believe if you'd
+just let me talk this thing out to you it'd do me good. I believe you'd
+help me to get somewhere. I've got to fix up a scheme for getting next
+the people who have things happening to them that I can make society
+stuff out of, you know. Biker didn't make a hit of it, but, gee! I've
+just got to. I've got to.”
+
+“Yes,” answered Little Ann, her eyes fixed on him thoughtfully; “you've
+got to, Mr. Tembarom.”
+
+“There's not a soul in the parlor. Would you mind coming down and
+sitting there while I talk at you and try to work things out? You could
+go on with your marking.”
+
+She thought it over a minute.
+
+“I'll do it if Father can spare me,” she made up her mind. “I'll go and
+ask him.”
+
+She went to ask him, and returned in two or three minutes with her small
+sewing-basket in her hand.
+
+“He can spare me,” she said. “He's reading his paper, and doesn't want
+to talk.”
+
+They went down-stairs together and found the room empty. Tembarom turned
+up the lowered gas, and Little Ann sat down in the cozy-corner with her
+work-basket on her knee. Tembarom drew up a chair and sat down opposite
+to her. She threaded a needle and took up one of Jim's new socks.
+
+“Now,” she said.
+
+“It's like this,” he explained. “The page is a new deal, anyhow. There
+didn't used to be an up-town society column at all. It was all Fifth
+Avenue and the four hundred; but ours isn't a fashionable paper, and
+their four hundred ain't going to buy it to read their names in it.
+They'd rather pay to keep out of it. Uptown's growing like smoke, and
+there's lots of people up that way that'd like their friends to read
+about their weddings and receptions, and would buy a dozen copies to
+send away when their names were in. There's no end of women and girls
+that'd like to see their clothes described and let their friends read
+the descriptions. They'd buy the paper, too, you bet. It'll be a big
+circulation-increaser. It's Galton's idea, and he gave the job to Biker
+because he thought an educated fellow could get hold of people. But
+somehow he couldn't. Seems as if they didn't like him. He kept getting
+turned down. The page has been mighty poor--no pictures of brides or
+anything. Galton's been sick over it. He'd been sure it'd make a hit.
+Then Biker's always drinking more or less, and he's got the swell head,
+anyhow. I believe that's the reason he couldn't make good with the
+up-towners.”
+
+“Perhaps he was too well educated, Mr. Tembarom,” said Little Ann. She
+was marking a letter J in red cotton, and her outward attention was
+apparently wholly fixed on her work.
+
+“Say, now,” Tembarom broke out, “there's where you come in. You go on
+working as if there was nothing but that sock in New York, but I guess
+you've just hit the dot. Perhaps that was it. He wanted to do Fifth
+Avenue work anyway, and he didn't go at Harlem right. He put on
+Princeton airs when he asked questions. Gee! a fellow can't put on any
+kind of airs when he's the one that's got to ask.”
+
+“You'll get on better,” remarked Little Ann. “You've got a friendly way
+and you've a lot of sense. I've noticed it.”
+
+Her head was bent over the red J and she still looked at it and not at
+Tembarom. This was not coyness, but simple, calm absorption. If she had
+not been making the J, she would have sat with her hands folded in her
+lap, and gazed at the young man with undisturbed attention.
+
+“Have you?” said Tembarom, gratefully. “That gives me another
+boost, Little Ann. What a man seems to need most is just plain
+twenty-cents-a-yard sense. Not that I ever thought I had the dollar
+kind. I'm not putting on airs.”
+
+“Mr. Galton knows the kind you have. I suppose that's why he gave you
+the page.” The words, spoken in the shrewd-sounding Manchester accent,
+were neither flattering nor unflattering; they were merely impartial.
+
+“Well, now I've got it, I can't fall down,” said Tembarom. “I've got
+to find out for myself how to get next to the people I want to talk to.
+I've got to find out who to get next to.”
+
+Little Ann put in the final red stitch of the letter J and laid the sock
+neatly folded on the basket.
+
+“I've just been thinking something, Mr. Tembarom,” she said. “Who makes
+the wedding-cakes?”
+
+He gave a delighted start.
+
+“Gee!” he broke out, “the wedding-cakes!”
+
+“Yes,” Little Ann proceeded, “they'd have to have wedding-cakes, and
+perhaps if you went to the shops where they're sold and could make
+friends with the people, they'd tell you whom they were selling them to,
+and you could get the addresses and go and find out things.”
+
+Tembarom, glowing with admiring enthusiasm, thrust out his hand.
+
+“Little Ann, shake!” he said. “You've given me the whole show, just
+like I thought you would. You're just the limit.”
+
+“Well, a wedding-cake's the next thing after the bride,” she answered.
+
+Her practical little head had given him the practical lead. The mere
+wedding-cake opened up vistas. Confectioners supplied not only weddings,
+but refreshments for receptions and dances. Dances suggested the “halls”
+ in which they were held. You could get information at such places. Then
+there were the churches, and the florists who decorated festal scenes.
+Tembarom's excitement grew as he talked. One plan led to another; vistas
+opened on all sides. It all began to look so easy that he could not
+understand how Biker could possibly have gone into such a land of
+promise, and returned embittered and empty-handed.
+
+“He thought too much of himself and too little of other people,” Little
+Ann summed him up in her unsevere, reasonable voice. “That's so silly.”
+
+Tembarom tried not to look at her affectionately, but his voice was
+affectionate as well as admiring, despite him.
+
+“The way you get on to a thing just in three words!” he said. “Daniel
+Webster ain't in it.”
+
+“I dare say if you let the people in the shops know that you come from a
+newspaper, it'll be a help,” she went on with ingenuous worldly wisdom.
+“They'll think it'll be a kind of advertisement. And so it will. You get
+some neat cards printed with your name and Sunday Earth on them.”
+
+“Gee!” Tembarom ejaculated, slapping his knee, “there's another! You
+think of every darned thing, don't you?”
+
+She stopped a moment to look at him.
+
+“You'd have thought of it all yourself after a bit,” she said. She was
+not of those unseemly women whose intention it is manifestly to instruct
+the superior man. She had been born in a small Manchester street
+and trained by her mother, whose own training had evolved through
+affectionately discreet conjugal management of Mr. Hutchinson.
+
+“Never you let a man feel set down when you want him to see a thing
+reasonable, Ann,” she had said. “You never get on with them if you do.
+They can't stand it. The Almighty seemed to make 'em that way. They've
+always been masters, and it don't hurt any woman to let 'em be, if she
+can help 'em to think reasonable. Just you make a man feel comfortable
+in his mind and push him the reasonable way. But never you shove him,
+Ann. If you do, he'll just get all upset-like. Me and your father have
+been right-down happy together, but we never should have been if I
+hadn't thought that out before we was married two weeks. Perhaps it's
+the Almighty's will, though I never was as sure of the Almighty's way of
+thinking as some are.”
+
+Of course Tembarom felt soothed and encouraged, though he belonged
+to the male development which is not automatically infuriated at a
+suspicion of female readiness of logic.
+
+“Well, I might have got on to it in time,” he answered, still trying
+not to look affectionate, “but I've no time to spare. Gee! but I'm glad
+you're here!”
+
+“I sha'n't be here very long.” There was a shade of patient regret in
+her voice. “Father's got tired of trying America. He's been disappointed
+too often. He's going back to England.”
+
+“Back to England!” Tembarom cried out forlornly, “Oh Lord! What shall we
+all do without you, Ann?”
+
+“You'll do as you did before we came,” said Little Ann.
+
+“No, we sha'n't. We can't. I can't anyhow.” He actually got up from
+his chair and began to walk about, with his hands thrust deep in his
+pockets.
+
+Little Ann began to put her first stitches into a red B. No human being
+could have told what she thought.
+
+“We mustn't waste time talking about that,” she said. “Let us talk about
+the page. There are dressmakers, you know. If you could make friends
+with a dressmaker or two they'd tell you what the wedding things were
+really made of. Women do like their clothes to be described right.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+His work upon the page began the following week. When the first morning
+of his campaign opened with a tumultuous blizzard, Jim Bowles and Julius
+Steinberger privately sympathized with him as they dressed in company,
+but they heard him whistling in his own hall bedroom as he put on his
+clothes, and to none of the three did it occur that time could be lost
+because the weather was inhuman. Blinding snow was being whirled through
+the air by a wind which had bellowed across the bay, and torn its way
+howling through the streets, maltreating people as it went, snatching
+their breath out of them, and leaving them gaspingly clutching at hats
+and bending their bodies before it. Street-cars went by loaded from
+front to back platform, and were forced from want of room to whizz
+heartlessly by groups waiting anxiously at street corners.
+
+Tembarom saw two or three of them pass in this way, leaving the waiting
+ones desperately huddled together behind them. He braced himself and
+whistled louder as he buttoned his celluloid collar.
+
+“I'm going to get up to Harlem all the same,” he said. “The 'L' will be
+just as jammed, but there'll be a place somewhere, and I'll get it.”
+
+His clothes were the outwardly decent ones of a young man who
+must perforce seek cheap clothing-stores, and to whom a ten-dollar
+“hand-me-down” is a source of exultant rejoicing. With the aid of great
+care and a straight, well-formed young body, he managed to make the
+best of them; but they were not to be counted upon for warmth even in
+ordinarily cold weather. His overcoat was a specious covering, and was
+not infrequently odorous of naphtha.
+
+“You've got to know something about first aid to the wounded if you live
+on ten per,” he had said once to Little Ann. “A suit of clothes gets to
+be an emergency-case mighty often if it lasts three years.”
+
+“Going up to Harlem to-day, T. T.?” his neighbor at table asked him as
+he sat down to breakfast.
+
+“Right there,” he answered. “I've ordered the limousine round, with the
+foot-warmer and fur rugs.”
+
+“I guess a day wouldn't really matter much,” said Mrs. Bowse,
+good-naturedly. “Perhaps it might be better to-morrow.”
+
+“And perhaps it mightn't,” said Tembarom, eating “break-fast-food” with
+a cheerful appetite. “What you can't be stone-cold sure of to-morrow you
+drive a nail in to-day.”
+
+He ate a tremendous breakfast as a discreet precautionary measure.
+The dark dining-room was warm, and the food was substantial. It was
+comfortable in its way.
+
+“You'd better hold the hall door pretty tight when you go out, and don't
+open it far,” said Mrs. Bowse as he got up to go. “There's wind enough
+to upset things.”
+
+Tembarom went out in the hall, and put on his insufficient overcoat. He
+buttoned it across his chest, and turned its collar up to his ears. Then
+he bent down to turn up the bottoms of his trousers.
+
+“A pair of arctics would be all to the merry right here,” he said,
+and then he stood upright and saw Little Ann coming down the staircase
+holding in her hand a particularly ugly tar-tan-plaid woolen neck-scarf
+of the kind known in England as a “comforter.”
+
+“If you are going out in this kind of weather,” she said in her serene,
+decided little voice, “you'd better wrap this comforter right round your
+neck, Mr. Tembarom. It's one of Father's, and he can spare it because
+he's got another, and, besides, he's not going out.”
+
+Tembarom took it with a sudden emotional perception of the fact that he
+was being taken care of in an abnormally luxurious manner.
+
+“Now, I appreciate that,” he said. “The thing about you. Little Ann, is
+that you never make a wrong guess about what a fellow needs, do you?”
+
+“I'm too used to taking care of Father not to see things,” she answered.
+
+“What you get on to is how to take care of the whole world--initials
+on a fellow's socks and mufflers round his neck.” His eyes looked
+remarkably bright.
+
+“If a person were taking care of the whole world, he'd have a lot to
+do,” was her sedate reception of the remark. “You'd better put that
+twice round your neck, Mr. Tembarom.”
+
+She put up her hand to draw the end of the scarf over his shoulder,
+and Tembarom stood still at once, as though he were a little boy being
+dressed for school. He looked down at her round cheek, and watched one
+of the unexpected dimples reveal itself in a place where dimples are not
+usually anticipated. It was coming out because she was smiling a small,
+observing smile. It was an almost exciting thing to look at, and he
+stood very still indeed. A fellow who did not own two pairs of boots
+would be a fool not to keep quiet.
+
+“You haven't told me I oughtn't to go out till the blizzard lets up,” he
+said presently.
+
+“No, I haven't, Mr. Tembarom,” she answered. “You're one of the kind
+that mean to do a thing when they've made up their minds. It'll be a
+nice bit of money if you can keep the page.”
+
+“Galton said he'd give me a chance to try to make good,” said Tembarom.
+“And if it's the hit he thinks it ought to be, he'll raise me ten.
+Thirty per. Vanastorbilts won't be in it. I think I'll get married,” he
+added, showing all his attractive teeth at once.
+
+“I wouldn't do that,” she said. “It wouldn't be enough to depend on. New
+York's an expensive place.”
+
+She drew back and looked him over. “That'll keep you much warmer,” she
+decided. “Now you can go. I've been looking in the telephone-book for
+confectioners, and I've written down these addresses.” She handed him a
+slip of paper.
+
+Tembarom caught his breath.
+
+“Hully gee!” he exclaimed, “there never were TWO of you made! One used
+up all there was of it. How am I going to thank you, anyhow!”
+
+“I do hope you'll be able to keep the page,” she said. “I do that, Mr.
+Tembarom.”
+
+If there had been a touch of coquetry in her earnest, sober, round,
+little face she would have been less distractingly alluring, but there
+was no shade of anything but a sort of softly motherly anxiety in the
+dropped note of her voice, and it was almost more than flesh and blood
+at twenty-five could stand. Tembarom made a hasty, involuntary
+move toward her, but it was only a slight one, and it was scarcely
+perceptible before he had himself in hand and hurriedly twisted his
+muffler tighter, showing his teeth again cheerily.
+
+“You keep on hoping it all day without a let-up,” he said. “And tell Mr.
+Hutchinson I'm obliged to him, please. Get out of the way, Little Ann,
+while I go out. The wind might blow you and the hat-stand upstairs.”
+
+He opened the door and dashed down the high steps into the full blast
+of the blizzard. He waited at the street corner while three overcrowded
+cars whizzed past him, ignoring his signals because there was not an
+inch of space left in them for another passenger. Then he fought his
+way across two or three blocks to the nearest “L” station. He managed to
+wedge himself into a train there, and then at least he was on his way.
+He was thinking hard and fast, but through all his planning the warm hug
+of the tartan comforter round his neck kept Little Ann near him. He had
+been very thankful for the additional warmth as the whirling snow and
+wind had wrought their will with him while he waited for the cars at the
+street corner. On the “L” train he saw her serious eyes and heard the
+motherly drop in her voice as she said, “I do hope you'll be able to
+keep the page. I do that, Mr. Tembarom.” It made him shut his hands hard
+as they hung in his overcoat pockets for warmth, and it made him shut
+his sound teeth strongly.
+
+“Gee! I've got to!” his thoughts said for him. “If I make it, perhaps
+my luck will have started. When a man's luck gets started, every darned
+thing's to the good.”
+
+The “L” had dropped most of its crowd when it reached the up-town
+station among the hundredth streets which was his destination. He
+tightened his comforter, tucked the ends firmly into the front of his
+overcoat, and started out along the platform past the office, and down
+the steep, iron steps, already perilous with freezing snow. He had to
+stop to get his breath when he reached the street, but he did not stop
+long. He charged forth again along the pavement, looking closely at the
+shop-windows. There were naturally but few passers-by, and the shops
+were not important-looking; but they were open, and he could see
+that the insides of them looked comfortable in contrast with the
+blizzard-ruled street. He could not see both sides of the street as he
+walked up one side of the block without coming upon a confectioner's.
+He crossed at the corner and turned back on the other side. Presently
+he saw that a light van was standing before one place, backed up against
+the sidewalk to receive parcels, its shuddering horse holding its head
+down and bracing itself with its forelegs against the wind. At any rate,
+something was going on there, and he hurried forward to find out what
+it was. The air was so thick with myriads of madly flying bits of snow,
+which seemed whirled in all directions in the air, that he could not
+see anything definite even a few yards away. When he reached the van
+he found that he had also reached his confectioner. The sign over the
+window read “M. Munsberg, Confectionery. Cakes. Ice-Cream. Weddings,
+Balls and Receptions.”
+
+“Made a start, anyhow,” said Tembarom.
+
+He turned into the store, opening the door carefully, and thereby barely
+escaping being blown violently against a stout, excited, middle-aged
+little Jew who was bending over a box he was packing. This was evidently
+Mr. Munsberg, who was extremely busy, and even the modified shock upset
+his temper.
+
+“Vhere you goin'?” he cried out. “Can't you look vhere you're goin'?”
+
+Tembarom knew this was not a good beginning, but his natural mental
+habit of vividly seeing the other man's point of view helped him after
+its usual custom. His nice grin showed itself.
+
+“I wasn't going; I was coming,” he said. “Beg pardon. The wind's blowing
+a hundred miles an hour.”
+
+A good-looking young woman, who was probably Mrs. Munsberg, was packing
+a smaller box behind the counter. Tembarom lifted his hat, and she liked
+it.
+
+“He didn't do it a bit fresh,” she said later. “Kind o' nice.” She spoke
+to him with professional politeness.
+
+“Is there anything you want?” she asked.
+
+Tembarom glanced at the boxes and packages standing about and at
+Munsberg, who had bent over his packing again. Here was an occasion for
+practical tact.
+
+“I've blown in at the wrong time,” he said. “You're busy getting things
+out on time. I'll just wait.. Gee! I'm glad to be inside. I want to
+speak to Mr. Munsberg.”
+
+Mr. Munsberg jerked himself upright irascibly, and broke forth in the
+accent of the New York German Jew.
+
+“If you comin' in here to try to sell somedings, young man, joost you
+let that same vind vat blew you in blow you right out pretty quick. I'm
+not buyin' nodings. I'm busy.”
+
+“I'm not selling a darned thing,” answered Tembarom, with undismayed
+cheer.
+
+“You vant someding?” jerked out Munsberg.
+
+“Yes, I want something,” Tembarom answered, “but it's nothing any one
+has to pay for. I'm only a newspaper man.” He felt a glow of pride as he
+said the words. He was a newspaper man even now. “Don't let me stop you
+a minute. I'm in luck to get inside anywhere and sit down. Let me wait.”
+
+Mrs. Munsberg read the Sunday papers and revered them. She also knew
+the value of advertisement. She caught her husband's eye and hurriedly
+winked at him.
+
+“It's awful outside. 'T won't do harm if he waits--if he ain't no
+agent,” she put in.
+
+“See,” said Tembarom, handing over one of the cards which had been
+Little Ann's businesslike inspiration.
+
+“T. Tembarom. New York Sunday Earth,” read Munsberg, rather grudgingly.
+He looked at T. Tembarom, and T. Tembarom looked back at him. The normal
+human friendliness in the sharp boyish face did it.
+
+“Vell,” he said, making another jerk toward a chair, “if you ain't no
+agent, you can vait.”
+
+“Thank you,” said Tembarom, and sat down. He had made another start,
+anyhow.
+
+After this the packing went on fast and furious. A youth appeared
+from the back of the store, and ran here and there as he was ordered.
+Munsberg and his wife filled wooden and cardboard boxes with small cakes
+and larger ones, with sandwiches and salads, candies and crystallized
+fruits. Into the larger box was placed a huge cake with an icing temple
+on the top of it, with silver doves adorning it outside and in. There
+was no mistaking the poetic significance of that cake. Outside the
+blizzard whirled clouds of snow-particles through the air, and the van
+horse kept his head down and his forelegs braced. His driver had long
+since tried to cover him with a blanket which the wind continually
+tore loose from its fastenings, and flapped about the creature's sides.
+Inside the store grew hot. There was hurried moving about, banging
+of doors, excited voices, irascible orders given and countermanded.
+Tembarom found out in five minutes that the refreshments were for a
+wedding reception to be held at a place known as “The Hall,” and the
+goods must be sent out in time to be ready for the preparations for the
+wedding supper that night.
+
+“If I knew how to handle it, I could get stuff for a column just sitting
+here,” he thought. He kept both eyes and ears open. He was sharp enough
+to realize that the mere sense of familiarity with detail which he was
+gaining was material in itself. Once or twice he got up and lent a hand
+with a box in his casual way, and once or twice he saw that he could
+lift some-thing down or up for Mrs. Munsberg, who was a little woman.
+The natural casualness of his way of jumping up to do the things
+prevented any suspicion of officiousness, and also prevented his waiting
+figure from beginning to wear the air of a superfluous object in the
+way. He waited a long time, and circumstances so favored him as to give
+him a chance or so. More than once exactly the right moment presented
+itself when he could interject an apposite remark. Twice he made
+Munsberg laugh, and twice Mrs. Munsberg voluntarily addressed him.
+
+At last the boxes and parcels ware all carried out and stored in the
+van, after strugglings with the opening and shutting of doors, and
+battlings with outside weather.
+
+When this was all over, Munsberg came back into the store, knocking his
+hands together and out of breath.
+
+“Dot's all right,” he said. “It'll all be there plenty time. Vouldn't
+have fell down on that order for tventy-vive dollars. Dot temple on the
+cake was splendid. Joseph he done it fine.”
+
+“He never done nothin' no finer,” Mrs. Munsberg said. “It looked as good
+as anything on Fift' Avenoo.”
+
+Both were relieved and pleased with themselves, their store, and their
+cake-decorator. Munsberg spoke to Tembarom in the manner of a man who,
+having done a good thing, does not mind talking about it.
+
+“Dot was a big order,” he remarked.
+
+“I should smile,” answered Tembarom. “I'd like to know whose going to
+get outside all that good stuff. That wedding-cake took the tart away
+from anything I've ever seen. Which of the four hundred's going to eat
+it?”
+
+“De man vot ordered dot cake,” Munsberg swaggered, “he's not got to
+vorry along on vun million nor two. He owns de biggest brewery in New
+York, I guess in America. He's Schwartz of Schwartz & Kapfer.”
+
+“Well, he 's got it to burn!” said Tembarom.
+
+“He's a mighty good man,” went on Munsberg. “He's mighty fond of his
+own people. He made his first money in Harlem, and he had a big fight
+to get it; but his own people vas good to him, an' he's never forgot
+it. He's built a fine house here, an' his girls is fine girls. De vun's
+goin' to be married to-night her name's Rachel, an' she's goin' to marry
+a nice feller, Louis Levy. Levy built the big entertainment-hall vhere
+the reception's goin' to be. It's decorated vith two thousand dollars'
+worth of bride roses an' lilies of de valley an' smilax. All de up-town
+places vas bought out, an' den Schwartz vent down Fift' Avenoo.”
+
+The right moment had plainly arrived.
+
+“Say, Mr. Munsberg,” Tembarom broke forth, “you're giving me just what
+I wanted to ask you for. I'm the new up-town society reporter for the
+Sunday Earth, and I came in here to see if you wouldn't help me to get a
+show at finding out who was going to have weddings and society doings. I
+didn't know just how to start.”
+
+Munsberg gave a sort of grunt. He looked less amiable.
+
+“I s'pose you're used to nothin' but Fift' Avenoo,” he said.
+
+Tembarom grinned exactly at the right time again. Not only his good
+teeth grinned, but his eyes grinned also, if the figure may be used.
+
+“Fifth Avenue!” he laughed. “There's been no Fifth Avenue in mine. I'm
+not used to anything, but you may bet your life I'm going to get used
+to Harlem, if you people'll let me. I've just got this job, and I'm dead
+stuck on it. I want to make it go.”
+
+“He's mighty different from Biker,” said Mrs. Munsberg in an undertone.
+
+“Vhere's dod oder feller?” inquired Munsberg. “He vas a dam fool, dot
+oder feller, half corned most de time, an' puttin' on Clarence airs. No
+one was goin' to give him nothin'. He made folks mad at de start.”
+
+“I've got his job,” said Tembarom, “and if I can't make it go, the
+page will be given up. It'll be my fault if that happens, not Harlem's.
+There's society enough up-town to make a first-class page, and I shall
+be sick if I can't get on to it.”
+
+He had begun to know his people. Munsberg was a good-natured, swaggering
+little Hebrew.
+
+That the young fellow should make a clean breast of it and claim no
+down-town superiority, and that he should also have the business insight
+to realize that he might obtain valuable society items from such a
+representative confectioner as M. Munsberg, was a situation to incite
+amiable sentiments.
+
+“Vell, you didn't come to de wrong place,” he said. “All de biggest
+things comes to me, an' I don't mind tellin' you about 'em. 'T ain't
+goin' to do no harm. Weddings an' things dey ought to be wrote up,
+anyhow, if dey're done right. It's good for business. Vy don't dey have
+no pictures of de supper-tables? Dot'd be good.”
+
+“There's lots of receptions and weddings this month,” said Mrs.
+Munsberg, becoming agreeably excited. “And there's plenty handsome young
+girls that'd like their pictures published.
+
+“None of them have been in Sunday papers before, and they'd like it. The
+four Schwartz girls would make grand pictures. They dress splendid, and
+their bridesmaids dresses came from the biggest place in Fift' Avenoo.”
+
+“Say,” exclaimed Tembarom, rising from his chair, “I'm in luck. Luck
+struck me the minute I turned in here. If you'll tell me where Schwartz
+lives, and where the hall is, and the church, and just anything else
+I can use, I'll go out and whoop up a page to beat the band.” He was
+glowing with exultation. “I know I can do it. You've started me off.”
+
+Munsberg and his wife began to warm. It was almost as though they had
+charge of the society page themselves. There was something stimulating
+in the idea. There was a suggestion of social importance in it. They
+knew a number of people who would be pleased with the prospect of being
+in the Sunday Earth. They were of a race which holds together, and they
+gave not only the names and addresses of prospective entertainers, but
+those of florists and owners of halls where parties were given.
+
+Mrs. Munsberg gave the name of a dressmaker of whom she shrewdly guessed
+that she would be amiably ready to talk to a society-page reporter.
+
+“That Biker feller,” she said, “got things down all wrong. He called
+fine white satin 'white nun's-veiling,' and he left out things. Never
+said nothing about Miss Lewishon's diamond ring what her grandpa gave
+her for a wedding-present. An' it cost two hundred and fifty.”
+
+“Well, I'm a pretty big fool myself,” said Tembarom, “but I should have
+known better than that.”
+
+When he opened the door to go, Mrs. Munsberg called after him:
+
+“When you get through, you come back here and tell us what you done.
+I'll give you a cup of hot coffee.”
+
+He returned to Mrs. Bowse's boarding-house so late that night that even
+Steinberger and Bowles had ended their day. The gas in the hall was
+turned down to a glimmering point, and the house was silent for the
+night. Even a cat who stole to him and rubbed herself against his leg
+miauwed in a sort of abortive whisper, opening her mouth wide, but
+emitting no sound. When he went cautiously up the staircase he carried
+his damp overcoat with him, and hung it in company with the tartan
+muffler close to the heater in the upper hall. Then he laid on his
+bedside table a package of papers and photographs.
+
+After he had undressed, he dropped heavily into bed, exhausted, but
+elate.
+
+“I'm dog-tired,” he said, “but I guess I've got it going.” And almost
+before the last word had uttered itself he fell into the deep sleep of
+worn-out youth.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+Mrs. Bowse's boarding-house began to be even better pleased with him
+than before. He had stories to tell, festivities to describe, and
+cheerful incidents to recount. The boarders assisted vicariously at
+weddings and wedding receptions, afternoon teas and dances, given in
+halls. “Up-town” seemed to them largely given to entertainment and
+hilarity of an enviably prodigal sort. Mrs. Bowse's guests were not
+of the class which entertains or is entertained, and the details
+of banquets and ball-dresses and money-spending were not uncheering
+material for conversation. Such topics suggested the presence and
+dispensing of a good deal of desirable specie, which in floating about
+might somehow reach those who needed it most. The impression was that
+T. Tembarom was having “a good time.” It was not his way to relate any
+incidents which were not of a cheering or laughter-inspiring nature. He
+said nothing of the times when his luck was bad, when he made blunders,
+and, approaching the wrong people, was met roughly or grudgingly, and
+found no resource left but to beat a retreat. He made no mention of his
+experiences in the blizzard, which continued, and at times nearly beat
+breath and life out of him as he fought his way through it. Especially
+he told no story of the morning when, after having labored furiously
+over the writing of his “stuff” until long after midnight, he had taken
+it to Galton, and seen his face fall as he looked over it. To battle all
+day with a blizzard and occasional brutal discouragements, and to sit
+up half the night tensely absorbed in concentrating one's whole mental
+equipment upon the doing of unaccustomed work has its effect. As he
+waited, Tembarom unconsciously shifted from one foot to another, and had
+actually to swallow a sort of lump in his throat.
+
+“I guess it won't do,” he said rather uncertainly as Galton laid a sheet
+down.
+
+Galton was worn out himself and harried by his nerves.
+
+“No, it won't,” he said; and then as he saw Tembarom move to the other
+foot he added, “Not as it is.”
+
+Tembarom braced himself and cleared his throat.
+
+“If,” he ventured--“well, you've been mighty easy on me, Mr
+Galton--and this is a big chance for a fellow like me. If it's too big
+a chance--why--that's all. But if it's anything I could change and it
+wouldn't be too much trouble to tell me--”
+
+“There's no time to rewrite it,” answered Galton. “It must be handed in
+to-morrow. It's too flowery. Too many adjectives. I've no time to give
+you--” He snatched up a blue pencil and began to slash at the paper
+with it. “Look here--and here--cut out that balderdash--cut this--and
+this--oh,--” throwing the pencil down,--“you'd have to cut it all out.
+There's no time.” He fell back in his chair with a hopeless movement,
+and rubbed his forehead nervously with the back of his hand. Ten people
+more or less were waiting to speak to him; he was worn out with the rush
+of work. He believed in the page, and did not want to give up his idea;
+but he didn't know a man to hand it to other than this untrained, eager
+ignoramus whom he had a queer personal liking for. He was no business of
+his, a mere stenographer in his office with whom he could be expected
+to have no relations, and yet a curious sort of friendliness verging on
+intimacy had developed between them.
+
+“There'd be time if you thought it wouldn't do any harm to give me
+another chance,” said Tembarom. “I can sit up all night. I guess I've
+caught on to what you DON'T want. I've put in too many fool words. I got
+them out of other papers, but I don't know how to use them. I guess I've
+caught on. Would it do any harm if you gave me till to-morrow?”
+
+“No, it wouldn't,” said Galton, desperately. “If you can't do it,
+there's no time to find another man, and the page must be cut out. It's
+been no good so far. It won't be missed. Take it along.”
+
+As he pushed back the papers, he saw the photographs, and picked one up.
+
+“That bride's a good-looking girl. Who are these others? Bridesmaids?
+You've got a lot of stuff here. Biker couldn't get anything.” He
+glanced up at the young fellow's rather pale face. “I thought you'd make
+friends. How did you get all this?”
+
+“I beat the streets till I found it,” said Tembarom. “I had luck right
+away. I went into a confectionery store where they make wedding-cakes.
+A good-natured little Dutchman and his wife kept it, and I talked to
+them--”
+
+“Got next?” said Galton, grinning a little.
+
+“They gave me addresses, and told me a whole lot of things. I got into
+the Schwartz wedding reception, and they treated me mighty well. A good
+many of them were willing to talk. I told them what a big thing the page
+was going to be, and I--well, I said the more they helped me the finer
+it would turn out. I said it seemed a shame there shouldn't be an
+up-town page when such swell entertainments were given. I've got a lot
+of stuff there.”
+
+Galton laughed.
+
+“You'd get it,” he said. “If you knew how to handle it, you'd make it a
+hit. Well, take it along. If it isn't right tomorrow, it's done for.”
+
+Tembarom didn't tell stories or laugh at dinner that evening. He said
+he had a headache. After dinner he bolted upstairs after Little Ann, and
+caught her before she mounted to her upper floor.
+
+“Will you come and save my life again?” he said. “I'm in the tightest
+place I ever was in in my life.”
+
+“I'll do anything I can, Mr. Tembarom,” she answered, and as his face
+had grown flushed by this time she looked anxious. “You look downright
+feverish.”
+
+“I've got chills as well as fever,” he said. “It's the page. It seems
+like I was going to fall down on it.”
+
+She turned back at once.
+
+“No you won't, Mr. Tembarom,” she said “I'm just right-down sure you
+won't.”
+
+They went down to the parlor again, and though there were people in it,
+they found a corner apart, and in less than ten minutes he had told her
+what had happened.
+
+She took the manuscript he handed to her.
+
+“If I was well educated, I should know how to help you,” she said, “but
+I've only been to a common Manchester school. I don't know anything
+about elegant language. What are these?” pointing to the blue-pencil
+marks.
+
+Tembarom explained, and she studied the blue slashes with serious
+attention.
+
+“Well,” she said in a few minutes, laying the manuscript down, “I should
+have cut those words out myself if--if you'd asked me which to take
+away. They're too showy, Mr. Tembarom.”
+
+Tembarom whipped a pencil out of his pocket and held it out.
+
+“Say,” he put it to her, “would you take this and draw it through a few
+of the other showy ones?”
+
+“I should feel as if I was taking too much upon myself,” she said. “I
+don't know anything about it.”
+
+“You know a darned sight more than I do,” Tembarom argued. “I didn't
+know they were showy. I thought they were the kind you had to put in
+newspaper stuff.”
+
+She held the sheets of paper on her knee, and bent her head over them.
+Tembarom watched her dimples flash in and out as she worked away like a
+child correcting an exercise. Presently he saw she was quite absorbed.
+Sometimes she stopped and thought, pressing her lips together; sometimes
+she changed a letter. There was no lightness in her manner. A badly
+mutilated stocking would have claimed her attention in the same way.
+
+“I think I'd put 'house' there instead of 'mansion' if I were you,” she
+suggested once.
+
+“Put in a whole block of houses if you like,” he answered gratefully.
+“Whatever you say goes. I believe Galton would say the same thing.”
+
+She went over sheet after sheet, and though she knew nothing about it,
+she cut out just what Galton would have cut out. She put the papers
+together at last and gave them back to Tembarom, getting up from her
+seat.
+
+“I must go back to father now,” she said. “I promised to make him a good
+cup of coffee over the little oil-stove. If you'll come and knock at the
+door I'll give you one. It will help you to keep fresh while you work.”
+
+Tembarom did not go to bed at all that night, and he looked rather
+fagged the next morning when he handed back the “stuff” entirely
+rewritten. He swallowed several times quite hard as he waited for the
+final verdict.
+
+“You did catch on to what I didn't want,” Galton said at last. “You will
+catch on still more as you get used to the work. And you did get the
+'stuff'.”
+
+“That--you mean--that goes?” Tembarom stammered.
+
+“Yes, it goes,” answered Galton. “You can turn it in. We'll try the page
+for a month.”
+
+“Gee! Thank the Lord!” said Tembarom, and then he laughed an excited
+boyish laugh, and the blood came back to his face. He had a whole month
+before him, and if he had caught on as soon as this, a month would teach
+him a lot.
+
+He'd work like a dog.
+
+He worked like a healthy young man impelled by a huge enthusiasm,
+and seeing ahead of him something he had had no practical reason for
+aspiring to. He went out in all weathers and stayed out to all hours.
+Whatsoever rebuffs or difficulties he met with he never was even on the
+verge of losing his nerve. He actually enjoyed himself tremendously at
+times. He made friends; people began to like to see him. The Munsbergs
+regarded him as an inspiration of their own.
+
+“He seen my name over de store and come in here first time he vas sent
+up dis vay to look for t'ings to write,” Mr. Munsberg always explained.
+“Ve vas awful busy--time of the Schwartz vedding, an' dere vas dat
+blizzard. He owned up he vas new, an' vanted some vun vhat knew to tell
+him vhat vas goin' on. 'Course I could do it. Me an' my vife give him
+addresses an' a lot of items. He vorked 'em up good. Dot up-town page
+is gettin' first-rate. He says he don' know vhat he'd have done if he
+hadn't turned up here dot day.”
+
+Tembarom, having “caught on” to his fault of style, applied himself with
+vigor to elimination. He kept his tame dictionary chained to the leg of
+his table--an old kitchen table which Mrs. Bowse scrubbed and put into
+his hall bedroom, overcrowding it greatly. He turned to Little Ann at
+moments of desperate uncertainty, but he was man enough to do his work
+himself. In glorious moments when he was rather sure that Galton was far
+from unsatisfied with his progress, and Ann had looked more than usually
+distracting in her aloof and sober alluringness,--it was her entire
+aloofness which so stirred his blood,--he sometimes stopped scribbling
+and lost his head for a minute or so, wondering if a fellow ever COULD
+“get away with it” to the extent of making enough to--but he always
+pulled himself up in time.
+
+“Nice fool I look, thinking that way!” he would say to himself. “She'd
+throw me down hard if she knew. But, my Lord! ain't she just a peach!”
+
+It was in the last week of the month of trial which was to decide the
+permanency of the page that he came upon the man Mrs. Bowse's boarders
+called his “Freak.” He never called him a “freak” himself even at the
+first. Even his somewhat undeveloped mind felt itself confronted at
+the outset with something too abnormal and serious, something with a
+suggestion of the weird and tragic in it.
+
+In this wise it came about:
+
+The week had begun with another blizzard, which after the second day had
+suddenly changed its mind, and turned into sleet and rain which filled
+the streets with melted snow, and made walking a fearsome thing.
+Tembarom had plenty of walking to do. This week's page was his great
+effort, and was to be a “dandy.” Galton must be shown what pertinacity
+could do.
+
+“I'm going to get into it up to my neck, and then strike out,” he said
+at breakfast on Monday morning.
+
+Thursday was his most strenuous day. The weather had decided to change
+again, and gusts of sleet were being driven about, which added cold to
+sloppiness. He had found it difficult to get hold of some details he
+specially wanted. Two important and extremely good-looking brides had
+refused to see him because Biker had enraged them in his day. He had
+slighted the description of their dresses at a dance where they had been
+the observed of all observers, and had worn things brought from Paris.
+Tembarom had gone from house to house. He had even searched out
+aunts whose favor he had won professionally. He had appealed to his
+dressmaker, whose affection he had by that time fully gained. She was
+doing work in the brides' houses, and could make it clear that he would
+not call peau de cygne “Surah silk,” nor duchess lace “Baby Irish.”
+ But the young ladies enjoyed being besought by a society page. It was
+something to discuss with one's bridesmaids and friends, to protest that
+“those interviewers” give a person no peace. “If you don't want to be in
+the papers, they'll put you in whether you like it or not, however often
+you refuse them.” They kept Tembarom running about, they raised faint
+hopes, and then went out when he called, leaving no messages, but
+allowing the servant to hint that if he went up to Two Hundred and
+Seventy-fifth Street he might chance to find them.
+
+“All right,” said Tembarom to the girl, delighting her by lifting his
+hat genially as he turned to go down the steps. “I'll just keep going.
+The Sunday Earth can't come out without those photographs in it. I
+should lose my job.”
+
+When at last he ran the brides to cover it was not at Two Hundred and
+Seventy-fifth Street, but in their own home, to which they had finally
+returned. They had heard from the servant-girl about what the young
+gentleman from the Sunday Earth had said, and they were mollified by
+his proper appreciation of values. Tembarom's dressmaker friend also
+proffered information.
+
+“I know him myself,” she said, “and he's a real nice gentle-manlike
+young man. He's not a bit like Biker. He doesn't think he knows
+everything. He came to me from Mrs. Munsberg, just to ask me the names
+of fashionable materials. He said it was more important than a man knew
+till he found out” Miss Stuntz chuckled.
+
+“He asked me to lend him some bits of samples so he could learn them
+off by heart, and know them when he saw them. He's got a pleasant laugh;
+shows his teeth, and they're real pretty and white; and he just laughed
+like a boy and said: 'These samples are my alphabet, Miss Stuntz. I'm
+going to learn to read words of three syllables in them.'”
+
+When late in the evening Tembarom, being let out of the house after his
+interview, turned down the steps again, he carried with him all he had
+wanted--information and photographs, even added picturesque details. He
+was prepared to hand in a fuller and better page than he had ever handed
+in before. He was in as elated a frame of mind as a young man can
+be when he is used up with tramping the streets, and running after
+street-cars, to stand up in them and hang by a strap. He had been
+wearing a new pair of boots, one of which rubbed his heel and had ended
+by raising a blister worthy of attention. To reach the nearest “L”
+ station he must walk across town, through several deserted streets in
+the first stages of being built up, their vacant lots surrounded by high
+board fencing covered with huge advertising posters. The hall bedroom,
+with the gas turned up and the cheap, red-cotton comfort on the bed,
+made an alluring picture as he faced the sleety wind.
+
+“If I cut across to the avenue and catch the 'L,' I'm bound to get there
+sometime, anyhow,” he said as he braced himself and set out on his way.
+
+The blister on his heel had given him a good deal of trouble, and he was
+obliged to stop a moment to ease it, and he limped when he began to walk
+again. But he limped as fast as he could, while the sleety rain beat
+in his face, across one street, down another for a block or so, across
+another, the melting snow soaking even the new boots as he splashed
+through it. He bent his head, however, and limped steadily. At this end
+of the city many of the streets were only scantily built up, and he was
+passing through one at the corner of which was a big vacant lot. At the
+other corner a row of cheap houses which had only reached their second
+story waited among piles of bricks and frozen mortar for the return
+of the workmen the blizzard had dispersed. It was a desolate-enough
+thoroughfare, and not a soul was in sight. The vacant lot was fenced
+in with high boarding plastered over with flaring sheets advertising
+whiskies, sauces, and theatrical ventures. A huge picture of a
+dramatically interrupted wedding ceremony done in reds and yellows,
+and announcing in large letters that Mr. Isaac Simonson presented Miss
+Evangeline St. Clair in “Rent Asunder,” occupied several yards of the
+boarding. As he reached it, the heel of Tembarom's boot pressed, as
+it seemed to him, a red-hot coal on the flesh. He had rubbed off the
+blister. He was obliged to stop a moment again.
+
+“Gee whizz!” he exclaimed through his teeth, “I shall have to take my
+boot off and try to fix it.”
+
+To accomplish this he leaned against the boarding and Miss Evangeline
+St. Clair being “Rent Asunder” in the midst of the wedding service. He
+cautiously removed his boot, and finding a hole in his sock in the place
+where the blister had rubbed off, he managed to protect the raw spot by
+pulling the sock over it. Then he drew on his boot again.
+
+“That'll be better,” he said, with a long breath.
+
+As he stood on his feet again he started involuntarily. This was not
+because the blister had hurt him, but because he had heard behind him a
+startling sound.
+
+“What's that?” broke from him. “What's that?”
+
+He turned and listened, feeling his heart give a quick thump. In the
+darkness of the utterly empty street the thing was unnatural enough
+to make any man jump. He had heard it between two gusts of wind, and
+through another he heard it again--an uncanny, awful sobbing, broken by
+a hopeless wail of words.
+
+“I can't remember! I can't--remember! O my God!”
+
+And it was not a woman's voice or a child's; it was a man's, and there
+was an eerie sort of misery in it which made Tembarom feel rather sick.
+He had never heard a man sobbing before. He belonged to a class which
+had no time for sobs. This sounded ghastly.
+
+“Good Lord!” he said, “the fellow's crying! A man!”
+
+The sound came directly behind him. There was not a human being in
+sight. Even policemen do not loiter in empty streets.
+
+“Hello!” he cried. “Where are you?”
+
+But the low, horrible sound went on, and no answer came. His physical
+sense of the presence of the blister was blotted out by the abnormal
+thrill of the moment. One had to find out about a thing like that one
+just had to. One could not go on and leave it behind uninvestigated in
+the dark and emptiness of a street no one was likely to pass through. He
+listened more intently. Yes, it was just behind him.
+
+“He's in the lot behind the fence,” he said. “How did he get there?”
+
+He began to walk along the boarding to find a gap. A few yards farther
+on he came upon a broken place in the inclosure--a place where boards
+had sagged until they fell down, or had perhaps been pulled down by boys
+who wanted to get inside. He went through it, and found lie was in the
+usual vacant lot long given up to rubbish. When he stood still a moment
+he heard the sobbing again, and followed the sound to the place behind
+the boarding against which he had supported himself when he took off his
+boot.
+
+A man was lying on the ground with his arms flung out. The street lamp
+outside the boarding cast light enough to reveal him. Tembarom felt as
+though he had suddenly found himself taking part in a melodrama,--“The
+Streets of New York,” for choice,--though no melodrama had ever given him
+this slightly shaky feeling. But when a fellow looked up against it as
+hard as this, what you had to do was to hold your nerve and make him
+feel he was going to be helped. The normal human thing spoke loud in
+him.
+
+“Hello, old man!” he said with cheerful awkwardness. “What's hit you?”
+
+The man started and scrambled to his feet as though he were frightened.
+He was wet, unshaven, white and shuddering, piteous to look at. He
+stared with wild eyes, his chest heaving.
+
+“What's up?” said Tembarom.
+
+The man's breath caught itself.
+
+“I don't remember.” There was a touch of horror in his voice, though he
+was evidently making an effort to control him-self. “I can't--I can't
+remember.” “What's your name? You remember that?” Tembarom put it to
+him.
+
+“N-n-no!” agonizingly. “If I could! If I could!”
+
+“How did you get in here?”
+
+“I came in because I saw a policeman. He wouldn't understand. He would
+have stopped me. I must not be stopped. I MUST not.”
+
+“Where were you going?” asked Tembarom, not knowing what else to say.
+
+“Home! My God! man, home!” and he fell to shuddering again. He put
+his arm against the boarding and dropped his head against it. The low,
+hideous sobbing tore him again.
+
+T. Tembarom could not stand it. In his newsboy days he had never been
+able to stand starved dogs and homeless cats. Mrs. Bowse was taking care
+of a wretched dog for him at the present moment. He had not wanted the
+poor brute,--he was not particularly fond of dogs,--but it had followed
+him home, and after he had given it a bone or so, it had licked its
+chops and turned up its eyes at him with such abject appeal that he had
+not been able to turn it into the streets again. He was unsentimental,
+but ruled by primitive emotions. Also he had a sudden recollection of a
+night when as a little fellow he had gone into a vacant lot and cried
+as like this as a child could. It was a bad night when some “tough”
+ big boys had turned him out of a warm corner in a shed, and he had had
+nowhere to go, and being a friendly little fellow, the unfriendliness
+had hit him hard. The boys had not seen him crying, but he remembered
+it. He drew near, and put his hand on the shaking shoulder.
+
+“Say, don't do that,” he said. “I'll help you to remember.”
+
+He scarcely knew why he said it. There was something in the situation
+and in the man himself which was compelling. He was not of the tramp
+order. His wet clothes had been decent, and his broken, terrified voice
+was neither coarse nor nasal. He lifted his head and caught Tembarom's
+arm, clutching it with desperate fingers.
+
+“Could you?” he poured forth the words. “Could you? I'm not quite mad.
+Something happened. If I could be quiet! Don't let them stop me! My God!
+my God! my God! I can't say it. It's not far away, but it won't come
+back. You're a good fellow; if you're human, help me! help me! help me!”
+ He clung to Tembarom with hands which shook; his eyes were more abject
+than the starved dog's; he choked, and awful tears rolled down his
+cheeks. “Only help me,” he cried--“just help, help, help--for a while.
+Perhaps not long. It would come back.” He made a horrible effort.
+“Listen! My name--I am--I am--it's--”
+
+He was down on the ground again, groveling. His efforts had failed.
+Tembarom, overwrought himself, caught at him and dragged him up.
+
+“Make a fight,” he said. “You can't lie down like that. You've got to
+put up a fight. It'll come back. I tell you it will. You've had a clip
+on the head or something. Let me call an ambulance and take you to the
+hospital.”
+
+The next moment he was sorry he had said the words, the man's terror was
+so ill to behold. He grew livid with it, and uttered a low animal cry.
+
+“Don't drop dead over it,” said Tembarom, rather losing his head. “I
+won't do it, though what in thunder I'm going to do with you I don't
+know. You can't stay here.”
+
+“For God's sake!” said the man. “For God's sake!” He put his shaking
+hand on Tembarom again, and looked at him with a bewildered scrutiny.
+“I'm not afraid of you,” he said; “I don't know why. There's something
+all right about you. If you'll stand by me--you'd stand by a man, I'd
+swear. Take me somewhere quiet. Let me get warm and think.”
+
+“The less you think now the better,” answered Tembarom. “You want a bed
+and a bath and a night's rest. I guess I've let myself in for it. You
+brush off and brace yourself and come with me.”
+
+There was the hall bedroom and the red-cotton comfort for one night
+at least, and Mrs. Bowse was a soft-hearted woman. If she'd heard the
+fellow sobbing behind the fence, she'd have been in a worse fix than he
+was. Women were kinder-hearted than men, anyhow. The way the fellow's
+voice sounded when he said, “Help me, help me, help me!” sounded as
+though he was in hell. “Made me feel as if I was bracing up a chap that
+was going to be electrocuted,” he thought, feeling sickish again. “I've
+not got backbone enough to face that sort of thing. Got to take him
+somewhere.”
+
+They were walking toward the “L” together, and he was wondering what he
+should say to Mrs. Bowse when he saw his companion fumbling under his
+coat at the back as though he was in search of something. His hands
+being unsteady, it took him some moments to get at what he wanted.
+He evidently had a belt or a hidden pocket. He got something out and
+stopped under a street light to show it to Tembarom. His hands still
+shook when he held them out, and his look was a curious, puzzled,
+questioning one. What he passed over to Tembarom was a roll of
+money. Tembarom rather lost his breath as he saw the number on two
+five-hundred-dollar bills, and of several hundreds, besides twenties,
+tens, and fives.
+
+“Take it--keep it,” he said. “It will pay.”
+
+“Hully gee!” cried Tembarom, aghast. “Don't go giving away your whole
+pile to the first fellow you meet. I don't want it.”
+
+“Take it.” The stranger put his hand on his shoulder, the abject look in
+his eyes harrowingly like the starved dog's again.
+
+“There's something all right about you. You'll help me.”
+
+“If I don't take it for you, some one will knock you upon the head for
+it.” Tembarom hesitated, but the next instant he stuffed it all in his
+pocket, incited thereto by the sound of a whizzing roar.
+
+“There's the 'L' coming,” he cried; “run for all you're worth.” And they
+fled up the street and up the steps, and caught it without a second to
+spare.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+At about the time Tembarom made his rush to catch the “L” Joseph
+Hutchinson was passing through one of his periodical fits of infuriated
+discouragement. Little Ann knew they would occur every two or three
+days, and she did not wonder at them. Also she knew that if she merely
+sat still and listened as she sewed, she would be doing exactly what
+her mother would have done and what her father would find a sort of
+irritated comfort in. There was no use in citing people's villainies and
+calling them names unless you had an audience who would seem to agree to
+the justice of your accusations.
+
+So Mr. Hutchinson charged up and down the room, his face red, and his
+hands thrust in his coat pockets. He was giving his opinions of America
+and Americans, and he spoke with his broadest Manchester accent,
+and threw in now and then a word or so of Lancashire dialect to add
+roughness and strength, the angrier a Manchester man being, the broader
+and therefore the more forcible his accent. “Tha” is somehow a great
+deal more bitter or humorous or affectionate than the mere ordinary
+“You” or “Yours.”
+
+“'Merica,” he bellowed--“dang 'Merica! I says--an' dang 'Mericans. Goin'
+about th' world braggin' an' boastin' about their sharpness an' their
+open-'andedness. 'Go to 'Merica,' folks'll tell you, 'with an invention,
+and there's dozens of millionaires ready to put money in it.' Fools!”
+
+“Now, Father,”--Little Ann's voice was as maternal as her mother's had
+been,--“now, Father, love, don't work yourself up into a passion. You
+know it's not good for you.”
+
+“I don't need to work myself up into one. I'm in one. A man sells
+everything he owns to get to 'Merica, an' when he gets there what does
+he find? He canna' get near a millionaire. He's pushed here an scuffled
+there, an' told this chap can't see him, an' that chap isn't interested,
+an' he must wait his chance to catch this one. An' he waits an' waits,
+an' goes up in elevators an' stands on one leg in lobbies, till he's
+broke' down an' sick of it, an' has to go home to England steerage.”
+
+Little Ann looked up from her sewing. He had been walking furiously for
+half an hour, and had been tired to begin with. She had heard his voice
+break roughly as he said the last words. He threw himself astride a
+chair and, crossing his arms on the back of it, dropped his head on
+them. Her mother never allowed this. Her idea was that women were made
+to tide over such moments for the weaker sex. Far had it been from the
+mind of Mrs. Hutchinson to call it weaker. “But there's times, Ann, when
+just for a bit they're just like children. They need comforting without
+being let to know they are being comforted. You know how it is when your
+back aches, and some one just slips a pillow under it in the right place
+without saying anything. That's what women can do if they've got heads.
+It needs a head.”
+
+Little Ann got up and went to the chair. She began to run her fingers
+caressingly through the thick, grizzled hair.
+
+“There, Father, love, there!” she said. “We are going back to England,
+at any rate, aren't we? And grandmother will be so glad to have us with
+her in her cottage. And America's only one place.”
+
+“I tried it first, dang it!” jerked out Hutchinson. “Every one told me
+to do it.” He quoted again with derisive scorn: “'You go to 'Merica.
+'Merica's the place for a chap like you. 'Merica's the place for
+inventions.' Liars!”
+
+Little Ann went on rubbing the grizzled head lovingly.
+
+“Well, now we're going back to try England. You never did really try
+England. And you know how beautiful it'll be in the country, with the
+primroses in bloom and the young lambs in the fields.” The caressing
+hand grew even softer. “And you're not going to forget how mother
+believed in the invention; you can't do that.”
+
+Hutchinson lifted his head and looked at her.
+
+“Eh, Ann,” he said, “you are a comfortable little body. You've got a way
+with you just like your poor mother had. You always say the right thing
+to help a chap pull himself together. Your mother did believe in it,
+didn't she?”
+
+She had, indeed, believed in it, though her faith was founded more upon
+confidence in “Mr. Hutchinson” than in any profound knowledge of the
+mechanical appliance his inspiration would supply. She knew it had
+something important to do with locomotive engines, and she knew that if
+railroad magnates would condescend to consider it, her husband was sure
+that fortune would flow in. She had lived with the “invention,” as it
+was respectfully called, for years.
+
+“That she did,” answered Little Ann. “And before she died she said to
+me: 'Little Ann,' she said, 'there's one thing you must never let your
+father do. You must never let him begin not to believe in his invention.
+Your father's a clever man, and it's a clever invention, and it'll make
+his fortune yet. You must remind him how I believed in it and how sure I
+was.'”
+
+Hutchinson rubbed his hands thoughtfully. He had heard this before, but
+it did him good to hear it again.
+
+“She said that, did she?” he found vague comfort in saying. “She said
+that?”
+
+“Yes, she did, Father. It was the very day before she died.”
+
+“Well, she never said anything she hadn't thought out,” he said in
+slow retrospection. “And she had a good head of her own. Eh, she was
+a wonderful woman, she was, for sticking to things. That was th'
+Lancashire in her. Lancashire folks knows their own minds.”
+
+“Mother knew hers,” said Ann. “And she always said you knew yours. Come
+and sit in your own chair, Father, and have your paper.”
+
+She had tided him past the worst currents without letting him slip into
+them.
+
+“I like folks that knows their own minds,” he said as he sat down and
+took his paper from her. “You know yours, Ann; and there's that Tembarom
+chap. He knows his. I've been noticing that chap.” There was a certain
+pleasure in using a tone of amiable patronage. “He's got a way with him
+that's worth money to him in business, if he only knew it.”
+
+“I don't think he knows he's got a way,” Little Ann said. “His way is
+just him.”
+
+“He just gets over people with it, like he got over me. I was ready
+to knock his head off first time he spoke to me. I was ready to knock
+anybody's head off that day. I'd just had that letter from Hadman.
+He made me sick wi' the way he pottered an' played the fool about the
+invention. He believed in it right enough, but he hadn't the courage
+of a mouse. He wasn't goin' to be the first one to risk his money. Him,
+with all he has! He's the very chap to be able to set it goin'. If I
+could have got some one else to put up brass, it'd have started him.
+It's want o' backbone, that's the matter wi' Hadman an' his lot.”
+
+“Some of these days some of them 're going to get their eyes open,”
+ said Little Ann, “and then the others will be sorry. Mr. Tembarom says
+they'll fall over themselves to get in on the ground floor.”
+
+Hutchinson chuckled.
+
+“That's New York,” he said. “He's a rum chap. But he thinks a good bit
+of the invention. I've talked it over with him, because I've wanted to
+talk, and the one thing I've noticed about Tembarom is that he can keep
+his mouth shut.”
+
+“But he talks a good deal,” said Ann.
+
+“That's the best of it. You'd think he was telling all he knows, and
+he's not by a fat lot. He tells you what you'll like to hear, and he's
+not sly; but he can keep a shut mouth. That's Lancashire. Some folks
+can't do it even when they want to.”
+
+“His father came from England.”
+
+“That's where the lad's sense comes from. Perhaps he's Lancashire. He
+had a lot of good ideas about the way to get at Hadman.”
+
+A knock at the door broke in upon them. Mrs. Bowse presented herself,
+wearing a novel expression on her face. It was at once puzzled and not
+altogether disagreeably excited.
+
+“I wish you would come down into the dining-room, Little Ann.” She
+hesitated. “Mr. Tembaron's brought home such a queer man. He picked
+him up ill in the street. He wants me to let him stay with him for
+the night, anyhow. I don't think he's crazy, but I guess he's lost
+his memory. Queerest thing I ever saw. He doesn't know his name or
+anything.”
+
+“See here,” broke out Hutchinson, dropping his hands and his paper
+on his knee, “I'm not going to have Ann goin' down stairs to quiet
+lunatics.”
+
+“He's as quiet as a child,” Mrs. Bowse protested. “There's something
+pitiful about him, he seems so frightened. He's drenched to the skin.”
+
+“Call an ambulance and send him to the hospital,” advised Hutchinson.
+
+“That's what Mr. Tembarom says he can't do. It frightens him to death
+to speak of it. He just clings to Mr. Tembarom sort of awful, as if he
+thinks he'll save his life. But that isn't all,” she added in an amazed
+tone; “he's given Mr. Tembarom more than two thousand dollars.”
+
+“What!” shouted Hutchinson, bounding to his feet quite unconsciously.
+
+“What!” exclaimed Little Ann.
+
+“Just you come and look at it,” answered Mrs. Bowse, nodding her head.
+“There's over two thousand dollars in bills spread out on the table in
+the dining-room this minute. He had it in a belt pocket, and he dragged
+it out in the street and would make Mr. Tembarom take it. Do come and
+tell us what to do.”
+
+“I'd get him to take off his wet clothes and get into bed, and drink
+some hot spirits and water first,” said Little Ann. “Wouldn't you, Mrs.
+Bowse?”
+
+Hutchinson got up, newspaper in hand.
+
+“I say, I'd like to go down and have a look at that chap myself,” he
+announced.
+
+“If he's so frightened, perhaps--” Little Ann hesitated.
+
+“That's it,” put in Mrs. Bowse. “He's so nervous it'd make him worse to
+see another man. You'd better wait, Mr. Hutchinson.”
+
+Hutchinson sat down rather grumpily, and Mrs. Bowse and Little Ann went
+down the stairs together.
+
+“I feel real nervous myself,” said Mrs. Bowse, “it's so queer. But he's
+not crazy. He's quiet enough.”
+
+As they neared the bottom of the staircase Little Ann could see over
+the balustrade into the dining-room. The strange man was sitting by the
+table, his disordered, black-haired head on his arm. He looked like
+an exhausted thing. Tembarom was sitting by him, and was talking in an
+encouraging voice. He had laid a hand on one of the stranger's. On the
+table beside them was spread a number of bills which had evidently just
+been counted.
+
+“Here's the ladies,” said Tembarom.
+
+The stranger lifted his head and, having looked, rose and stood upright,
+waiting. It was the involuntary, mechanical action of a man who had been
+trained among gentlemen.
+
+“It's Mrs. Bowse again, and she's brought Miss Hutchinson down with
+her. Miss Hutchinson always knows what to do,” explained Tembarom in his
+friendly voice.
+
+The man bowed, and his bewildered eyes fixed themselves on Little Ann.
+
+“Thank you,” he said. “It's very kind of you. I--I am--in great
+trouble.”
+
+Little Ann went to him and smiled her motherly smile at him.
+
+“You're very wet,” she said. “You'll take a bad cold if you're not
+careful. Mrs. Bowse thinks you ought to go right to bed and have
+something hot to drink.”
+
+“It seems a long time since I was in bed,” he answered her.
+
+“I'm very tired. Thank you.” He drew a weary, sighing breath, but he
+didn't move his eyes from the girl's face. Perhaps the cessation of
+action in certain cells of his brain had increased action in others.
+He looked as though he were seeing something in Little Ann's face which
+might not have revealed itself so clearly to the more normal gaze.
+
+He moved slightly nearer to her. He was a tall man, and had to look down
+at her.
+
+“What is your name?” he asked anxiously. “Names trouble me.”
+
+It was Ann who drew a little nearer to him now. She had to look up, and
+the soft, absorbed kindness in her eyes might, Tembarom thought, have
+soothed a raging lion, it was so intent on its purpose.
+
+“My name is Ann Hutchinson; but never you mind about it now,” she said.
+“I'll tell it to you again. Let Mr. Tembarom take you up-stairs to bed.
+You'll be better in the morning.” And because his hollow eyes rested on
+her so fixedly she put her hand on his wet sleeve.
+
+“You're wet through,” she said. “That won't do.”
+
+He looked down at her hand and then at her face again.
+
+“Help me,” he pleaded, “just help me. I don't know what's happened. Have
+I gone mad?”
+
+“No,” she answered; “not a bit. It'll all come right after a while;
+you'll see.”
+
+“Will it, will it?” he begged, and then suddenly his eyes were full of
+tears. It was a strange thing to see him in his bewildered misery try
+to pull himself together, and bite his shaking lips as though he vaguely
+remembered that he was a man. “I beg pardon,” he faltered: “I suppose
+I'm ill.”
+
+“I don't know where to put him,” Mrs. Bowse was saying half aside; “I've
+not got a room empty.”
+
+“Put him in my bed and give me a shake-down on the floor,” said
+Tembarom. “That'll be all right. He doesn't want me to leave him,
+anyhow.”
+
+He turned to the money on the table.
+
+“Say,” he said to his guest, “there's two thousand five hundred dollars
+here. We've counted it to make sure. That's quite some money. And it's
+yours--”
+
+The stranger looked disturbed and made a nervous gesture.
+
+“Don't, don't!” he broke in. “Keep it. Some one took the rest. This was
+hidden. It will pay.”
+
+“You see he isn't real' out of his mind,” Mrs. Bowse murmured feelingly.
+
+“No, not real' out of it,” said Tembarom. “Say,”--as an inspiration
+occurred to him,--“I guess maybe Miss Hutchinson will keep it. Will you,
+Little Ann? You can give it to him when he wants it.”
+
+“It's a good bit of money,” said Little Ann, soberly; “but I can put it
+in a bank and pay Mrs. Bowse his board every week. Yes, I'll take it.
+Now he must go to bed. It's a comfortable little room,” she said to the
+stranger, “and Mrs. Bowse will make you a hot milk-punch. That'll be
+nourishing.”
+
+“Thank you,” murmured the man, still keeping his yearning eyes on her.
+“Thank you.”
+
+So he was taken up to the fourth floor and put into Tembarom's bed. The
+hot milk-punch seemed to take the chill out of him, and when, by lying
+on his pillow and gazing at the shakedown on the floor as long as he
+could keep his eyes open, he had convinced himself that Tembarom was
+going to stay with him, he fell asleep.
+
+Little Ann went back to her father carrying a roll of bills in her
+hands. It was a roll of such size that Hutchinson started up in his
+chair and stared at the sight of it.
+
+“Is that the money?” he exclaimed. “What are you going to do with it?
+What have you found out, lass?”
+
+“Yes, this is it,” she answered. “Mr. Tembarom asked me to take care of
+it. I'm going to put it in the bank. But we haven't found out anything.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+His was the opening incident of the series of extraordinary and
+altogether incongruous events which took place afterwards, as it
+appeared to T. Tembarom, like scenes in a play in which he had become
+involved in a manner which one might be inclined to regard humorously
+and make jokes about, because it was a thousand miles away from anything
+like real life. That was the way it struck him. The events referred to,
+it was true, were things one now and then read about in newspapers, but
+while the world realized that they were actual occurrences, one rather
+regarded them, when their parallels were reproduced in books and plays,
+as belonging alone to the world of pure and highly romantic fiction.
+
+“I guess the reason why it seems that way,” he summed it up to
+Hutchinson and Little Ann, after the worst had come to the worst, “is
+because we've not only never known any one it's happened to, but we've
+never known any one that's known any one it's happened to. I've got to
+own up that it makes me feel as if the fellows'd just yell right out
+laughing when they heard it.”
+
+The stranger's money had been safely deposited in a bank, and the
+stranger himself still occupied Tembarom's bedroom. He slept a great
+deal and was very quiet. With great difficulty Little Ann had persuaded
+him to let a doctor see him, and the doctor had been much interested
+in his case. He had expected to find some signs of his having received
+accidentally or otherwise a blow upon the head, but on examination
+he found no scar or wound. The condition he was in was frequently the
+result of concussion of the brain, sometimes of prolonged nervous strain
+or harrowing mental shock. Such cases occurred not infrequently. Quiet
+and entire freedom from excitement would do more for such a condition
+than anything else. If he was afraid of strangers, by all means keep
+them from him. Tembarom had been quite right in letting him think he
+would help him to remember, and that somehow he would in the end reach
+the place he had evidently set out to go to. Nothing must be allowed to
+excite him. It was well he had had money on his person and that he had
+fallen into friendly hands. A city hospital would not have been likely
+to help him greatly. The restraint of its necessary discipline might
+have alarmed him.
+
+So long as he was persuaded that Tembarom was not going to desert
+him, he was comparatively calm, though sunk in a piteous and tormented
+melancholy. His worst hours were when he sat alone in the hall bedroom,
+with his face buried in his hands. He would so sit without moving or
+speaking, and Little Ann discovered that at these times he was trying
+to remember. Sometimes he would suddenly rise and walk about the little
+room, muttering, with woe in his eyes. Ann, who saw how hard this was
+for him, found also that to attempt to check or distract him was even
+worse. When, sitting in her father's room, which was on the other side
+of the wall, she heard his fretted, hurried pacing feet, her face lost
+its dimpled cheerfulness. She wondered if her mother would not have
+discovered some way of clearing the black cloud distracting his brain.
+Nothing would induce him to go down to the boarders' dining-room for
+his meals, and the sight of a servant alarmed him so that it was Ann
+who took him the scant food he would eat. As the time of her return to
+England with her father drew near, she wondered what Mr. Tembarom would
+do without her services. It was she who suggested that they must have
+a name for him, and the name of a part of Manchester had provided one.
+There was a place called Strangeways, and one night when, in talking
+to her father, she referred to it in Tembarom's presence, he suddenly
+seized upon it.
+
+“Strangeways,” he said. “That'd make a good-enough name for him. Let's
+call him Mr. Strangeways. I don't like the way the fellows have of
+calling him 'the Freak.'”
+
+So the name had been adopted, and soon became an established fact.
+
+“The way I feel about him,” Tembarom said, “is that the fellow's not
+a bit of a joke. What I see is that he's up against about the toughest
+proposition I've ever known. Gee! that fellow's not crazy. He's worse.
+If he was out-and-out dippy and didn't know it, he'd be all right.
+Likely as not he'd be thinking he was the Pope of Rome or Anna Held.
+What knocks him out is that he's just right enough to know he's wrong,
+and to be trying to get back. He reminds me of one of those chaps the
+papers tell about sometimes--fellows that go to work in livery-stables
+for ten years and call themselves Bill Jones, and then wake up some
+morning and remember they're some high-browed minister of the gospel
+named the Rev. James Cadwallader.”
+
+When the curtain drew up on Tembarom's amazing drama, Strangeways had
+been occupying his bed nearly three weeks, and he himself had been
+sleeping on a cot Mrs. Bowse had put up for him in his room. The
+Hutchinsons were on the point of sailing for England--steerage--on the
+steamship Transatlantic, and Tembarom was secretly torn into fragments,
+though he had done well with the page and he was daring to believe that
+at the end of the month Galton would tell him he had “made good” and the
+work would continue indefinitely.
+
+If that happened, he would be raised to “twenty-five per” and would be a
+man of means. If the Hutchinsons had not been going away, he would have
+been floating in clouds of rose color. If he could persuade Little
+Ann to take him in hand when she'd had time to “try him out,” even
+Hutchinson could not utterly flout a fellow who was making his steady
+twenty-five per on a big paper, and was on such terms with his boss
+that he might get other chances. Gee! but he was a fellow that luck just
+seemed to chase, anyhow! Look at the other chaps, lots of 'em, who
+knew twice as much as he did, and had lived in decent homes and gone to
+school and done their darned best, too, and then hadn't been able to
+get there! It didn't seem fair somehow that he should run into such pure
+luck.
+
+The day arrived when Galton was to give his decision. Tembarom was going
+to hand in his page, and while he was naturally a trifle nervous, his
+nervousness would have been a hopeful and not unpleasant thing but that
+the Transatlantic sailed in two days, and in the Hutchinson's rooms
+Little Ann was packing her small trunk and her father's bigger one,
+which held more models and drawings than clothing. Hutchinson was
+redder in the face than usual, and indignant condemnation of America
+and American millionaires possessed his soul. Everybody was rather
+depressed. One boarder after another had wakened to a realization that,
+with the passing of Little Ann, Mrs. Bowse's establishment, even with
+the parlor, the cozy-corner, and the second-hand pianola to support
+it, would be a deserted-seeming thing. Mrs. Bowse felt the tone of
+low spirits about the table, and even had a horrible secret fear that
+certain of her best boarders might decide to go elsewhere, merely to
+change surroundings from which they missed something. Her eyes were a
+little red, and she made great efforts to keep things going.
+
+“I can only keep the place up when I've no empty rooms,” she had said to
+Mrs. Peck, “but I'd have boarded her free if her father would have let
+her stay. But he wouldn't, and, anyway, she'd no more let him go off
+alone than she'd jump off Brooklyn Bridge.”
+
+It had been arranged that partly as a farewell banquet and partly to
+celebrate Galton's decision about the page, there was to be an oyster
+stew that night in Mr. Hutchinson's room, which was distinguished as
+a bed-sitting-room. Tembarom had diplomatically suggested it to Mr.
+Hutchinson. It was to be Tembarom's oyster supper, and somehow he
+managed to convey that it was only a proper and modest tribute to Mr.
+Hutchinson himself. First-class oyster stew and pale ale were not so bad
+when properly suggested, therefore Mr. Hutchinson consented. Jim Bowles
+and Julius Steinberger were to come in to share the feast, and Mrs.
+Bowse had promised to prepare.
+
+It was not an inspiring day for Little Ann. New York had seemed a
+bewildering and far too noisy place for her when she had come to it
+directly from her grandmother's cottage in the English village, where
+she had spent her last three months before leaving England. The dark
+rooms of the five-storied boarding-house had seemed gloomy enough to
+her, and she had found it much more difficult to adjust herself to her
+surroundings than she could have been induced to admit to her father.
+At first his temper and the open contempt for American habits and
+institutions which he called “speaking his mind” had given her a
+great deal of careful steering through shoals to do. At the outset the
+boarders had resented him, and sometimes had snapped back their own
+views of England and courts. Violent and disparaging argument had
+occasionally been imminent, and Mrs. Bowse had worn an ominous look.
+Their rooms had in fact been “wanted” before their first week had come
+to an end, and Little Ann herself scarcely knew how she had tided over
+that situation. But tide it over she did, and by supernatural effort and
+watchfulness she contrived to soothe Mrs. Bowse until she had been in
+the house long enough to make friends with people and aid her father
+to realize that, if they went elsewhere, they might find only the same
+class of boarders, and there would be the cost of moving to consider.
+She had beguiled an armchair from Mrs. Bowse, and had recovered it
+herself with a remnant of crimson stuff secured from a miscellaneous
+heap at a marked-down sale at a department store. She had arranged his
+books and papers adroitly and had kept them in their places so that
+he never felt himself obliged to search for any one of them. With many
+little contrivances she had given his bed-sitting-room a look of comfort
+and established homeliness, and he had even begun to like it.
+
+“Tha't just like tha mother, Ann,” he had said. “She'd make a railway
+station look as if it had been lived in.”
+
+Then Tembarom had appeared, heralded by Mrs. Bowse and the G. Destroyer,
+and the first time their eyes had met across the table she had liked
+him. The liking had increased. There was that in his boyish cheer and
+his not-too-well-fed-looking face which called forth maternal interest.
+As she gradually learned what his life had been, she felt a thrilled
+anxiety to hear day by day how he was getting on. She listened for
+details, and felt it necessary to gather herself together in the face of
+a slight depression when hopes of Galton were less high than usual. His
+mending was mysteriously done, and in time he knew with amazed gratitude
+that he was being “looked after.” His first thanks were so awkward, but
+so full of appreciation of unaccustomed luxury, that they almost brought
+tears to her eyes, since they so clearly illuminated the entire novelty
+of any attention whatever.
+
+“I just don't know what to say,” he said, shuffling from one foot to
+another, though his nice grin was at its best. “I've never had a woman
+do anything for me since I was ten. I guess women do lots of things
+for most fellows; but, then, they're mothers and sisters and aunts. I
+appreciate it like--like thunder. I feel as if I was Rockefeller, Miss
+Ann.”
+
+In a short time she had become “Little Ann” to him, as to the rest,
+and they began to know each other very well. Jim Bowles and Julius
+Steinberger had not been able to restrain themselves at first from
+making slangy, yearning love to her, but Tembarom had been different.
+He had kept himself well in hand. Yes, she had liked T. Tembarom, and
+as she packed the trunks she realized that the Atlantic Ocean was
+three thousand miles across, and when two people who had no money
+were separated by it, they were likely to remain so. Rich people could
+travel, poor people couldn't. You just stayed where things took you, and
+you mustn't be silly enough to expect things to happen in your class of
+life--things like seeing people again. Your life just went on. She kept
+herself very busy, and did not allow her thoughts any latitude. It would
+vex her father very much if he thought she had really grown fond of
+America and was rather sorry to go away. She had finished her packing
+before evening, and the trunks were labeled and set aside, some in the
+outside hall and some in the corner of the room. She had sat down with
+some mending on her lap, and Hutchinson was walking about the room with
+the restlessness of the traveler whose approaching journey will not let
+him settle himself anywhere.
+
+“I'll lay a shilling you've got everything packed and ready, and put
+just where a chap can lay his hands on it,” he said.
+
+“Yes, Father. Your tweed cap's in the big pocket of your thick topcoat,
+and there's an extra pair of spectacles and your pipe and tobacco in the
+small one.”
+
+“And off we go back to England same as we came!” He rubbed his head, and
+drew a big, worried sigh. “Where's them going?” he asked, pointing to
+some newly laundered clothing on a side table. “You haven't forgotten
+'em, have you?”
+
+“No, Father. It's just some of the young men's washing. I thought I'd
+take time to mend them up a bit before I went to bed.”
+
+“That's like tha mother, too--taking care of everybody. What did these
+chaps do before you came?”
+
+“Sometimes they tried to sew on a button or so themselves, but oftener
+they went without. Men make poor work of sewing. It oughtn't to be
+expected of them.”
+
+Hutchinson stopped and looked her and her mending over with a touch of
+curiosity.
+
+“Some of them's Tembarom's?” he asked.
+
+Little Ann held up a pair of socks.
+
+“These are. He does wear them out, poor fellow. It's tramping up and
+down the streets to save car-fare does it. He's never got a heel to his
+name. But he's going to be able to buy some new ones next week.”
+
+Hutchinson began his tramp again.
+
+“He'll miss thee, Little Ann; but so'll the other lads, for that
+matter.”
+
+“He'll know to-night whether Mr. Galton's going to let him keep his
+work. I do hope he will. I believe he'd begin to get on.”
+
+“Well,”--Hutchinson was just a little grudging even at this
+comparatively lenient moment,--“I believe the chap'll get on myself.
+He's got pluck and he's sharp. I never saw him make a poor mouth yet.”
+
+“Neither did I,” answered Ann.
+
+A door leading into Tembarom's hall bedroom opened on to Hutchinson's.
+They both heard some one inside the room knock at it. Hutchinson turned
+and listened, jerking his head toward the sound.
+
+“There's that poor chap again,” he said. “He's wakened and got restless.
+What's Tembarom going to do with him, I'd like to know? The money won't
+last forever.”
+
+“Shall I let him in, Father? I dare say he's got restless because Mr.
+Tembarom's not come in.”
+
+“Aye, we'll let him in. He won't have thee long. He can't do no harm so
+long as I'm here.”
+
+Little Ann went to the door and opened it. She spoke quietly.
+
+“Do you want to come in here, Mr. Strangeways?”
+
+The man came in. He was clean, but still unshaven, and his clothes
+looked as though he had been lying down. He looked round the room
+anxiously.
+
+“Where has he gone?” he demanded in an overstrung voice. “Where is he?”
+ He caught at Ann's sleeve in a sudden access of nervous fear. “What
+shall I do if he's gone?”
+
+Hutchinson moved toward him.
+
+“'Ere, 'ere,” he said, “don't you go catchin' hold of ladies. What do
+you want?”
+
+“I've forgotten his name now. What shall I do if I can't remember?”
+ faltered Strangeways.
+
+Little Ann patted his arm comfortingly.
+
+“There, there, now! You've not really forgotten it. It's just slipped
+your memory. You want Mr. Tembarom--Mr. T. Tembarom.”
+
+“Oh, thank you, thank you. That's it. Yes, Tembarom. He said T.
+Tembarom. He said he wouldn't throw me over.”
+
+Little Ann led him to a seat and made him sit down. She answered him
+with quiet decision.
+
+“Well, if he said he wouldn't, he won't. Will he, Father?”
+
+“No, he won't.” There was rough good nature in Hutchinson's admission.
+He paused after it to glance at Ann. “You think a lot of that lad, don't
+you, Ann?”
+
+“Yes, I do, Father,” she replied undisturbedly. “He's one you can trust,
+too. He's up-town at his work,” she explained to Strangeways. “He'll be
+back before long. He's giving us a bit of a supper in here because we're
+going away.”
+
+Strangeways grew nervous again.
+
+“But he won't go with you? T. Tembarom won't go?”
+
+“No, no; he's not going. He'll stay here,” she said soothingly. He had
+evidently not observed the packed and labeled trunks when he came in. He
+seemed suddenly to see them now, and rose in distress.
+
+“Whose are these? You said he wasn't going?”
+
+Ann took hold of his arm and led him to the corner.
+
+“They are not Mr. Tembarom's trunks,” she explained. “They are father's
+and mine. Look on the labels. Joseph Hutchinson, Liverpool. Ann
+Hutchinson, Liverpool.”
+
+He looked at them closely in a puzzled way. He read a label aloud in a
+dragging voice.
+
+“Ann Hutchinson, Liverpool. What's--what's Liverpool?
+
+“Oh, come,” encouraged Little Ann, “you know that. It's a place in
+England. We're going back to England.”
+
+He stood and gazed fixedly before him. Then he began to rub his fingers
+across his forehead. Ann knew the straining look in his eyes. He was
+making that horrible struggle to get back somewhere through the darkness
+which shut him in. It was so painful a thing to see that even Hutchinson
+turned slightly away.
+
+“Don't!” said Little Ann, softly, and tried to draw him away.
+
+He caught his breath convulsively once or twice, and his voice dragged
+out words again, as though he were dragging them from bottomless depths.
+
+“Going--back--to--England--back to England--to England.”
+
+He dropped into a chair near by, his arms thrown over its back, and
+broke, as his face fell upon them, into heavy, deadly sobbing--the
+kind of sobbing Tembarom had found it impossible to stand up against.
+Hutchinson whirled about testily.
+
+“Dang it!” he broke out, “I wish Tembarom'd turn up. What are we to do?”
+ He didn't like it himself. It struck him as unseemly.
+
+But Ann went to the chair, and put her hands on the shuddering shoulder,
+bending over the soul-wrung creature, the wisdom of centuries in the
+soft, expostulatory voice which seemed to reach the very darkness he
+was lost in. It was a wisdom of which she was wholly unaware, but it had
+been born with her, and was the building of her being.
+
+“'Sh! 'S-h-h!” she said. “You mustn't do that. Mr. Tembarom wouldn't
+like you to do it. He'll be in directly. 'Sh! 'Sh, now!” And simple as
+the words were, their soothing reached him. The wildness of his sobs
+grew less.
+
+“See here,” Hutchinson protested, “this won't do, my man. I won't have
+it, Ann. I'm upset myself, what with this going back and everything. I
+can't have a chap coming and crying like that there. It upsets me worse
+than ever. And you hangin' over him! It won't do.”
+
+Strangeways lifted his head from his arms and looked at him.
+
+“Aye, I mean what I say,” Hutchinson added fretfully.
+
+Strangeways got up from the chair. When he was not bowed or slouching it
+was to be seen that he was a tall man with square shoulders. Despite his
+unshaven, haggard face, he had a sort of presence.
+
+“I'll go back to my room,” he said. “I forgot. I ought not to be here.”
+
+Neither Hutchinson nor Little Ann had ever seen any one do the thing
+he did next. When Ann went with him to the door of the hall bedroom, he
+took her hand, and bowing low before her, lifted it gently to his lips.
+
+Hutchinson stared at him as he turned into the room and closed the door
+behind him.
+
+“Well, I've read of lords and ladies doin' that in books,” he said, “but
+I never thought I should see a chap do it myself.”
+
+Little Ann went back to her mending, looking very thoughtful.
+
+“Father,” she said, after a few moments, “England made him come near to
+remembering something.”
+
+“New York'll come near making me remember a lot of things when I'm
+out of it,” said Mr. Hutchinson, sitting down heavily in his chair and
+rubbing his head. “Eh, dang it! dang it!”
+
+“Don't you let it, Father,” advised Little Ann. “There's never any good
+in thinking things over.”
+
+“You're not as cheerful yourself as you let on,” he said. “You've not
+got much color to-day, my lass.”
+
+She rubbed one cheek a little, trying to laugh.
+
+“I shall get it back when we go and stay with grandmother. It's just
+staying indoors so much. Mr. Tembarom won't be long now; I'll get up and
+set the table. The things are on a tray outside.”
+
+As she was going out of the room, Jim Bowles and Julius Steinberger
+appeared at the door.
+
+“May we come in?” Jim asked eagerly. “We're invited to the oyster stew,
+and it's time old T. T. was here. Julius and me are just getting dippy
+waiting up-stairs to hear if he's made good with Galton.”
+
+“Well, now, you sit down and be quiet a bit, or you'll be losing your
+appetites,” advised Ann.
+
+“You can't lose a thing the size of mine,” answered Jim, “any more than
+you could lose the Metropolitan Opera-house.”
+
+Ann turned her head and paused as though she were listening. She heard
+footsteps in the lower hall.
+
+“He's coming now,” she announced. “I know his step. He's tired. Don't go
+yet, you two,” she added as the pair prepared to rush to meet him.
+“When any one's that tired he wants to wash his face, and talk when he's
+ready. If you'll just go back to your room I'll call you when I've set
+the table.”
+
+She felt that she wanted a little more quiet during the next few minutes
+than she could have if they remained and talked at the top of elated
+voices. She had not quite realized how anxiously she had been waiting
+all day for the hour when she would hear exactly what had happened. If
+he was all right, it would be a nice thing to remember when she was in
+England. In this moderate form she expressed herself mentally. “It would
+be a nice thing to remember.” She spread the cloth on the table and
+began to lay out the plates. Involuntarily she found herself stopping to
+glance at the hall bedroom door and listen rather intently.
+
+“I hope he's got it. I do that. I'm sure he has. He ought to.”
+
+Hutchinson looked over at her. She was that like her mother, that lass!
+
+“You're excited, Ann,” he said.
+
+“Yes, Father, I am--a bit. He's--he's washing his face now.” Sounds of
+splashing water could be heard through the intervening door.
+
+Hutchinson watched her with some uneasiness.
+
+“You care a lot for that lad,” he said.
+
+She did not look fluttered. Her answer was quite candid.
+
+“I said I did, Father. He's taking off his boots.”
+
+“You know every sound he makes, and you're going away Saturday, and
+you'll never see him again.”
+
+“That needn't stop me caring. It never did any one any harm to care for
+one of his sort.”
+
+“But it can't come to anything,” Hutchinson began to bluster. “It won't
+do--”
+
+“He's coming to the door, he's turning the handle,” said Little Ann.
+
+Tembarom came in. He was fresh with recent face-washing, and his hair
+was damp, so that a short lock curled and stood up. He had been uptown
+making frantic efforts for hours, but he had been making them in a
+spirit of victorious relief, and he did not look tired at all.
+
+“I've got it!” he cried out the moment he entered. “I've got it, by
+jingo! The job's mine for keeps.”
+
+“Galton's give it to you out and out?” Hutchinson was slightly excited
+himself.
+
+“He's in the bulliest humor you ever saw. He says I've done first-rate,
+and if I go on, he'll run me up to thirty.”
+
+“Well, I'm danged glad of it, lad, that I am!” Hutchinson gave in
+handsomely. “You put backbone into it.”
+
+Little Ann stood near, smiling. Her smile met Tembarom's.
+
+“I know you're glad, Little Ann,” he said. “I'd never have got there but
+for you. It was up to me, after the way you started me.”
+
+“You know I'm glad without me telling you,” she answered. “I'm RIGHTDOWN
+glad.”
+
+And it was at this moment that Mrs. Bowse came into the room.
+
+“It's too bad it's happened just now,” she said, much flustered.
+“That's the way with things. The stew'll spoil, but he says it's real
+important.”
+
+Tembarom caught at both her hands and shook them.
+
+“I've got it, Mrs. Bowse. Here's your society reporter! The best-looking
+boarder you've got is going to be able to pay his board steady.”
+
+“I'm as glad as can be, and so will everybody be. I knew you'd get it.
+But this gentleman's been here twice to-day. He says he really must see
+you.”
+
+“Let him wait,” Hutchinson ordered. “What's the chap want? The stew
+won't be fit to eat.”
+
+“No, it won't,” answered Mrs. Bowse; “but he seems to think he's not the
+kind to be put off. He says it's more Mr. Tembarom's business than his.
+He looked real mad when I showed him into the parlor, where they were
+playing the pianola. He asked wasn't there a private room where you
+could talk.”
+
+A certain flurried interest in the manner of Mrs. Bowse, a something
+not usually awakened by inopportune callers, an actual suggestion of
+the possible fact that she was not as indifferent as she was nervous,
+somewhat awakened Mr. Hutchinson's curiosity.
+
+“Look here,” he volunteered, “if he's got any real business, he
+can't talk over to the tune of the pianola you can bring him up here,
+Tembarom. I'll see he don't stay long if his business isn't worth
+talkin' about. He'll see the table set for supper, and that'll hurry
+him.”
+
+“Oh, gee I wish he hadn't come!” said Tembarom. “I'll just go down and
+see what he wants. No one's got any swell private business with me.”
+
+“You bring him up if he has,” said Hutchinson. “We'd like to hear about
+it.”
+
+Tembarom ran down the stairs quickly.
+
+No one had ever wanted to see him on business before. There was
+something important-sounding about it; perhaps things were starting up
+for him in real earnest. It might be a message from Galton, though
+he could not believe that he had at this early stage reached such a
+distinction. A ghastly thought shot a bolt at him, but he shook himself
+free of it.
+
+“He's not a fellow to go back on his word, anyhow,” he insisted.
+
+There were more boarders than usual in the parlor. The young woman from
+the notion counter had company; and one of her guests was playing “He
+sut'nly was Good to Me” on the pianola with loud and steady tread of
+pedal.
+
+The new arrival had evidently not thought it worth his while to commit
+himself to permanency by taking a seat. He was standing not far from the
+door with a businesslike-looking envelop in one hand and a pince-nez in
+the other, with which Tembarom saw he was rather fretfully tapping
+the envelop as he looked about him. He was plainly taking in the
+characteristics of the room, and was not leniently disposed toward them.
+His tailor was clearly an excellent one, with entirely correct ideas as
+to the cut and material which exactly befitted an elderly gentleman of
+some impressiveness in the position, whatsoever it happened to be, which
+he held. His face was not of a friendly type, and his eyes held cold
+irritation discreetly restrained by businesslike civility. Tembarom
+vaguely felt the genialities of the oyster supper assume a rather
+fourth-rate air.
+
+The caller advanced and spoke first.
+
+“Mr. Tembarom?” he inquired.
+
+“Yes,” Tembarom answered, “I'm T. Tembarom.”
+
+“T.,” repeated the stranger, with a slightly puzzled expression. “Ah,
+yes; I see. I beg pardon.”
+
+In that moment Tembarom felt that he was looked over, taken in, summed
+up, and without favor. The sharp, steady eye, however, did not seem to
+have moved from his face. At the same time it had aided him to realize
+that he was, to this well-dressed person at least, a too exhilarated
+young man wearing a ten-dollar “hand-me-down.”
+
+“My name is Palford,” he said concisely. “That will convey nothing to
+you. I am of the firm of Palford & Grimby of Lincoln's Inn. This is my
+card.”
+
+Tembarom took the card and read that Palford & Grimby were “solicitors,”
+ and he was not sure that he knew exactly what “solicitors” were.
+
+“Lincoln's Inn?” he hesitated. “That's not in New York, is it?”
+
+“No, Mr. Tembarom; in London. I come from England.”
+
+“You must have had bad weather crossing,” said Tembarom, with amiable
+intent. Somehow Mr. Palford presented a more unyielding surface than he
+was accustomed to. And yet his hard courtesy was quite perfect.
+
+“I have been here some weeks.”
+
+“I hope you like New York. Won't you have a seat?”
+
+The young lady from the notion counter and her friends began to sing
+the chorus of “He sut'nly was Good to Me” with quite professional negro
+accent.
+
+“That's just the way May Irwin done it,” one of them laughed.
+
+Mr. Palford glanced at the performers. He did not say whether he liked
+New York or not.
+
+“I asked your landlady if we could not see each other in a private
+room,” he said. “It would not be possible to talk quietly here.”
+
+“We shouldn't have much of a show,” answered Tembarom, inwardly wishing
+he knew what was going to happen. “But there are no private rooms in the
+house. We can be quieter than this, though, if we go up stairs to Mr.
+Hutchinson's room. He said I could bring you.”
+
+“That would be much better,” replied Mr. Palford.
+
+Tembarom led him out of the room, up the first steep and narrow flight
+of stairs, along the narrow hall to the second, up that, down another
+hall to the third, up the third, and on to the fourth. As he led the way
+he realized again that the worn carpets, the steep narrowness, and the
+pieces of paper unfortunately stripped off the wall at intervals, were
+being rather counted against him. This man had probably never been in a
+place like this before in his life, and he didn't take to it.
+
+At the Hutchinsons' door he stopped and explained:
+
+“We were going to have an oyster stew here because the Hutchinsons are
+going away; but Mr. Hutchinson said we could come up.”
+
+“Very kind of Mr. Hutchinson, I'm sure.”
+
+Despite his stiffly collected bearing, Mr. Palford looked perhaps
+slightly nervous when he was handed into the bed-sitting-room, and found
+himself confronting Hutchinson and Little Ann and the table set for the
+oyster stew. It is true that he had never been in such a place in his
+life, that for many reasons he was appalled, and that he was beset by a
+fear that he might be grotesquely compelled by existing circumstances to
+accept these people's invitation, if they insisted upon his sitting down
+with them and sharing their oyster stew. One could not calculate on what
+would happen among these unknown quantities. It might be their idea of
+boarding-house politeness. And how could one offend them? God forbid
+that the situation should intensify itself in such an absurdly trying
+manner! What a bounder the unfortunate young man was! His own experience
+had not been such as to assist him to any realistic enlightenment
+regarding him, even when he had seen the society page and had learned
+that he had charge of it.
+
+“Let me make you acquainted with Mr. and Miss Hutchinson,” Tembarom
+introduced. “This is Mr. Palford, Mr. Hutchinson.”
+
+Hutchinson, half hidden behind his newspaper, jerked his head and
+grunted:
+
+“Glad to see you, sir.”
+
+Mr. Palford bowed, and took the chair Tembarom presented.
+
+“I am much obliged to you, Mr. Hutchinson, for allowing me to come to
+your room. I have business to discuss with Mr. Tembarom, and the pianola
+was being played down-stairs--rather loudly.”
+
+“They do it every night, dang 'em! Right under my bed,” growled
+Hutchinson. “You're an Englishman, aren't you?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“So am I, thank God!” Hutchinson devoutly gave forth.
+
+Little Ann rose from her chair, sewing in hand.
+
+“Father'll come and sit with me in my room,” she said.
+
+Hutchinson looked grumpy. He did not intend to leave the field clear
+and the stew to its fate if he could help it. He gave Ann a protesting
+frown.
+
+“I dare say Mr. Palford doesn't mind us,” he said. “We're not
+strangers.”
+
+“Not in the least,” Palford protested. “Certainly not. If you are old
+friends, you may be able to assist us.”
+
+“Well, I don't know about that,” Hutchinson answered, “We've not known
+him long, but we know him pretty well. You come from London, don't you?”
+
+“Yes. From Lincoln's Inn Fields.”
+
+“Law?” grunted Hutchinson.
+
+“Yes. Of the firm of Palford & Grimby.”
+
+Hutchinson moved in his chair involuntarily. There was stimulation to
+curiosity in this. This chap was a regular top sawyer--clothes, way of
+pronouncing his words, manners, everything. No mistaking him--old family
+solicitor sort of chap. What on earth could he have to say to Tembarom?
+Tembarom himself had sat down and could not be said to look at his ease.
+
+“I do not intrude without the excuse of serious business,” Palford
+explained to him. “A great deal of careful research and inquiry has
+finally led me here. I am compelled to believe I have followed the
+right clue, but I must ask you a few questions. Your name is not really
+Tembarom, is it?”
+
+Hutchinson looked at Tembarom sharply.
+
+“Not Tembarom? What does he mean, lad?”
+
+Tembarom's grin was at once boyish and ashamed.
+
+“Well, it is in one way,” he answered, “and it isn't in another. The
+fellows at school got into the way of calling me that way,--to save
+time, I guess,--and I got to like it. They'd have guyed my real name.
+Most of them never knew it. I can't see why any one ever called a child
+by such a fool name, anyhow.”
+
+“What was it exactly?”
+
+Tembarom looked almost sheepish.
+
+“It sounds like a thing in a novel. It was Temple Temple Barholm. Two
+Temples, by gee! As if one wasn't enough!”
+
+Joseph Hutchinson dropped his paper and almost started from his chair.
+His red face suddenly became so much redder that he looked a trifle
+apoplectic.
+
+“Temple Barholm does tha say?” he cried out.
+
+Mr. Palford raised his hand and checked him, but with a suggestion of
+stiff apology.
+
+“If you will kindly allow me. Did you ever hear your father refer to a
+place called Temple Barholm?” he inquired.
+
+Tembarom reflected as though sending his thoughts backward into a
+pretty thoroughly forgotten and ignored past. There had been no reason
+connected with filial affection which should have caused him to recall
+memories of his father. They had not liked each other. He had known
+that he had been resented and looked down upon as a characteristically
+American product. His father had more than once said he was a “common
+American lad,” and he had known he was.
+
+“Seems to me,” he said at last, “that once when he was pretty mad at his
+luck I heard him grumbling about English laws, and he said some of his
+distant relations were swell people who would never think of speaking to
+him,--perhaps didn't know he was alive,--and they lived in a big way in
+a place that was named after the family. He never saw it or them, and he
+said that was the way in England--one fellow got everything and the rest
+were paupers like himself. He'd always been poor.”
+
+“Yes, the relation was a distant one. Until this investigation began the
+family knew nothing of him. The inquiry has been a tiresome one. I trust
+I am reaching the end of it. We have given nearly two years to following
+this clue.”
+
+“What for?” burst forth Tembarom, sitting upright.
+
+“Because it was necessary to find either George Temple Barholm or his
+son, if he had one.”
+
+“I'm his son, all right, but he died when I was eight years old,”
+ Tembarom volunteered. “I don't remember much about him.”
+
+“You remember that he was not an American?”
+
+“He was English. Hated it; but he wasn't fond of America.”
+
+“Have you any papers belonging to him?”
+
+Tembarom hesitated again.
+
+“There's a few old letters--oh, and one of those glass photographs in
+a case. I believe it's my grandfather and grandmother, taken when they
+were married. Him on a chair, you know, and her standing with her hand
+on his shoulder.”
+
+“Can you show them to me?” Palford suggested.
+
+“Sure,” Tembarom answered, getting up from his seat “They're in my room.
+I turned them up yesterday among some other things.”
+
+When he left them, Mr. Palford sat gently rubbing his chin. Hutchinson
+wanted to burst forth with questions, but he looked so remote and
+acidly dignified that there was a suggestion of boldness in the idea of
+intruding on his reflections. Hutchinson stared at him and breathed hard
+and short in his suspense. The stiff old chap was thinking things
+over and putting things together in his lawyer's way. He was entirely
+oblivious to his surroundings. Little Ann went on with her mending, but
+she wore her absorbed look, and it was not a result of her work.
+
+Tembarom came back with some papers in his hand. They were yellowed
+old letters, and on the top of the package there was a worn
+daguerreotype-case with broken clasp.
+
+“Here they are,” he said, giving them to Palford. “I guess they'd just
+been married,” opening the case. “Get on to her embroidered collar and
+big breast-pin with his picture in it. That's English enough, isn't it?
+He'd given it to her for a wedding-present. There's something in one of
+the letters about it.”
+
+It was the letters to which Mr. Palford gave the most attention. He read
+them and examined post-marks and dates. When he had finished, he
+rose from his chair with a slightly portentous touch of professional
+ceremony.
+
+“Yes, those are sufficiently convincing. You are a very fortunate young
+man. Allow me to congratulate you.”
+
+He did not look particularly pleased, though he extended his hand and
+shook Tembarom's politely. He was rigorously endeavoring to conceal that
+he found himself called upon to make the best of an extremely bad job.
+Hutchinson started forward, resting his hands on his knees and glaring
+with ill-suppressed excitement.
+
+“What's that for?” Tembarom said. He felt rather like a fool. He laughed
+half nervously. It seemed to be up to him to understand, and he didn't
+understand in the least.
+
+“You have, through your father's distant relationship, inherited a
+very magnificent property--the estate of Temple Barholm in Lancashire,”
+ Palford began to explain, but Mr. Hutchinson sprang from his chair
+outright, crushing his paper in his hand.
+
+“Temple Barholm!” he almost shouted, “I dunnot believe thee! Why, it's
+one of th' oldest places in England and one of th' biggest. Th' Temple
+Barholms as didn't come over with th' Conqueror was there before him.
+Some of them was Saxon kings! And him--” pointing a stumpy, red finger
+disparagingly at Tembarom, aghast and incredulous--“that New York lad
+that's sold newspapers in the streets--you say he's come into it?”
+
+“Precisely.” Mr. Palford spoke with some crispness of diction. Noise
+and bluster annoyed him. “That is my business here. Mr. Tembarom is,
+in fact, Mr. Temple Temple Barholm of Temple Barholm, which you seem to
+have heard of.”
+
+“Heard of it! My mother was born in the village an' lives there yet. Art
+tha struck dumb, lad!” he said almost fiercely to Tembarom. “By Judd!
+Tha well may be!”
+
+Tembarom was standing holding the back of a chair. He was pale, and
+had once opened his mouth, and then gulped and shut it. Little Ann had
+dropped her sewing. His first look had leaped to her, and she had looked
+back straight into his eyes.
+
+“I'm struck something,” he said, his half-laugh slightly unsteady.
+“Who'd blame me?”
+
+“You'd better sit down,” said Little Ann. “Sudden things are upsetting.”
+
+He did sit down. He felt rather shaky. He touched himself on his chest
+and laughed again.
+
+“Me!” he said. “T. T.! Hully gee! It's like a turn at a vaudeville.”
+
+The sentiment prevailing in Hutchinson's mind seemed to verge on
+indignation.
+
+“Thee th' master of Temple Barholm!” he ejaculated. “Why, it stood for
+seventy thousand pound' a year!”
+
+“It did and it does,” said Mr. Palford, curtly. He had less and less
+taste for the situation. There was neither dignity nor proper sentiment
+in it. The young man was utterly incapable of comprehending the meaning
+and proportions of the extraordinary event which had befallen him. It
+appeared to present to him the aspect of a somewhat slangy New York
+joke.
+
+“You do not seem much impressed, Mr. Temple Barholm,” he said.
+
+“Oh, I'm impressed, all right,” answered Tembarom, “but, say, this thing
+can't be true! You couldn't make it true if you sat up all night to do
+it.”
+
+“When I go into the business details of the matter tomorrow morning
+you will realize the truth of it,” said Mr. Palford. “Seventy thousand
+pounds a year--and Temple Barholm--are not unsubstantial facts.”
+
+“Three hundred and fifty thousand dollars, my lad--that's what it stands
+for!” put in Mr. Hutchinson.
+
+“Well,” said Tembarom, “I guess I can worry along on that if I try hard
+enough. I mayn't be able to keep myself in the way I've been used to,
+but I've got to make it do.”
+
+Mr. Palford stiffened. He did not know that the garish,
+flippant-sounding joking was the kind of defense the streets of New York
+had provided Mr. Temple Barholm with in many an hour when he had been
+a half-clad newsboy with an empty stomach, and a bundle of unsold
+newspapers under his arm.
+
+“You are jocular,” he said. “I find the New Yorkers are given to being
+jocular--continuously.”
+
+Tembarom looked at him rather searchingly. Palford wouldn't have found
+it possible to believe that the young man knew all about his distaste
+and its near approach to disgust, that he knew quite well what he
+thought of his ten-dollar suit, his ex-newsboy's diction, and his entire
+incongruousness as a factor in any circumstances connected with dignity
+and splendor. He would certainly not have credited the fact that though
+he had not the remotest idea what sort of a place Temple Barholm was,
+and what sort of men its long line of possessors had been, he had gained
+a curious knowledge of their significance through the mental attitude
+of their legal representative when he for a moment failed to conceal his
+sense of actual revolt.
+
+“It seems sort of like a joke till you get on to it,” he said. “But I
+guess it ain't such a merry jest as it seems.”
+
+And then Mr. Palford did begin to observe that he had lost his color
+entirely; also that he had a rather decent, sharp-cut face, and
+extremely white and good young teeth, which he showed not unattractively
+when he smiled. And he smiled frequently, but he was not smiling now.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+In the course of the interview given to the explaining of business and
+legal detail which took place between Mr. Palford and his client the
+following morning, Tembarom's knowledge of his situation extended itself
+largely, and at the same time added in a proportionate degree to his
+sense of his own incongruity as connected with it. He sat at a table in
+Palford's private sitting-room at the respectable, old-fashioned hotel
+the solicitor had chosen--sat and listened, and answered questions and
+asked them, until his head began to feel as though it were crammed to
+bursting with extraordinary detail.
+
+It was all extraordinary to him. He had had no time for reading and no
+books to read, and therefore knew little of fiction. He was entirely
+ignorant of all romance but such as the New York papers provided. This
+was highly colored, but it did not deal with events connected with the
+possessors of vast English estates and the details of their habits and
+customs. His geographical knowledge of Great Britain was simple and
+largely incorrect. Information concerning its usual conditions and
+aspects had come to him through talk of international marriages and
+cup races, and had made but little impression upon him. He liked New
+York--its noise, its streets, its glare, its Sunday newspapers, with
+their ever-increasing number of sheets, and pictures of everything
+on earth which could be photographed. His choice, when he could allow
+himself a fifty-cent seat at the theater, naturally ran to productions
+which were farcical or cheerfully musical. He had never reached serious
+drama, perhaps because he had never had money enough to pay for entrance
+to anything like half of the “shows” the other fellows recommended. He
+was totally unprepared for the facing of any kind of drama as connected
+with himself. The worst of it was that it struck him as being of the
+nature of farce when regarded from the normal New York point of view. If
+he had somehow had the luck to come into the possession of money in ways
+which were familiar to him,--to “strike it rich” in the way of a “big
+job” or “deal,”--he would have been better able to adjust himself to
+circumstances. He might not have known how to spend his money, but he
+would have spent it in New York on New York joys. There would have
+been no foreign remoteness about the thing, howsoever fantastically
+unexpected such fortune might have been. At any rate, in New York he
+would have known the names of places and things.
+
+Through a large part of his interview with Palford his elbow rested
+on the table, and he held his chin with his hand and rubbed it
+thoughtfully. The last Temple Temple Barholm had been an eccentric and
+uncompanionable person. He had lived alone and had not married. He had
+cherished a prejudice against the man who would have succeeded him as
+next of kin if he had not died young. People had been of the opinion
+that he had disliked him merely because he did not wish to be reminded
+that some one else must some day inevitably stand in his shoes, and
+own the possessions of which he himself was arrogantly fond. There were
+always more female Temple Barholms than male ones, and the families
+were small. The relative who had emigrated to Brooklyn had been a
+comparatively unknown person. His only intercourse with the head of the
+house had been confined to a begging letter, written from America
+when his circumstances were at their worst. It was an ill-mannered and
+ill-expressed letter, which had been considered presuming, and had been
+answered chillingly with a mere five-pound note, clearly explained as
+a final charity. This begging letter, which bitterly contrasted the
+writer's poverty with his indifferent relative's luxuries, had, by a
+curious trick of chance which preserved it, quite extraordinarily turned
+up during an examination of apparently unimportant, forgotten papers,
+and had furnished a clue in the search for next of kin. The writer had
+greatly annoyed old Mr. Temple Barholm by telling him that he had called
+his son by his name--“not that there was ever likely to be anything in
+it for him.” But a waif of the New York streets who was known as “Tem”
+ or “Tembarom” was not a link easily attached to any chain, and the
+search had been long and rather hopeless. It had, however, at last
+reached Mrs. Bowse's boarding-house and before Mr. Palford sat Mr.
+Temple Temple Barholm, a cheap young man in cheap clothes, and speaking
+New York slang with a nasal accent. Mr. Palford, feeling him appalling
+and absolutely without the pale, was still aware that he stood in the
+position of an important client of the firm of Palford & Grimby. There
+was a section of the offices at Lincoln's Inn devoted to documents
+representing a lifetime of attention to the affairs of the Temple
+Barholm estates. It was greatly to be hoped that the crass ignorance
+and commonness of this young outsider would not cause impossible
+complications.
+
+“He knows nothing! He knows nothing!” Palford found himself forced to
+exclaim mentally not once, but a hundred times, in the course of their
+talk.
+
+There was--this revealed itself as the interview proceeded--just one
+slight palliation of his impossible benightedness: he was not the
+kind of young man who, knowing nothing, huffily protects himself by
+pretending to know everything. He was of an unreserve concerning his
+ignorance which his solicitor felt sometimes almost struck one in the
+face. Now and then it quite made one jump. He was singularly free from
+any vestige of personal vanity. He was also singularly unready to
+take offense. To the head of the firm of Palford & Grimby, who was
+not accustomed to lightness of manner, and inclined to the view that a
+person who made a joke took rather a liberty with him, his tendency to
+be jocular, even about himself and the estate of Temple Barholm, was
+irritating and somewhat disrespectful. Mr. Palford did not easily
+comprehend jokes of any sort; especially was he annoyed by cryptic
+phraseology and mammoth exaggeration. For instance, he could not in the
+least compass Mr. Temple Barholm's meaning when he casually remarked
+that something or other was “all to the merry”; or again, quite as
+though he believed that he was using reasonable English figures of
+speech, “The old fellow thought he was the only pebble on the beach.” In
+using the latter expression he had been referring to the late Mr. Temple
+Barholm; but what on earth was his connection with the sea-shore and
+pebbles? When confronted with these baffling absurdities, Mr. Palford
+either said, “I beg pardon,” or stiffened and remained silent.
+
+When Tembarom learned that he was the head of one of the oldest families
+in England, no aspect of the desirable dignity of his position reached
+him in the least.
+
+“Well,” he remarked, “there's quite a lot of us can go back to Adam and
+Eve.”
+
+When he was told that he was lord of the manor of Temple Barholm, he did
+not know what a manor was.
+
+“What's a manor, and what happens if you're lord of it?” he asked.
+
+He had not heard of William the Conqueror, and did not appear moved to
+admiration of him, though he owned that he seemed to have “put it over.”
+
+“Why didn't he make a republic of it while he was about it?” he said.
+“But I guess that wasn't his kind. He didn't do all that fighting for
+his health.”
+
+His interest was not alone totally dissevered from the events of past
+centuries; it was as dissevered from those of mere past years. The
+habits, customs, and points of view of five years before seemed to
+have been cast into a vast waste-paper basket as wholly unpractical in
+connection with present experiences.
+
+“A man that's going to keep up with the procession can't waste time
+thinking about yesterday. What he's got to do is to keep his eye on
+what's going to happen the week after next,” he summed it up.
+
+Rather to Mr. Palford's surprise, he did not speak lightly, but with a
+sort of inner seriousness. It suggested that he had not arrived at this
+conclusion without the aid of sharp experience. Now and then one saw a
+touch of this profound practical perception in him.
+
+It was not to be denied that he was clear-headed enough where purely
+practical business detail was concerned. He was at first plainly rather
+stunned by the proportions presented to him, but his questions were
+direct and of a common-sense order not to be despised.
+
+“I don't know anything about it yet,” he said once. “It's all Dutch to
+me. I can't calculate in half-crowns and pounds and half pounds, but I'm
+going to find out. I've got to.”
+
+It was extraordinary and annoying to feel that one must explain
+everything; but this impossible fellow was not an actual fool on all
+points, and he did not seem to be a weakling. He might learn certain
+things in time, and at all events one was no further personally
+responsible for him and his impossibilities than the business concerns
+of his estate would oblige any legal firm to be. Clients, whether
+highly desirable or otherwise, were no more than clients. They were not
+relatives whom one must introduce to one's friends. Thus Mr. Palford,
+who was not a specially humane or sympathetic person, mentally decided.
+He saw no pathos in this raw young man, who would presently find himself
+floundering unaided in waters utterly unknown to him. There was even a
+touch of bitter amusement in the solicitor's mind as he glanced toward
+the future.
+
+He explained with detail the necessity for their immediate departure for
+the other side of the Atlantic. Certain legal formalities which must at
+once be attended to demanded their presence in England. Foreseeing this,
+on the day when he had finally felt himself secure as to the identity
+of his client he had taken the liberty of engaging optionally certain
+state-rooms on the Adriana, sailing the following Wednesday.
+
+“Subject of course to your approval,” he added politely. “But it is
+imperative that we should be on the spot as early as possible.” He did
+not mention that he himself was abominably tired of his sojourn on alien
+shores, and wanted to be back in London in his own chambers, with his
+own club within easy reach.
+
+Tembarom's face changed its expression. He had been looking rather
+weighted down and fatigued, and he lighted up to eagerness.
+
+“Say,” he exclaimed, “why couldn't we go on the Transatlantic on
+Saturday?”
+
+“It is one of the small, cheap boats,” objected Palford.
+
+“The accommodation would be most inferior.”
+
+Tembarom leaned forward and touched his sleeve in hasty, boyish appeal.
+
+“I want to go on it,” he said; “I want to go steerage.”
+
+Palford stared at him.
+
+“You want to go on the Transatlantic! Steerage!” he ejaculated, quite
+aghast. This was a novel order of madness to reveal itself in the recent
+inheritor of a great fortune.
+
+Tembarom's appeal grew franker; it took on the note of a too crude young
+fellow's misplaced confidence.
+
+“You do this for me,” he said. “I'd give a farm to go on that boat. The
+Hutchinsons are sailing on it--Mr. and Miss Hutchinson, the ones you saw
+at the house last night.”
+
+“I--it is really impossible.” Mr. Palford hesitated. “As to steerage, my
+dear Mr. Temple Barholm, you--you can't.”
+
+Tembarom got up and stood with his hands thrust deep in his pockets. It
+seemed to be a sort of expression of his sudden hopeful excitement.
+
+“Why not” he said. “If I own about half of England and have money to
+burn, I guess I can buy a steerage passage on a nine-day steamer.”
+
+“You can buy anything you like,” Palford answered stiffly. “It is not a
+matter of buying. But I should not be conducting myself properly toward
+you if I allowed it. It would not be--becoming.”
+
+“Becoming!” cried Tembarom, “Thunder! It's not a spring bat. I tell you
+I want to go just that way.”
+
+Palford saw abnormal breakers ahead. He felt that he would be glad
+when he had landed his charge safely at Temple Barholm. Once there, his
+family solicitor was not called upon to live with him and hobnob with
+his extraordinary intimates.
+
+“As to buying,” he said, still with marked lack of enthusiasm, “instead
+of taking a steerage passage on the Transatlantic yourself, you might no
+doubt secure first-class state-rooms for Mr. and Miss Hutchinson on the
+Adriana, though I seriously advise against it.”
+
+Tembarom shook his head.
+
+“You don't know them,” he said. “They wouldn't let me. Hutchinson's
+a queer old fellow and he's had the hardest kind of luck, but he's as
+proud as they make 'em. Me butt in and offer to pay their passage back,
+as if they were paupers, just because I've suddenly struck it rich!
+Hully gee! I guess not. A fellow that's been boosted up in the air all
+in a minute, as I have, has got to lie pretty low to keep folks from
+wanting to kick him, anyhow. Hutchinson's a darned sight smarter fellow
+than I am, and he knows it--and he's Lancashire, you bet.” He stopped a
+minute and flushed. “As to Little Ann,” he said--“me make that sort of a
+break with HER! Well, I should be a fool.”
+
+Palford was a cold-blooded and unimaginative person, but a long legal
+experience had built up within him a certain shrewdness of perception.
+He had naturally glanced once or twice at the girl sitting still at
+her mending, and he had observed that she said very little and had a
+singularly quiet, firm little voice.
+
+“I beg pardon. You are probably right. I had very little conversation
+with either of them. Miss Hutchinson struck me as having an intelligent
+face.”
+
+“She's a wonder,” said Tembarom, devoutly. “She's just a wonder.”
+
+“Under the circumstances,” suggested Mr. Palford, “it might not be a bad
+idea to explain to her your idea of the steerage passage. An intelligent
+girl can often give excellent advice. You will probably have an
+opportunity of speaking to her tonight. Did you say they were sailing
+to-morrow?”
+
+To-morrow! That brought it so near that it gave Tembarom a shock. He
+had known that they sailed on Saturday, and now Saturday had become
+to-morrow. Things began to surge through his mind--all sorts of things
+he had no time to think of clearly, though it was true they had darted
+vaguely about in the delirious excitement of the night, during which he
+had scarcely slept at all. His face changed again, and the appeal died
+out of it. He began to look anxious and restless.
+
+“Yes, they're going to-morrow,” he answered.
+
+“You see,” argued Mr. Palford, with conviction, “how impossible it would
+be for us to make any arrangements in so few hours. You will excuse my
+saying,” he added punctiliously, “that I could not make the voyage in
+the steerage.”
+
+Tembarom laughed. He thought he saw him doing it.
+
+“That's so,” he said. Then, with renewed hope, he added, “Say, I 'm
+going to try and get them to wait till Wednesday.”
+
+“I do not think--” Mr. Palford began, and then felt it wiser to leave
+things as they were. “But I'm not qualified to give an opinion. I do not
+know Miss Hutchinson at all.”
+
+But the statement was by no means frank. He had a private conviction
+that he did know her to a certain degree. And he did.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+There was a slight awkwardness even to Tembarom in entering the
+dining-room that evening. He had not seen his fellow boarders, as his
+restless night had made him sleep later than usual. But Mrs. Bowse had
+told him of the excitement he had caused.
+
+“They just couldn't eat,” she said. “They could do nothing but talk
+and talk and ask questions; and I had waffles, too, and they got
+stone-cold.”
+
+The babel of friendly outcry which broke out on his entry was made up
+of jokes, ejaculations, questions, and congratulatory outbursts from all
+sides.
+
+“Good old T. T.!” “Give him a Harvard yell! Rah! Rah! Rah!” “Lend me
+fifty-five cents?” “Where's your tiara?” “Darned glad of it!” “Make us a
+speech!”
+
+“Say, people,” said Tembarom, “don't you get me rattled or I can't tell
+you anything. I'm rattled enough already.”
+
+“Well, is it true?” called out Mr. Striper.
+
+“No,” Tembarom answered back, sitting down. “It couldn't be; that's what
+I told Palford. I shall wake up in a minute or two and find myself in a
+hospital with a peacherino of a trained nurse smoothing 'me piller.' You
+can't fool ME with a pipe-dream like this. Palford's easier; he's not a
+New Yorker. He says it IS true, and I can't get out of it.”
+
+“Whew! Great Jakes!” A long breath was exhaled all round the table.
+
+“What are you, anyhow?” cried Jim Bowles across the dishes.
+
+Tembarom rested his elbow on the edge of the table and began to check
+off his points on his fingers.
+
+“I'm this,” he said: “I'm Temple Temple Barholm, Esquire, of Temple
+Barholm, Lancashire, England. At the time of the flood my folks knocked
+up a house just about where the ark landed, and I guess they've held on
+to it ever since. I don't know what business they went into, but they
+made money. Palford swears I've got three hundred and fifty thousand
+dollars a year. I wasn't going to call the man a liar; but I just missed
+it, by jings!”
+
+He was trying to “bluff it out.” Somehow he felt he had to. He felt it
+more than ever when a momentary silence fell upon those who sat about
+the table. It fell when he said “three hundred and fifty thousand
+dollars a year.” No one could find voice to make any remark for a few
+seconds after that.
+
+“Are you a lord--or a duke?” some one asked after breath had recovered
+itself.
+
+“No, I'm not,” he replied with relief. “I just got out from under that;
+but the Lord knows how I did it.”
+
+“What are you going to do first?” said Jim Bowles.
+
+“I've got to go and 'take possession.' That's what Palford calls
+it. I've been a lost heir for nearly two years, and I've got to show
+myself.”
+
+Hutchinson had not joined the clamor of greeting, but had grunted
+disapproval more than once. He felt that, as an Englishman, he had a
+certain dignity to maintain. He knew something about big estates and
+their owners. He was not like these common New York chaps, who regarded
+them as Arabian Nights tales to make jokes about. He had grown up as a
+village boy in proper awe of Temple Barholm. They were ignorant fools,
+this lot. He had no patience with them. He had left the village and gone
+to work in Manchester when he was a boy of twelve, but as long as he had
+remained in his mother's cottage it had been only decent good manners
+for him to touch his forehead respectfully when a Temple Barholm, or
+a Temple Barholm guest or carriage or pony phaeton, passed him by. And
+this chap was Mr. Temple Temple Barholm himself! Lord save us!
+
+Little Ann said nothing at all; but, then, she seldom said anything
+during meal-times. When the rest of the boarders laughed, she ate her
+dinner and smiled. Several times, despite her caution, Tembarom caught
+her eye, and somehow held it a second with his. She smiled at him when
+this happened; but there was something restless and eager in his look
+which made her wish to evade it. She knew what he felt, and she knew why
+he kept up his jokes and never once spoke seriously. She knew he was
+not comfortable, and did not enjoy talking about hundreds of thousands
+a year to people who worked hard for ten or twenty “per.” To-morrow
+morning was very near, she kept thinking. To-morrow night she would be
+lying in her berth in the steerage, or more probably taking care of her
+father, who would be very uncomfortable.
+
+“What will Galton do?” Mr. Striper asked.
+
+“I don't know,” Tembarom answered, and he looked troubled. Three hundred
+and fifty thousand dollars a year might not be able to give aid to a
+wounded society page.
+
+“What are you going to do with your Freak?” called out Julius
+Steinberger.
+
+Tembarom actually started. As things had surged over him, he had had
+too much to think over. He had not had time to give to his strange
+responsibility; it had become one nevertheless.
+
+“Are you going to leave him behind when you go to England?”
+
+He leaned forward and put his chin on his hand.
+
+“Why, say,” he said, as though he were thinking it out, “he's spoken
+about England two or three times. He's said he must go there. By jings!
+I'll take him with me, and see what'll happen.”
+
+When Little Ann got up to leave the room he followed her and her father
+into the hall.
+
+“May I come up and talk it over with you?” he appealed. “I've got to
+talk to some one who knows something about it. I shall go dotty if I
+don't. It's too much like a dream.”
+
+“Come on up when you're ready,” answered Hutchinson. “Ann and me can
+give you a tip or two.”
+
+“I'm going to be putting the last things in the trunks,” said Ann, “but
+I dare say you won't mind that. The express'll be here by eight in the
+morning.”
+
+“O Lord!” groaned Tembarom.
+
+When he went up to the fourth floor a little later, Hutchinson had
+fallen into a doze in his chair over his newspaper, and Ann was kneeling
+by a trunk in the hall, folding small articles tightly, and fitting them
+into corners. To Tembarom she looked even more than usual like a slight
+child thing one could snatch up in one's arms and carry about or set on
+one's knee without feeling her weight at all. An inferior gas-jet on the
+wall just above her was doing its best with the lot of soft, red hair,
+which would have been an untidy bundle if it had not been hers.
+
+Tembarom sat down on the trunk next to her.
+
+“O Little Ann!” he broke out under his breath, lest the sound of his
+voice might check Hutchinson's steady snoring. “O Little Ann!”
+
+Ann leaned back, sitting upon her small heels, and looked up at him.
+
+“You're all upset, and it's not to be wondered at, Mr. Temple Barholm,”
+ she said.
+
+“Upset! You're going away to-morrow morning! And, for the Lord's sake,
+don't call me that!” he protested.
+
+“You're going away yourself next Wednesday. And you ARE Mr. Temple
+Barholm. You'll never be called anything else in England.
+
+“How am I going to stand it?” he protested again. “How could a fellow
+like me stand it! To be yanked out of good old New York, and set down in
+a place like a museum, with Central Park round it, and called Mr. Temple
+Temple Barholm instead of just 'Tem' or 'T. T.'! It's not natural.”
+
+“What you must do, Mr. Temple Barholm, is to keep your head clear,
+that's all,” she replied maturely.
+
+“Lord! if I'd got a head like yours!”
+
+She seemed to take him in, with a benign appreciativeness, in his
+entirety.
+
+“Well, you haven't,” she admitted, though quite without disparagement,
+merely with slight reservation. “But you've got one like your own. And
+it's a good head--when you try to think steady. Yours is a man's head,
+and mine's only a woman's.”
+
+“It's Little Ann Hutchinson's, by gee!” said Tembarom, with feeling.
+
+“Listen here, Mr. Tem--Temple Barholm,” she went on, as nearly disturbed
+as he had ever seen her outwardly. “It's a wonderful thing that's
+happened to you. It's like a novel. That splendid place, that splendid
+name! It seems so queer to think I should ever have talked to a Mr.
+Temple Barholm as I've talked to you.”
+
+He leaned forward a little as though something drew him.
+
+“But”--there was unsteady appeal in his voice--“you have liked me,
+haven't you, Little Ann?”
+
+Her own voice seemed to drop into an extra quietness that made it
+remote. She looked down at her hands on her lap.
+
+“Yes, I have liked you. I have told Father I liked you,” she answered.
+
+He got up, and made an impetuous rush at his goal.
+
+“Then--say, I'm going in there to wake up Mr. Hutchinson and ask him not
+to sail to-morrow morning.”
+
+“You'd better not wake him up,” she answered, smiling; but he saw
+that her face changed and flushed. “It's not a good time to ask Father
+anything when he's just been waked up. And we HAVE to go. The express is
+coming at eight.”
+
+“Send it away again; tell 'em you're not going. Tell 'em any old thing.
+Little Ann, what's the matter with you? Something's the matter. Have I
+made a break?”
+
+He had felt the remoteness in her even before he had heard it in her
+dropped voice. It had been vaguely there even when he sat down on the
+trunk. Actually there was a touch of reserve about her, as though she
+was keeping her little place with the self-respecting propriety of a
+girl speaking to a man not of her own world.
+
+“I dare say I've done some fool thing without knowing it. I don't know
+where I'm at, anyhow,” he said woefully.
+
+“Don't look at me like that, Mr. Temple Barholm,” she said--“as if I was
+unkind. I--I'm NOT.”
+
+“But you're different,” he implored. “I saw it the minute I came up. I
+ran up-stairs just crazy to talk to you,--yes, crazy to talk to you--and
+you--well, you were different. Why are you, if you're not mad?”
+
+Then she rose and stood holding one of her neatly rolled packages in
+her hand. Her eyes were soft and clear, and appealed maternally to his
+reason.
+
+“Because everything's different. You just think a bit,” she answered.
+
+He stared at her a few seconds, and then understanding of her dawned
+upon him. He made a human young dash at her, and caught her arm.
+
+“What!” he cried out. “You mean this Temple Barholm song and dance makes
+things different? Not on your life! You're not the girl to work that
+on me, as if it was my fault. You've got to hear me speak my piece.
+Ann--you've just got to!”
+
+He had begun to tremble a little, and she herself was not steady; but
+she put a hand on his arm.
+
+“Don't say anything you've not had time to think about,” she said.
+
+“I've been thinking of pretty near nothing else ever since I came here.
+Just as soon as I looked at you across the table that first day I saw my
+finish, and every day made me surer. I'd never had any comfort or taking
+care of,--I didn't know the first thing about it,--and it seemed as if
+all there was of it in the world was just in YOU.”
+
+“Did you think that?” she asked falteringly.
+
+“Did I? That's how you looked to me, and it's how you look now. The way
+you go about taking care of everybody and just handing out solid little
+chunks of good sense to every darned fool that needs them, why--” There
+was a break in his voice--“why, it just knocked me out the first round.”
+ He held her a little away from him, so that he could yearn over her,
+though he did not know he was yearning. “See, I'd sworn I'd never ask a
+girl to marry me until I could keep her. Well, you know how it was, Ann.
+I couldn't have kept a goat, and I wasn't such a fool that I didn't know
+it. I've been pretty sick when I thought how it was; but I never worried
+you, did I?”
+
+“No, you didn't.”
+
+“I just got busy. I worked like--well, I got busier than I ever was
+in my life. When I got the page SURE, I let myself go a bit, sort of
+hoping. And then this Temple Barholm thing hits me.”
+
+“That's the thing you've got to think of now,” said Little Ann. “I'm
+going to talk sensible to you.”
+
+“Don't, Ann! Good Lord! DON'T!”
+
+“I MUST.” She put her last tight roll into the trunk and tried to shut
+the lid. “Please lock this for me.”
+
+He locked it, and then she seated herself on the top of it, though it
+was rather high for her, and her small feet dangled. Her eyes looked
+large and moist like a baby's, and she took out a handkerchief and
+lightly touched them.
+
+“You've made me want to cry a bit,” she said, “but I'm not going to.”
+
+“Are you going to tell me you don't want me?” he asked, with anxious
+eyes.
+
+“No, I'm not.”
+
+“God bless you!” He was going to make a dash at her again, but pulled
+himself up because he must. “No, by jings!” he said. “I'm not going to
+till you let me.”
+
+“You see, it's true your head's not like mine,” she said reasonably.
+“Men's heads are mostly not like women's. They're men, of course, and
+they're superior to women, but they're what I'd call more fluttery-like.
+Women must remind them of things.”
+
+“What--what kind of things?”
+
+“This kind. You see, Grandmother lives near Temple Barholm, and I know
+what it's like, and you don't. And I've seen what seventy thousand
+pounds a year means, and you haven't. And you've got to go and find out
+for yourself.”
+
+“What's the matter with you coming along to help me?”
+
+“I shouldn't help you; that's it. I should hold you back. I'm nothing
+but Ann Hutchinson, and I talk Manchester--and I drop my h's.”
+
+“I love to hear you drop your little h's all over the place,” he burst
+forth impetuously. “I love it.”
+
+She shook her head.
+
+“The girls that go to garden-parties at Temple Barholm look like those
+in the `Ladies' Pictorial', and they've got names and titles same as
+those in novels.”
+
+He answered her in genuine anguish. He had never made any mistake about
+her character, and she was beginning to make him feel afraid of her in
+the midst of his adoration.
+
+“What do I want with a girl out of a magazine?” he cried. “Where should
+I hang her up?”
+
+She was not unfeeling, but unshaken and she went on:
+
+“I should look like a housemaid among them. How would you feel with a
+wife of that sort, when the other sort was about?”
+
+“I should feel like a king, that's what I should feel like,” he replied
+indignantly.
+
+“I shouldn't feel like a queen. I should feel MISERABLE.”
+
+She sat with her little feet dangling, and her hands folded in her lap.
+Her infantile blue eyes held him as the Ancient Mariner had been held.
+He could not get away from the clear directness of them. He did not want
+to exactly, but she frightened him more and more.
+
+“I should be ashamed,” she proceeded. “I should feel as if I had taken
+an advantage. What you've got to do is to find out something no one else
+can find out for you, Mr. Temple Barholm.”
+
+“How can I find it out without you? It was you who put me on to the
+wedding-cake; you can put me on to other things.”
+
+“Because I've lived in the place,” she answered unswervingly. “I know
+how funny it is for any one to think of me being Mrs. Temple Barholm.
+You don't.”
+
+“You bet I don't,” he answered; “but I'll tell you what I do know, and
+that's how funny it is that I should be Mr. Temple Barholm. I've got on
+to that all right, all right. Have you?”
+
+She looked at him with a reflection that said much. She took him in with
+a judicial summing up of which it must be owned an added respect was
+part. She had always believed he had more sense than most young men, and
+now she knew it.
+
+“When a person's clever enough to see things for himself, he's generally
+clever enough to manage them,” she replied.
+
+He knelt down beside the trunk and took both her hands in his. He held
+them fast and rather hard.
+
+“Are you throwing me down for good, Little Ann?” he said. “If you are, I
+can't stand it, I won't stand it.”
+
+“If you care about me like that, you'll do what I tell you,” she
+interrupted, and she slipped down from the top of her trunk. “I know
+what Mother would say. She'd say, 'Ann, you give that young man a
+chance.' And I'm going to give you one. I've said all I'm going to, Mr.
+Temple Barholm.”
+
+He took both her elbows and looked at her closely, feeling a somewhat
+awed conviction.
+
+“I--believe--you have,” he said.
+
+And here the sound of Mr. Hutchinson's loud and stertorous breathing
+ceased, and he waked up, and came to the door to find out what Ann was
+doing.
+
+“What are you two talking about?” he asked. “People think when they
+whisper it's not going to disturb anybody, but it's worse than shouting
+in a man's ear.”
+
+Tembarom walked into the room.
+
+“I've been asking Little Ann to marry me,” he announced, “and she
+won't.”
+
+He sat down in a chair helplessly, and let his head fall into his hands.
+
+“Eh!” exclaimed Hutchinson. He turned and looked at Ann disturbedly. “I
+thought a bit ago tha didn't deny but what tha'd took to him?”
+
+“I didn't, Father,” she answered. “I don't change my mind that quick.
+I--would have been willing to say 'Yes' when you wouldn't have been
+willing to let me. I didn't know he was Mr. Temple Barholm then.”
+
+Hutchinson rubbed the back of his head, reddening and rather bristling.
+
+“Dost tha think th' Temple Barholms would look down on thee?”
+
+“I should look down on myself if I took him up at his first words, when
+he's all upset with excitement, and hasn't had time to find out what
+things mean. I'm--well, I 'm too fond of him, Father.”
+
+Hutchinson gave her a long, steady look.
+
+“You are?” he said.
+
+“Yes, I am.”
+
+Tembarom lifted his head, and looked at her, too.
+
+“Are you?” he asked.
+
+She put her hands behind her back, and returned his look with the calm
+of ages.
+
+“I'm not going to argue about it,” she answered. “Arguing's silly.”
+
+His involuntary rising and standing before her was a sort of unconscious
+tribute of respect.
+
+“I know that,” he owned. “I know you. That's why I take it like this.
+But I want you to tell me one thing. If this hadn't happened, if I'd
+only had twenty dollars a week, would you have taken me?”
+
+“If you'd had fifteen, and Father could have spared me, I'd have taken
+you. Fifteen dollars a week is three pounds two and sixpence, and I've
+known curates' wives that had to bring up families on less. It wouldn't
+go as far in New York as it would in the country in England, but we
+could have made it do--until you got more. I know you, too, Mr. Temple
+Barholm.”
+
+He turned to her father, and saw in his florid countenance that which
+spurred him to bold disclosure.
+
+“Say,” he put it to him, as man to man, “she stands there and says a
+thing like that, and she expects a fellow not to jerk her into his arms
+and squeeze the life out of her! I daren't do it, and I'm not going to
+try; but--well, you said her mother was like her, and I guess you know
+what I'm up against.”
+
+Hutchinson's grunting chuckle contained implications of exultant
+tenderness and gratified paternal pride.
+
+“She's th' very spit and image of her mother,” he said, “and she had th'
+sense of ten women rolled into one, and th' love of twenty. You let her
+be, and you're as safe as th' Rock of Ages.”
+
+“Do you think I don't know that?” answered Tembarom, his eyes shining
+almost to moisture. “But what hits me, by thunder! is that I've lost the
+chance of seeing her work out that fifteen-dollar-a-week proposition,
+and it drives me crazy.”
+
+“I should have downright liked to try it,” said Little Ann, with
+speculative reflection, and while she knitted her brows in lovely
+consideration of the attractive problem, several previously unknown
+dimples declared themselves about her mouth.
+
+“Ann,” Tembarom ventured, “if I go to Temple Barholm and try it a year
+and learn all about it---”
+
+“It would take more than a year,” said Ann.
+
+“Don't make it two,” Tembarom pleaded. “I'll sit up at night with wet
+towels round my head to learn; I'll spend fourteen hours a day with
+girls that look like the pictures in the `Ladies' Pictorial', or
+whatever it is in England; I'll give them every chance in life, if
+you'll let me off afterward. There must be another lost heir somewhere;
+let's dig him up and then come back to little old New York and be happy.
+Gee! Ann,”--letting himself go and drawing nearer to her,--“how happy we
+could be in one of those little flats in Harlem!”
+
+She was a warm little human thing, and a tender one, and when he came
+close to her, glowing with tempestuous boyish eagerness, her eyes grew
+bluer because they were suddenly wet, and she was obliged to move softly
+back.
+
+“Yes,” she said; “I know those little flats. Any one could---” She
+stopped herself, because she had been going to reveal what a home a
+woman could make in rooms like the compartments in a workbox. She knew
+and saw it all. She drew back a little again, but she put out a hand and
+laid it on his sleeve.
+
+“When you've had quite time enough to find out, and know what the other
+thing means, I'll do whatever you want me to do,” she said. “It won't
+matter what it is. I'll do it.”
+
+“She means that,” Hutchinson mumbled unsteadily, turning aside. “Same as
+her mother would have meant it. And she means it in more ways than one.”
+
+And so she did. The promise included quite firmly the possibility of not
+unnatural changes in himself such as young ardor could not foresee, even
+the possibility of his new life withdrawing him entirely from the plane
+on which rapture could materialize on twenty dollars a week in a flat in
+Harlem.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+
+Type as exotic as Tembarom's was to his solicitor naturally suggested
+problems. Mr. Palford found his charge baffling because, according to
+ordinary rules, a young man so rudimentary should have presented no
+problems not perfectly easy to explain. It was herein that he was
+exotic. Mr. Palford, who was not given to subtle analysis of differences
+in character and temperament, argued privately that an English youth who
+had been brought up in the streets would have been one of two or three
+things. He would have been secretly terrified and resentful, roughly
+awkward and resentful, or boastfully delighted and given to a common
+youth's excitedly common swagger at finding himself suddenly a “swell.”
+
+This special kind of youth would most assuredly have constantly thought
+of himself as a “swell” and would have lost his head altogether,
+possibly with results in the matter of conduct in public which would
+have been either maddening or crushing to the spirit of a well-bred,
+mature-minded legal gentleman temporarily thrust into the position of
+bear-leader.
+
+But Tembarom was none of these things. If he was terrified, he did
+not reveal his anguish. He was without doubt not resentful, but on the
+contrary interested and curious, though he could not be said to bear
+himself as one elated. He indulged in no frolics or extravagances. He
+saw the Hutchinsons off on their steamer, and supplied them with fruit
+and flowers and books with respectful moderation. He did not conduct
+himself as a benefactor bestowing unknown luxuries, but as a young man
+on whom unexpected luck had bestowed decent opportunities to express his
+friendship. In fact, Palford's taste approved of his attitude. He was
+evidently much under the spell of the slight girl with the Manchester
+accent and sober blue eyes, but she was neither flighty nor
+meretricious, and would have sense enough to give no trouble even when
+he naturally forgot her in the revelations of his new life. Her father
+also was plainly a respectable working-man, with a blunt Lancashire
+pride which would keep him from intruding.
+
+“You can't butt in and get fresh with a man like that,” Tembarom said.
+“Money wouldn't help you. He's too independent.”
+
+After the steamer had sailed away it was observable to his solicitor
+that Mr. Temple Barholm was apparently occupied every hour. He did not
+explain why he seemed to rush from one part of New York to another
+and why he seemed to be seeking interviews with persons it was plainly
+difficult to get at. He was evidently working hard to accomplish
+something or other before he left the United States, perhaps. He asked
+some astutely practical business questions; his intention seeming to be
+to gain a definite knowledge of what his future resources would be and
+of his freedom to use them as he chose.
+
+Once or twice Mr. Palford was rather alarmed by the tendency of his
+questions. Had he actually some prodigious American scheme in view? He
+seemed too young and inexperienced in the handling of large sums for
+such a possibility. But youth and inexperience and suddenly inherited
+wealth not infrequently led to rash adventures. Something which Palford
+called “very handsome” was done for Mrs. Bowse and the boarding-house.
+Mrs. Bowse was evidently not proud enough to resent being made secure
+for a few years' rent. The extraordinary page was provided for after a
+large amount of effort and expenditure of energy.
+
+“I couldn't leave Galton high and dry,” Tembarom explained when he came
+in after rushing about. “I think I know a man he might try, but I've got
+to find him and put him on to things. Good Lord! nobody rushed about to
+find me and offer me the job. I hope this fellow wants it as bad as I
+did. He'll be up in the air.” He discovered the whereabouts of the young
+man in question, and finding him, as the youngster almost tearfully
+declared, “about down and out,” his proposition was met with the
+gratitude the relief from a prospect of something extremely like
+starvation would mentally produce. Tembarom took him to Galton after
+having talked him over in detail.
+
+“He's had an education, and you know how much I'd had when I butted into
+the page,” he said. “No one but you would have let me try it. You did it
+only because you saw--you saw--”
+
+“Yes, I saw,” answered Galton, who knew exactly what he had seen and
+who found his up-town social representative and his new situation as
+interesting as amusing and just touched with the pathetic element.
+Galton was a traveled man and knew England and several other countries
+well.
+
+“You saw that a fellow wanted the job as much as I did would be likely
+to put up a good fight to hold it down. I was scared out of my life when
+I started out that morning of the blizzard, but I couldn't afford to be
+scared. I guess soldiers who are scared fight like that when they see
+bayonets coming at them. You have to.”
+
+“I wonder how often a man finds out that he does pretty big things
+when bayonets are coming at him,” answered Galton, who was actually
+neglecting his work for a few minutes so that he might look at and talk
+to him, this New York descendant of Norman lords and Saxon kings.
+
+“Joe Bennett had been trying to live off free-lunch counters for a week
+when I found him,” Tembarom explained. “You don't know what that is.
+He'll go at the page all right. I'm going to take him up-town and
+introduce him to my friends there and get them to boost him along.”
+
+“You made friends,” said Galton. “I knew you would.”
+
+“Some of the best ever. Good-natured and open-handed. Well, you bet!
+Only trouble was they wanted you to eat and drink everything in sight,
+and they didn't quite like it when you couldn't get outside all the
+champagne they'd offer you.”
+
+He broke into a big, pleased laugh.
+
+“When I went in and told Munsberg he pretty near threw a fit. Of course
+he thought I was kidding. But when I made him believe it, he was as glad
+as if he'd had luck himself. It was just fine the way people took
+it. Tell you what, it takes good luck, or bad luck, to show you how
+good-natured a lot of folks are. They'll treat Bennett and the page all
+right; you'll see.”
+
+“They'll miss you,” said Galton.
+
+“I shall miss them,” Tembarom answered in a voice with a rather
+depressed drop in it.
+
+“I shall miss you,” said Galton.
+
+Tembarom's face reddened a little.
+
+“I guess it'd seem rather fresh for me to tell you how I shall miss
+you,” he said. “I said that first day that I didn't know how to tell you
+how I--well, how I felt about you giving a mutt like me that big chance.
+You never thought I didn't know how little I did know, did you?” he
+inquired almost anxiously.
+
+“That was it--that you did know and that you had the backbone and the
+good spirits to go in and win,” Galton replied. “I'm a tired man, and
+good spirits and good temper seem to me about the biggest assets a man
+can bring into a thing. I shouldn't have dared do it when I was your
+age. You deserved the Victoria Cross,” he added, chuckling.
+
+“What's the Victoria Cross?” asked Tembarom.
+
+“You'll find out when you go to England.”
+
+“Well, I'm not supposing that you don't know about how many billion
+things I'll have to find out when I go to England.”
+
+“There will be several thousand,” replied Galton moderately; “but you'll
+learn about them as you go on.”
+
+“Say,” said Tembarom, reflectively, “doesn't it seem queer to think of
+a fellow having to keep up his spirits because he's fallen into three
+hundred and fifty thousand a year? You wouldn't think he'd have to,
+would you?”
+
+“But you find he has?” queried Galton, interestedly.
+
+Tembarom's lifted eyes were so honest that they were touching.
+
+“I don't know where I'm at,” he said. “I'm going to wake up in a new
+place--like people that die. If you knew what it was like, you wouldn't
+mind it so much; but you don't know a blamed thing. It's not having seen
+a sample that rattles you.”
+
+“You're fond of New York?”
+
+“Good Lord! it's all the place I know on earth, and it's just about good
+enough for me, by gee! It's kept me alive when it might have starved
+me to death. My! I've had good times here,” he added, flushing with
+emotion. “Good times--when I hadn't a whole meal a day!”
+
+“You'd have good times anywhere,” commented Galton, also with feeling.
+“You carry them over your shoulder, and you share them with a lot of
+other people.”
+
+He certainly shared some with Joe Bennett, whom he took up-town and
+introduced right and left to his friendly patrons, who, excited by the
+atmosphere of adventure and prosperity, received him with open arms.
+To have been the choice of T. Tembarom as a mere representative of the
+EARTH would have been a great thing for Bennett, but to be the choice of
+the hero of a romance of wildest opulence was a tremendous send-off.
+He was accepted at once, and when Tembarom actually “stood for” a big
+farewell supper of his own in “The Hall,” and nearly had his hand shaken
+off by congratulating acquaintances, the fact that he kept the new
+aspirant by his side, so that the waves of high popularity flowed over
+him until he sometimes lost his joyful breath, established him as a sort
+of hero himself.
+
+Mr. Palford did not know of this festivity, as he also found he was
+not told of several other things. This he counted as a feature of his
+client's exoticism. His extraordinary lack of concealment of things
+vanity forbids many from confessing combined itself with a quite
+cheerful power to keep his own counsel when he was, for reasons of his
+own, so inclined.
+
+“He can keep his mouth shut, that chap,” Hutchinson had said once, and
+Mr. Palford remembered it. “Most of us can't. I've got a notion I can;
+but I don't many's the time when I should. There's a lot more in him
+than you'd think for. He's naught but a lad, but he is na half such a
+fool as he looks.”
+
+He was neither hesitant nor timid, Mr. Palford observed. In an entirely
+unostentatious way he soon realized that his money gave things into
+his hands. He knew he could do most things he chose to do, and that the
+power to do them rested in these days with himself without the necessity
+of detailed explanation or appeal to others, as in the case, for
+instance, of this mysterious friend or protege whose name was
+Strangeways. Of the history of his acquaintance with him Palford knew
+nothing, and that he should choose to burden himself with a half-witted
+invalid--in these terms the solicitor described him--was simply
+in-explainable. If he had asked for advice or by his manner left
+an opening for the offering of it, he would have been most strongly
+counseled to take him to a public asylum and leave him there; but advice
+on the subject seemed the last thing he desired or anticipated, and talk
+about his friend was what he seemed least likely to indulge in. He made
+no secret of his intentions, but he frankly took charge of them as his
+own special business, and left the rest alone.
+
+“Say nothing and saw wood,” Palford had once been a trifle puzzled
+by hearing him remark casually, and he remembered it later, as he
+remembered the comments of Joseph Hutchinson. Tembarom had explained
+himself to Little Ann.
+
+“You'll understand,” he said. “It is like this. I guess I feel like you
+do when a dog or a cat in big trouble just looks at you as if you
+were all they had, and they know if you don't stick by them they'll be
+killed, and it just drives them crazy. It's the way they look at you
+that you can't stand. I believe something would burst in that fellow's
+brain if I left him. When he found out I was going to do it he'd just
+let out some awful kind of a yell I'd remember till I died. I dried
+right up almost as soon as I spoke of him to Palford. He couldn't see
+anything but that he was crazy and ought to be put in an asylum. Well,
+he's not. There're times when he talks to me almost sensible; only he's
+always so awful low down in his mind you're afraid to let him go on. And
+he's a little bit better than he was. It seems queer to get to like
+a man that's sort of dotty, but I tell you, Ann, because you'll
+understand--I've got to sort of like him, and want to see if I can work
+it out for him somehow. England seems to sort of stick in his mind. If
+I can't spend my money in living the way I want to live,--buying jewelry
+and clothes for the girl I'd like to see dressed like a queen--I'm going
+to do this just to please myself. I'm going to take him to England and
+keep him quiet and see what'll happen. Those big doctors ought to know
+about all there is to know, and I can pay them any old thing they want.
+By jings! isn't it the limit--to sit here and say that and know it's
+true!”
+
+Beyond the explaining of necessary detail to him and piloting him to
+England, Mr. Palford did not hold himself many degrees responsible. His
+theory of correct conduct assumed no form of altruism. He had formulated
+it even before he reached middle age. One of his fixed rules was to
+avoid the error of allowing sympathy or sentiment to hamper him with
+any unnecessary burden. Natural tendency of temperament had placed no
+obstacles in the way of his keeping this rule. To burden himself with
+the instruction or modification of this unfortunately hopeless young New
+Yorker would be unnecessary. Palford's summing up of him was that he was
+of a type with which nothing palliative could be done. There he was.
+As unavoidable circumstances forced one to take him,--commonness,
+slanginess, appalling ignorance, and all,--one could not leave him.
+Fortunately, no respectable legal firm need hold itself sponsor for a
+“next of kin” provided by fate and the wilds of America.
+
+The Temple Barholm estate had never, in Mr. Palford's generation, been
+specially agreeable to deal with. The late Mr. Temple Temple Barholm had
+been a client of eccentric and abominable temper. Interviews with him
+had been avoided as much as possible. His domineering insolence of
+bearing had at times been on the verge of precipitating unheard-of
+actions, because it was almost more than gentlemanly legal flesh and
+blood could bear. And now appeared this young man.
+
+He rushed about New York strenuously attending to business concerning
+himself and his extraordinary acquaintances, and on the day of the
+steamer's sailing he presented himself at the last moment in an
+obviously just purchased suit of horribly cut clothes. At all events,
+their cut was horrible in the eyes of Mr. Palford, who accepted no
+cut but that of a West End tailor. They were badly made things enough,
+because they were unconsidered garments that Tembarom had barely found
+time to snatch from a “ready-made” counter at the last moment. He had
+been too much “rushed” by other things to remember that he must have
+them until almost too late to get them at all. He bought them merely
+because they were clothes, and warm enough to make a voyage in. He
+possessed a monster ulster, in which, to Mr. Palford's mind, he
+looked like a flashy black-leg. He did not know it was flashy. His
+opportunities for cultivating a refined taste in the matter of wardrobe
+had been limited, and he had wasted no time in fastidious consideration
+or regrets. Palford did him some injustice in taking it for granted that
+his choice of costume was the result of deliberate bad taste. It was
+really not choice at all. He neither liked his clothes nor disliked
+them. He had been told he needed warm garments, and he had accepted the
+advice of the first salesman who took charge of him when he dropped into
+the big department store he was most familiar with because it was the
+cheapest in town. Even when it was no longer necessary to be cheap, it
+was time-saving and easy to go into a place one knew.
+
+The fact that he was as he was, and that they were the subjects of
+comment and objects of unabated interest through-out the voyage, that it
+was proper that they should be companions at table and on deck, filled
+Mr. Palford with annoyed unease.
+
+Of course every one on board was familiar with the story of the
+discovery of the lost heir. The newspapers had reveled in it, and had
+woven romances about it which might well have caused the deceased Mr.
+Temple Barholm to turn in his grave. After the first day Tembarom had
+been picked out from among the less-exciting passengers, and when he
+walked the deck, books were lowered into laps or eyes followed him over
+their edges. His steamer-chair being placed in a prominent position
+next to that of a pretty, effusive Southern woman, the mother of three
+daughters whose eyes and eyelashes attracted attention at the
+distance of a deck's length, he was without undue delay provided
+with acquaintances who were prepared to fill his every moment with
+entertainment.
+
+“The three Gazelles,” as their mother playfully confided to Tembarom
+her daughters were called in Charleston, were destructively lovely.
+They were swaying reeds of grace, and being in radiant spirits at the
+prospect of “going to Europe,” were companions to lure a man to any
+desperate lengths. They laughed incessantly, as though they were chimes
+of silver bells; they had magnolia-petal skins which neither wind nor
+sun blemished; they had nice young manners, and soft moods in which
+their gazelle eyes melted and glowed and their long lashes drooped.
+They could dance, they played on guitars, and they sang. They were as
+adorable as they were lovely and gay.
+
+“If a fellow was going to fall in love,” Tembarom said to Palford,
+“there'd be no way out of this for him unless he climbed the rigging and
+dragged his food up in a basket till he got to Liverpool. If he didn't
+go crazy about Irene, he'd wake up raving about Honora; and if he got
+away from Honora, Adelia Louise would have him `down on the mat.'” From
+which Mr. Palford argued that the impression made by the little Miss
+Hutchinson with the Manchester accent had not yet had time to obliterate
+itself.
+
+The Gazelles were of generous Southern spirit, and did not surround
+their prize with any barrier of precautions against other young persons
+of charm. They introduced him to one girl after another, and in a day
+or two he was the center of animated circles whenever he appeard. The
+singular thing, however, was that he did not appear as often as the
+other men who were on board. He seemed to stay a great deal with
+Strangeways, who shared his suite of rooms and never came on deck.
+Sometimes the Gazelles prettily reproached him. Adelia Louise suggested
+to the others that his lack of advantages in the past had made him feel
+rather awkward and embarrassed; but Palford knew he was not embarrassed.
+He accepted his own limitations too simply to be disturbed by them.
+Palford would have been extremely bored by him if he had been of the
+type of young outsider who is anxiouus about himself and expansive in
+self-revelation and appeals for advice; but sometimes Tembarom's air of
+frankness, which was really the least expansive thing in the world and
+revealed nothing whatever, besides concealing everything it chose, made
+him feel himself almost irritatingly baffled. It would have been more
+natural if he had not been able to keep anything to himself and had
+really talked too much.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+
+The necessary business in London having been transacted, Tembarom went
+north to take possession of the home of his forefathers. It had rained
+for two days before he left London, and it rained steadily all the way
+to Lancashire, and was raining steadily when he reached Temple
+Barholm. He had never seen such rain before. It was the quiet, unmoved
+persistence of it which amazed him. As he sat in the railroad carriage
+and watched the slanting lines of its unabating downpour, he felt that
+Mr. Palford must inevitably make some remark upon it. But Mr. Palford
+continued to read his newspapers undisturbedly, as though the condition
+of atmosphere surrounding him were entirely accustomed and natural. It
+was of course necessary and proper that he should accompany his client
+to his destination, but the circumstances of the case made the whole
+situation quite abnormal. Throughout the centuries each Temple Barholm
+had succeeded to his estate in a natural and conventional manner. He had
+either been welcomed or resented by his neighbors, his tenants, and his
+family, and proper and fitting ceremonies had been observed. But here
+was an heir whom nobody knew, whose very existence nobody had even
+suspected, a young man who had been an outcast in the streets of the
+huge American city of which lurid descriptions are given. Even in
+New York he could have produced no circle other than Mrs. Bowse's
+boarding-house and the objects of interest to the up-town page, so
+he brought no one with him; for Strangeways seemed to have been
+mysteriously disposed of after their arrival in London.
+
+Never had Palford & Grimby on their hands a client who seemed so
+entirely alone. What, Mr. Palford asked himself, would he do in the
+enormity of Temple Barholm, which always struck one as being a place
+almost without limit. But that, after all, was neither here nor there.
+There he was. You cannot undertake to provide a man with relatives if he
+has none, or with acquaintances if people do not want to know him. His
+past having been so extraordinary, the neighborhood would naturally be
+rather shy of him. At first, through mere force of custom and respect
+for an old name, punctilious, if somewhat alarmed, politeness would be
+shown by most people; but after the first calls all would depend upon
+how much people could stand of the man himself.
+
+The aspect of the country on a wet winter's day was not enlivening. The
+leafless and dripping hedges looked like bundles of sticks; the huge
+trees, which in June would be majestic bowers of greenery, now held
+out great skeleton arms, which seemed to menace both earth and sky.
+Heavy-faced laborers tramped along muddy lanes; cottages with soaked
+bits of dead gardens looked like hovels; big, melancholy cart-horses,
+dragging jolting carts along the country roads, hung their heads as they
+splashed through the mire.
+
+As Tembarom had known few persons who had ever been out of America, he
+had not heard that England was beautiful, and he saw nothing which led
+him to suspect its charms. London had impressed him as gloomy, dirty,
+and behind the times despite its pretensions; the country struck him as
+“the limit.” Hully gee! was he going to be expected to spend his life in
+this! Should he be obliged to spend his life in it. He'd find that out
+pretty quick, and then, if there was no hard-and-fast law against it,
+him for little old New York again, if he had to give up the whole
+thing and live on ten per. If he had been a certain kind of youth, his
+discontent would have got the better of him, and he might have talked a
+good deal to Mr. Palford and said many disparaging things.
+
+“But the man was born here,” he reflected. “I guess he doesn't know
+anything else, and thinks it's all right. I've heard of English fellows
+who didn't like New York. He looks like that kind.”
+
+He had supplied himself with newspapers and tried to read them. Their
+contents were as unexciting as the rain-sodden landscape. There were no
+head-lines likely to arrest any man's attention. There was a lot about
+Parliament and the Court, and one of them had a column or two about
+what lords and ladies were doing, a sort of English up-town or down-town
+page.
+
+He knew the stuff, but there was no snap in it, and there were no
+photographs or descriptions of dresses. Galton would have turned it
+down. He could never have made good if he had done no better than that.
+He grinned to himself when he read that the king had taken a drive and
+that a baby prince had the measles.
+
+“I wonder what they'd think of the Sunday Earth,” he mentally inquired.
+
+He would have been much at sea if he had discovered what they
+really would have thought of it. They passed through smoke-vomiting
+manufacturing towns, where he saw many legs seemingly bearing about
+umbrellas, but few entire people; they whizzed smoothly past drenched
+suburbs, wet woodlands, and endless-looking brown moors, covered with
+dead bracken and bare and prickly gorse. He thought these last great
+desolate stretches worse than all the rest.
+
+But the railroad carriage was luxuriously upholstered and comfortable,
+though one could not walk about and stretch his legs. In the afternoon,
+Mr. Palford ordered in tea, and plainly expected him to drink two cups
+and eat thin bread and butter. He felt inclined to laugh, though the tea
+was all right, and so was the bread and butter, and he did not fail his
+companion in any respect. The inclination to laugh was aroused by the
+thought of what Jim Bowles and Julius would say if they could see old T.
+T. with nothing to do at 4:30 but put in cream and sugar, as though he
+were at a tea-party on Fifth Avenue.
+
+But, gee! this rain did give him the Willies. If he was going to be
+sorry for himself, he might begin right now. But he wasn't. He was going
+to see this thing through.
+
+The train had been continuing its smooth whir through fields, wooded
+lands, and queer, dead-and-alive little villages for some time before it
+drew up at last at a small station. Bereft by the season of its garden
+bloom and green creepers, it looked a bare and uninviting little place.
+On the two benches against the wall of the platform a number of women
+sat huddled together in the dampness. Several of them held children in
+their laps and all stared very hard, nudging one another as he descended
+from the train. A number of rustics stood about the platform, giving it
+a somewhat crowded air. It struck Tembarom that, for an out-of-the-way
+place, there seemed to be a good many travelers, and he wondered if
+they could all be going away. He did not know that they were the curious
+element among such as lived in the immediate neighborhood of the station
+and had come out merely to see him on his first appearance. Several of
+them touched their hats as he went by, and he supposed they knew Palford
+and were saluting him. Each of them was curious, but no one was in
+a particularly welcoming mood. There was, indeed, no reason for
+anticipating enthusiasm. It was, however, but human nature that the
+bucolic mind should bestir itself a little in the desire to obtain a
+view of a Temple Barholm who had earned his living by blacking boots and
+selling newspapers, unknowing that he was “one o' th' gentry.”
+
+When he stepped from his first-class carriage, Tembarom found himself
+confronted by a very straight, clean-faced, and well-built young man,
+who wore a long, fawn-colored livery coat with claret facings and silver
+buttons. He touched his cockaded hat, and at once took up the Gladstone
+bags. Tembarom knew that he was a footman because he had seen something
+like him outside restaurants, theaters, and shops in New York, but he
+was not sure whether he ought to touch his own hat or not. He slightly
+lifted it from his head to show there was no ill feeling, and then
+followed him and Mr. Palford to the carriage waiting for them. It was a
+severe but sumptuous equipage, and the coachman was as well dressed
+and well built as the footman. Tembarom took his place in it with many
+mental reservations.
+
+“What are the illustrations on the doors?” he inquired.
+
+“The Temple Barholm coat of arms,” Mr. Palford answered. “The people
+at the station are your tenants. Members of the family of the stout man
+with the broad hat have lived as yeoman farmers on your land for three
+hundred years.”
+
+They went on their way, with more rain, more rain, more dripping hedges,
+more soaked fields, and more bare, huge-armed trees. CLOP, CLOP, CLOP,
+sounded the horses' hoofs along the road, and from his corner of the
+carriage Mr. Palford tried to make polite conversation. Faces peered out
+of the windows of the cottages, sometimes a whole family group of faces,
+all crowded together, eager to look, from the mother with a baby in her
+arms to the old man or woman, plainly grandfather or grandmother--sharp,
+childishly round, or bleared old eyes, all excited and anxious to catch
+glimpses.
+
+“They are very curious to see you,” said Mr. Palford. “Those two
+laborers are touching their hats to you. It will be as well to recognize
+their salute.”
+
+At a number of the cottage doors the group stood upon the threshold and
+touched foreheads or curtsied. Tembarom saluted again and again, and
+more than once his friendly grin showed itself. It made him feel queer
+to drive along, turning from side to side to acknowledge obeisances, as
+he had seen a well-known military hero acknowledge them as he drove down
+Broadway.
+
+The chief street of the village of Temple Barholm wandered almost within
+hailing distance of the great entrance to the park. The gates were
+supported by massive pillars, on which crouched huge stone griffins.
+Tembarom felt that they stared savagely over his head as he was driven
+toward them as for inspection, and in disdainful silence allowed to
+pass between them as they stood on guard, apparently with the haughtiest
+mental reservations.
+
+The park through which the long avenue rolled concealed its beauty to
+the unaccustomed eye, showing only more bare trees and sodden stretches
+of brown grass. The house itself, as it loomed up out of the thickening
+rain-mist, appalled Tembarom by its size and gloomily gray massiveness.
+Before it was spread a broad terrace of stone, guarded by more griffins
+of even more disdainful aspect than those watching over the gates. The
+stone noses held themselves rigidly in the air as the reporter of the
+up-town society page passed with Mr. Palford up a flight of steps broad
+enough to make him feel as though he were going to church. Footmen with
+powdered heads received him at the carriage door, seemed to assist him
+to move, to put one foot before the other for him, to stand in rows as
+though they were a military guard ready to take him into custody.
+
+Then he was inside, standing in an enormous hall filled with furnishings
+such as he had never seen or heard of before. Carved oak, suits of
+armor, stone urns, portraits, another flight of church steps mounting
+upward to surrounding galleries, stained-glass windows, tigers' and
+lions' heads, horns of tremendous size, strange and beautiful weapons,
+suggested to him that the dream he had been living in for weeks had
+never before been so much a dream. He had walked about as in a vision,
+but among familiar surroundings. Mrs. Bowse's boarders and his hall
+bedroom had helped him to retain some hold over actual existence. But
+here the reverently saluting villagers staring at him through windows
+as though he were General Grant, the huge, stone entrance, the drive
+of what seemed to be ten miles through the park, the gloomy mass of
+architecture looming up, the regiment of liveried men-servants, with
+respectfully lowered but excitedly curious eyes, the dark and solemn
+richness inclosing and claiming him--all this created an atmosphere
+wholly unreal. As he had not known books, its parallel had not been
+suggested to him by literature. He had literally not heard that such
+things existed. Selling newspapers and giving every moment to the
+struggle for life or living, one did not come within the range of
+splendors. He had indeed awakened in that other world of which he had
+spoken. And though he had heard that there was another world, he had had
+neither time nor opportunity to make mental pictures of it. His life so
+far had expressed itself in another language of figures. The fact that
+he had in his veins the blood of the Norman lords and Saxon kings may or
+may not have had something to do with the fact that he was not abashed,
+but bewildered. The same factor may or may not have aided him to
+preserve a certain stoic, outward composure. Who knows what remote
+influences express themselves in common acts of modern common life?
+As Cassivellaunus observed his surroundings as he followed in captive
+chains his conqueror's triumphal car through the streets of Rome, so
+the keen-eyed product of New York pavement life “took in” all about
+him. Existence had forced upon him the habit of sharp observance. The
+fundamental working law of things had expressed itself in the simple
+colloquialism, “Keep your eye skinned, and don't give yourself away.” In
+what phrases the parallel of this concise advice formulated itself in
+55 B.C. no classic has yet exactly informed us, but doubtless something
+like it was said in ancient Rome. Tembarom did not give himself away,
+and he took rapid, if uncertain, inventory of people and things. He
+remarked, for instance, that Palford's manner of speaking to a servant
+was totally different from the manner he used in addressing himself. It
+was courteous, but remote, as though he spoke across an accepted chasm
+to beings of another race. There was no hint of incivility in it,
+but also no hint of any possibility that it could occur to the person
+addressed to hesitate or resent. It was a subtle thing, and Tembarom
+wondered how he did it.
+
+They were shown into a room the walls of which seemed built of books;
+the furniture was rich and grave and luxuriously comfortable. A fire
+blazed as well as glowed in a fine chimney, and a table near it was set
+with a glitter of splendid silver urn and equipage for tea.
+
+“Mrs. Butterworth was afraid you might not have been able to get tea,
+sir,” said the man-servant, who did not wear livery, but whose butler's
+air of established authority was more impressive than any fawn color and
+claret enriched with silver could have encompassed.
+
+Tea again? Perhaps one was obliged to drink it at regular intervals.
+Tembarom for a moment did not awaken to the fact that the man was
+speaking to him, as the master from whom orders came. He glanced at Mr.
+Palford.
+
+“Mr. Temple Barholm had tea after we left Crowly,” Mr. Palford said. “He
+will no doubt wish to go to his room at once, Burrill.”
+
+“Yes, sir,” said Burrill, with that note of entire absence of comment
+with which Tembarom later became familiar. “Pearson is waiting.”
+
+It was not unnatural to wonder who Pearson was and why he was waiting,
+but Tembarom knew he would find out. There was a slight relief on
+realizing that tea was not imperative. He and Mr. Palford were led
+through the hall again. The carriage had rolled away, and two footmen,
+who were talking confidentially together, at once stood at attention.
+The staircase was more imposing as one mounted it than it appeared as
+one looked at it from below. Its breadth made Tembarom wish to lay
+a hand on a balustrade, which seemed a mile away. He had never
+particularly wished to touch balustrades before. At the head of the
+first flight hung an enormous piece of tapestry, its forest and hunters
+and falconers awakening Tembarom's curiosity, as it looked wholly unlike
+any picture he had ever seen in a shop-window. There were pictures
+everywhere, and none of them looked like chromos. Most of the people in
+the portraits were in fancy dress. Rumors of a New York millionaire ball
+had given him some vague idea of fancy dress. A lot of them looked like
+freaks. He caught glimpses of corridors lighted by curious, high, deep
+windows with leaded panes. It struck him that there was no end to the
+place, and that there must be rooms enough in it for a hotel.
+
+“The tapestry chamber, of course, Burrill,” he heard Mr. Palford say in
+a low tone.
+
+“Yes, sir. Mr. Temple Barholm always used it.”
+
+A few yards farther on a door stood open, revealing an immense room,
+rich and gloomy with tapestry-covered walls and dark oak furniture. A
+bed which looked to Tembarom incredibly big, with its carved oak canopy
+and massive posts, had a presiding personality of its own. It was
+mounted by steps, and its hangings and coverlid were of embossed velvet,
+time-softened to the perfection of purples and blues. A fire enriched
+the color of everything, and did its best to drive the shadows away.
+Deep windows opened either into the leafless boughs of close-growing
+trees or upon outspread spaces of heavily timbered park, where gaunt,
+though magnificent, bare branches menaced and defied. A slim, neat young
+man, with a rather pale face and a touch of anxiety in his expression,
+came forward at once.
+
+“This is Pearson, who will valet you,” exclaimed Mr. Palford.
+
+“Thank you, sir,” said Pearson in a low, respectful voice. His manner
+was correctness itself.
+
+There seemed to Mr. Palford to be really nothing else to say. He wanted,
+in fact, to get to his own apartment and have a hot bath and a rest
+before dinner.
+
+“Where am I, Burrill?” he inquired as he turned to go down the corridor.
+
+“The crimson room, sir,” answered Burrill, and he closed the door of the
+tapestry chamber and shut Tembarom in alone with Pearson.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+
+For a few moments the two young men looked at each other, Pearson's gaze
+being one of respectfulness which hoped to propitiate, if propitiation
+was necessary, though Pearson greatly trusted it was not. Tembarom's was
+the gaze of hasty investigation and inquiry. He suddenly thought that
+it would have been “all to the merry” if somebody had “put him on to”
+ a sort of idea of what was done to a fellow when he was “valeted.” A
+valet, he had of course gathered, waited on one somehow and looked after
+one's clothes. But were there by chance other things he expected to
+do,--manicure one's nails or cut one's hair,--and how often did he do
+it, and was this the day? He was evidently there to do something, or he
+wouldn't have been waiting behind the door to pounce out the minute he
+appeared, and when the other two went away, Burrill wouldn't have closed
+the door as solemnly as though he shut the pair of them in together to
+get through some sort of performance.
+
+“Here's where T. T. begins to feel like a fool,” he thought. “And here's
+where there's no way out of looking like one. I don't know a thing.”
+
+But personal vanity was not so strong in him as healthy and normal good
+temper. Despite the fact that the neat correctness of Pearson's style
+and the finished expression of his neat face suggested that he was of
+a class which knew with the most finished exactness all that custom
+and propriety demanded on any occasion on which “valeting” in its most
+occult branches might be done, he was only “another fellow,” after all,
+and must be human. So Tembarom smiled at him.
+
+“Hello, Pearson,” he said. “How are you?”
+
+Pearson slightly started. It was the tiniest possible start, quite
+involuntary, from which he recovered instantly, to reply in a tone of
+respectful gratefulness:
+
+“Thank you, sir, very well; thank you, sir.”
+
+“That's all right,” answered Tembarom, a sense of relief because he'd
+“got started” increasing the friendliness of his smile. “I see you got
+my trunk open,” he said, glancing at some articles of clothing neatly
+arranged upon the bed.
+
+Pearson was slightly alarmed. It occurred to him suddenly that perhaps
+it was not the custom in America to open a gentleman's box and lay out
+his clothes for him. For special reasons he was desperately anxious
+to keep his place, and above all things he felt he must avoid giving
+offense by doing things which, by being too English, might seem to cast
+shades of doubt on the entire correctness of the customs of America. He
+had known ill feeling to arise between “gentlemen's gentlemen” in the
+servants' hall in the case of slight differences in customs, contested
+with a bitterness of feeling which had made them almost an international
+question. There had naturally been a great deal of talk about the new
+Mr. Temple Barholm and what might be expected of him. When a gentleman
+was not a gentleman,--this was the form of expression in “the
+hall,”--the Lord only knew what would happen. And this one, who had, for
+all one knew, been born in a workhouse, and had been a boot-black kicked
+about in American streets,--they did not know Tembarom,--and nearly
+starved to death, and found at last in a low lodging-house, what could
+he know about decent living? And ten to one he'd be American enough to
+swagger and bluster and pretend he knew everything better than any one
+else, and lose his temper frightfully when he made mistakes, and try
+to make other people seem to blame. Set a beggar on horseback, and who
+didn't know what he was? There were chances enough and to spare that not
+one of them would be able to stand it, and that in a month's time they
+would all be looking for new places.
+
+So while Tembarom was rather afraid of Pearson and moved about in an
+awful state of uncertainty, Pearson was horribly afraid of Tembarom, and
+was, in fact, in such a condition of nervous anxiety that he was obliged
+more than once furtively to apply to his damp, pale young forehead his
+exceedingly fresh and spotless pocket-handkerchief.
+
+In the first place, there was the wardrobe. What COULD he do? How could
+he approach the subject with sufficient delicacy? Mr. Temple Barholm had
+brought with him only a steamer trunk and a Gladstone bag, the latter
+evidently bought in London, to be stuffed with hastily purchased
+handkerchiefs and shirts, worn as they came out of the shop, and as
+evidently bought without the slightest idea of the kind of linen a
+gentleman should own. What most terrified Pearson, who was of a timid
+and most delicate-minded nature, was that having the workhouse and the
+boot-blacking as a background, the new Mr. Temple Barholm COULDN'T know,
+as all this had come upon him so suddenly. And was it to be Pearson's
+calamitous duty to explain to him that he had NOTHING, that he
+apparently KNEW nothing, and that as he had no friends who knew, a mere
+common servant must educate him, if he did not wish to see him
+derided and looked down upon and actually “cut” by gentlemen that
+WERE gentlemen? All this to say nothing of Pearson's own well-earned
+reputation for knowledge of custom, intelligence, and deftness in
+turning out the objects of his care in such form as to be a reference in
+themselves when a new place was wanted. Of course sometimes there
+were even real gentlemen who were most careless and indifferent to
+appearance, and who, if left to themselves, would buy garments which
+made the blood run cold when one realized that his own character and
+hopes for the future often depended upon his latest employer's outward
+aspect. But the ulster in which Mr. Temple Barholm had presented himself
+was of a cut and material such as Pearson's most discouraged moments
+had never forced him to contemplate. The limited wardrobe in the steamer
+trunk was all new and all equally bad. There was no evening dress,
+no proper linen,--not what Pearson called “proper,”--no proper toilet
+appurtenances. What was Pearson called upon by duty to do? If he
+had only had the initiative to anticipate this, he might have asked
+permission to consult in darkest secrecy with Mr. Palford. But he had
+never dreamed of such a situation, and apparently he would be obliged
+to send his new charge down to his first dinner in the majestically
+decorous dining-room, “before all the servants,” in a sort of speckled
+tweed cutaway, with a brown necktie.
+
+Tembarom, realizing without delay that Pearson did not expect to be
+talked to and being cheered by the sight of the fire, sat down before
+it in an easy-chair the like of which for luxurious comfort he had never
+known. He was, in fact, waiting for developments. Pearson would say or
+do something shortly which would give him a chance to “catch on,” or
+perhaps he'd go out of the room and leave him to himself, which would be
+a thing to thank God for. Then he could wash his face and hands, brush
+his hair, and wait till the dinner-bell rang. They'd be likely to have
+one. They'd have to in a place like this.
+
+But Pearson did not go out of the room. He moved about behind him for
+a short time with footfall so almost entirely soundless that Tembarom
+became aware that, if it went on long, he should be nervous; in fact,
+he was nervous already. He wanted to know what he was doing. He could
+scarcely resist the temptation to turn his head and look; but he did
+not want to give himself away more entirely than was unavoidable, and,
+besides, instinct told him that he might frighten Pearson, who looked
+frightened enough, in a neat and well-mannered way, already. Hully gee!
+how he wished he would go out of the room!
+
+But he did not. There were gently gliding footsteps of Pearson behind
+him, quiet movements which would have seemed stealthy if they had been
+a burglar's, soft removals of articles from one part of the room to
+another, delicate brushings, and almost noiseless foldings. Now Pearson
+was near the bed, now he had opened a wardrobe, now he was looking into
+the steamer trunk, now he had stopped somewhere behind him, within a few
+yards of his chair. Why had he ceased moving? What was he looking at?
+What kept him quiet?
+
+Tembarom expected him to begin stirring mysteriously again; but he did
+not. Why did he not? There reigned in the room entire silence; no soft
+footfalls, no brushing, no folding. Was he doing nothing? Had he got
+hold of something which had given him a fit? There had been no sound of
+a fall; but perhaps even if an English valet had a fit, he'd have it so
+quietly and respectfully that one wouldn't hear it. Tembarom felt that
+he must be looking at the back of his head, and he wondered what was
+the matter with it. Was his hair cut in a way so un-English that it
+had paralyzed him? The back of his head began to creep under an
+investigation so prolonged. No sound at all, no movement. Tembarom
+stealthily took out his watch--good old Waterbury he wasn't going to
+part with--and began to watch the minute-hand. If nothing happened
+in three minutes he was going to turn round. One--two--three--and the
+silence made it seem fifteen. He returned his Waterbury to his pocket
+and turned round.
+
+Pearson was not dead. He was standing quite still and resigned, waiting.
+It was his business to wait, not to intrude or disturb, and having put
+everything in order and done all he could do, he was waiting for further
+commands--in some suspense, it must be admitted.
+
+“Hello!” exclaimed Tembarom, involuntarily.
+
+“Shall I get your bath ready, sir?” inquired Pearson. “Do you like it
+hot or cold, sir?”
+
+Tembarom drew a relieved breath. He hadn't dropped dead and he hadn't
+had a fit, and here was one of the things a man did when he valeted
+you--he got your bath ready. A hasty recollection of the much-used,
+paint-smeared tin bath on the fourth floor of Mrs. Bowse's
+boarding-house sprang up before him. Everybody had to use it in turn,
+and you waited hours for the chance to make a dash into it. No one stood
+still and waited fifteen minutes until you got good and ready to tell
+him he could go and turn on the water. Gee whizz!
+
+Being relieved himself, he relieved Pearson by telling him he might “fix
+it” for him, and that he would have hot water.
+
+“Very good, sir. Thank you, sir,” said Pearson, and silently left the
+room.
+
+Then Tembarom got up from his chair and began to walk about rather
+restlessly. A new alarm seized him. Did Pearson expect to WASH him or
+to stand round and hand him soap and towels and things while he washed
+himself?
+
+If it was supposed that you hadn't the strength to turn the faucets
+yourself, it might be supposed you didn't have the energy to use a
+flesh-brush and towels. Did valeting include a kind of shampoo all over?
+
+“I couldn't stand for that,” he said. “I'd have to tell him there'd been
+no Turkish baths in mine, and I'm not trained up to them. When I've got
+on to this kind of thing a bit more, I'll make him understand what I'm
+NOT in for; but I don't want to scare the life out of him right off. He
+looks like a good little fellow.”
+
+But Pearson's duties as valet did not apparently include giving him
+his bath by sheer physical force. He was deft, calm, amenable. He led
+Tembarom down the corridor to the bath-room, revealed to him stores of
+sumptuous bath-robes and towels, hot-and cold-water faucets, sprays,
+and tonic essences. He forgot nothing and, having prepared all, mutely
+vanished, and returned to the bedroom to wait--and gaze in troubled
+wonder at the speckled tweed cutaway. There was an appalling
+possibility--he was aware that he was entirely ignorant of American
+customs--that tweed was the fashionable home evening wear in the States.
+Tembarom, returning from his bath much refreshed after a warm plunge and
+a cold shower, evidently felt that as a costume it was all that could be
+desired.
+
+“Will you wear--these, sir,--this evening?” Pearson suggested.
+
+It was suggestive of more than actual inquiry. If he had dared to hope
+that his manner might suggest a number of things! For instance, that
+in England gentlemen really didn't wear tweed in the evening even in
+private. That through some unforeseen circumstances his employer's
+evening-dress suit had been delayed, but would of course arrive
+to-morrow!
+
+But Tembarom, physically stimulated by hot and cold water, and relief at
+being left alone, was beginning to recover his natural buoyancy.
+
+“Yes, I'll wear 'em,” he answered, snatching at his hairbrush and
+beginning to brush his damp hair. It was a wooden-backed brush that
+Pearson had found in his Gladstone bag and shudderingly laid in
+readiness on the dressing-table. “I guess they're all right, ain't
+they?”
+
+“Oh, quite right, sir, quite,” Pearson ventured--“for morning wear.”
+
+“Morning?” said Tembarom, brushing vigorously. “Not night?”
+
+“Black, sir,” most delicately hinted Pearson, “is--more usual--in the
+evening--in England.” After which he added, “So to speak,” with a vague
+hope that the mollifying phrase might counteract the effect of any
+apparently implied aspersion on colors preferred in America.
+
+Tembarom ceased brushing his hair, and looked at him in good-natured
+desire for information.
+
+“Frock-coats or claw-hammer?” he asked. Despite his natural anxiety,
+and in the midst of it, Pearson could not but admit that he had an
+uncondemnatory voice and a sort of young way with him which gave one
+courage. But he was not quite sure of “claw-hammer.”
+
+“Frock-coats for morning dress and afternoon wear, sir,” he ventured.
+“The evening cut, as you know, is--”
+
+“Claw-hammer. Swallow-tail, I guess you say here,” Tembarom ended for
+him, quite without hint of rancor, he was rejoiced to see.
+
+“Yes, sir,” said Pearson.
+
+The ceremony of dressing proved a fearsome thing as it went on. Pearson
+moved about deftly and essayed to do things for the new Mr. Temple
+Barholm which the new Mr. Temple Barholm had never heard of a man not
+doing for himself. He reached for things Pearson was about to hand to
+him or hold for him. He unceremoniously achieved services for himself
+which it was part of Pearson's manifest duty to perform. They got into
+each other's way; there was even danger sometimes of their seeming to
+snatch things from each other, to Pearson's unbounded horror. Mr. Temple
+Barholm did not express any irritation whatsoever misunderstandings took
+place, but he held his mouth rather close-shut, and Pearson, not aware
+that he did this as a precaution against open grinning or shouts of
+laughter as he found himself unable to adjust himself to his attendant's
+movements, thought it possible that he was secretly annoyed and regarded
+the whole matter with disfavor. But when the dressing was at an end and
+he stood ready to go down in all his innocent ignoring of speckled tweed
+and brown necktie, he looked neither flurried nor out of humor, and
+he asked a question in a voice which was actually friendly. It was a
+question dealing with an incident which had aroused much interest in the
+servants' hall as suggesting a touch of mystery.
+
+“Mr. Strangeways came yesterday all right, didn't he?” he inquired.
+
+“Yes, sir,” Pearson answered. “Mr. Hutchinson and his daughter came
+with him. They call her `Little Ann Hutchinson.' She's a sensible little
+thing, sir, and she seemed to know exactly what you'd want done to make
+him comfortable. Mrs. Butterworth put him in the west room, sir, and
+I valeted him. He was not very well when he came, but he seems better
+to-day, sir, only he's very anxious to see you.”
+
+“That's all right,” said Tembarom. “You show me his room. I'll go and
+see him now.”
+
+And being led by Pearson, he went without delay.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+
+The chief objection to Temple Barholm in Tembarom's mind was that it
+was too big for any human use. That at least was how it struck him. The
+entrance was too big, the stairs were too wide, the rooms too broad
+and too long and too high to allow of eyes accustomed to hall bedrooms
+adjusting their vision without discomfort. The dining-room in which the
+new owner took his first meal in company with Mr. Palford, and attended
+by the large, serious man who wore no livery and three tall footmen who
+did, was of a size and stateliness which made him feel homesick for
+Mrs. Bowse's dining-room, with its two hurried, incompetent, and
+often-changed waitresses and its prevailing friendly custom of pushing
+things across the table to save time. Meals were quickly disposed of at
+Mrs. Bowse's. Everybody was due up-town or down-town, and regarded food
+as an unavoidable, because necessary, interference with more urgent
+business. At Temple Barholm one sat half the night--this was the
+impression made upon Tembarom--watching things being brought in and
+taken out of the room, carved on a huge buffet, and passed from one man
+to another; and when they were brought solemnly to you, if you turned
+them down, it seemed that the whole ceremony had to be gone through with
+again. All sorts of silver knives, forks, and spoons were given to one
+and taken away, and half a dozen sorts of glasses stood by your plate;
+and if you made a move to do anything for yourself, the man out of
+livery stopped you as though you were too big a fool to be trusted.
+The food was all right, but when you knew what anything was, and were
+inclined to welcome it as an old friend, it was given to you in some
+way that made you get rattled. With all the swell dishes, you had
+no butter-plate, and ice seemed scarce, and the dead, still way the
+servants moved about gave you a sort of feeling that you were at a
+funeral and that it wasn't decent to talk so long as the remains were
+in the room. The head-man and the foot-men seemed to get on by signs,
+though Tembarom never saw them making any; and their faces never changed
+for a moment. Once or twice he tried a joke, addressing it to Mr.
+Palford, to see what would happen. But as Mr. Palford did not seem to
+see the humor of it, and gave him the “glassy eye,” and neither the
+head-man nor the footmen seemed to hear it, he thought that perhaps they
+didn't know it was a joke; and if they didn't, and they thought anything
+at all, they must think he was dippy. The dinner was a deadly, though
+sumptuous, meal, and long drawn out, when measured by meals at Mrs.
+Bowse's. He did not know, as Mr. Palford did, that it was perfect, and
+served with a finished dexterity that was also perfection.
+
+Mr. Palford, however, was himself relieved when it was at an end. He had
+sat at dinner with the late Mr. Temple Barholm in his day, and had seen
+him also served by the owners of impassive countenances; but he had been
+aware that whatsoever of secret dislike and resentment was concealed by
+them, there lay behind their immovability an acceptance of the fact
+that he represented, even in his most objectionable humors, centuries of
+accustomedness to respectful service and of knowledge of his right and
+power to claim it. The solicitor was keenly aware of the silent comments
+being made upon the tweed suit and brown necktie and on the manner in
+which their wearer boldly chose the wrong fork or erroneously made use
+of a knife or spoon. Later in the evening, in the servants' hall, the
+comment would not be silent, and there could be no doubt of what
+its character would be. There would be laughter and the relating
+of incidents. Housemaids and still-room maids would giggle, and
+kitchen-maids and boot-boys would grin and whisper in servile tribute to
+the witticisms of the superior servants.
+
+After dinner the rest of the evening could at least be spent in talk
+about business matters. There still remained details to be enlarged upon
+before Palford himself returned to Lincoln's Inn and left Mr. Temple
+Barholm to the care of the steward of his estate. It was not difficult
+to talk to him when the sole subject of conversation was of a business
+nature.
+
+Before they parted for the night the mystery of the arrangements made
+for Strangeways had been cleared. In fact, Mr. Temple Barholm made no
+mystery of them. He did not seem ignorant of the fact that what he had
+chosen to do was unusual, but he did not appear hampered or embarrassed
+by the knowledge. His remarks on the subject were entirely civil and
+were far from actually suggesting that his singular conduct was purely
+his own business and none of his solicitor's; but for a moment or so
+Mr. Palford was privately just a trifle annoyed. The Hutchinsons had
+traveled from London with Strangeways in their care the day before. He
+would have been unhappy and disturbed if he had been obliged to travel
+with Mr. Palford, who was a stranger to him, and Miss Hutchinson had
+a soothing effect on him. Strangeways was for the present comfortably
+installed as a guest of the house, Miss Hutchinson having talked to the
+housekeeper, Mrs. Butterworth, and to Pearson. What the future held for
+him Mr. Temple Barholm did not seem to feel the necessity of going into.
+He left him behind as a subject, and went on talking cheerfully of other
+things almost as if he had forgotten him.
+
+They had their coffee in the library, and afterward sat at the
+writing-table and looked over documents and talked until Mr. Palford
+felt that he could quite decorously retire to his bedroom. He was glad
+to be relieved of his duties, and Tembarom was amiably resigned to
+parting with him.
+
+Tembarom did not go up-stairs at once himself. He sat by the fire and
+smoked several pipes of tobacco and thought things over. There were
+a lot of things to think over, and several decisions to make, and he
+thought it would be a good idea to pass them in review. The quiet of
+the dead surrounded him. In a house the size of this the servants
+were probably half a mile away. They'd need trolleys to get to one, he
+thought, if you rang for them in a hurry. If an armed burglar made a
+quiet entry without your knowing it, he could get in some pretty rough
+work before any of the seventy-five footmen could come to lend a hand.
+He was not aware that there were two of them standing in waiting in the
+hall, their powdered heads close together, so that their whispers and
+chuckles could be heard. A sound of movement in the library would have
+brought them up standing to a decorous attitude of attention conveying
+to the uninitiated the impression that they had not moved for hours.
+
+Sometimes as he sat in the big morocco chair, T. Tembarom looked grave
+enough; sometimes he looked as though he was confronting problems which
+needed puzzling out and with which he was not making much headway;
+sometimes he looked as though he was thinking of little Ann Hutchinson,
+and not infrequently he grinned. Here he was up to the neck in it, and
+he was darned if he knew what he was going to do. He didn't know a soul,
+and nobody knew him. He didn't know a thing he ought to know, and he
+didn't know any one who could tell him. Even the Hutchinsons had never
+been inside a place like Temple Barholm, and they were going back to
+Manchester after a few weeks' stay at the grandmother's cottage.
+
+Before he had left New York he had seen Hadman and some other fellows
+and got things started, so that there was an even chance that the
+invention would be put on its feet. He had worked hard and used his own
+power to control money in the future as a lever which had proved to be
+exactly what was needed.
+
+Hadman had been spurred and a little startled when he realized the
+magnitude of what really could be done, and saw also that this slangy,
+moneyed youth was not merely an enthusiastic fool, but saw into business
+schemes pretty sharply and was of a most determined readiness. With this
+power ranging itself on the side of Hutchinson and his invention, it was
+good business to begin to move, if one did not want to run a chance of
+being left out in the cold.
+
+Hutchinson had gone to Manchester, and there had been barely time for
+a brief but characteristic interview between him and Tembarom, when he
+rushed back to London. Tembarom felt rather excited when he remembered
+it, recalling what he had felt in confronting the struggles against
+emotion in the blunt-featured, red face, the breaks in the rough voice,
+the charging up and down the room like a curiously elated bull in a
+china shop, and the big effort to restrain relief and gratitude the
+degree of which might seem to under-value the merits of the invention
+itself.
+
+Once or twice when he looked serious, Tembarom was thinking this
+over, and also once or twice when he grinned. Relief and gratitude
+notwithstanding, Hutchinson had kept him in his place, and had not
+made unbounded efforts to conceal his sense of the incongruity of his
+position as the controller of fortunes and the lord of Temple Barholm,
+which was still vaguely flavored with indignation.
+
+When he had finished his last pipe, Tembarom rose and knocked the ashes
+out of it.
+
+“Now for Pearson,” he said.
+
+He had made up his mind to have a talk with Pearson, and there was no
+use wasting time. If things didn't suit you, the best thing was to see
+what you could do to fix them right away--if it wasn't against the law.
+He went out into the hall, and seeing the two footmen standing waiting,
+he spoke to them.
+
+“Say, I didn't know you fellows were there,” he said. “Are you waiting
+up for me? Well, you can go to bed, the sooner the quicker. Good night.”
+ And he went up-stairs whistling.
+
+The glow and richness and ceremonial order of preparation in his
+bedroom struck him as soon as he opened the door. Everything which could
+possibly have been made ready for his most luxurious comfort had been
+made ready. He did not, it is true, care much for the huge bed with its
+carved oak canopy and massive pillars.
+
+“But the lying-down part looks about all right,” he said to himself.
+
+The fine linen, the soft pillows, the downy blankets, would have allured
+even a man who was not tired. The covering had been neatly turned back
+and the snowy whiteness opened. That was English, he supposed. They
+hadn't got on to that at Mrs. Bowse's.
+
+“But I guess a plain little old New York sleep will do,” he said.
+“Temple Barholm or no Temple Barholm, I guess they can't change that.”
+
+Then there sounded a quiet knock at the door. He knew who it would
+turn out to be, and he was not mistaken. Pearson stood in the corridor,
+wearing his slightly anxious expression, but ready for orders.
+
+Mr. Temple Barholm looked down at him with a friendly, if unusual, air.
+
+“Say, Pearson,” he announced, “if you've come to wash my face and put my
+hair up in crimping-pins, you needn't do it, because I'm not used to it.
+But come on in.”
+
+If he had told Pearson to enter and climb the chimney, it cannot be said
+that the order would have been obeyed upon the spot, but Pearson would
+certainly have hesitated and explained with respectful delicacy the fact
+that the task was not “his place.” He came into the room.
+
+“I came to see, if I could do anything further and--” making a
+courageous onslaught upon the situation for which he had been preparing
+himself for hours--“and also--if it is not too late--to venture to
+trouble you with regard to your wardrobe.” He coughed a low, embarrassed
+cough. “In unpacking, sir, I found--I did not find--”
+
+“You didn't find much, did you?” Tembarom assisted him.
+
+“Of course, sir,” Pearson apologized, “leaving New York so hurriedly,
+your--your man evidently had not time to--er--”
+
+Tembarom looked at him a few seconds longer, as if making up his mind to
+something. Then he threw himself easily into the big chair by the fire,
+and leaned back in it with the frankest and best-natured smile possible.
+
+“I hadn't any man,” he said. “Say, Pearson,” waving his hand to another
+chair near by, “suppose you take a seat.”
+
+Long and careful training came to Pearson's aid and supported him, but
+he was afraid that he looked nervous, and certainly there was a lack of
+entire calm in his voice.
+
+“I--thank you, sir,--I think I'd better stand, sir.”
+
+“Why?” inquired Tembarom, taking his tobacco-pouch out of his pocket and
+preparing to fill another pipe.
+
+“You're most kind, sir, but--but--” in impassioned embarrassment--“I
+should really PREFER to stand, sir, if you don't mind. I should feel
+more--more at 'ome, sir,” he added, dropping an h in his agitation.
+
+“Well, if you'd like it better, that's all right,” yielded Mr. Temple
+Barholm, stuffing tobacco into the pipe. Pearson darted to a table,
+produced a match, struck it, and gave it to him.
+
+“Thank you,” said Tembarom, still good-naturedly. “But there are a few
+things I've GOT to say to you RIGHT now.”
+
+Pearson had really done his best, his very best, but he was terrified
+because of the certain circumstances once before referred to.
+
+“I beg pardon, sir,” he appealed, “but I am most anxious to give
+satisfaction in every respect.” He WAS, poor young man, horribly
+anxious. “To-day being only the first day, I dare say I have not been
+all I should have been. I have never valeted an American gentleman
+before, but I'm sure I shall become accustomed to everything QUITE
+soon--almost immediately.”
+
+“Say,” broke in Tembarom, “you're 'way off. I'm not complaining. You're
+all right.”
+
+The easy good temper of his manner was so singularly assuring that
+Pearson, unexplainable as he found him in every other respect, knew that
+this at least was to be depended upon, and he drew an almost palpable
+breath of relief. Something actually allured him into approaching what
+he had never felt it safe to approach before under like circumstances--a
+confidential disclosure.
+
+“Thank you, sir: I am most grateful. The--fact is, I hoped especially to
+be able to settle in place just now. I--I'm hoping to save up enough to
+get married, sir.”
+
+“You are?” Tembarom exclaimed. “Good business! So was I before all
+this”--he glanced about him--“fell on top of me.”
+
+“I've been saving for three years, sir, and if I can know I'm a
+permanency--if I can keep this place--”
+
+“You're going to keep it all right,” Tembarom cheered him up with. “If
+you've got an idea you're going to be fired, just you forget it. Cut it
+right out.”
+
+“Is--I beg your pardon, sir,” Pearson asked with timorous joy, “but is
+that the American for saying you'll be good enough to keep me on?”
+
+Mr. Temple Barholm thought a second.
+
+“Is 'keep me on' the English for 'let me stay'?”
+
+“Yes, sir.”
+
+“Then we're all right. Let's start from there. I'm going to have a
+heart-to-heart talk with you, Pearson.”
+
+“Thank you, sir,” said Pearson in a deferential murmur. But if he was
+not dissatisfied, what was going to happen?
+
+“It'll save us both trouble, and me most. I'm not one of those clever
+Clarences that can keep up a bluff, making out I know things I don't
+know. I couldn't deceive a setting hen or a Berlin wool antimacassar.”
+
+Pearson swallowed something with effort.
+
+“You see, I fell into this thing KERCHUNK, and I'm just RATTLED--I'm
+rattled.” As Pearson slightly coughed again, he translated for him,
+“That's American for 'I don't know where I'm at'.”
+
+“Those American jokes, sir, are very funny indeed,” answered Pearson,
+appreciatively.
+
+“Funny!” the new Mr. Temple Barholm exclaimed even aggrievedly. “If you
+think this lay-out is an American joke to me, Pearson, there's where
+you're 'way off. Do you think it a merry jest for a fellow like me to
+sit up in a high chair in a dining-room like a cathedral and not know
+whether he ought to bite his own bread or not? And not dare to stir
+till things are handed to him by five husky footmen? I thought that
+plain-clothes man was going to cut up my meat, and slap me on the back
+if I choked.”
+
+Pearson's sense of humor was perhaps not inordinate, but unseemly mirth,
+which he had swallowed at the reference to the setting hen and the
+Berlin wool antimacassar, momentarily got the better of him, despite
+his efforts to cough it down, and broke forth in a hoarse, ill-repressed
+sound.
+
+“I beg pardon, sir,” he said with a laudable endeavor to recover his
+professional bearing. “It's your--American way of expressing it which
+makes me forget myself. I beg pardon.”
+
+Tembarom laughed outright boyishly.
+
+“Oh, cut that out,” he said. “Say, how old are you?”
+
+“Twenty-five, sir.”
+
+“So am I. If you'd met me three months ago, beating the streets of New
+York for a living, with holes in my shoes and a celluloid collar on,
+you'd have looked down on me. I know you would.”
+
+“Oh, no, sir,” most falsely insisted Pearson.
+
+“Oh, yes, you would,” protested Tembarom, cheerfully. “You'd have said
+I talked through my nose, and I should have laughed at you for dropping
+your h's. Now you're rattled because I'm Mr. Temple Temple Barholm; but
+you're not half as rattled as I am.”
+
+“You'll get over it, sir, almost immediately,” Pearson assured him,
+hopefully.
+
+“Of course I shall,” said Tembarom, with much courage. “But to start
+right I've got to get over YOU.”
+
+“Me, sir?” Pearson breathed anxiously.
+
+“Yes. That's what I want to get off my chest. Now, first off, you came
+in here to try to explain to me that, owing to my New York valet having
+left my New York wardrobe behind, I've not got anything to wear, and so
+I shall have to buy some clothes.”
+
+“I failed to find any dress-shirts, sir,” began Pearson, hesitatingly.
+
+Mr. Temple Barholm grinned.
+
+“I always failed to find them myself. I never had a dress-shirt. I never
+owned a suit of glad rags in my life.”
+
+“Gl--glad rags, sir?” stammered Pearson, uncertainly.
+
+“I knew you didn't catch on when I said that to you before dinner.
+I mean claw-hammer and dress-suit things. Don't you be frightened,
+Pearson. I never had six good shirts at once, or two pair of shoes, or
+more than four ten-cent handkerchiefs at a time since I was born. And
+when Mr. Palford yanked me away from New York, he didn't suspect a
+fellow could be in such a state. And I didn't know I was in a state,
+anyhow. I was too busy to hunt up people to tell me, because I was
+rushing something important right through, and I couldn't stop. I just
+bought the first things I set eyes on and crammed them into my trunk.
+There, I guess you know the most of this, but you didn't know I knew you
+knew it. Now you do, and you needn't be afraid to hurt my feelings by
+telling me I haven't a darned thing I ought to have. You can go straight
+ahead.”
+
+As he leaned back, puffing away at his pipe, he had thrown a leg over
+the arm of his chair for greater comfort, and it really struck his valet
+that he had never seen a gentleman more at his ease, even one who WAS
+one. His casual candidness produced such a relief from the sense of
+strain and uncertainty that Pearson felt the color returning to his
+face. An opening had been given him, and it was possible for him to do
+his duty.
+
+“If you wish, sir, I will make a list,” he ventured further, “and the
+proper firms will send persons to bring things down from London on
+appro.”
+
+“What's 'appro' the English for?”
+
+“Approval, sir.”
+
+“Good business! Good old Pearson!”
+
+“Thank you, sir. Shall I attend to it to-night, to be ready for the
+morning post?”
+
+“In five minutes you shall. But you threw me off the track a bit. The
+thing I was really going to say was more important than the clothes
+business.”
+
+There was something else, then, thought Pearson, some other unexpected
+point of view.
+
+“What have you to do for me, anyhow?”
+
+“Valet you, sir.”
+
+“That's English for washing my face and combing my hair and putting my
+socks on, ain't it?”
+
+“Well, sir, it means doing all you require, and being always in
+attendance when you change.”
+
+“How much do you get for it?”
+
+“Thirty shillings a week, sir.”
+
+“Say, Pearson,” said Tembarom, with honest feeling, “I'll give you sixty
+shillings a week NOT to do it.”
+
+Calmed though he had felt a few moments ago, it cannot be denied that
+Pearson was aghast. How could one be prepared for developments of such
+an order?
+
+“Not to do it, sir!” he faltered. “But what would the servants think if
+you had no one to valet you?”
+
+“That's so. What would they think?” But he evidently was not dismayed,
+for he smiled widely. “I guess the plainclothes man would throw a fit.”
+
+But Pearson's view was more serious and involved a knowledge of not
+improbable complications. He knew “the hall” and its points of view.
+
+“I couldn't draw my wages, sir,” he protested. “There'd be the greatest
+dissatisfaction among the other servants, sir, if I didn't do my duties.
+There's always a--a slight jealousy of valets and ladies'-maids. The
+general idea is that they do very little to earn their salaries. I've
+seen them fairly hated.”
+
+“Is that so? Well, I'll be darned!” remarked Mr. Temple Barholm. He
+gave a moment to reflection, and then cheered up immensely.
+
+“I'll tell you how we'll fix it. You come up into my room and bring your
+tatting or read a newspaper while I dress.” He openly chuckled. “Holy
+smoke! I've GOT to put on my shirt and swear at my collar-buttons
+myself. If I'm in for having a trained nurse do it for me, it'll give me
+the Willies. When you danced around me before dinner--”
+
+Pearson's horror forced him to commit the indiscretion of interrupting.
+
+“I hope I didn't DANCE, sir,” he implored. “I tried to be extremely
+quiet.”
+
+“That was it,” said Tembarom. “I shouldn't have said danced; I meant
+crept. I kept thinking I should tread on you, and I got so nervous
+toward the end I thought I should just break down and sob on your bosom
+and beg to be taken back to home and mother.”
+
+“I'm extremely sorry, sir, I am, indeed,” apologized Pearson, doing his
+best not to give way to hysterical giggling. How was a man to keep a
+decently straight face, and if one didn't, where would it end? One thing
+after another.
+
+“It was not your fault. It was mine. I haven't a thing against you.
+You're a first-rate little chap.”
+
+“I will try to be more satisfactory to-morrow.”
+
+There must be no laughing aloud, even if one burst a blood-vessel. It
+would not do. Pearson hastily confronted a vision of a young footman
+or Mr. Burrill himself passing through the corridors on some errand
+and hearing master and valet shouting together in unseemly and wholly
+incomprehensible mirth. And the next remark was worse than ever.
+
+“No, you won't, Pearson,” Mr. Temple Barholm asserted. “There's where
+you're wrong. I've got no more use for a valet than I have for a pair of
+straight-front corsets.”
+
+This contained a sobering suggestion.
+
+“But you said, sir, that--”
+
+“Oh, I'm not going to fire you,” said Tembarom, genially. “I'll 'keep
+you on', but little Willie is going to put on his own socks. If the
+servants have to be pacified, you come up to my room and do anything
+you like. Lie on the bed if you want to; get a jew's-harp and play on
+it--any old thing to pass the time. And I'll raise your wages. What do
+you say? Is it fixed?”
+
+“I'm here, sir, to do anything you require,” Pearson answered
+distressedly; “but I'm afraid--”
+
+Tembarom's face changed. A sudden thought had struck him.
+
+“I'll tell you one thing you can do,” he said; “you can valet that
+friend of mine.”
+
+“Mr. Strangeways, sir?”
+
+“Yes. I've got a notion he wouldn't mind it.” He was not joking now. He
+was in fact rather suddenly thoughtful.
+
+“Say, Pearson, what do you think of him?”
+
+“Well, sir, I've not seen much of him, and he says very little, but I
+should think he was a GENTLEMAN, sir.”
+
+Mr. Temple Barholm seemed to think it over.
+
+“That's queer,” he said as though to himself. “That's what Ann said.”
+ Then aloud, “Would you say he was an American?”
+
+In his unavoidable interest in a matter much talked over below stairs
+and productive of great curiosity Pearson was betrayed. He could not
+explain to himself, after he had spoken, how he could have been such a
+fool as to forget; but forget himself and the birthplace of the new Mr.
+Temple Barholm he did.
+
+“Oh, no, sir,” he exclaimed hastily; “he's QUITE the gentleman, sir,
+even though he is queer in his mind.” The next instant he caught himself
+and turned cold. An American or a Frenchman or an Italian, in fact, a
+native of any country on earth so slighted with an unconsciousness so
+natural, if he had been a man of hot temper, might have thrown something
+at him or kicked him out of the room; but Mr. Temple Barholm took his
+pipe out of his mouth and looked at him with a slow, broadening smile.
+
+“Would you call me a gentleman, Pearson?” he asked.
+
+Of course there was no retrieving such a blunder, Pearson felt, but--
+
+“Certainly, sir,” he stammered. “Most--most CERTAINLY, sir.”
+
+“Pearson,” said Tembarom, shaking his head slowly, with a grin so
+good-natured that even the frankness of his words was friendly humor
+itself--“Pearson, you're a liar. But that doesn't jolt me a bit. I dare
+say I'm not one, anyhow. We might put an 'ad' in one of your papers and
+find out.”
+
+“I--I beg your pardon, sir,” murmured Pearson in actual anguish of mind.
+
+Mr. Temple Barholm laughed outright.
+
+“Oh, I've not got it in for you. How could you help it?” he said. Then
+he stopped joking again. “If you want to please ME,” he added with
+deliberation, “you look after Mr. Strangeways, and don't let anything
+disturb him. Don't bother him, but just find out what he wants. When he
+gets restless, come and tell me. If I'm out, tell him I'm coming back.
+Don't let him worry. You understand--don't let him worry.”
+
+“I'll do my best--my very best, sir,” Pearson answered devoutly. “I've
+been nervous and excited this first day because I am so anxious to
+please--everything seems to depend on it just now,” he added, daring
+another confidential outburst. “But you'll see I do know how to keep my
+wits about me in general, and I've got a good memory, and I have learned
+my duties, sir. I'll attend to Mr. Strangeways most particular.”
+
+As Tembarom listened, and watched his neat, blond countenance, and
+noted the undertone of quite desperate appeal in his low voice, he was
+thinking of a number of things. Chiefly he was thinking of little Ann
+Hutchinson and the Harlem flat which might have been “run” on fifteen
+dollars a week.
+
+“I want to know I have some one in this museum of a place who'll
+UNDERSTAND,” he said--“some one who'll do just exactly what I say and
+ask no fool questions and keep his mouth shut. I believe you could do
+it.”
+
+“I'll swear I could, sir. Trust me,” was Pearson's astonishingly
+emotional and hasty answer.
+
+“I'm going to,” returned Mr. Temple Barholm. “I've set my mind on
+putting something through in my own way. It's a queer thing, and most
+people would say I was a fool for trying it. Mr. Hutchinson does, but
+Miss Hutchinson doesn't.”
+
+There was a note in his tone of saying “Miss Hutchinson doesn't” which
+opened up vistas to Pearson--strange vistas when one thought of old Mrs.
+Hutchinson's cottage and the estate of Temple Barholm.
+
+“We're just about the same age,” his employer continued, “and in a sort
+of way we're in just about the same fix.”
+
+Their eyes looked into each other's a second; but it was not for Pearson
+to presume to make any comment whatsoever upon the possible nature of
+“the fix.” Two or three more puffs, and Mr. Temple Barholm spoke again.
+
+“Say, Pearson, I don't want to butt in, but what about that little bunch
+of calico of yours--the one you're saving up for?”
+
+“Calico, sir?” said Pearson, at sea, but hopeful. Whatsoever the new Mr.
+Temple Barholm meant, one began to realize that it was not likely to be
+unfriendly.
+
+“That's American for HER, Pearson. 'Her' stands for the same thing both
+in English and American, I guess. What's her name and where is she?
+Don't you say a word if you don't want to.”
+
+Pearson drew a step nearer. There was an extraordinary human atmosphere
+in the room which caused things to begin to go on in his breast. He had
+had a harder life than Tembarom because he had been more timid and less
+buoyant and less unselfconscious. He had been beaten by a drunken mother
+and kicked by a drunken father. He had gone hungry and faint to the
+board school and had been punished as a dull boy. After he had struggled
+into a place as page, he had been bullied by footmen and had had his
+ears boxed by cooks and butlers. Ladies'-maids and smart housemaids had
+sneered at him, and made him feel himself a hopeless, vulgar little worm
+who never would “get on.” But he had got on, in a measure, because he
+had worked like a slave and openly resented nothing. A place like this
+had been his fevered hope and dream from his page days, though of course
+his imagination had not encompassed attendance on a gentleman who had
+never owned a dress-shirt in his life. Yet gentleman or no gentleman, he
+was a Temple Barholm, and there was something about him, something human
+in his young voice and grin and queer, unheard-of New York jokes, which
+Pearson had never encountered, and which had the effect of making him
+feel somehow more of a man than his timorous nature had ever allowed of
+his feeling before. It suggested that they were both, valet and master,
+merely masculine human creatures of like kind. The way he had said “Miss
+Hutchinson” and the twinkle in his eye when he'd made that American
+joke about the “little bunch of calico”! The curious fact was that thin,
+neat, white-blooded-looking Pearson was passionately in love. So he took
+the step nearer and grew hot and spoke low.
+
+“Her name is Rose Merrick, sir, and she's in place in London. She's
+lady's-maid to a lady of title, and it isn't an easy place. Her lady has
+a high temper, and she's economical with her servants. Her maid has
+to sew early and late, and turn out as much as if she was a whole
+dressmaking establishment. She's clever with her needle, and it would
+be easier if she felt it was appreciated. But she's treated haughty
+and severe, though she tries her very best. She has to wait up half
+the night after balls, and I'm afraid it's breaking her spirit and
+her health. That's why,--I beg your pardon, sir,” he added, his voice
+shaking--“that's why I'd bear anything on earth if I could give her a
+little home of her own.”
+
+“Gee whizz!” ejaculated Mr. Temple Barholm, with feeling. “I guess you
+would!”
+
+“And that's not all, sir,” said Pearson. “She's a beautiful girl, sir,
+with a figure, and service is sometimes not easy for a young woman
+like that. His lordship--the master of the house, sir,--is much too
+attentive. He's a man with bad habits; the last lady's-maid was sent
+away in disgrace. Her ladyship wouldn't believe she hadn't been forward
+when she saw things she didn't like, though every one in the hall knew
+the girl hated his bold ways with her, and her mother nearly broke her
+heart. He's begun with Rose, and it just drives me mad, sir, it does!”
+
+He choked, and wiped his forehead with his clean handkerchief. It was
+damp, and his young eyes had fire in them, as Mr. Temple Barholm did not
+fail to observe.
+
+“I'm taking a liberty talking to you like this, sir,” he said. “I'm
+behaving as if I didn't know my place, sir.”
+
+“Your place is behind that fellow, kicking him till he'll never sit down
+again except on eider-down cushions three deep,” remarked Mr. Temple
+Barholm, with fire in his eyes also. “That's where your place is. It's
+where mine would be if I was in the same house with him and caught him
+making a goat of himself. I bet nine Englishmen out of ten would break
+his darned neck for him if they got on to his little ways, even if they
+were lordships themselves.”
+
+“The decent ones won't know,” Pearson said. “That's not what happens,
+sir. He can laugh and chaff it off with her ladyship and coax her round.
+But a girl that's discharged like that, Rose says, that's the worst of
+it: she says she's got a character fastened on to her for life that no
+respectable man ought to marry her with.”
+
+Mr. Temple Barholm removed his leg from the arm of his chair and got up.
+Long-legged, sinewy, but somewhat slouchy in his badly made tweed suit,
+sharp New York face and awful American style notwithstanding, he still
+looked rather nice as he laid his hand on his valet's shoulder and gave
+him a friendly push.
+
+“See here,” he said. “What you've got to say to Rose is that she's just
+got to cut that sort of thing out--cut it right out. Talking to a man
+that's in love with her as if he was likely to throw her down because
+lies were told. Tell her to forget it--forget it quick. Why, what does
+she suppose a man's FOR, by jinks? What's he FOR?”
+
+“I've told her that, sir, though of course not in American. I just swore
+it on my knees in Hyde Park one night when she got out for an hour. But
+she laid her poor head on the back of the bench and cried and wouldn't
+listen. She says she cares for me too much to--”
+
+Tembarom's hand clutched his shoulder. His face lighted and glowed
+suddenly.
+
+“Care for you too much,” he asked. “Did she say that? God bless her!”
+
+“That's what I said,” broke in Pearson.
+
+“I heard another girl say that--just before I left New York--a girl
+that's just a wonder,” said his master. “A girl can be a wonder, can't
+she?”
+
+“Rose is, sir,” protested Pearson. “She is, indeed, sir. And her eyes
+are that blue--”
+
+“Blue, are they?” interrupted Tembarom. “I know the kind. I'm on to the
+whole thing. And what's more, I'm going to fix it. You tell Rose--and
+tell her from me--that she's going to leave that place, and you're going
+to stay in this one, and--well, presently things'll begin to happen.
+They're going to be all right--ALL RIGHT,” he went on, with immensely
+convincing emphasis. “She's going to have that little home of her own.”
+ He paused a moment for reflection, and then a sudden thought presented
+itself to him. “Why, darn it!” he exclaimed, “there must be a whole raft
+of little homes that belong to me in one place or another. Why couldn't
+I fix you both up in one of them?”
+
+“Oh, sir!” Pearson broke forth in some slight alarm. He went so fast
+and so far all in a moment. And Pearson really possessed a neat,
+well-ordered conscience, and, moreover, “knew his place.” “I hope I
+didn't seem to be expecting you to trouble yourself about me, sir. I
+mustn't presume on your kindness.”
+
+“It's not kindness; it's--well, it's just human. I'm going to think this
+thing over. You just keep your hair on, and let me do my own valeting,
+and you'll see I'll fix it for you somehow.”
+
+What he thought of doing, how he thought of doing it, and what Pearson
+was to expect, the agitated young man did not know. The situation was of
+course abnormal, judged by all respectable, long-established custom. A
+man's valet and his valet's “young woman” were not usually of intimate
+interest. Gentlemen were sometimes “kind” to you--gave you half a
+sovereign or even a sovereign, and perhaps asked after your mother if
+you were supporting one; but--
+
+“I never dreamed of going so far, sir,” he said. “I forgot myself, I'm
+afraid.”
+
+“Good thing you did. It's made me feel as if we were brothers.” He
+laughed again, enjoying the thought of the little thing who cared for
+Pearson “too much” and had eyes that were “that blue.” “Say, I've just
+thought of something else. Have you bought her an engagement-ring yet?”
+
+“No, sir. In our class of life jewelry is beyond the means.”
+
+“I just wondered,” Mr. Temple Barholm said. He seemed to be thinking of
+something that pleased him as he fumbled for his pocket-book and took a
+clean banknote out of it. “I'm not on to what the value of this thing is
+in real money, but you go and buy her a ring with it, and I bet she'll
+be so pleased you'll have the time of your life.”
+
+Pearson taking it; and recognizing its value in UNreal money, was
+embarrassed by feeling the necessity of explanation.
+
+“This is a five-pound note, sir. It's too much, sir, it is indeed. This
+would FURNISH THE FRONT PARLOR.” He said it almost solemnly.
+
+Mr. Temple Barholm looked at the note interestedly.
+
+“Would it? By jinks!” and his laugh had a certain softness of
+recollection. “I guess that's just what Ann would say. She'd know what
+it would furnish, you bet your life!”
+
+“I'm most grateful, sir,” protested Pearson, “but I oughtn't to take
+it. Being an American gentleman and not accustomed to English money, you
+don't realize that--”
+
+“I'm not accustomed to any kind of money,” said his master. “I'm scared
+to be left alone in the room with it. That's what's the matter. If I
+don't give some away, I shall never know I've got it. Cheer up, Pearson.
+You take that and buy the ring, and when you start furnishing, I'll see
+you don't get left.”
+
+“I don't know what to say, sir,” Pearson faltered emotionally. “I don't,
+indeed.”
+
+“Don't say a darned thing,” replied Mr. Temple Barholm. And just here
+his face changed as Mr. Palford had seen it change before, and as
+Pearson often saw it change later. His New York jocular irreverence
+dropped from him, and he looked mature and oddly serious.
+
+“I've tried to sort of put you wise to the way I've lived and the things
+I HAVEN'T had ever since I was born,” he said, “but I guess you don't
+really know a thing about it. I've got more money coming in every year
+than a thousand of me would ever expect to see in their lives, according
+to my calculation. And I don't know how to do any of the things a fellow
+who is what you call `a gentleman' would know how to do. I mean in the
+way of spending it. Now, I've got to get some fun out of it. I should
+be a mutt if I didn't, so I'm going to spend it my own way. I may make
+about seventy-five different kinds of a fool of myself, but I guess I
+sha'n't do any particular harm.”
+
+“You'll do good, sir,--to every one.”
+
+“Shall I?”--said Tembarom, speculatively. “Well, I'm not exactly setting
+out with that in my mind. I'm no Young Men's Christian Association, but
+I'm not in for doing harm, anyway. You take your five-pound note--come
+to think of it, Palford said it came to about twenty-five dollars, real
+money. Hully gee! I never thought I'd have twenty-five dollars to GIVE
+AWAY! It makes me feel like I was Morgan.”
+
+“Thank you, sir; thank you,” said Pearson, putting the note into his
+pocket with rapt gratitude in his neat face. “You--you do not wish me to
+remain--to do anything for you?”
+
+“Not a thing. But just go and find out if Mr. Strangeways is asleep. If
+he isn't and seems restless, I'll come and have a talk with him.”
+
+“Yes, sir,” said Pearson, and went at once.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+
+In the course of two days Mr. Palford, having given his client the
+benefit of his own exact professional knowledge of the estate of
+Temple Barholm and its workings and privileges as far as he found them
+transferable and likely to be understood, returned to London, breathing
+perhaps something like a sigh of relief when the train steamed out
+of the little station. Whatsoever happened in days to come, Palford &
+Grimby had done their most trying and awkward duty by the latest Temple
+Barholm. Bradford, who was the steward of the estate, would now take
+him over, and could be trusted to furnish practical information of any
+ordinary order.
+
+It did not appear to Mr. Palford that the new inheritor was particularly
+interested in his possessions or exhilarated by the extraordinary turn
+in his fortunes. The enormity of Temple Barholm itself, regarded as a
+house to live in in an everyday manner, seemed somewhat to depress him.
+When he was taken over its hundred and fifty rooms, he wore a detached
+air as he looked about him, and such remarks as he made were of an
+extraordinary nature and expressed in terms peculiar to America. Neither
+Mr. Palford nor Burrill understood them, but a young footman who was
+said to have once paid a visit to New York, and who chanced to be in the
+picture-gallery when his new master was looking at the portraits of
+his ancestors, over-hearing one observation, was guilty of a convulsive
+snort, and immediately made his way into the corridor, coughing
+violently. From this Mr. Palford gathered that one of the transatlantic
+jokes had been made. That was the New York idea--to be jocular. Yet he
+had not looked jocular when he had made the remark which had upset the
+equilibrium of the young footman. He had, in fact, looked reflective
+before speaking as he stood and studied a portrait of one of his
+ancestors. But, then, he had a trick of saying things incomprehensibly
+ridiculous with an unmoved expression of gravity, which led Palford to
+feel that he was ridiculous through utter ignorance and was not aware
+that he was exposing the fact. Persons who thought that an air of
+seriousness added to a humorous remark were especially annoying to the
+solicitor, because they frequently betrayed one into the position
+of seeming to be dull in the matter of seeing a point. That, he had
+observed, was often part of the New York manner--to make a totally
+absurdly exaggerated or seemingly ignorance-revealing observation, and
+then leave one's hearer to decide for himself whether the speaker was an
+absolute ignoramus and fool or a humorist.
+
+More than once he had somewhat suspected his client of meaning to “get
+a rise out of him,” after the odious manner of the tourists described
+in “The Innocents Abroad,” though at the same time he felt rather
+supportingly sure of the fact that generally, when he displayed
+ignorance, he displayed it because he was a positive encyclopedia of
+lack of knowledge.
+
+He knew no more of social customs, literature, and art than any other
+street lad. He had not belonged to the aspiring self-taught, who
+meritoriously haunt the night schools and free libraries with a view
+to improving their minds. If this had been his method, he might in one
+sense have been more difficult to handle, as Palford had seen the
+thing result in a bumptiousness most objectionable. He was markedly not
+bumptious, at all events.
+
+A certain degree of interest in or curiosity concerning his ancestors
+as represented in the picture-gallery Mr. Palford had observed. He had
+stared at them and had said queer things--sometimes things which perhaps
+indicated a kind of uneducated thought. The fact that some of them
+looked so thoroughly alive, and yet had lived centuries ago, seemed
+to set him reflecting oddly. His curiosity, however, seemed to connect
+itself with them more as human creatures than as historical figures.
+
+“What did that one do?” he inquired more than once. “What did he start,
+or didn't he start anything?”
+
+When he disturbed the young footman he had stopped before a dark man in
+armor.
+
+“Who's this fellow in the tin overcoat?” he asked seriously, and
+Palford felt it was quite possible that he had no actual intent of being
+humorous.
+
+“That is Miles Gaspard Nevil John, who fought in the Crusades with
+Richard Coeur de Lion,” he explained. “He is wearing a suit of armor.”
+ By this time the footman was coughing in the corridor.
+
+“That's English history, I guess,” Tembarom replied. “I'll have to get a
+history-book and read up about the Crusades.”
+
+He went on farther, and paused with a slightly puzzled expression before
+a boy in a costume of the period of Charles II.
+
+“Who's this Fauntleroy in the lace collar?” he inquired. “Queer!” he
+added, as though to himself. “I can't ever have seen him in New York.”
+ And he took a step backward to look again.
+
+“That is Miles Hugo Charles James, who was a page at the court of
+Charles II. He died at nineteen, and was succeeded by his brother Denzel
+Maurice John.”
+
+“I feel as if I'd had a dream about him sometime or other,” said
+Tembarom, and he stood still a few seconds before he passed on. “Perhaps
+I saw something like him getting out of a carriage to go into the Van
+Twillers' fancy-dress ball. Seems as if I'd got the whole show shut up
+in here. And you say they're all my own relations?” Then he laughed. “If
+they were alive now!” he said. “By jinks!”
+
+His laughter suggested that he was entertained by mental visions. But he
+did not explain to his companion. His legal adviser was not in the least
+able to form any opinion of what he would do, how he would be likely to
+comport himself, when he was left entirely to his own devices. He
+would not know also, one might be sure, that the county would wait with
+repressed anxiety to find out. If he had been a minor, he might have
+been taken in hand, and trained and educated to some extent. But he was
+not a minor.
+
+On the day of Mr. Palford's departure a thick fog had descended and
+seemed to enwrap the world in the white wool. Tembarom found it close to
+his windows when he got up, and he had dressed by the light of tall wax
+candles, the previous Mr. Temple Barholm having objected to more modern
+and vulgar methods of illumination.
+
+“I guess this is what you call a London fog,” he said to Pearson.
+
+“No, not exactly the London sort, sir,” Pearson answered. “A London fog
+is yellow--when it isn't brown or black. It settles on the hands and
+face. A fog in the country isn't dirty with smoke. It's much less
+trying, sir.”
+
+When Palford had departed and he was entirely alone, Tembarom found a
+country fog trying enough for a man without a companion. A degree of
+relief permeated his being with the knowledge that he need no
+longer endeavor to make suitable reply to his solicitor's efforts at
+conversation. He had made conversational efforts himself. You couldn't
+let a man feel that you wouldn't talk to him if you could when he was
+doing business for you, but what in thunder did you have to talk about
+that a man like that wouldn't be bored stiff by? He didn't like New
+York, he didn't know anything about it, and he didn't want to know, and
+Tembarom knew nothing about anything else, and was homesick for the very
+stones of the roaring city's streets. When he said anything, Palford
+either didn't understand what he was getting at or he didn't like it.
+And he always looked as if he was watching to see if you were trying to
+get a joke on him. Tembarom was frequently not nearly so much inclined
+to be humorous as Mr. Palford had irritably suspected him of being. His
+modes of expression might on numerous occasions have roused to mirth
+when his underlying idea was almost entirely serious. The mode of
+expression was merely a result of habit.
+
+Mr. Palford left by an extremely early train, and after he was gone,
+Tembarom sat over his breakfast as long as possible, and then, going to
+the library, smoked long. The library was certainly comfortable, though
+the fire and the big wax candles were called upon to do their best to
+defy the chill, mysterious dimness produced by the heavy, white wool
+curtain folding itself more and more thickly outside the windows.
+
+But one cannot smoke in solitary idleness for much more than an hour,
+and when he stood up and knocked the ashes out of his last pipe,
+Tembarom drew a long breath.
+
+“There's a hundred and thirty-six hours in each of these days,” he said.
+“That's nine hundred and fifty-two in a week, and four thousand and
+eighty in a month--when it's got only thirty days in it. I'm not going
+to calculate how many there'd be in a year. I'll have a look at the
+papers. There's Punch. That's their comic one.”
+
+He looked out the American news in the London papers, and sighed hugely.
+He took up Punch and read every joke two or three times over. He did not
+know that the number was a specially good one and that there were some
+extremely witty things in it. The jokes were about bishops in gaiters,
+about garden-parties, about curates or lovely young ladies or rectors'
+wives and rustics, about Royal Academicians or esthetic poets. Their
+humor appealed to him as little and seemed as obscure as his had seemed
+to Mr. Palford.
+
+“I'm not laughing my head off much over these,” he said. “I guess I'm
+not on to the point.”
+
+He got up and walked about. The “L” in New York was roaring to and fro
+loaded with men and women going to work or to do shopping. Some of them
+were devouring morning papers bearing no resemblance to those of London,
+some of them carried parcels, and all of them looked as though they were
+intent on something or other and hadn't a moment to waste. They were all
+going somewhere in a hurry and had to get back in time for something.
+When the train whizzed and slackened at a station, some started up,
+hastily caught their papers or bundles closer, and pushed or were pushed
+out on the platform, which was crowded with other people who rushed to
+get in, and if they found seats, dropped into them hastily with an air
+of relief. The street-cars were loaded and rang their bells loudly,
+trucks and carriages and motors filled the middle of the thoroughfares,
+and people crowded the pavements. The store windows were dressed up for
+Christmas, and most of the people crowded before them were calculating
+as to what they could get for the inadequate sums they had on hand.
+
+The breakfast at Mrs. Bowse's boarding-house was over, and the boarders
+had gone on cars or elevated trains to their day's work. Mrs. Bowse
+was getting ready to go out and do some marketing. Julius and Jim were
+down-town deep in the work pertaining to their separate “jobs.” They'd
+go home at night, and perhaps, if they were in luck, would go to a
+“show” somewhere, and afterward come and sit in their tilted chairs in
+the hall bedroom and smoke and talk it over. And he wouldn't be there,
+and the Hutchinsons' rooms would be empty, unless some new people were
+in them. Galton would be sitting among his papers, working like mad. And
+Bennett--well, Bennett would be either “getting out his page,” or would
+be rushing about in the hundredth streets to find items and follow up
+weddings or receptions.
+
+“Gee!” he said, “every one of them trying their best to put something
+over, and with so much to think of they've not got time to breathe! It'd
+be no trouble for THEM to put in a hundred and thirty-six hours. They'd
+be darned glad of them. And, believe me, they'd put something over,
+too, before they got through. And I'm here, with three hundred and fifty
+thousand dollars a year round my neck and not a thing to spend it on,
+unless I pay some one part of it to give me lessons in tatting. What is
+tatting, anyhow?”
+
+He didn't really know. It was vaguely supposed to imply some intensely
+feminine fancy-work done by old ladies, and used as a figure of speech
+in jokes.
+
+“If you could ride or shoot, you could amuse yourself in the country,”
+ Palford had said.
+
+“I can ride in a street-car when I've got five cents,” Tembarom had
+answered. “That's as far as I've gone in riding--and what in thunder
+should I shoot?”
+
+“Game,” replied Mr. Palford, with chill inward disgust. “Pheasants,
+partridges, woodcock, grouse--”
+
+“I shouldn't shoot anything like that if I went at it,” he responded
+shamelessly. “I should shoot my own head off, or the fellow's that stood
+next to me, unless he got the drop on me first.”
+
+He did not know that he was ignominious. Nobody could have made it clear
+to him. He did not know that there were men who had gained distinction,
+popularity, and fame by doing nothing in particular but hitting things
+animate and inanimate with magnificent precision of aim.
+
+He stood still now and listened to the silence.
+
+“There's not a sound within a thousand miles of the place. What do
+fellows with money DO to keep themselves alive?” he said piteously.
+“They've got to do SOMETHING. Shall I have to go out and take a walk, as
+Palford called it? Take a walk, by gee!”
+
+He couldn't conceive it, a man “taking a walk” as though it were
+medicine--a walk nowhere, to reach nothing, just to go and turn back
+again.
+
+“I'll begin and take in sewing,” he said, “or I'll open a store in the
+village--a department store. I could spend something on that. I'll ask
+Pearson what he thinks of it--or Burrill. I'd like to see Burrill if I
+said that to him.”
+
+He decided at last that he would practise his “short” awhile; that would
+be doing something, at any rate. He sat down at the big writing-table
+and began to dash off mystic signs at furious speed. But the speed did
+not keep up. The silence of the great room, of the immense house, of all
+the scores of rooms and galleries and corridors, closed in about him. He
+had practised his “short” in the night school, with the “L” thundering
+past at intervals of five minutes; in the newspaper office, with all the
+babel of New York about him and the bang of steam-drills going on
+below in the next lot, where the foundation of a new building was being
+excavated; he had practised it in his hall bedroom at Mrs. Bowse's,
+to the tumultuous accompaniment of street sounds and the whizz and
+TING-A-LING of street-cars dashing past, and he had not been disturbed.
+He had never practised it in any place which was silent, and it was the
+silence which became more than he could stand. He actually jumped out
+of his chair when he heard mysterious footsteps outside the door, and a
+footman appeared and spoke in a low voice which startled him as though
+it had been a thunderclap.
+
+“A young person with her father wants to see you, sir,” he announced. “I
+don't think they are villagers, but of the working-class, I should say.”
+
+“Where are they?”
+
+“I didn't know exactly what to do, sir, so I left them in the hall. The
+young person has a sort of quiet, determined way--”
+
+“Little Ann, by gee!” exclaimed Tembarom with mad joy, and shot out of
+the room.
+
+The footman--he had not seen Little Ann when she had brought
+Strangeways--looked after him and rubbed his chin.
+
+“Wouldn't you call that a rummy sort for Temple Barholm?” he said to one
+of his fellows who had appeared in the hall near him.
+
+“It's not my sort,” was the answer. “I'm going to give notice to old
+Butterworth.”
+
+Hutchinson and Little Ann were waiting in the hall. Hutchinson was
+looking at the rich, shadowy spaces about him with a sort of proud
+satisfaction. Fine, dark corners with armored figures lurking in
+them, ancient portraits, carved oak settles, and massive chairs and
+cabinets--these were English, and he was an Englishman, and somehow felt
+them the outcome of certain sterling qualities of his own. He looked
+robustly well, and wore a new rough tweed suit such as one of the gentry
+might tramp about muddy roads and fields in. Little Ann was dressed
+in something warm and rough also, a brown thing, with a little close,
+cap-like, brown hat, from under which her red hair glowed. The walk in
+the cold, white fog had made her bloom fresh, soft-red and white-daisy
+color. She was smiling, and showing three distinct dimples, which
+deepened when Tembarom dashed out of the library.
+
+“Hully gee!” he cried out, “but I'm glad to see you!”
+
+He shook hands with both of them furiously, and two footmen stood and
+looked at the group with image-like calm of feature, but with curiously
+interested eyes. Hutchinson was aware of them, and endeavored to present
+to them a back which by its stolid composure should reveal that he knew
+more about such things than this chap did and wasn't a bit upset by
+grandeur.
+
+“Hully gee!” cried Tembarom again, “how glad I am! Come on in and sit
+down and let's talk it over.”
+
+Burrill made a stately step forward, properly intent on his duty, and
+his master waved him back.
+
+“Say,” he said hastily, “don't bring in any tea. They don't want it.
+They're Americans.”
+
+Hutchinson snorted. He could not stand being consigned to ignominy
+before the footmen.
+
+“Nowt o' th' sort,” he broke forth. “We're noan American. Tha'rt losing
+tha head, lad.”
+
+“He's forgetting because he met us first in New York,” said Little Ann,
+smiling still more.
+
+“Shall I take your hat and cane, sir?” inquired Burrill, unmovedly, at
+Hutchinson's side.
+
+“He wasn't going to say anything about tea,” explained Little Ann as
+they went into the library. “They don't expect to serve tea in the
+middle of the morning, Mr. Temple Barholm.”
+
+“Don't they?” said Tembarom, reckless with relieved delight. “I thought
+they served it every time the clock struck. When we were in London it
+seemed like Palford had it when he was hot and when he was cold and when
+he was glad and when he was sorry and when he was going out and when he
+was coming in. It's brought up to me, by jinks! as soon as I wake, to
+brace me up to put on my clothes--and Pearson wants to put those on.”
+
+He stopped short when they reached the middle of the room and looked her
+over.
+
+“O Little Ann!” he breathed tumultuously. “O Little Ann!”
+
+Mr. Hutchinson was looking about the library as he had looked about the
+hall.
+
+“Well, I never thought I'd get inside Temple Barlholm in my day,” he
+exclaimed. “Eh, lad, tha must feel like bull in a china shop.”
+
+“I feel like a whole herd of 'em,” answered Tembarom. Hutchinson nodded.
+He understood.
+
+“Well, perhaps tha'll get over it in time,” he conceded, “but it'll take
+thee a good bit.” Then he gave him a warmly friendly look. “I'll lay
+you know what Ann came with me for to-day.” The way Little Ann looked at
+him--the way she looked at him!
+
+“I came to thank you, Mr. Temple Barholm,” she said--“to thank you.” And
+there was an odd, tender sound in her voice.
+
+“Don't you do it, Ann,” Tembarom answered. “Don't you do it.”
+
+“I don't know much about business, but the way you must have worked, the
+way you must have had to run after people, and find them, and make then
+listen, and use all your New York cleverness--because you ARE clever.
+The way you've forgotten all about yourself and thought of nothing but
+father and the invention! I do know enough to understand that, and it
+seems as if I can't think of enough to say. I just wish I could tell you
+what it means to me.” Two round pearls of tears brimmed over and fell
+down her cheeks. “I promised mother FAITHFUL I'd take care of him and
+see he never lost hope about it,” she added, “and sometimes I didn't
+know whatever I was going to do.”
+
+It was perilous when she looked at one like that, and she was so little
+and light that one could have snatched her up in his arms and carried
+her to the big arm-chair and sat down with her and rocked her backward
+and forward and poured forth the whole thing that was making him feel as
+though he might explode.
+
+Hutchinson provided salvation.
+
+“Tha pulled me out o' the water just when I was going under, lad. God
+bless thee!” he broke out, and shook his hand with rough vigor. “I
+signed with the North Electric yesterday.”
+
+“Good business!” said Tembarom. “Now I'm in on the ground floor with
+what's going to be the biggest money-maker in sight.”
+
+“The way tha talked New York to them chaps took my fancy,” chuckled
+Hutchinson. “None o' them chaps wants to be the first to jump over the
+hedge.”
+
+“We've got 'em started now,” exulted Tembarom.
+
+“Tha started 'em,” said Hutchinson, “and it's thee I've got to thank.”
+
+“Say, Little Ann,” said Tembarom, with sudden thought, “who's come into
+money now? You'll have it to burn.”
+
+“We've not got it yet, Mr. Temple Barholm,” she replied, shaking
+her head. “Even when inventions get started, they don't go off like
+sky-rockets.”
+
+“She knows everything, doesn't she?” Tembarom said to Hutchinson. “Here,
+come and sit down. I've not seen you for 'steen years.”
+
+She took her seat in the big arm-chair and looked at him with softly
+examining eyes, as though she wanted to understand him sufficiently to
+be able to find out something she ought to do if he needed help.
+
+He saw it and half laughed, not quite unwaveringly.
+
+“You'll make me cry in a minute,” he said. “You don't know what it's
+like to have some one from home and mother come and be kind to you.”
+
+“How is Mr. Strangeways?” she inquired.
+
+“He's well taken care of, at any rate. That's where he's got to thank
+you. Those rooms you and the housekeeper chose were the very things for
+him. They're big and comfortable, and 'way off in a place where no one's
+likely to come near. The fellow that's been hired to valet me valets him
+instead, and I believe he likes it. It seems to come quite natural to
+him, any how. I go in and see him every now and then and try to get
+him to talk. I sort of invent things to see if I can start him thinking
+straight. He's quieted down some and he looks better. After a while I'm
+going to look up some big doctors in London and find out which of
+'em's got the most plain horse sense. If a real big one would just get
+interested and come and see him on the quiet and not get him excited, he
+might do him good. I'm dead stuck on this stunt I've set myself--getting
+him right. It's something to work on.”
+
+“You'll have plenty to work on soon,” said Little Ann. “There's a lot
+of everyday things you've got to think about. They may seem of no
+consequence to you, but they ARE, Mr. Temple Barholm.”
+
+“If you say they are, I guess they are,” he answered. “I'll do anything
+you say, Ann.”
+
+“I came partly to tell you about some of them to-day,” she went on,
+keeping the yearningly thoughtful eyes on him. It was rather hard for
+her, too, to be firm enough when there was so much she wanted to say and
+do. And he did not look half as twinkling and light-heartedly grinning
+as he had looked in New York.
+
+He couldn't help dropping his voice a little coaxingly, though Mr.
+Hutchinson was quite sufficiently absorbed in examination of his
+surroundings.
+
+“Didn't you come to save my life by letting me have a look at you,
+Little Ann--didn't you?” he pleaded.
+
+She shook her wonderful, red head.
+
+“No, I didn't, Mr. Temple Barholm,” she answered with Manchester
+downrightness. “When I said what I did in New York, I meant it. I
+didn't intend to hang about here and let you--say things to me. You
+mustn't say them. Father and me are going back to Manchester in a
+few days, and very soon we have to go to America again because of the
+business.”
+
+“America!” he said. “Oh, Lord!” he groaned. “Do you want me to drop down
+dead here with a dull, sickening thud, Ann?”
+
+“You're not going to drop down dead,” she replied convincedly. “You're
+going to stay here and do whatever it's your duty to do, now you've come
+into Temple Barholm.”
+
+“Am I?” he answered. “Well, we'll see what I'm going to do when I've had
+time to make up my mind. It may be something different from what you'd
+think, and it mayn't. Just now I'm going to do what you tell me. Go
+ahead, Little Ann.”
+
+She thought the matter over with her most destructive little air of
+sensible intentness.
+
+“Well, it may seem like meddling, but it isn't,” she began rather
+concernedly. “It's just that I'm used to looking after people. I wanted
+to talk to you about your clothes.”
+
+“My clothes?” he replied, bewildered a moment; but the next he
+understood and grinned. “I haven't got any. My valet--think of T. T.
+with a valet!--told me so last night.”
+
+“That's what I thought,” she said maternally. “I got Mrs. Bowse to write
+to me, and she told me you were so hurried and excited you hadn't time
+for anything.”
+
+“I just rushed into Cohen's the last day and yanked a few things off the
+ready-made counter.”
+
+She looked him over with impersonal criticism.
+
+“I thought so. Those you've got on won't do at all.”
+
+Tembarom glanced at them.
+
+“That's what Pearson says.”
+
+“They're not the right shape,” she explained. “I know what a gentleman's
+clothes mean in England, and--” her face flushed, and sudden, warm
+spirit made her speak rather fast--“I couldn't ABIDE to think of you
+coming here and--being made fun of--just because you hadn't the right
+clothes.”
+
+She said it, the little thing, as though he were hers--her very own, and
+defend him against disrespect she WOULD. Tembarom, being but young
+flesh and blood, made an impetuous dart toward her, and checked himself,
+catching his breath.
+
+“Ann,” he said, “has your grandmother got a dog?”
+
+“Y-e-s,” she said, faltering because she was puzzled.
+
+“How big is he?”
+
+“He's a big one. He's a brindled bulldog. Why?”
+
+“Well,” he said, half pathetic, half defiant, “if you're going to come
+and talk to me like that, and look like that, you've got to bring that
+bull along and set him on me when I make a break; for there's nothing
+but a dog can keep me where you want me to stay--and a big one at that.”
+
+He sat down on an ottoman near her and dropped his head on his hands. It
+was not half such a joke as it sounded.
+
+Little Ann saw it wasn't and she watched him tenderly, catching her
+breath once quickly. Men had ways of taking some things hard and feeling
+them a good bit more than one would think. It made trouble many a time
+if one couldn't help them to think reasonable.
+
+“Father,” she said to Hutchinson.
+
+“Aye,” he answered, turning round.
+
+“Will you tell Mr. Temple Barholm that you think I'm right about giving
+him his chance?”
+
+“Of course I think she's right,” Hutchinson blustered, “and it isn't the
+first time either. I'm not going to have my lass married into any family
+where she'd be looked down upon.”
+
+But that was not what Little Ann wanted; it was not, in fact, her
+argument. She was not thinking of that side of the situation.
+
+“It's not me that matters so much, Father,” she said; “it's him.”
+
+“Oh, is it?” disagreed Hutchinson, dictatorially. “That's not th' road
+I look at it. I'm looking after you, not him. Let him take care of
+himself. No chap shall put you where you won't be looked up to, even if
+I AM grateful to him. So there you have it.”
+
+“He can't take care of himself when he feels like this,” she answered.
+“That's WHY I'm taking care of him. He'll think steadier when he's
+himself again.” She put out her hand and softly touched his shoulder.
+
+“Don't do that,” she said. “You make me want to be silly.” There was a
+quiver in her voice, but she tried to change it. “If you don't lift
+your head,” she added with a great effort at disciplinarian firmness, “I
+shall have to go away without telling you the other things.”
+
+He lifted his head, but his attempt at a smile was not hilarious.
+
+“Well, Ann,” he submitted, “I've warned you. Bring along your dog.”
+
+She took a sheet of paper out of one of the neat pockets in her rough,
+brown coat.
+
+“I just wrote down some of the very best tailors' addresses--the very
+best,” she explained. “Don't you go to any but the very best, and be
+a bit sharp with them if they're not attentive. They'll think all the
+better of you. If your valet's a smart one, take him with you.”
+
+“Yes, Ann,” he said rather weakly. “He's going to make a list of things
+himself, anyhow.”
+
+“That sounds as if he'd got some sense.” She handed him the list of
+addresses. “You give him this, and tell him he must go to the very best
+ones.”
+
+“What do I want to put on style for?” he asked desperately. “I don't
+know a soul on this side of the Atlantic Ocean.”
+
+“You soon will,” she replied, with calm perspicacity. “You've got too
+much money not to.”
+
+A gruff chuckle made itself heard from Hutchinson's side of the room.
+
+“Aye, seventy thousand a year'll bring th' vultures about thee, lad.”
+
+“We needn't call them vultures exactly,” was Little Ann's tolerant
+comment; “but a lot of people will come here to see you. That was one of
+the things I thought I might tell you about.”
+
+“Say, you're a wonder!”
+
+“I'm nothing of the sort. I'm just a girl with a bit of common
+sense--and grandmother's one that's looked on a long time, and she sees
+things. The country gentlemen will begin to call on you soon, and then
+you'll be invited to their houses to meet their wives and daughters, and
+then you'll be kept pretty busy.”
+
+Hutchinson's bluff chuckle broke out again.
+
+“You will that, my lad, when th' match-making mothers get after you.
+There's plenty on 'em.”
+
+“Father's joking,” she said. Her tone was judicially unprejudiced.
+“There are young ladies that--that'd be very suitable. Pretty ones and
+clever ones. You'll see them all.”
+
+“I don't want to see them.”
+
+“You can't help it,” she said, with mild decision. “When there
+are daughters and a new gentleman comes into a big property in the
+neighborhood, it's nothing but natural that the mothers should be a bit
+anxious.”
+
+“Aye, they'll be anxious enough. Mak' sure o' that,” laughed Hutchinson.
+
+“Is that what you want me to put on style for, Little Ann?” Tembarom
+asked reproachfully.
+
+“I want you to put it on for yourself. I don't want you to look
+different from other men. Everybody's curious about you. They're ready
+to LAUGH because you came from America and once sold newspapers.”
+
+“It's the men he'll have to look out for,” Hutchinson put in, with an
+experienced air. “There's them that'll want to borrow money, and them
+that'll want to drink and play cards and bet high. A green American
+lad'll be a fine pigeon for them to pluck. You may as well tell him,
+Ann; you know you came here to do it.”
+
+“Yes, I did,” she admitted. “I don't want you to seem not to know what
+people are up to and what they expect.”
+
+That little note of involuntary defense was a dangerous thing for
+Tembarom. He drew nearer.
+
+“You don't want them to take me for a fool, Little Ann. You're standing
+up for me; that's it.”
+
+“You can stand up for yourself, Mr. Temple Barholm, if you're not taken
+by surprise,” she said confidently. “If you understand things a bit, you
+won't be.”
+
+His feelings almost overpowered him.
+
+“God bless your dear little soul!” he broke out. “Say, if this goes on,
+that dog of your grandmother's wouldn't have a show, Ann. I should bite
+him before he could bite me.”
+
+“I won't go on if you can't be sensible, Mr. Temple Barholm. I shall
+just go away and not come back again. That's what I shall do.” Her tone
+was that of a young mother.
+
+He gave in incontinently.
+
+“Good Lord! no!” he exclaimed. “I'll do anything if you'll stay. I'll
+lie down on the mat and not open my mouth. Just sit here and tell me
+things. I know you won't let me hold your hand, but just let me hold a
+bit of your dress and look at you while you talk.” He took a bit of her
+brown frock between his fingers and held it, gazing at her with all his
+crude young soul in his eyes. “Now tell me,” he added.
+
+“There's only one or two things about the people who'll come to Temple
+Barholm. Grandmother's talked it over with me. She knew all about those
+that came in the late Mr. Temple Barholm's time. He used to hate most of
+them.”
+
+“Then why in thunder did he ask them to come?”
+
+“He didn't. They've got clever, polite ways of asking themselves
+sometimes. He couldn't bear the Countess of Mallowe. She'll come.
+Grandmother says you may be sure of that.”
+
+“What'll she come for?”
+
+Little Ann's pause and contemplation of him were fraught with
+thoughtfulness.
+
+“She'll come for you,” at last she said.
+
+“She's got a daughter she thinks ought to have been married eight years
+ago,” announced Hutchinson.
+
+Tembarom pulled at the bit of brown tweed he held as though it were a
+drowning man's straw.
+
+“Don't you drive me to drink, Ann,” he said. “I'm frightened. Your
+grandmother will have to lend ME the dog.”
+
+This was a flightiness which Little Ann did not encourage.
+
+“Lady Joan--that's her daughter--is very grand and haughty. She's a
+great beauty. You'll look at her, but perhaps she won't look at you. But
+it's not her I'm troubled about. I'm thinking of Captain Palliser and
+men like him.”
+
+“Who's he?”
+
+“He's one of those smooth, clever ones that's always getting up some
+company or other and selling the stock. He'll want you to know his
+friends and he'll try to lead you his way.”
+
+As Tembarom held to his bit of her dress, his eyes were adoring ones,
+which was really not to be wondered at. She WAS adorable as her soft,
+kind, wonderfully maternal girl face tried to control itself so that it
+should express only just enough to help and nothing to disturb.
+
+“I don't want him to spoil you. I don't want anything to make
+you--different. I couldn't bear it.”
+
+He pulled the bit of dress pleadingly.
+
+“Why, Little Ann?” he implored quite low.
+
+“Because,” she said, feeling that perhaps she was rash--“because if
+you were different, you wouldn't be T. Tembarom; and it was T. Tembarom
+that--that was T. Tembarom,” she finished hastily.
+
+He bent his head down to the bit of tweed and kissed it.
+
+“You just keep looking after me like that,” he said, “and there's not
+one of them can get away with me.”
+
+She got up, and he rose with her. There was a touch of fire in the
+forget-me-not blue of her eyes.
+
+“Just you let them see--just you let them see that you're not one they
+can hold light and make use of.” But there she stopped short, looking
+up at him. He was looking down at her with a kind of matureness in
+his expression. “I needn't be afraid,” she said. “You can take care of
+yourself; I ought to have known that.”
+
+“You did,” he said, smiling; “but you wanted to sort of help me. And
+you've done it, by gee! just by saying that thing about T. Tembarom. You
+set me right on my feet. That's YOU.”
+
+Before they went away they paid a visit to Strangeways in his remote,
+undisturbed, and beautiful rooms. They were in a wing of the house
+untouched by any ordinary passing to and fro, and the deep windows
+looked out upon gardens which spring and summer would crowd with
+loveliness from which clouds of perfume would float up to him on days
+when the sun warmed and the soft airs stirred the flowers, shaking
+the fragrance from their full incense-cups. But the white fog shut out
+to-day even their winter bareness. There were light and warmth inside,
+and every added charm of rich harmony of deep color and comfort made
+beautiful. There were books and papers waiting to be looked over, but
+they lay untouched on the writing-table, and Strangeways was sitting
+close to the biggest window, staring into the fog. His eyes looked
+hungry and hollow and dark. Ann knew he was “trying to remember”
+ something.
+
+When the sound of footsteps reached his ear, he turned to look at them,
+and rose mechanically at sight of Ann. But his expression was that of a
+man aroused from a dream of far-off places.
+
+“I remember you,” he said, but hesitated as though making an effort to
+recall something.
+
+“Of course you do,” said Little Ann. “You know me quite well. I brought
+you here. Think a bit. Little--Little--”
+
+“Yes,” he broke forth. “Of course, Little Ann! Thank God I've not
+forgotten.” He took her hand in both his and held it tenderly. “You have
+a sweet little face. It's such a wise little face!” His voice sounded
+dreamy.
+
+Ann drew him to his chair with a coaxing laugh and sat down by him.
+
+“You're flattering me. You make me feel quite shy,” she said. “You know
+HIM, too,” nodding toward Tembarom.
+
+“Oh, yes,” he replied, and he looked up with a smile. “He is the one who
+remembers. You said you did.” He had turned to Tembarom.
+
+“You bet your life I do,” Tembarom answered. “And you will, too, before
+long.”
+
+“If I did not try so hard,” said Strangeways, thoughtfully. “It seems
+as if I were shut up in a room, and so many things were knocking at the
+doors--hundreds of them--knocking because they want to be let in. I am
+damnably unhappy--damnably.” He hung his head and stared at the floor.
+Tembarom put a hand on his shoulder and gave him a friendly shake.
+
+“Don't you worry a bit,” he said. “You take my word for it. It'll all
+come back. I'm working at it myself.” Strangeways lifted his head.
+
+“You are the one I know best. I trust you.” But there was the beginning
+of a slight drag in his voice. “I don't always--quite recollect--your
+name. Not quite. Good heavens! I mustn't forget that.”
+
+Little Ann was quite ready.
+
+“You won't,” she said, “because it's different from other names. It
+begins with a letter--just a letter, and then there is the name. Think.”
+
+“Yes, yes,” he said anxiously.
+
+Little Ann bent forward and fixed her eyes on his with concentrated
+suggestion. They had never risked confusing him by any mention of
+the new name. She began to repeat letters of the alphabet slowly and
+distinctly until she reached the letter T.
+
+“T,” she ended with much emphasis--“R. S. _T_.”
+
+His expression cleared itself.
+
+“T,” he repeated. “T--Tembarom. R, S, T. How clever you are!”
+
+Little Ann's gaze concentrated itself still more intently.
+
+“Now you'll never forget it again,” she said, “because of the T. You'll
+say the other letters until you come to it. R, S, T.”
+
+“T. Tembarom,” he ended relievedly. “How you help me!” He took her hand
+and kissed it very gently.
+
+“We are all going to help you,” Ann soothed him, “T. Tembarom most of
+all.”
+
+“Say,” Tembarom broke out in an aside to her, “I'm going to come here
+and try things on him every day. When it seems like he gets on to
+something, however little a thing it is, I'm going to follow it up and
+see if it won't get somewhere.”
+
+Ann nodded.
+
+“There'll be something some day,” she said. “Are you quite comfortable
+here?” she asked aloud to Strangeways.
+
+“Very comfortable, thank you,” he answered courteously. “They are
+beautiful rooms. They are furnished with such fine old things. This is
+entirely Jacobean. It's quite perfect.” He glanced about him. “And so
+quiet. No one comes in here but my man, and he is a very nice chap. I
+never had a man who knew his duties better.”
+
+Little Ann and Tembarom looked at each other.
+
+“I shouldn't be a bit surprised,” she said after they had left the room,
+“if it wouldn't be a good thing to get Pearson to try to talk to him now
+and then. He's been used to a man-servant.”
+
+“Yes,” answered Tembarom. “Pearson didn't rattle HIM, you bet your
+life.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+
+He could not persuade them to remain to take lunch with him. The
+firmness of Hutchinson's declination was not unconnected with a private
+feeling that “them footmen chaps 'u'd be on the lookout to see the way
+you handled every bite you put in your mouth.” He couldn't have stood
+it, dang their impudence! Little Ann, on her part, frankly and calmly
+said, “It wouldn't DO.” That was all, and evidently covered everything.
+
+After they had gone, the fog lifted somewhat, but though it withdrew
+from the windows, it remained floating about in masses, like huge
+ghosts, among the trees of the park. When Tembarom sat down alone
+to prolong his lunch with the aid of Burrill and the footmen, he was
+confronted by these unearthly shapes every time he lifted his eyes to
+the window he faced from his place at the table. It was an outlook which
+did not inspire to cheerfulness, and the fact that Ann and her father
+were going back to Manchester and later to America left him without even
+the simple consolation of a healthy appetite. Things were bound to get
+better after a while; they were BOUND to. A fellow would be a fool if
+he couldn't fix it somehow so that he could enjoy himself, with money to
+burn. If you made up your mind you couldn't stand the way things were,
+you didn't have to lie down under them, with a thousand or so “per”
+ coming in. You could fix it so that it would be different. By jinks!
+there wasn't any law against your giving it all to the church but just
+enough to buy a flat in Harlem out-right, if you wanted to. But you
+weren't going to run crazy and do a lot of fool things in a minute, and
+be sorry the rest of your life. Money was money. And first and foremost
+there was Ann, with her round cheeks flushed and her voice all sweet
+and queer, saying, “You wouldn't be T. Tembarom; and it was T. Tembarom
+that--that was T. Tembarom.”
+
+He couldn't help knowing what she had begun to say, and his own face
+flushed as he thought of it. He was at that time of life when there
+generally happens to be one center about which the world revolves. The
+creature who passes through this period of existence without watching it
+revolve about such a center has missed an extraordinary and singularly
+developing experience. It is sometimes happy, often disastrous, but
+always more or less developing. Speaking calmly, detachedly, but not
+cynically, it is a phase. During its existence it is the blood in the
+veins, the sight of the eyes, the beat of the pulse, the throb of the
+heart. It is also the day and the night, the sun, the moon, and the
+stars, heaven and hell, the entire universe. And it doesn't matter in
+the least to any one but the creatures living through it. T. Tembarom
+was in the midst of it. There was Ann. There was this new crazy thing
+which had happened to him--“this fool thing,” as he called it. There was
+this monstrous, magnificent house,--he knew it was magnificent, though
+it wasn't his kind,--there was old Palford and his solemn talk about
+ancestors and the name of Temple Barholm. It always reminded him of how
+ashamed he had been in Brooklyn of the “Temple Temple” and how he had
+told lies to prevent the fellows finding out about it. And there was
+seventy thousand pounds a year, and there was Ann, who looked as soft as
+a baby,--Good Lord! how soft she'd feel if you got her in your arms and
+squeezed her!--and yet was somehow strong enough to keep him just where
+she wanted him to stay and believed he ought to stay until “he had
+found out.” That was it. She wasn't doing it for any fool little idea of
+making herself seem more important: she just believed it. She was doing
+it because she wanted to let him “have his chance,” just as if she were
+his mother instead of the girl he was clean crazy about. His chance!
+He laughed outright--a short, confident laugh which startled Burrill
+exceedingly.
+
+When he went back to the library and lighted his pipe he began to stride
+up and down as he continued to think it over.
+
+“I wish she was as sure as I am,” he said. “I wish she was as sure of me
+as I am of myself--and as I am of her.” He laughed the short, confident
+laugh again. “I wish she was as sure as I am of us both. We're all
+right. I've got to get through this, and find out what it's best to do,
+and I've got to show her. When I've had my chance good and plenty,
+us two for little old New York! Gee! won't it be fine!” he exclaimed
+imaginatively. “Her going over her bills, looking like a peach of a baby
+that's trying to knit its brows, and adding up, and thinking she ought
+to economize. She'd do it if we had ten million.” He laughed outright
+joyfully. “Good Lord! I should kiss her to death!”
+
+The simplest process of ratiocination would lead to a realization of
+the fact that though he was lonely and uncomfortable, he was not in
+the least pathetic or sorry for himself. His normal mental and
+physical structure kept him steady on his feet, and his practical and
+unsentimental training, combining itself with a touch of iron which
+centuries ago had expressed itself through some fighting Temple Barholm
+and a medium of battle-axes, crossbows, and spears, did the rest.
+
+“It'd take more than this to get me where I'd be down and out. I'm
+feeling fine,” he said. “I believe I'll go and 'take a walk,' as Palford
+says.”
+
+The fog-wreaths in the park were floating away, and he went out grinning
+and whistling, giving Burrill and the footman a nod as he passed them
+with a springing young stride. He got the door open so quickly that he
+left them behind him frustrated and staring at each other.
+
+“It wasn't our fault,” said Burrill, gloomily. “He's never had a door
+opened for him in his life. This won't do for me.”
+
+He was away for about an hour, and came back in the best of spirits. He
+had found out that there was something in “taking a walk” if a fellow
+had nothing else to do. The park was “fine,” and he had never seen
+anything like it. When there were leaves on the trees and the grass
+and things were green, it would be better than Central Park itself.
+You could have base-ball matches in it. What a cinch it would be if you
+charged gate-money! But he supposed you couldn't if it belonged to you
+and you had three hundred and fifty thousand a year. You had to get used
+to that. But it did seem a fool business to have all that land and not
+make a cent out of it. If it was just outside New York and you cut it
+up into lots, you'd just pile it up. He was quite innocent--calamitously
+innocent and commercial and awful in his views. Thoughts such as these
+had been crammed into his brain by life ever since he had gone down the
+staircase of the Brooklyn tenement with his twenty-five cents in his
+ten-year-old hand.
+
+The stillness of the house seemed to have accentuated itself when he
+returned to it. His sense of it let him down a little as he entered. The
+library was like a tomb--a comfortable luxurious tomb with a bright fire
+in it. A new Punch and the morning papers had been laid upon a table
+earlier in the day, and he sat down to look at them.
+
+“I guess about fifty-seven or eight of the hundred and thirty-six hours
+have gone by,” he said. “But, gee! ain't it lonesome!”
+
+He sat so still trying to interest himself in “London Day by Day” in the
+morning paper that the combination of his exercise in the fresh air and
+the warmth of the fire made him drowsy. He leaned back in his chair and
+closed his eyes without being aware that he did so. He was on the verge
+of a doze.
+
+He remained upon the verge for a few minutes, and then a soft, rustling
+sound made him open his eyes.
+
+An elderly little lady had timidly entered the room. She was neatly
+dressed in an old-fashioned and far-from-new black silk dress, with a
+darned lace collar and miniature brooch at her neck. She had also thin,
+gray side-ringlets dangling against her cheeks from beneath a small,
+black lace cap with pale-purple ribbons on it. She had most evidently
+not expected to find any one in the room, and, having seen Tembarom,
+gave a half-frightened cough.
+
+“I--I beg your pardon,” she faltered. “I really did not mean to
+intrude--really.”
+
+Tembarom jumped up, awkward, but good-natured. Was she a kind of servant
+who was a lady?
+
+“Oh, that's all right,” he said.
+
+But she evidently did not feel that it was all right. She looked as
+though she felt that she had been caught doing something wrong, and must
+properly propitiate by apology.
+
+“I'm so sorry. I thought you had gone out--Mr. Temple Barholm.”
+
+“I did go out--to take a walk; but I came in.”
+
+Having been discovered in her overt act, she evidently felt that
+duty demanded some further ceremony from her. She approached him very
+timidly, but with an exquisite, little elderly early-Victorian manner.
+She was of the most astonishingly perfect type, though Tembarom was not
+aware of the fact. The manner, a century earlier, would have expressed
+itself in a curtsy.
+
+“It is Mr. Temple Barholm, isn't it?” she inquired.
+
+“Yes; it has been for the last few weeks,” he answered, wondering why
+she seemed so in awe of him and wishing she didn't.
+
+“I ought to apologize for being here,” she began.
+
+“Say, don't, please!” he interrupted. “What I feel is, that it ought to
+be up to me to apologize for being here.”
+
+She was really quite flurried and distressed.
+
+“Oh, please, Mr. Temple Barholm!” she fluttered, proceeding to explain
+hurriedly, as though he without doubt understood the situation. “I
+should of course have gone away at once after the late Mr. Temple
+Barholm died, but--but I really had nowhere to go--and was kindly
+allowed to remain until about two months ago, when I went to make
+a visit. I fully intended to remove my little belongings before you
+arrived, but I was detained by illness and could not return until this
+morning to pack up. I understood you were in the park, and I remembered
+I had left my knitting-bag here.” She glanced nervously about the room,
+and seemed to catch sight of something on a remote corner table. “Oh,
+there it is. May I take it?” she said, looking at him appealingly. “It
+was a kind present from a dear lost friend, and--and--” She paused,
+seeing his puzzled and totally non-comprehending air. It was plainly the
+first moment it had dawned upon her that he did not know what she was
+talking about. She took a small, alarmed step toward him.
+
+“Oh, I BEG your pardon,” she exclaimed in delicate anguish. “I'm afraid
+you don't know who I am. Perhaps Mr. Palford forgot to mention me.
+Indeed, why should he mention me? There were so many more important
+things. I am a sort of distant--VERY distant relation of yours. My name
+is Alicia Temple Barholm.”
+
+Tembarom was relieved. But she actually hadn't made a move toward the
+knitting-bag. She seemed afraid to do it until he gave her permission.
+He walked over to the corner table and brought it to her, smiling
+broadly.
+
+“Here it is,” he said. “I'm glad you left it. I'm very happy to be
+acquainted with you, Miss Alicia.”
+
+He was glad just to see her looking up at him with her timid, refined,
+intensely feminine appeal. Why she vaguely brought back something that
+reminded him of Ann he could not have told. He knew nothing whatever of
+types early-Victorian or late.
+
+He took her hand, evidently to her greatest possible amazement, and
+shook it heartily. She knew nothing whatever of the New York street
+type, and it made her gasp for breath, but naturally with an allayed
+terror.
+
+“Gee!” he exclaimed whole-heartedly, “I'm glad to find out I've got a
+relation. I thought I hadn't one in the world. Won't you sit down?” He
+was drawing her toward his own easy-chair. But he really didn't know,
+she was agitatedly thinking. She really must tell him. He seemed so good
+tempered and--and DIFFERENT. She herself was not aware of the enormous
+significance which lay in that word “different.” There must be no risk
+of her seeming to presume upon his lack of knowledge.
+
+“It is MOST kind of you,” she said with grateful emphasis, “but I
+mustn't sit down and detain you. I can explain in a few words--if I
+may.”
+
+He positively still held her hand in the oddest, natural, boyish
+way, and before she knew what she was doing he had made her take the
+chair--quite MADE her.
+
+“Well, just sit down and explain,” he said. “I wish to thunder you
+would detain me. Take all the time you like. I want to hear all about
+it--honest Injun.”
+
+There was a cushion in the chair, and as he talked, he pulled it out
+and began to arrange it behind her, still in the most natural and
+matter-of-fact way--so natural and matter-of-fact, indeed, that its very
+natural matter-of-factedness took her breath away.
+
+“Is that fixed all right?” he asked.
+
+Being a little lady, she could only accept his extraordinary
+friendliness with grateful appreciation, though she could not help
+fluttering a little in her bewilderment.
+
+“Oh, thank you, thank you, Mr. Temple Barholm,” she said.
+
+He sat down on the square ottoman facing her, and leaned forward with an
+air of making a frank confession.
+
+“Guess what I was thinking to myself two minutes before you came in?
+I was thinking, `Lord, I'm lonesome--just sick lonesome!' And then I
+opened my eyes and looked--and there was a relation! Hully gee! I call
+that luck!”
+
+“Dear me!” she said, shyly delighted. “DO you, Mr. Temple
+Barholm--REALLY?”
+
+Her formal little way of saying his name was like Ann's.
+
+“Do I? I'm tickled to death. My mother died when I was ten, and I've
+never had any women kin-folks.”
+
+“Poor bo--” She had nearly said “Poor boy!” and only checked the
+familiarity just in time--“Poor Mr. Temple Barholm!”
+
+“Say, what are we two to each other, anyhow?” He put it to her with
+great interest.
+
+“It is a very distant relationship, if it is one at all,” she answered.
+“You see, I was only a second cousin to the late Mr. Temple Barholm,
+and I had not really the SLIGHTEST claim upon him.” She placed pathetic
+emphasis on the fact. “It was most generous of him to be so kind to me.
+When my poor father died and I was left quite penniless, he gave me a--a
+sort of home here.”
+
+“A sort of home?” Tembarom repeated.
+
+“My father was a clergyman in VERY straitened circumstances. We had
+barely enough to live upon--barely. He could leave me nothing. It
+actually seemed as if I should have to starve--it did, indeed.” There
+was a delicate quiver in her voice. “And though the late Mr. Temple
+Barholm had a great antipathy to ladies, he was so--so noble as to send
+word to me that there were a hundred and fifty rooms in his house, and
+that if I would keep out of his way I might live in one of them.”
+
+“That was noble,” commented her distant relative.
+
+“Oh, yes, indeed, especially when one considers how he disliked the
+opposite sex and what a recluse he was. He could not endure ladies. I
+scarcely ever saw him. My room was in quite a remote wing of the house,
+and I never went out if I knew he was in the park. I was most careful.
+And when he died of course I knew I must go away.”
+
+Tembarom was watching her almost tenderly.
+
+“Where did you go?”
+
+“To a kind clergyman in Shropshire who thought he might help me.”
+
+“How was he going to do it?”
+
+She answered with an effort to steady a somewhat lowered and hesitating
+voice.
+
+“There was near his parish a very nice--charity,”--her breath caught
+itself pathetically,--“some most comfortable almshouses for decayed
+gentlewomen. He thought he might be able to use his influence to get
+me into one.” She paused and smiled, but her small, wrinkled hands held
+each other closely.
+
+Tembarom looked away. He spoke as though to himself, and without knowing
+that he was thinking aloud.
+
+“Almshouses!” he said. “Wouldn't that jolt you!” He turned on her again
+with a change to cheerful concern. “Say, that cushion of yours ain't
+comfortable. I 'm going to get you another one.” He jumped up and,
+taking one from a sofa, began to arrange it behind her dexterously.
+
+“But I mustn't trouble you any longer. I must go, really,” she said,
+half rising nervously. He put a hand on her shoulder and made her sit
+again.
+
+“Go where?” he said. “Just lean back on that cushion, Miss Alicia. For
+the next few minutes this is going to be MY funeral.”
+
+She was at once startled and uncomprehending. What an extraordinary
+expression! What COULD it mean?
+
+“F--funeral?” she stammered.
+
+Suddenly he seemed somehow to have changed. He looked as serious as
+though he was beginning to think out something all at once. What was he
+going to say?
+
+“That's New York slang,” he answered. “It means that I want to explain
+myself to you and ask a few questions.”
+
+“Certainly, certainly, Mr. Temple Barholm.”
+
+He leaned his back against the mantel, and went into the matter
+practically.
+
+“First off, haven't you ANY folks?” Then, answering her puzzled look,
+added, “I mean relations.”
+
+Miss Alicia gently shook her head.
+
+“No sisters or brothers or uncles or aunts or cousins?”
+
+She shook her head again.
+
+He hesitated a moment, putting his hands in his pockets and taking them
+out again awkwardly as he looked down at her.
+
+“Now here's where I'm up against it,” he went on. “I don't want to be
+too fresh or to butt in, but--didn't old Temple Barholm leave you ANY
+money?”
+
+“Oh, no!” she exclaimed. “Dear me! no! I couldn't possibly EXPECT such a
+thing.”
+
+He gazed at her as though considering the situation. “Couldn't you?” he
+said.
+
+There was an odd reflection in his eyes, and he seemed to consider her
+and the situation again.
+
+“Well,” he began after his pause, “what I want to know is what you
+expect ME to do.”
+
+There was no unkindness in his manner, in fact, quite the contrary,
+even when he uttered what seemed to Miss Alicia these awful, unwarranted
+words. As though she had forced herself into his presence to make
+demands upon his charity! They made her tremble and turn pale as she got
+up quickly, shocked and alarmed.
+
+“Oh, nothing! nothing! nothing WHATEVER, Mr. Temple Barholm!” she
+exclaimed, her agitation doing its best to hide itself behind a fine
+little dignity. He saw in an instant that his style of putting it had
+been “'way off,” that his ignorance had betrayed him, that she had
+misunderstood him altogether. He almost jumped at her.
+
+“Oh, say, I didn't mean THAT!” he cried out. “For the Lord's sake! don't
+think I'm such a Tenderloin tough as to make a break like that! Not on
+your life!”
+
+Never since her birth had a male creature looked at Miss Alicia with the
+appeal which showed itself in his eyes as he actually put his arm half
+around her shoulders, like a boy begging a favor from his mother or his
+aunt.
+
+“What I meant was--” He broke off and began again quite anxiously, “say,
+just as a favor, will you sit down again and let me tell you what I did
+mean?”
+
+It was that natural, warm, boyish way which overcame her utterly. It
+reminded her of the only boy she had ever really known, the one male
+creature who had allowed her to be fond of him. There was moisture in
+her eyes as she let him put her back into her chair. When he had done
+it, he sat down on the ottoman again and poured himself forth.
+
+“You know what kind of a chap I am. No, you don't, either. You mayn't
+know a thing about me; and I want to tell you. I'm so different from
+everything you've ever known that I scare you. And no wonder. It's the
+way I've lived. If you knew, you'd understand what I was thinking of
+when I spoke just now. I've been cold, I've been hungry, I've walked
+the wet streets on my uppers. I know all about GOING WITHOUT. And do you
+expect that I am going to let a--a little thing like you--go away from
+here without friends and without money on the chance of getting into an
+almshouse that isn't vacant? Do you expect that of me? Not on your life!
+That was what I meant.”
+
+Miss Alicia quivered; the pale-purple ribbons on her little lace cap
+quivered.
+
+“I haven't,” she said, and the fine little dignity was piteous, “a
+SHADOW of a claim upon you.” It was necessary for her to produce a
+pocket-handkerchief. He took it from her, and touched her eyes as softly
+as though she were a baby.
+
+“Claim nothing!” he said. “I've got a claim on YOU. I'm going to stake
+one out right now.” He got up and gesticulated, taking in the big
+room and its big furniture. “Look at all this! It fell on me like a
+thunderbolt. It's nearly knocked the life out of me. I'm like a lost cat
+on Broadway. You can't go away and leave me, Miss Alicia; it's your duty
+to stay. You've just GOT to stay to take care of me.” He came over to
+her with a wheedling smile. “I never was taken care of in my life. Just
+be as noble to me as old Temple Barholm was to you: give me a sort of
+home.”
+
+If a little gentlewoman could stare, it might be said that Miss Alicia
+stared at him. She trembled with amazed emotion.
+
+“Do you mean--” Despite all he had said, she scarcely dared to utter the
+words lest, after all, she might be taking for granted more than it was
+credible could be true. “Can you mean that if I stayed here with you it
+would make Temple Barholm seem more like HOME? Is it possible you--you
+mean THAT?”
+
+“I mean just that very thing.”
+
+It was too much for her. Finely restrained little elderly gentlewoman as
+she was, she openly broke down under it.
+
+“It can't be true!” she ejaculated shakily. “It isn't possible. It is
+too--too beautiful and kind. Do forgive me! I c-a-n't help it.” She
+burst into tears.
+
+She knew it was most stupidly wrong. She knew gentlemen did not like
+tears. Her father had told her that men never really forgave women who
+cried at them. And here, when her fate hung in the balance, she was not
+able to behave herself with feminine decorum.
+
+Yet the new Mr. Temple Barholm took it in as matter-of-fact a manner as
+he seemed to take everything. He stood by her chair and soothed her in
+his dear New York voice.
+
+“That's all right, Miss Alicia,” he commented. “You cry as much as you
+want to, just so that you don't say no. You've been worried and you're
+tired. I'll tell you there's been two or three times lately when I
+should like to have cried myself if I'd known how. Say,” he added with a
+sudden outburst of imagination, “I bet anything it's about time you had
+tea.”
+
+The suggestion was so entirely within the normal order of things that it
+made her feel steadier, and she was able to glance at the clock.
+
+“A cup of tea would be refreshing,” she said. “They will bring it in
+very soon, but before the servants come I must try to express--”
+
+But before she could express anything further the tea appeared. Burrill
+and a footman brought it on splendid salvers, in massive urn and
+tea-pot, with chaste, sacrificial flame flickering, and wonderful, hot
+buttered and toasted things and wafers of bread and butter attendant.
+As they crossed the threshold, the sight of Miss Alicia's small form
+enthroned in their employer's chair was one so obviously unanticipated
+that Burrill made a step backward and the footman almost lost the
+firmness of his hold on the smaller tray. Each recovered himself in
+time, however, and not until the tea was arranged upon the table near
+the fire was any outward recognition of Miss Alicia's presence made.
+Then Burrill, pausing, made an announcement entirely without prejudice:
+
+“I beg pardon, sir, but Higgins's cart has come for Miss Temple
+Barholm's box; he is asking when she wants the trap.”
+
+“She doesn't want it at all,” answered Tembarom. “Carry her trunk
+up-stairs again. She's not going away.”
+
+The lack of proper knowledge contained in the suggestion that Burrill
+should carry trunks upstairs caused Miss Alicia to quail in secret, but
+she spoke with outward calm.
+
+“No, Burrill,” she said. “I am not going away.”
+
+“Very good, Miss,” Burrill replied, and with impressive civility he
+prepared to leave the room. Tembarom glanced at the tea-things.
+
+“There's only one cup here,” he said. “Bring one for me.”
+
+Burrill's expression might perhaps have been said to start slightly.
+
+“Very good, sir,” he said, and made his exit. Miss Alicia was fluttering
+again.
+
+“That cup was really for you, Mr. Temple Barholm,” she ventured.
+
+“Well, now it's for you, and I've let him know it,” replied Tembarom.
+
+“Oh, PLEASE,” she said in an outburst of feeling--“PLEASE let me tell
+you how GRATEFUL--how grateful I am!”
+
+But he would not let her.
+
+“If you do,” he said, “I'll tell you how grateful _I_ am, and that'll
+be worse. No, that's all fixed up between us. It goes. We won't say any
+more about it.”
+
+He took the whole situation in that way, as though he was assuming no
+responsibility which was not the simple, inevitable result of their
+drifting across each other--as though it was only what any man would
+have done, even as though she was a sort of delightful, unexpected
+happening. He turned to the tray.
+
+“Say, that looks all right, doesn't it?” he said. “Now you are here, I
+like the way it looks. I didn't yesterday.”
+
+Burrill himself brought the extra cup and saucer and plate. He wished
+to make sure that his senses had not deceived him. But there she sat who
+through years had existed discreetly in the most unconsidered rooms
+in an uninhabited wing, knowing better than to presume upon her
+privileges--there she sat with an awed and rapt face gazing up at this
+new outbreak into Temple Barholm's and “him joking and grinning as
+though he was as pleased as Punch.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+
+To employ the figure of Burrill, Tembarom was indeed “as pleased as
+Punch.” He was one of the large number of men who, apart from all
+sentimental relations, are made particularly happy by the kindly society
+of women; who expand with quite unconscious rejoicing when a woman
+begins to take care of them in one way or another. The unconsciousness
+is a touching part of the condition. The feminine nearness supplies a
+primeval human need. The most complete of men, as well as the weaklings,
+feel it. It is a survival of days when warm arms held and protected,
+warm hands served, and affectionate voices soothed. An accomplished male
+servant may perform every domestic service perfectly, but the fact that
+he cannot be a woman leaves a sense of lack. An accustomed feminine
+warmth in the surrounding daily atmosphere has caused many a man to
+marry his housekeeper or even his cook, as circumstances prompted.
+
+Tembarom had known no woman well until he had met Little Ann. His
+feeling for Mrs. Bowse herself had verged on affection, because he would
+have been fond of any woman of decent temper and kindliness, especially
+if she gave him opportunities to do friendly service. Little Ann had
+seemed the apotheosis of the feminine, the warmly helpful, the subtly
+supporting, the kind. She had been to him an amazement and a revelation.
+She had continually surprised him by revealing new characteristics which
+seemed to him nicer things than he had ever known before, but which, if
+he had been aware of it, were not really surprising at all. They were
+only the characteristics of a very nice young feminine creature.
+
+The presence of Miss Alicia, with the long-belated fashion of her
+ringlets and her little cap, was delightful to him. He felt as though
+he would like to take her in his arms and hug her. He thought perhaps
+it was partly because she was a little like Ann, and kept repeating his
+name in Ann's formal little way. Her delicate terror of presuming
+or intruding he felt in its every shade. Mentally she touched him
+enormously. He wanted to make her feel that she need not be afraid of
+him in the least, that he liked her, that in his opinion she had more
+right in the house than he had. He was a little frightened lest through
+ignorance he should say things the wrong way, as he had said that thing
+about wanting to know what she expected him to do. What he ought to have
+said was, “You're not expecting me to let that sort of thing go on.”
+ It had made him sick when he saw what a break he'd made and that she
+thought he was sort of insulting her. The room seemed all right now that
+she was in it. Small and unassuming as she was, she seemed to make it
+less over-sized. He didn't so much mind the loftiness of the ceiling,
+the depth and size of the windows, and the walls covered with thousands
+of books he knew nothing whatever about. The innumerable books had been
+an oppressing feature. If he had been one of those “college guys” who
+never could get enough of books, what a “cinch” the place would have
+been for him--good as the Astor Library! He hadn't a word to say against
+books,--good Lord! no;--but even if he'd had the education and the time
+to read, he didn't believe he was naturally that kind, anyhow. You had
+to be “that kind” to know about books. He didn't suppose she--meaning
+Miss Alicia--was learned enough to make you throw a fit. She didn't look
+that way, and he was mighty glad of it, because perhaps she wouldn't
+like him much if she was. It would worry her when she tried to talk to
+him and found out he didn't know a darned thing he ought to.
+
+They'd get on together easier if they could just chin about common sort
+of every-day things. But though she didn't look like the Vassar sort,
+he guessed that she was not like himself: she had lived in libraries
+before, and books didn't frighten her. She'd been born among people
+who read lots of them and maybe could talk about them. That was why she
+somehow seemed to fit into the room. He was aware that, timid as she was
+and shabby as her neat dress looked, she fitted into the whole place, as
+he did not. She'd been a poor relative and had been afraid to death of
+old Temple Barholm, but she'd not been afraid of him because she wasn't
+his sort. She was a lady; that was what was the matter with her. It was
+what made things harder for her, too. It was what made her voice tremble
+when she'd tried to seem so contented and polite when she'd talked about
+going into one of those “decayed alms-houses.” As if the old ladies were
+vegetables that had gone wrong, by gee! he thought.
+
+He liked her little, modest, delicate old face and her curls and her
+little cap with the ribbons so much that he smiled with a twinkling eye
+every time he looked at her. He wanted to suggest something he thought
+would be mighty comfortable, but he was half afraid he might be asking
+her to do something which wasn't “her job,” and it might hurt her
+feelings. But he ventured to hint at it.
+
+“Has Burrill got to come back and pour that out?” he asked, with an
+awkward gesture toward the tea-tray. “Has he just GOT to?”
+
+“Oh, no, unless you wish it,” she answered. “Shall--may I give it to
+you?”
+
+“Will you?” he exclaimed delightedly. “That would be fine. I shall feel
+like a regular Clarence.”
+
+She was going to sit at the table in a straight-backed chair, but he
+sprang at her.
+
+“This big one is more comfortable,” he said, and he dragged it forward
+and made her sit in it. “You ought to have a footstool,” he added, and
+he got one and put it under her feet. “There, that's all right.”
+
+A footstool, as though she were a royal personage and he were a
+gentleman in waiting, only probably gentlemen in waiting did not jump
+about and look so pleased. The cheerful content of his boyish face when
+he himself sat down near the table was delightful.
+
+“Now,” he said, “we can ring up for the first act.”
+
+She filled the tea-pot and held it for a moment, and then set it down as
+though her feelings were too much for her.
+
+“I feel as if I were in a dream,” she quavered happily. “I do indeed.”
+
+“But it's a nice one, ain't it?” he answered. “I feel as if I was in
+two. Sitting here in this big room with all these fine things about me,
+and having afternoon tea with a relation! It just about suits me. It
+didn't feel like this yesterday, you bet your life!”
+
+“Does it seem--nicer than yesterday?” she ventured. “Really, Mr. Temple
+Barholm?”
+
+“Nicer!” he ejaculated. “It's got yesterday beaten to a frazzle.”
+
+It was beyond all belief. He was speaking as though the advantage, the
+relief, the happiness, were all on his side. She longed to enlighten
+him.
+
+“But you can't realize what it is to me,” she said gratefully, “to sit
+here, not terrified and homeless and--a beggar any more, with your kind
+face before me. Do forgive me for saying it. You have such a kind young
+face, Mr. Temple Barholm. And to have an easy-chair and cushions,
+and actually a buffet brought for my feet!” She suddenly recollected
+herself. “Oh, I mustn't let your tea get cold,” she added, taking up the
+tea-pot apologetically. “Do you take cream and sugar, and is it to be
+one lump or two?”
+
+“I take everything in sight,” he replied joyously, “and two lumps,
+please.”
+
+She prepared the cup of tea with as delicate a care as though it had
+been a sacramental chalice, and when she handed it to him she smiled
+wistfully.
+
+“No one but you ever thought of such a thing as bringing a buffet for
+my feet--no one except poor little Jem,” she said, and her voice was
+wistful as well as her smile.
+
+She was obviously unaware that she was introducing an entirely new
+acquaintance to him. Poor little Jem was supposed to be some one whose
+whole history he knew.
+
+“Jem?” he repeated, carefully transferring a piece of hot buttered
+crumpet to his plate.
+
+“Jem Temple Barholm,” she answered. “I say little Jem because I remember
+him only as a child. I never saw him after he was eleven years old.”
+
+“Who was he?” he asked. The tone of her voice, and her manner of
+speaking made him feel that he wanted to hear something more.
+
+She looked rather startled by his ignorance. “Have you--have you never
+heard of him?” she inquired.
+
+“No. Is he another distant relation?”
+
+Her hesitation caused him to neglect his crumpet, to look up at her.
+He saw at once that she wore the air of a sensitive and beautifully
+mannered elderly lady who was afraid she had made a mistake and said
+something awkward.
+
+“I am so sorry,” she apologized. “Perhaps I ought not to have mentioned
+him.”
+
+“Why shouldn't he be mentioned?”
+
+She was embarrassed. She evidently wished she had not spoken, but
+breeding demanded that she should ignore the awkwardness of the
+situation, if awkwardness existed.
+
+“Of course--I hope your tea is quite as you like it--of course there is
+no real reason. But--shall I give you some more cream? No? You see, if
+he hadn't died, he--he would have inherited Temple Barholm.”
+
+Now he was interested. This was the other chap.
+
+“Instead of me?” he asked, to make sure. She endeavored not to show
+embarrassment and told herself it didn't really matter--to a thoroughly
+nice person. But--
+
+“He was the next of kin--before you. I'm so sorry I didn't know you
+hadn't heard of him. It seemed natural that Mr. Palford should have
+mentioned him.”
+
+“He did say that there was a young fellow who had died, but he didn't
+tell me about him. I guess I didn't ask. There were such a lot of other
+things. I'd like to hear about him. You say you knew him?”
+
+“Only when he was a little fellow. Never after he grew up. Something
+happened which displeased my father. I'm afraid papa was very easily
+displeased. Mr. Temple Barholm disliked him, too. He would not have him
+at Temple Barholm.”
+
+“He hadn't much luck with his folks, had he?” remarked Tembarom.
+
+“He had no luck with any one. I seemed to be the only person who was
+fond of him, and of course I didn't count.”
+
+“I bet you counted with him,” said Tembarom.
+
+“I do think I did. Both his parents died quite soon after he was born,
+and people who ought to have cared for him were rather jealous because
+he stood so near to Temple Barholm. If Mr. Temple Barholm had not been
+so eccentric and bitter, everything would have been done for him; but as
+it was, he seemed to belong to no one. When he came to the vicarage it
+used to make me so happy. He used to call me Aunt Alicia, and he had
+such pretty ways.” She hesitated and looked quite tenderly at the
+tea-pot, a sort of shyness in her face. “I am sure,” she burst forth, “I
+feel quite sure that you will understand and won't think it indelicate;
+but I had thought so often that I should like to have a little boy--if I
+had married,” she added in hasty tribute to propriety.
+
+Tembarom's eyes rested on her in a thoughtfulness openly touched with
+affection. He put out his hand and patted hers two or three times in
+encouraging sympathy.
+
+“Say,” he said frankly, “I just believe every woman that's the real
+thing'd like to have a little boy--or a little girl--or a little
+something or other. That's why pet cats and dogs have such a cinch of
+it. And there's men that's the same way. It's sort of nature.”
+
+“He had such a high spirit and such pretty ways,” she said again. “One
+of his pretty ways was remembering to do little things to make one
+comfortable, like thinking of giving one a cushion or a buffet for one's
+feet. I noticed it so much because I had never seen boys or men
+wait upon women. My own dear papa was used to having women wait upon
+him--bring his slippers, you know, and give him the best chair. He
+didn't like Jem's ways. He said he liked a boy who was a boy and not
+an affected nincompoop. He wasn't really quite just.” She paused
+regretfully and sighed as she looked back into a past doubtlessly
+enriched with many similar memories of “dear papa.” “Poor Jem! Poor
+Jem!” she breathed softly.
+
+Tembarom thought that she must have felt the boy's loss very much,
+almost as much as though she had really been his mother; perhaps more
+pathetically because she had not been his mother or anybody's mother. He
+could see what a good little mother she would have made, looking after
+her children and doing everything on earth to make them happy and
+comfortable, just the kind of mother Ann would make, though she had not
+Ann's steady wonder of a little head or her shrewd farsightedness. Jem
+would have been in luck if he had been her son. It was a darned pity he
+hadn't been. If he had, perhaps he would not have died young.
+
+“Yes,” he answered sympathetically, “it's hard for a young fellow to
+die. How old was he, anyhow? I don't know.”
+
+“Not much older than you are now. It was seven years ago. And if he had
+only died, poor dear! There are things so much worse than death.”
+
+“Worse!”
+
+“Awful disgrace is worse,” she faltered. She was plainly trying to keep
+moisture out of her eyes.
+
+“Did he get into some bad mix-up, poor fellow?” If there had been
+anything like that, no wonder it broke her up to think of him.
+
+It surely did break her up. She flushed emotionally.
+
+“The cruel thing was that he didn't really do what he was accused of,”
+ she said.
+
+“He didn't?”
+
+“No; but he was a ruined man, and he went away to the Klondike because
+he could not stay in England. And he was killed--killed, poor boy! And
+afterward it was found out that he was innocent--too late.”
+
+“Gee!” Tembarom gasped, feeling hot and cold. “Could you beat that for
+rotten luck! What was he accused of?”
+
+Miss Alicia leaned forward and spoke in a whisper. It was too dreadful
+to speak of aloud.
+
+“Cheating at cards--a gentleman playing with gentlemen. You know what
+that means.”
+
+Tembarom grew hotter and colder. No wonder she looked that way, poor
+little thing!
+
+“But,”--he hesitated before he spoke,--“but he wasn't that kind, was he?
+Of course he wasn't.”
+
+“No, no. But, you see,”--she hesitated herself here,--“everything looked
+so much against him. He had been rather wild.” She dropped her voice
+even lower in making the admission.
+
+Tembarom wondered how much she meant by that.
+
+“He was so much in debt. He knew he was to be rich in the future, and he
+was poor just in those reckless young days when it seemed unfair. And
+he had played a great deal and had been very lucky. He was so lucky
+that sometimes his luck seemed uncanny. Men who had played with him were
+horrible about it afterward.”
+
+“They would be,” put in Tembarom. “They'd be sore about it, and bring
+it up.”
+
+They both forgot their tea. Miss Alicia forgot everything as she poured
+forth her story in the manner of a woman who had been forced to keep
+silent and was glad to put her case into words. It was her case. To tell
+the truth of this forgotten wrong was again to offer justification of
+poor handsome Jem whom everybody seemed to have dropped talk of, and
+even preferred not to hear mentioned.
+
+“There were such piteously cruel things about it,” she went on. “He had
+fallen very much in love, and he meant to marry and settle down. Though
+we had not seen each other for years, he actually wrote to me and told
+me about it. His letter made me cry. He said I would understand and care
+about the thing which seemed to have changed everything and made him a
+new man. He was so sorry that he had not been better and more careful.
+He was going to try all over again. He was not going to play at all
+after this one evening when he was obliged to keep an engagement he had
+made months before to give his revenge to a man he had won a great deal
+of money from. The very night the awful thing happened he had told Lady
+Joan, before he went into the card-room, that this was to be his last
+game.”
+
+Tembarom had looked deeply interested from the first, but at her last
+words a new alertness added itself.
+
+“Did you say Lady Joan?” he asked. “Who was Lady Joan?”
+
+“She was the girl he was so much in love with. Her name was Lady Joan
+Fayre.”
+
+“Was she the daughter of the Countess of Mallowe?”
+
+“Yes. Have you heard of her?”
+
+He recalled Ann's reflective consideration of him before she had said,
+“She'll come after you.” He replied now: “Some one spoke of her to me
+this morning. They say she's a beauty and as proud as Lucifer.”
+
+“She was, and she is yet, I believe. Poor Lady Joan--as well as poor
+Jem!”
+
+“She didn't believe it, did she?” he put in hastily. “She didn't throw
+him down?”
+
+“No one knew what happened between them afterward. She was in the
+card-room, looking on, when the awful thing took place.”
+
+She stopped, as though to go on was almost unbearable. She had been so
+overwhelmed by the past shame of it that even after the passing of years
+the anguish was a living thing. Her small hands clung hard together
+as they rested on the edge of the table. Tembarom waited in thrilled
+suspense. She spoke in a whisper again:
+
+“He won a great deal of money--a great deal. He had that uncanny luck
+again, and of course people in the other rooms heard what was going on,
+and a number drifted in to look on. The man he had promised to give his
+revenge to almost showed signs of having to make an effort to conceal
+his irritation and disappointment. Of course, as he was a gentleman,
+he was as cool as possible; but just at the most exciting moment, the
+height of the game, Jem made a quick movement, and--and something fell
+out of his sleeve.”
+
+“Something,” gasped Tembarom, “fell out of his sleeve!”
+
+Miss Alicia's eyes overflowed as she nodded her beribboned little cap.
+
+“It”--her voice was a sob of woe--“it was a marked card. The man he was
+playing against snatched it and held it up. And he laughed out loud.”
+
+“Holy cats!” burst from Tembarom; but the remarkable exclamation was
+one of genuine horror, and he turned pale, got up from his seat, and
+took two or three strides across the room, as though he could not sit
+still.
+
+“Yes, he laughed--quite loudly,” repeated Miss Alicia, “as if he had
+guessed it all the time. Papa heard the whole story from some one who
+was present.”
+
+Tembarom came back to her rather breathless.
+
+“What in thunder did he do--Jem?” he asked.
+
+She actually wrung her poor little hands.
+
+“What could he do? There was a dead silence. People moved just a little
+nearer to the table and stood and stared, merely waiting. They say it
+was awful to see his face--awful. He sprang up and stood still, and
+slowly became as white as if he were dying before their eyes. Some one
+thought Lady Joan Fayre took a step toward him, but no one was quite
+sure. He never uttered one word, but walked out of the room and down the
+stairs and out of the house.”
+
+“But didn't he speak to the girl?”
+
+“He didn't even look at her. He passed her by as if she were stone.”
+
+“What happened next?”
+
+“He disappeared. No one knew where at first, and then there was a rumor
+that he had gone to the Klondike and had been killed there. And a year
+later--only a year! Oh, if he had only waited in England!--a worthless
+villain of a valet he had discharged for stealing met with an accident,
+and because he thought he was going to die, got horribly frightened,
+and confessed to the clergyman that he had tucked the card in poor Jem's
+sleeve himself just to pay him off. He said he did it on the chance
+that it would drop out where some one would see it, and a marked card
+dropping out of a man's sleeve anywhere would look black enough, whether
+he was playing or not. But poor Jem was in his grave, and no one seemed
+to care, though every one had been interested enough in the scandal.
+People talked about that for weeks.”
+
+Tembarom pulled at his collar excitedly.
+
+“It makes me sort of strangle,” he said. “You've got to stand your own
+bad luck, but to hear of a chap that's had to lie down and take the
+worst that could come to him and know it wasn't his--just KNOW it! And
+die before he's cleared! That knocks me out.”
+
+Almost every sentence he uttered had a mystical sound to Miss Alicia,
+but she knew how he was taking it, with what hot, young human sympathy
+and indignation. She loved the way he took it, and she loved the feeling
+in his next words,
+
+“And the girl--good Lord!--the girl?”
+
+“I never met her, and I know very little of her; but she has never
+married.”
+
+“I'm glad of that,” he said. “I'm darned glad of it. How could she?” Ann
+wouldn't, he knew. Ann would have gone to her grave unmarried. But she
+would have done things first to clear her man's name. Somehow she would
+have cleared him, if she'd had to fight tooth and nail till she was
+eighty.
+
+“They say she has grown very bitter and haughty in her manner. I'm
+afraid Lady Mallowe is a very worldly woman. One hears they don't get on
+together, and that she is bitterly disappointed because her daughter has
+not made a good match. It appears that she might have made several,
+but she is so hard and cynical that men are afraid of her. I wish I had
+known her a little--if she really loved Jem.”
+
+Tembarom had thrust his hands into his pockets, and was standing deep in
+thought, looking at the huge bank of red coals in the fire-grate. Miss
+Alicia hastily wiped her eyes.
+
+“Do excuse me,” she said.
+
+“I'll excuse you all right,” he replied, still looking into the coals.
+“I guess I shouldn't excuse you as much if you didn't” He let her cry in
+her gentle way while he stared, lost in reflection.
+
+“And if he hadn't fired that valet chap, he would be here with you
+now--instead of me. Instead of me,” he repeated.
+
+And Miss Alicia did not know what to say in reply. There seemed to be
+nothing which, with propriety and natural feeling, one could say.
+
+“It makes me feel just fine to know I'm not going to have my dinner all
+by myself,” he said to her before she left the library.
+
+She had a way of blushing about things he noticed, when she was shy
+or moved or didn't know exactly what to say. Though she must have been
+sixty, she did it as though she were sixteen. And she did it when
+he said this, and looked as though suddenly she was in some sort of
+trouble.
+
+“You are going to have dinner with me,” he said, seeing that she
+hesitated--“dinner and breakfast and lunch and tea and supper and every
+old thing that goes. You can't turn me down after me staking out that
+claim.”
+
+“I'm afraid--” she said. “You see, I have lived such a secluded life.
+I scarcely ever left my rooms except to take a walk. I'm sure you
+understand. It would not have been necessary even if I could have
+afforded it, which I really couldn't--I'm afraid I have nothing--quite
+suitable--for evening wear.”
+
+“You haven't!” he exclaimed gleefully. “I don't know what is suitable
+for evening wear, but I haven't got it either. Pearson told me so with
+tears in his eyes. It never was necessary for me either. I've got to
+get some things to quiet Pearson down, but until I do I've got to eat
+my dinner in a tweed cutaway; and what I've caught on to is that it's
+unsuitable enough to throw a man into jail. That little black dress
+you've got on and that little cap are just 'way out of sight, they're so
+becoming. Come down just like you are.”
+
+She felt a little as Pearson had felt when confronting his new
+employer's entire cheerfulness in face of a situation as exotically
+hopeless as the tweed cutaway, and nothing else by way of resource. But
+there was something so nice about him, something which was almost as
+though he was actually a gentleman, something which absolutely, if one
+could go so far, stood in the place of his being a gentleman. It was
+impossible to help liking him more and more at every queer speech he
+made. Still, there were of course things he did not realize, and perhaps
+one ought in kindness to give him a delicate hint.
+
+“I'm afraid,” she began quite apologetically. “I'm afraid that the
+servants, Burrill and the footmen, you know, will be--will think--”
+
+“Say,” he took her up, “let's give Burrill and the footmen the Willies
+out and out. If they can't stand it, they can write home to their
+mothers and tell 'em they've got to take 'em away. Burrill and the
+footmen needn't worry. They're suitable enough, and it's none of their
+funeral, anyhow.”
+
+He wasn't upset in the least. Miss Alicia, who, as a timid dependent
+either upon “poor dear papa” or Mr. Temple Barholm, had been secretly,
+in her sensitive, ladylike little way, afraid of superior servants
+all her life, knowing that they realized her utterly insignificant
+helplessness, and resented giving her attention because she was not able
+to show her appreciation of their services in the proper manner--Miss
+Alicia saw that it had not occurred to him to endeavor to propitiate
+them in the least, because somehow it all seemed a joke to him, and he
+didn't care. After the first moment of being startled, she regarded him
+with a novel feeling, almost a kind of admiration. Tentatively she dared
+to wonder if there was not something even rather--rather ARISTOCRATIC in
+his utter indifference.
+
+If he had been a duke, he would not have regarded the servants' point of
+view; it wouldn't have mattered what they thought. Perhaps, she
+hastily decided, he was like this because, though he was not a duke,
+boot-blacking in New York notwithstanding he was a Temple Barholm. There
+were few dukes as old of blood as a Temple Barholm. That must be it. She
+was relieved.
+
+Whatsoever lay at the root of his being what he was and as he was, he
+somehow changed the aspect of things for her, and without doing anything
+but be himself, cleared the atmosphere of her dread of the surprise and
+mental reservations of the footmen and Burrill when she came down to
+dinner in her high-necked, much-cleaned, and much-repaired black silk,
+and with no more distinguishing change in her toilet than a white lace
+cap instead of a black one, and with “poor dear mamma's” hair bracelet
+with the gold clasp on her wrist, and a weeping-willow made of “poor
+dear papa's” hair in a brooch at her collar.
+
+It was so curious, though still “nice,” but he did not offer her his arm
+when they were going into the dining-room, and he took hold of hers with
+his hand and affectionately half led, half pushed, her along with him as
+they went. And he himself drew back her chair for her at the end of the
+table opposite his own. He did not let a footman do it, and he stood
+behind it, talking in his cheerful way all the time, and he moved it to
+exactly the right place, and then actually bent down and looked under
+the table.
+
+“Here,” he said to the nearest man-servant, “where's there a footstool?
+Get one, please,” in that odd, simple, almost aristocratic way. It was
+not a rude dictatorial way, but a casual way, as though he knew the man
+was there to do things, and he didn't expect any time to be wasted.
+
+And it was he himself who arranged the footstool, making it comfortable
+for her, and then he went to his own chair at the head of the table
+and sat down, smiling at her joyfully across the glass and silver and
+flowers.
+
+“Push that thing in the middle on one side, Burrill,” he said. “It's too
+high. I can't see Miss Alicia.”
+
+Burrill found it difficult to believe the evidence of his hearing.
+
+“The epergne, sir?” he inquired.
+
+“Is that what it's called, an apern? That's a new one on me. Yes, that's
+what I mean. Push the apern over.”
+
+“Shall I remove it from the table, sir?” Burrill steeled himself to
+exact civility. Of what use to behave otherwise? There always remained
+the liberty to give notice if the worst came to the worst, though what
+the worst might eventually prove to be it required a lurid imagination
+to depict. The epergne was a beautiful thing of crystal and gold, a
+celebrated work of art, regarded as an exquisite possession. It was
+almost remarkable that Mr. Temple Barholm had not said, “Shove it on
+one side,” but Burrill had been spared the poignant indignity of being
+required to “shove.”
+
+“Yes, suppose you do. It's a fine enough thing when it isn't in the
+way, but I've got to see you while I talk, Miss Alicia,” said Mr. Temple
+Barholm. The episode of the epergne--Burrill's expression, and the
+rigidly restrained mouths of Henry and James as the decoration was
+removed, leaving a painfully blank space of table-cloth until Burrill
+silently filled it with flowers in a low bowl--these things temporarily
+flurried Miss Alicia somewhat, but the pleased smile at the head of the
+table calmed even that trying moment.
+
+Then what a delightful meal it was, to be sure! How entertaining and
+cheerful and full of interesting conversation! Miss Alicia had always
+admired what she reverently termed “conversation.” She had read of the
+houses of brilliant people where they had it at table, at dinner and
+supper parties, and in drawing-rooms. The French, especially the French
+ladies, were brilliant conversationalists. They held “salons” in which
+the conversation was wonderful--Mme. de Stael and Mme. Roland, for
+instance; and in England, Lady Mary Wortley Montague, Sydney Smith, and
+Horace Walpole, and surely Miss Fanny Burney, and no doubt L. E. L.,
+whose real name was Miss Letitia Elizabeth Landon--what conversation
+they must have delighted their friends with and how instructive it must
+have been even to sit in the most obscure corner and listen!
+
+Such gifted persons seemed to have been chosen by Providence to delight
+and inspire every one privileged to hear them. Such privileges had been
+omitted from the scheme of Miss Alicia's existence. She did not know,
+she would have felt it sacrilegious to admit it even if the fact had
+dawned upon her, that “dear papa” had been a heartlessly arrogant,
+utterly selfish, and tyrannical old blackguard of the most pronounced
+type. He had been of an absolute morality as far as social laws were
+concerned. He had written and delivered a denunciatory sermon a week,
+and had made unbearable by his ministrations the suffering hours and the
+last moments of his parishioners during the long years of his pastorate.
+When Miss Alicia, in reading records of the helpful relationship of the
+male progenitors of the Brontes, Jane Austen, Fanny Burney, and Mrs.
+Browning, was frequently reminded of him, she revealed a perception of
+which she was not aware. He had combined the virile qualities of all of
+them. Consequently, brilliancy of conversation at table had not been the
+attractive habit of the household; “poor dear papa” had confined himself
+to scathing criticism of the incompetence of females who could not teach
+their menials to “cook a dinner which was not a disgrace to any decent
+household.” When not virulently aspersing the mutton, he was expressing
+his opinion of muddle-headed weakness which would permit household bills
+to mount in a manner which could only bring ruin and disaster upon a
+minister of the gospel who throughout a protracted career of usefulness
+had sapped his intellectual manhood in the useless effort to support in
+silly idleness a family of brainless and maddening fools. Miss Alicia
+had heard her character, her unsuccessful physical appearance, her mind,
+and her pitiful efforts at table-talk, described in detail with a choice
+of adjective and adverb which had broken into terrified fragments every
+atom of courage and will with which she had been sparsely dowered.
+
+So, not having herself been gifted with conversational powers to begin
+with, and never having enjoyed the exhibition of such powers in others,
+her ideals had been high. She was not sure that Mr. Temple Barholm's
+fluent and cheerful talk could be with exactness termed “conversation.”
+ It was perhaps not sufficiently lofty and intellectual, and did not
+confine itself rigorously to one exalted subject. But how it did raise
+one's spirits and open up curious vistas! And how good tempered
+and humorous it was, even though sometimes the humor was a little
+bewildering! During the whole dinner there never occurred even one of
+those dreadful pauses in which dead silence fell, and one tried, like a
+frightened hen flying from side to side of a coop, to think of something
+to say which would not sound silly, but perhaps might divert attention
+from dangerous topics. She had often thought it would be so interesting
+to hear a Spaniard or a native Hindu talk about himself and his own
+country in English. Tembarom talked about New York and its people and
+atmosphere, and he did not know how foreign it all was. He described the
+streets--Fifth Avenue and Broadway and Sixth Avenue--and the street-cars
+and the elevated railroad, and the way “fellows” had to “hustle” “to put
+it over.” He spoke of a boarding-house kept by a certain Mrs. Bowse, and
+a presidential campaign, and the election of a mayor, and a quick-lunch
+counter, and when President Garfield had been assassinated, and a
+department store; and the electric lights, and the way he had of making
+a sort of picture of everything was really instructive and, well,
+fascinating. She felt as though she had been taken about the city in
+one of the vehicles the conductor of which described things through a
+megaphone.
+
+Not that Mr. Temple Barholm suggested a megaphone, whatsoever that might
+be, but he merely made you feel as if you had seen things. Never had she
+been so entertained and enlightened. If she had been a beautiful girl,
+he could not have seemed more as though in amusing her he was also
+really pleasing himself. He was so very funny sometimes that she could
+not help laughing in a way which was almost unladylike, because she
+could not stop, and was obliged to put her handkerchief up to her face
+and wipe away actual tears of mirth.
+
+Fancy laughing until you cried, and the servants looking on!
+
+Once Burrill himself was obliged to turn hastily away, and twice she
+heard him severely reprove an overpowered young footman in a rapid
+undertone.
+
+Tembarom at least felt that the unlifting heaviness of atmosphere which
+had surrounded him while enjoying the companionship of Mr. Palford was a
+thing of the past.
+
+The thrilled interest, the surprise and delight of Miss Alicia would
+have stimulated a man in a comatose condition, it seemed to him. The
+little thing just loved every bit of it--she just “eat it up.” She asked
+question after question, sometimes questions which would have made him
+shout with laughter if he had not been afraid of hurting her feelings.
+She knew as little of New York as he knew of Temple Barholm, and was, it
+made him grin to see, allured by it as by some illicit fascination. She
+did not know what to make of it, and sometimes she was obliged hastily
+to conceal a fear that it was a sort of Sodom and Gomorrah; but she
+wanted to hear more about it, and still more.
+
+And she brightened up until she actually did not look frightened, and
+ate her dinner with an excellent appetite.
+
+“I really never enjoyed a dinner so much in my life,” she said when
+they went into the drawing-room to have their coffee. “It was the
+conversation which made it so delightful. Conversation is such a
+stimulating thing!”
+
+She had almost decided that it was “conversation,” or at least a
+wonderful substitute.
+
+When she said good night to him and went beaming to bed, looking forward
+immensely to breakfast next morning, he watched her go up the staircase,
+feeling wonderfully normal and happy.
+
+“Some of these nights, when she's used to me,” he said as he stuffed
+tobacco into his last pipe in the library--“some of these nights I'm
+darned if I sha'n't catch hold of the sweet, little old thing and hug
+her in spite of myself. I sha'n't be able to help it.” He lit his pipe,
+and puffed it even excitedly. “Lord!” he said, “there's some blame' fool
+going about the world right now that might have married her. And he'll
+never know what a break he made when he didn't.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+
+A fugitive fine day which had strayed into the month from the
+approaching spring appeared the next morning, and Miss Alicia was
+uplifted by the enrapturing suggestion that she should join her new
+relative in taking a walk, in fact that it should be she who took him
+to walk and showed him some of his possessions. This, it had revealed
+itself to him, she could do in a special way of her own, because during
+her life at Temple Barholm she had felt it her duty to “try to do a
+little good” among the villagers. She and her long-dead mother and
+sister had of course been working adjuncts of the vicarage, and had
+numerous somewhat trying tasks to perform in the way of improving upon
+“dear papa's” harrying them into attending church, chivying the mothers
+into sending their children to Sunday-school, and being unsparing in
+severity of any conduct which might be construed into implying lack of
+appreciation of the vicar or respect for his eloquence.
+
+It had been necessary for them as members of the vicar's family--always,
+of course, without adding a sixpence to the household bills--to supply
+bowls of nourishing broth and arrowroot to invalids and to bestow the
+aid and encouragement which result in a man of God's being regarded with
+affection and gratitude by his parishioners. Many a man's career in the
+church, “dear papa” had frequently observed, had been ruined by lack of
+intelligence and effort on the part of the female members of his family.
+
+“No man could achieve proper results,” he had said, “if he was hampered
+by the selfish influence and foolishness of his womenkind. Success in
+the church depends in one sense very much upon the conduct of a man's
+female relatives.”
+
+After the deaths of her mother and sister, Miss Alicia had toiled on
+patiently, fading day by day from a slim, plain, sweet-faced girl to
+a slim, even plainer and sweeter-faced middle-aged and at last elderly
+woman. She had by that time read aloud by bedsides a great many chapters
+in the Bible, had given a good many tracts, and bestowed as much
+arrowroot, barley-water, and beef-tea as she could possibly
+encompass without domestic disaster. She had given a large amount of
+conscientious, if not too intelligent, advice, and had never failed to
+preside over her Sunday-school class or at mothers' meetings. But
+her timid unimpressiveness had not aroused enthusiasm or awakened
+comprehension. “Miss Alicia,” the cottage women said, “she's well
+meanin', but she's not one with a head.” “She reminds me,” one of them
+had summed her up, “of a hen that lays a' egg every day, but it's too
+small for a meal, and 'u'd never hatch into anythin'.”
+
+During her stay at Temple Barholm she had tentatively tried to do a
+little “parish work,” but she had had nothing to give, and she was
+always afraid that if Mr. Temple Barholm found her out, he would be
+angry, because he would think she was presuming. She was aware that the
+villagers knew that she was an object of charity herself, and a person
+who was “a lady” and yet an object of charity was, so to speak, poaching
+upon their own legitimate preserves. The rector and his wife were rather
+grand people, and condescended to her greatly on the few occasions of
+their accidental meetings. She was neither smart nor influential enough
+to be considered as an asset.
+
+It was she who “conversed” during their walk, and while she trotted
+by Tembarom's side looking more early-Victorian than ever in a neat,
+fringed mantle and a small black bonnet of a fashion long decently
+interred by a changing world, Tembarom had never seen anything
+resembling it in New York; but he liked it and her increasingly at every
+moment.
+
+It was he who made her converse. He led her on by asking her questions
+and being greatly interested in every response she made. In fact, though
+he was quite unaware of the situation, she was creating for him such an
+atmosphere as he might have found in a book, if he had had the habit of
+books. Everything she told him was new and quaint and very often rather
+touching. She related anecdotes about herself and her poor little past
+without knowing she was doing it. Before they had talked an hour he had
+an astonishing clear idea of “poor dear papa” and “dearest Emily” and
+“poor darling mama” and existence at Rowcroft Vicarage. He “caught
+on to” the fact that though she was very much given to the word
+“dear,”--people were “dear,” and so were things and places,--she never
+even by chance slipped into saying “dear Rowcroft,” which she would
+certainly have done if she had ever spent a happy moment in it.
+
+As she talked to him he realized that her simple accustomedness to
+English village life and all its accompaniments of county surroundings
+would teach him anything and everything he might want to know. Her
+obscurity had been surrounded by stately magnificence, with which
+she had become familiar without touching the merest outskirts of its
+privileges. She knew names and customs and families and things to be
+cultivated or avoided, and though she would be a little startled and
+much mystified by his total ignorance of all she had breathed in since
+her birth, he felt sure that she would not regard him either with
+private contempt or with a lessened liking because he was a vandal pure
+and simple.
+
+And she had such a nice, little, old polite way of saying things. When,
+in passing a group of children, he failed to understand that their hasty
+bobbing up and down meant that they were doing obeisance to him as lord
+of the manor, she spoke with the prettiest apologetic courtesy.
+
+“I'm sure you won't mind touching your hat when they make their little
+curtsies, or when a villager touches his forehead,” she said.
+
+“Good Lord! no,” he said, starting. “Ought I? I didn't know they were
+doing it at me.” And he turned round and made a handsome bow and grinned
+almost affectionately at the small, amazed party, first puzzling, and
+then delighting, them, because he looked so extraordinarily friendly.
+A gentleman who laughed at you like that ought to be equal to a
+miscellaneous distribution of pennies in the future, if not on the spot.
+They themselves grinned and chuckled and nudged one another, with stares
+and giggles.
+
+“I am sorry to say that in a great many places the villagers are not
+nearly so respectful as they used to be,” Miss Alicia explained. “In
+Rowcroft the children were very remiss about curtseying. It's quite sad.
+But Mr. Temple Barholm was very strict indeed in the matter of demanding
+proper respectfulness. He has turned men off their farms for incivility.
+The villagers of Temple Barholm have much better manners than some even
+a few miles away.”
+
+“Must I tip my hat to all of them?” he asked.
+
+“If you please. It really seems kinder. You--you needn't quite lift it,
+as you did to the children just now. If you just touch the brim lightly
+with your hand in a sort of military salute--that is what they are
+accustomed to.”
+
+After they had passed through the village street she paused at the end
+of a short lane and looked up at him doubtfully.
+
+“Would you--I wonder if you would like to go into a cottage,” she said.
+
+“Go into a cottage?” he asked. “What cottage? What for?”
+
+He had not the remotest idea of any reason why he should go into a
+cottage inhabited by people who were entire strangers to him, and Miss
+Alicia felt a trifle awkward at having to explain anything so wholly
+natural.
+
+“You see, they are your cottages, and the people are your tenants,
+and--”
+
+“But perhaps they mightn't like it. It might make 'em mad,” he argued.
+“If their water-pipes had busted, and they'd asked me to come and look
+at them or anything; but they don't know me yet. They might think I was
+Mr. Buttinski.”
+
+“I don't quite--” she began. “Buttinski is a foreign name; it sounds
+Russian or Polish. I'm afraid I don't quite understand why they should
+mistake you for him.”
+
+Then he laughed--a boyish shout of laughter which brought a cottager
+to the nearest window to peep over the pots of fuchsias and geraniums
+blooming profusely against the diamond panes.
+
+“Say,” he apologized, “don't be mad because I laughed. I'm laughing
+at myself as much as at anything. It's a way of saying that they might
+think I was 'butting in' too much--pushing in where I wasn't asked. See?
+I said they might think I was Mr. Butt-in-ski! It's just a bit of fool
+slang. You're not mad, are you?”
+
+“Oh, no!” she said. “Dear me! no. It is very funny, of course. I'm
+afraid I'm extremely ignorant about--about foreign humor” It seemed more
+delicate to say “foreign” than merely “American.” But her gentle little
+countenance for a few seconds wore a baffled expression, and she said
+softly to herself, “Mr. Buttinski, Butt-in--to intrude. It sounds quite
+Polish; I think even more Polish than Russian.”
+
+He was afraid he would yell with glee, but he did not. Herculean
+effort enabled him to restrain his feelings, and present to her only an
+ordinary-sized smile.
+
+“I shouldn't know one from the other,” he said; “but if you say it
+sounds more Polish, I bet it does.”
+
+“Would you like to go into a cottage?” she inquired. “I think it might
+be as well. They will like the attention.”
+
+“Will they? Of course I'll go if you think that. What shall I say?” he
+asked somewhat anxiously.
+
+“If you think the cottage looks clean, you might tell them so, and ask a
+few questions about things. And you must be sure to inquire about Susan
+Hibblethwaite's legs.”
+
+“What?” ejaculated Tembarom.
+
+“Susan Hibblethwaite's legs,” she replied in mild explanation. “Susan is
+Mr. Hibblethwaite's unmarried sister, and she has very bad legs. It is a
+thing one notices continually among village people, more especially the
+women, that they complain of what they call `bad legs.' I never quite
+know what they mean, whether it is rheumatism or something different,
+but the trouble is always spoken of as `bad legs' And they like you to
+inquire about them, so that they can tell you their symptoms.”
+
+“Why don't they get them cured?”
+
+“I don't know, I'm sure. They take a good deal of medicine when they can
+afford it. I think they like to take it. They're very pleased when the
+doctor gives them `a bottle o' summat,' as they call it. Oh, I mustn't
+forget to tell you that most of them speak rather broad Lancashire.”
+
+“Shall I understand them?” Tembarom asked, anxious again. “Is it a sort
+of Dago talk?”
+
+“It is the English the working-classes speak in Lancashire. 'Summat'
+means 'something.' 'Whoam' means 'home.' But I should think you would be
+very clever at understanding things.”
+
+“I'm scared stiff,” said Tembarom, not in the least uncourageously; “but
+I want to go into a cottage and hear some of it. Which one shall we go
+into?”
+
+There were several whitewashed cottages in the lane, each in its own
+bit of garden and behind its own hawthorn hedge, now bare and wholly
+unsuggestive of white blossoms and almond scent to the uninitiated. Miss
+Alicia hesitated a moment.
+
+“We will go into this one, where the Hibblethwaites live,” she decided.
+“They are quite clean, civil people. They have a naughty, queer, little
+crippled boy, but I suppose they can't keep him in order because he is
+an invalid. He's rather rude, I'm sorry to say, but he's rather sharp
+and clever, too. He seems to lie on his sofa and collect all the gossip
+of the village.”
+
+They went together up the bricked path, and Miss Alicia knocked at
+the low door with her knuckles. A stout, apple-faced woman opened it,
+looking a shade nervous.
+
+“Good morning, Mrs. Hibblethwaite,” said Miss Alicia in a kind but
+remote manner. “The new Mr. Temple Barholm has been kind enough to come
+to see you. It's very good of him to come so soon, isn't it?”
+
+“It is that,” Mrs. Hibblethwaite answered respectfully, looking him
+over. “Wilt tha coom in, sir?”
+
+Tembarom accepted the invitation, feeling extremely awkward because Miss
+Alicia's initiatory comment upon his goodness in showing himself had
+“rattled” him. It had made him feel that he must appear condescending,
+and he had never condescended to any one in the whole course of his
+existence. He had, indeed, not even been condescended to. He had met
+with slanging and bullying, indifference and brutality of manner, but he
+had not met with condescension.
+
+“I hope you're well, Mrs. Hibblethwaite,” he answered. “You look it.”
+
+“I deceive ma looks a good bit, sir,” she answered. “Mony a day ma legs
+is nigh as bad as Susan's.”
+
+“Tha 'rt jealous o' Susan's legs,” barked out a sharp voice from a
+corner by the fire.
+
+The room had a flagged floor, clean with recent scrubbing with
+sandstone; the whitewashed walls were decorated with pictures cut
+from illustrated papers; there was a big fireplace, and by it was a
+hard-looking sofa covered with blue-and-white checked cotton stuff. A
+boy of about ten was lying on it, propped up with a pillow. He had a big
+head and a keen, ferret-eyed face, and just now was looking round the
+end of his sofa at the visitors. “Howd tha tongue, Tummas!” said his
+mother. “I wunnot howd it,” Tummas answered. “Ma tongue's th' on'y thing
+about me as works right, an' I'm noan goin' to stop it.”
+
+“He's a young nowt,” his mother explained; “but, he's a cripple, an' we
+conna do owt wi' him.”
+
+“Do not be rude, Thomas,” said Miss Alicia, with dignity.
+
+“Dunnot be rude thysen,” replied Tummas. “I'm noan o' thy lad.”
+
+Tembarom walked over to the sofa.
+
+“Say,” he began with jocular intent, “you've got a grouch on, ain't
+you?”
+
+Tummas turned on him eyes which bored. An analytical observer or a
+painter might have seen that he had a burning curiousness of look, a
+sort of investigatory fever of expression.
+
+“I dunnot know what tha means,” he said. “Happen tha'rt talkin'
+'Merican?”
+
+“That's just what it is,” admitted Tembarom. “What are you talking?”
+
+“Lancashire,” said Tummas. “Theer's some sense i' that.”
+
+Tembarom sat down near him. The boy turned over against his pillow and
+put his chin in the hollow of his palm and stared.
+
+“I've wanted to see thee,” he remarked. “I've made mother an' Aunt Susan
+an' feyther tell me every bit they've heared about thee in the village.
+Theer was a lot of it. Tha coom fro' 'Meriker?”
+
+“Yes.” Tembarom began vaguely to feel the demand in the burning
+curiosity.
+
+“Gi' me that theer book,” the boy said, pointing to a small table heaped
+with a miscellaneous jumble of things and standing not far from him.
+“It's a' atlas,” he added as Tembarom gave it to him. “Yo' con find
+places in it.” He turned the leaves until he found a map of the world.
+“Theer's 'Meriker,” he said, pointing to the United States. “That
+theer's north and that theer's south. All th' real 'Merikens comes from
+the North, wheer New York is.”
+
+“I come from New York,” said Tembarom.
+
+“Tha wert born i' th' workhouse, tha run about th' streets i' rags, tha
+pretty nigh clemmed to death, tha blacked boots, tha sold newspapers,
+tha feyther was a common workin'-mon--and now tha's coom into Temple
+Barholm an' sixty thousand a year.”
+
+“The last part's true all right,” Tembarom owned, “but there's some
+mistakes in the first part. I wasn't born in the workhouse, and though
+I've been hungry enough, I never starved to death--if that's what
+`clemmed' means.”
+
+Tummas looked at once disappointed and somewhat incredulous.
+
+“That's th' road they tell it i' th' village,” he argued.
+
+“Well, let them tell it that way if they like it best. That's not going
+to worry me,” Tembarom replied uncombatively.
+
+Tummas's eyes bored deeper into him.
+
+“Does na tha care?” he demanded.
+
+“What should I care for? Let every fellow enjoy himself his own way.”
+
+“Tha'rt not a bit like one o' th' gentry,” said Tummas. “Tha'rt quite a
+common chap. Tha'rt as common as me, for aw tha foine clothes.”
+
+“People are common enough, anyhow,” said Tembarom. “There's nothing much
+commoner, is there? There's millions of 'em everywhere--billions of 'em.
+None of us need put on airs.”
+
+“Tha'rt as common as me,” said Tummas, reflectively. “An' yet tha
+owns Temple Barholm an' aw that brass. I conna mak' out how th' loike
+happens.”
+
+“Neither can I; but it does all samee.”
+
+“It does na happen i' 'Meriker,” exulted Tummas. “Everybody's equal
+theer.”
+
+“Rats!” ejaculated Tembarom. “What about multimillionaires?”
+
+He forgot that the age of Tummas was ten. It was impossible not to
+forget it. He was, in fact, ten hundred, if those of his generation had
+been aware of the truth. But there he sat, having spent only a decade
+of his most recent incarnation in a whitewashed cottage, deprived of the
+use of his legs.
+
+Miss Alicia, seeing that Tembarom was interested in the boy, entered
+into domestic conversation with Mrs. Hibblethwaite at the other side
+of the room. Mrs. Hibblethwaite was soon explaining the uncertainty
+of Susan's temper on wash-days, when it was necessary to depend on her
+legs.
+
+“Can't you walk at all?” Tembarom asked. Tummas shook his head. “How
+long have you been lame?”
+
+“Ever since I wur born. It's summat like rickets. I've been lyin' here
+aw my days. I look on at foak an' think 'em over. I've got to do summat.
+That's why I loike th' atlas. Little Ann Hutchinson gave it to me onct
+when she come to see her grandmother.”
+
+Tembarom sat upright.
+
+“Do you know her?” he exclaimed.
+
+“I know her best o' onybody in th' world. An' I loike her best.”
+
+“So do I,” rashly admitted Tembarom.
+
+“Tha does?” Tummas asked suspiciously. “Does she loike thee?”
+
+“She says she does.” He tried to say it with proper modesty.
+
+“Well, if she says she does, she does. An' if she does, then yo an'
+me'll be friends.” He stopped a moment, and seemed to be taking Tembarom
+in with thoroughness. “I could get a lot out o' thee,” he said after the
+inspection.
+
+“A lot of what?” Tembarom felt as though he would really like to hear.
+
+“A lot o' things I want to know about. I wish I'd lived th' life tha's
+lived, clemmin' or no clemmin'. Tha's seen things goin' on every day o'
+thy loife.”
+
+“Well, yes, there's been plenty going on, plenty,” Tembarom admitted.
+
+“I've been lying here for ten year',” said Tummas, savagely. “An' I've
+had nowt i' th' world to do an' nowt to think on but what I could mak'
+foak tell me about th' village. But nowt happens but this chap gettin'
+drunk an' that chap deein' or losin' his place, or wenches gettin'
+married or havin' childer. I know everything that happens, but it's nowt
+but a lot o' women clackin'. If I'd not been a cripple, I'd ha' been
+at work for mony a year by now, 'arnin' money to save by an' go to
+'Meriker.”
+
+“You seem to be sort of stuck on America. How's that?”
+
+“What dost mean?”
+
+“I mean you seem to like it.”
+
+“I dunnot loike it nor yet not loike it, but I've heard a bit more about
+it than I have about th' other places on th' map. Foak goes there to
+seek their fortune, an' it seems loike there's a good bit doin'.”
+
+“Do you like to read newspapers?” said Tembarom, inspired to his query
+by a recollection of the vision of things “doin'” in the Sunday Earth.
+
+“Wheer'd I get papers from?” the boy asked testily. “Foak like us hasn't
+got th' brass for 'em.”
+
+“I'll bring you some New York papers,” promised Tembarom, grinning a
+little in anticipation. “And we'll talk about the news that's in them.
+The Sunday Earth is full of pictures. I used to work on that paper
+myself.”
+
+“Tha did?” Tummas cried excitedly. “Did tha help to print it, or was it
+th' one tha sold i' th' streets?”
+
+“I wrote some of the stuff in it.”
+
+“Wrote some of th' stuff in it? Wrote it thaself? How could tha, a
+common chap like thee?” he asked, more excited still, his ferret eyes
+snapping.
+
+“I don't know how I did it,” Tembarom answered, with increased cheer and
+interest in the situation. “It wasn't high-brow sort of work.”
+
+Tummas leaned forward in his incredulous eagerness.
+
+“Does tha mean that they paid thee for writin' it--paid thee?”
+
+“I guess they wouldn't have done it if they'd been Lancashire,” Tembarom
+answered. “But they hadn't much more sense than I had. They paid me
+twenty-five dollars a week--that's five pounds.”
+
+“I dunnot believe thee,” said Tummas, and leaned back on his pillow
+short of breath.
+
+“I didn't believe it myself till I'd paid my board two weeks and bought
+a suit of clothes with it,” was Tembarom's answer, and he chuckled as he
+made it.
+
+But Tummas did believe it. This, after he had recovered from the shock,
+became evident. The curiosity in his face intensified itself; his
+eagerness was even vaguely tinged with something remotely resembling
+respect. It was not, however, respect for the money which had been
+earned, but for the store of things “doin'” which must have been
+required. It was impossible that this chap knew things undreamed of.
+
+“Has tha ever been to th' Klondike?” he asked after a long pause.
+
+“No. I've never been out of New York.”
+
+Tummas seemed fretted and depressed.
+
+“Eh, I'm sorry for that. I wished tha'd been to th' Klondike. I want to
+be towd about it,” he sighed. He pulled the atlas toward him and found a
+place in it.
+
+“That theer's Dawson,” he announced. Tembarom saw that the region of
+the Klondike had been much studied. It was even rather faded with the
+frequent passage of searching fingers, as though it had been pored over
+with special curiosity.
+
+“There's gowd-moines theer,” revealed Tummas. “An' theer's welly newt
+else but snow an' ice. A young chap as set out fro' here to get theer
+froze to death on th' way.”
+
+“How did you get to hear about it?”
+
+“Ann she browt me a paper onet.” He dug under his pillow, and brought
+out a piece of newspaper, worn and frayed and cut with age and usage.
+“This heer's what's left of it.” Tembarom saw that it was a fragment
+from an old American sheet and that a column was headed “The Rush for
+the Klondike.”
+
+“Why didna tha go theer?” demanded Tummas. He looked up from his
+fragment and asked his question with a sudden reflectiveness, as though
+a new and interesting aspect of things had presented itself to him.
+
+“I had too much to do in New York,” said Tembarom. “There's always
+something doing in New York, you know.”
+
+Tummas silently regarded him a moment or so.
+
+“It's a pity tha didn't go,” he said. “Happen tha'd never ha' coom
+back.”
+
+Tembarom laughed the outright laugh.
+
+“Thank you,” he answered.
+
+Tummas was still thinking the matter over and was not disturbed.
+
+“I was na thinkin' o' thee,” he said in an impersonal tone. “I was
+thinkin' o' t' other chap. If tha'd gon i'stead o' him, he'd ha' been
+here i'stead o' thee. Eh, but it's funny.” And he drew a deep breath
+like a sigh having its birth in profundity of baffled thought.
+
+Both he and his evident point of view were “funny” in the Lancashire
+sense, which does not imply humor, but strangeness and the
+unexplainable. Singular as the phrasing was, Tembarom knew what he
+meant, and that he was thinking of the oddity of chance. Tummas had
+obviously heard of “poor Jem” and had felt an interest in him.
+
+“You're talking about Jem Temple Barholm I guess,” he said. Perhaps the
+interest he himself had felt in the tragic story gave his voice a tone
+somewhat responsive to Tummas's own mood, for Tummas, after one more
+boring glance, let himself go. His interest in this special subject
+was, it revealed itself, a sort of obsession. The history of Jem Temple
+Barholm had been the one drama of his short life.
+
+“Aye, I was thinkin' o' him,” he said. “I should na ha' cared for th'
+Klondike so much but for him.”
+
+“But he went away from England when you were a baby.”
+
+“Th' last toime he coom to Temple Barholm wur when I wur just born. Foak
+said he coom to ax owd Temple Barholm if he'd help him to pay his debts,
+an' th' owd chap awmost kicked him out o' doors. Mother had just had me,
+an' she was weak an' poorly an' sittin' at th' door wi' me in her arms,
+an' he passed by an' saw her. He stopped an' axed her how she was doin'.
+An' when he was goin' away, he gave her a gold sovereign, an' he says,
+`Put it in th' savin's-bank for him, an' keep it theer till he's a big
+lad an' wants it.' It's been in th' savin's-bank ever sin'. I've got
+a whole pound o' ma own out at interest. There's not many lads ha' got
+that.”
+
+“He must have been a good-natured fellow,” commented Tembarom. “It was
+darned bad luck him going to the Klondike.”
+
+“It was good luck for thee,” said Tummas, with resentment.
+
+“Was it?” was Tembarom's unbiased reply. “Well, I guess it was, one way
+or the other. I'm not kicking, anyhow.”
+
+Tummas naturally did not know half he meant. He went on talking about
+Jem Temple Barholm, and as he talked his cheeks flushed and his eyes
+lighted.
+
+“I would na spend that sovereign if I was starvin'. I'm going to leave
+it to Ann Hutchinson in ma will when I dee. I've axed questions about
+him reet and left ever sin' I can remember, but theer's nobody knows
+much. Mother says he was fine an' handsome, an' gentry through an'
+through. If he'd coom into th' property, he'd ha' coom to see me
+again I'll lay a shillin', because I'm a cripple an' I canna spend his
+sovereign. If he'd coom back from th' Klondike, happen he'd ha' towd me
+about it.” He pulled the atlas toward him, and laid his thin finger
+on the rubbed spot. “He mun ha' been killed somewheer about here,” he
+sighed. “Somewheer here. Eh, it's funny.”
+
+Tembarom watched him. There was something that rather gave you the
+“Willies” in the way this little cripple seemed to have taken to the
+dead man and worried along all these years thinking him over and asking
+questions and studying up the Klondike because he was killed there. It
+was because he'd made a kind of story of it. He'd enjoyed it in the way
+people enjoy stories in a newspaper. You always had to give 'em a kind
+of story; you had to make a story even if you were telling about a
+milk-wagon running away. In newspaper offices you heard that was the
+secret of making good with what you wrote. Dish it up as if it was a
+sort of story.
+
+He not infrequently arrived at astute enough conclusions concerning
+things. He had arrived at one now. Shut out even from the tame drama
+of village life, Tummas, born with an abnormal desire for action and a
+feverish curiosity, had hungered and thirsted for the story in any
+form whatsoever. He caught at fragments of happenings, and colored and
+dissected them for the satisfying of unfed cravings. The vanished man
+had been the one touch of pictorial form and color in his ten years of
+existence. Young and handsome and of the gentry, unfavored by the owner
+of the wealth which some day would be his own possession, stopping
+“gentry-way” at a cottage door to speak good-naturedly to a pale young
+mother, handing over the magnificence of a whole sovereign to be saved
+for a new-born child, going away to vaguely understood disgrace, leaving
+his own country to hide himself in distant lands, meeting death amid
+snow and ice and surrounded by gold-mines, leaving his empty place to be
+filled by a boot-black newsboy--true there was enough to lie and think
+over and to try to follow with the help of maps and excited questions.
+
+“I wish I could ha' seen him,” said Tummas. “I'd awmost gi' my sovereign
+to get a look at that picture in th' gallery at Temple Barholm.”
+
+“What picture?” Tembarom asked. “Is there a picture of him there?”
+
+“There is na one o' him, but there's one o' a lad as deed two hundred
+year' ago as they say wur th' spit an' image on him when he wur a lad
+hissen. One o' th' owd servants towd mother it wur theer.”
+
+This was a natural stimulus to interest and curiosity.
+
+“Which one is it? Jinks! I'd like to see it myself. Do you know which
+one it is? There's hundreds of them.”
+
+“No, I dunnot know,” was Tummas's dispirited answer, “an' neither does
+mother. Th' woman as knew left when owd Temple Barholm deed.”
+
+“Tummas,” broke in Mrs. Hibblethwaite from the other end of the room,
+to which she had returned after taking Miss Alicia out to complain about
+the copper in the “wash-'us'--” “Tummas, tha'st been talkin' like a
+magpie. Tha'rt a lot too bold an' ready wi' tha tongue. Th' gentry's
+noan comin' to see thee if tha clacks th' heads off theer showthers.”
+
+“I'm afraid he always does talk more than is good for him,” said Miss
+Alicia. “He looks quite feverish.”
+
+“He has been talking to me about Jem Temple Barholm,” explained
+Tembarom. “We've had a regular chin together. He thinks a heap of poor
+Jem.”
+
+Miss Alicia looked startled, and Mrs. Hibblethwaite was plainly
+flustered tremendously. She quite lost her temper.
+
+“Eh,” she exclaimed, “tha wants tha young yed knocked off, Tummas
+Hibblethwaite. He's fair daft about th' young gentleman as--as was
+killed. He axes questions mony a day till I'd give him th' stick if he
+wasna a cripple. He moithers me to death.”
+
+“I'll bring you some of those New York papers to look at,” Tembarom said
+to the boy as he went away.
+
+He walked back through the village to Temple Barholm, holding Miss
+Alicia's elbow in light, affectionate guidance and support, a little to
+her embarrassment and also a little to her delight. Until he had taken
+her into the dining-room the night before she had never seen such a
+thing done. There was no over-familiarity in the action. It merely
+seemed somehow to suggest liking and a wish to take care of her.
+
+“That little fellow in the village,” he said after a silence in which it
+occurred to her that he seemed thoughtful, “what a little freak he is!
+He's got an idea that there's a picture in the gallery that's said to
+look like Jem Temple Barholm when he was a boy. Have you ever heard
+anything about it? He says a servant told his mother it was there.”
+
+“Yes, there is one,” Miss Alicia answered. “I sometimes go and look at
+it. But it makes me feel very sad. It is the handsome boy who was a page
+in the court of Charles II. He died in his teens. His name was Miles
+Hugo Charles James. Jem could see the likeness himself. Sometimes for a
+little joke I used to call him Miles Hugo.”
+
+“I believe I remember him,” said Tembarom. “I believe I asked Palford
+his name. I must go and have a look at him again. He hadn't much better
+luck than the fellow that looked like him, dying as young as that.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+
+Form, color, drama, and divers other advantages are necessary to the
+creation of an object of interest. Presenting to the world none of these
+assets, Miss Alicia had slipped through life a scarcely remarked unit.
+No little ghost of prettiness had attracted the wandering eye, no
+suggestion of agreeable or disagreeable power of self-assertion had
+arrested attention. There had been no hour in her life when she had
+expected to count as being of the slightest consequence. When she had
+knocked at the door of the study at Rowcroft Vicarage, and “dear papa”
+ had exclaimed irritably: “Who is that? Who is that?” she had always
+replied, “It is only Alicia.”
+
+This being the case, her gradual awakening to the singularity of her new
+situation was mentally a process full of doubts and sometimes of alarmed
+bewilderments. If in her girlhood a curate, even a curate with prominent
+eyes and a receding chin, had proposed to her that she should face with
+him a future enriched by the prospect of being called upon to bring up
+a probable family of twelve on one hundred and fifty pounds a year, with
+both parish and rectory barking and snapping at her worn-down heels, she
+would have been sure to assert tenderly that she was afraid she was “not
+worthy.” This was the natural habit of her mind, and in the weeks which
+followed the foggy afternoon when Tembarom “staked out his claim” she
+dwelt often upon her unworthiness of the benefits bestowed upon her.
+
+First the world below-stairs, then the village, and then the county
+itself awoke to the fact that the new Temple Temple Barholm had “taken
+her up.” The first tendency of the world below-stairs was to resent the
+unwarranted uplifting of a person whom there had been a certain luxury
+in regarding with disdain and treating with scarcely veiled lack of
+consideration. To be able to do this with a person who, after all was
+said and done, was not one of the servant class, but a sort of lady of
+birth, was not unstimulating. And below-stairs the sense of personal
+rancor against “a 'anger-on” is strong. The meals served in Miss
+Alicia's remote sitting-room had been served at leisure, her tea had
+rarely been hot, and her modestly tinkled bell irregularly answered.
+Often her far from liberally supplied fire had gone out on chilly days,
+and she had been afraid to insist on its being relighted. Her sole
+defense against inattention would have been to complain to Mr. Temple
+Barholm, and when on one occasion a too obvious neglect had obliged her
+to gather her quaking being together in mere self-respect and say, “If
+this continues to occur, William, I shall be obliged to speak to Mr.
+Temple Barholm,” William had so looked at her and so ill hid a secret
+smile that it had been almost tantamount to his saying, “I'd jolly well
+like to see you.”
+
+And now! Sitting at the end of the table opposite him, if you please!
+Walking here and walking there with him! Sitting in the library or
+wherever he was, with him talking and laughing and making as much of her
+as though she were an aunt with a fortune to leave, and with her making
+as free in talk as though at liberty to say anything that came into her
+head! Well, the beggar that had found himself on horseback was setting
+another one galloping alongside of him. In the midst of this natural
+resentment it was “a bit upsetting,” as Burrill said, to find it dawning
+upon one that absolute exactness of ceremony was as much to be required
+for “her” as for “him.” Miss Alicia had long felt secretly sure that
+she was spoken of as “her” in the servants' hall. That businesslike
+sharpness which Palford had observed in his client aided Tembarom always
+to see things without illusions. He knew that There was no particular
+reason why his army of servants should regard him for the present as
+much more than an intruder; but he also knew that if men and women had
+employment which was not made hard for them, and were well paid for
+doing, they were not anxious to lose it, and the man who paid their
+wages might give orders with some certainty of finding them obeyed. He
+was “sharp” in more ways than one. He observed shades he might have been
+expected to overlook. He observed a certain shade in the demeanor of the
+domestics when attending Miss Alicia, and it was a shade which marked
+a difference between service done for her and service done for himself.
+This was only at the outset, of course, when the secret resentment was
+felt; but he observed it, mere shade though it was.
+
+He walked out into the hall after Burrill one morning. Not having yet
+adjusted himself to the rule that when one wished to speak to a man one
+rang a bell and called him back, fifty times if necessary, he walked
+after Burrill and stopped him.
+
+“This is a pretty good place for servants, ain't it?” he said.
+
+“Yes, sir.”
+
+“Good pay, good food, not too much to do?”
+
+“Certainly, sir,” Burrill replied, somewhat disturbed by a casualness
+which yet suggested a method of getting at something or other.
+
+“You and the rest of them don't want to change, do you?”
+
+“No, sir. There is no complaint whatever as far as I have heard.”
+
+“That's all right.” Mr. Temple Barholm had put his hands into his
+pockets, and stood looking non-committal in a steady sort of way.
+“There's something I want the lot of you to get on to--right away. Miss
+Temple Barholm is going to stay here. She's got to have everything just
+as she wants it. She's got to be pleased. She's the lady of the house.
+See?”
+
+“I hope, sir,” Burrill said with professional dignity, “that Miss Temple
+Barholm has not had reason to express any dissatisfaction.”
+
+“I'm the one that would express it--quick,” said Tembarom. “She wouldn't
+have time to get in first. I just wanted to make sure I shouldn't have
+to do it. The other fellows are under you. You've got a head on your
+shoulders, I guess. It's up to you to put 'em on to it. That's all.”
+
+“Thank you, sir,” said Burrill.
+
+His master went back into the library smiling genially, and Burrill
+stood still a moment or so gazing at the door he closed behind him.
+
+Be sure the village, and finally circles not made up of cottagers, heard
+of this, howsoever mysteriously. Miss Alicia was not aware that the
+incident had occurred. She could not help observing, however, that the
+manners of the servants of the household curiously improved; also, when
+she passed through the village, that foreheads were touched without
+omission and the curtseys of playing children were prompt. When she
+dropped into a cottage, housewives polished off the seats of chairs
+vigorously before offering them, and symptoms and needs were explained
+with a respectful fluency which at times almost suggested that she might
+be relied on to use influence.
+
+“I'm afraid I have done the village people injustice,” she said
+leniently to Tembarom. “I used to think them so disrespectful and
+unappreciative. I dare say it was because I was so troubled myself. I'm
+afraid one's own troubles do sometimes make one unfair.”
+
+“Well, yours are over,” said Tembarom. “And so are mine as long as you
+stay by me.”
+
+Never had Miss Alicia been to London. She had remained, as was
+demanded of her by her duty to dear papa, at Rowcroft, which was in
+Somersetshire. She had only dreamed of London, and had had fifty-five
+years of dreaming. She had read of great functions, and seen pictures
+of some of them in the illustrated papers. She had loyally endeavored
+to follow at a distance the doings of her Majesty,--she always spoke
+of Queen Victoria reverentially as “her Majesty,”--she rejoiced when
+a prince or a princess was born or christened or married, and believed
+that a “drawing-room” was the most awe-inspiring, brilliant, and
+important function in the civilized world, scarcely second to
+Parliament. London--no one but herself or an elderly gentlewoman of her
+type could have told any one the nature of her thoughts of London.
+
+Let, therefore, those of vivid imagination make an effort to depict
+to themselves the effect produced upon her mind by Tembarom's casually
+suggesting at breakfast one morning that he thought it might be rather
+a good “stunt” for them to run up to London. By mere good fortune she
+escaped dropping the egg she had just taken from the egg-stand.
+
+“London!” she said. “Oh!”
+
+“Pearson thinks it would be a first-rate idea,” he explained. “I guess
+he thinks that if he can get me into the swell clothing stores he can
+fix me up as I ought to be fixed, if I'm not going to disgrace him. I
+should hate to disgrace Pearson. Then he can see his girl, too, and I
+want him to see his girl.”
+
+“Is--Pearson--engaged?” she asked; but the thought which was repeating
+itself aloud to her was “London! London!”
+
+“He calls it 'keeping company,' or 'walking out,'” Tembarom answered.
+“She's a nice girl, and he's dead stuck on her. Will you go with me,
+Miss Alicia?”
+
+“Dear Mr. Temple Barholm,” she fluttered, “to visit London would be a
+privilege I never dreamed it would be my great fortune to enjoy--never.”
+
+“Good business!” he ejaculated delightedly. “That's luck for me. It gave
+me the blues--what I saw of it. But if you are with me, I'll bet it'll
+be as different as afternoon tea was after I got hold of you. When shall
+we start? To-morrow?”
+
+Her sixteen-year-old blush repeated itself.
+
+“I feel so sorry. It seems almost undignified to mention it, but--I
+fear I should not look smart enough for London. My wardrobe is so very
+limited. I mustn't,” she added with a sweet effort at humor, “do the new
+Mr. Temple Barholm discredit by looking unfashionable.”
+
+He was more delighted than before.
+
+“Say,” he broke out, “I'll tell you what we'll do: we'll go together and
+buy everything 'suitable' in sight. The pair of us'll come back here as
+suitable as Burrill and Pearson. We'll paint the town red.”
+
+He actually meant it. He was like a boy with a new game. His sense of
+the dreariness of London had disappeared. He knew what it would be like
+with Miss Alicia as a companion. He had really seen nothing of the place
+himself, and he would find out every darned thing worth looking at, and
+take her to see it--theaters, shops, every show in town. When they left
+the breakfast-table it was agreed upon that they would make the journey
+the following day.
+
+He did not openly refer to the fact that among the plans for their round
+of festivities he had laid out for himself the attending to one or
+two practical points. He was going to see Palford, and he had made an
+appointment with a celebrated nerve specialist. He did not discuss this
+for several reasons. One of them was that his summing up of Miss Alicia
+was that she had had trouble enough to think over all her little life,
+and the thing for a fellow to do for her, if he liked her, was to
+give her a good time and make her feel as if she was at a picnic right
+straight along--not let her even hear of a darned thing that might worry
+her. He had said comparatively little to her about Strangeways. His
+first mention of his condition had obviously made her somewhat nervous,
+though she had been full of kindly interest. She was in private not
+sorry that it was felt better that she should not disturb the patient
+by a visit to his room. The abnormality of his condition seemed just
+slightly alarming to her.
+
+“But, oh, how good, how charitable, you are!” she had murmured.
+
+“Good,” he answered, the devout admiration of her tone rather puzzling
+him. “It ain't that. I just want to see the thing through. I dropped
+into it by accident, and then I dropped into this by accident, and that
+made it as easy as falling off a log. I believe he's going to get well
+sometime. I guess I kind of like him because he holds on to me so and
+believes I'm just It. Maybe it's because I'm stuck on myself.”
+
+His visit to Strangeways was longer than usual that afternoon. He
+explained the situation to him so that he understood it sufficiently not
+to seem alarmed by it. This was one of the advances Tembarom had noticed
+recently, that he was less easily terrified, and seemed occasionally
+to see facts in their proper relation to one another. Sometimes the
+experiments tried on him were successful, sometimes they were not, but
+he never resented them.
+
+“You are trying to help me to remember,” he said once. “I think you will
+sometime.”
+
+“Sure I will,” said Tembarom. “You're better every day.”
+
+Pearson was to remain in charge of him until toward the end of the
+London visit. Then he was to run up for a couple of days, leaving in his
+place a young footman to whom the invalid had become accustomed.
+
+The visit to London was to Miss Alicia a period of enraptured delirium.
+The beautiful hotel in which she was established, the afternoons at the
+Tower, the National Gallery, the British Museum, the evenings at the
+play, during which one saw the most brilliant and distinguished actors,
+the mornings in the shops, attended as though one were a person of
+fortune, what could be said of them? And the sacred day on which she
+saw her Majesty drive slowly by, glittering helmets, splendid uniforms,
+waving plumes, and clanking swords accompanying and guarding her, and
+gentlemen standing still with their hats off, and everybody looking
+after her with that natural touch of awe which royalty properly
+inspires! Miss Alicia's heart beat rapidly in her breast, and she
+involuntarily made a curtsey as the great lady in mourning drove by. She
+lost no shade of any flavor of ecstatic pleasure in anything, and was to
+Tembarom, who knew nothing about shades and flavors, indeed a touching
+and endearing thing.
+
+He had never got so much out of anything. If Ann had just been there,
+well, that would have been the limit. Ann was on her way to America now,
+and she wouldn't write to him or let him write to her. He had to make a
+fair trial of it. He could find out only in that way, she said. It
+was not to be denied that the youth and longing in him gave him some
+half-hours to face which made him shut himself up in his room and stare
+hard at the wall, folding his arms tightly as he tilted his chair.
+
+There arrived a day when one of the most exalted shops in Bond Street
+was invaded by an American young man of a bearing the peculiarities of
+which were subtly combined with a remotely suggested air of knowing that
+if he could find what he wanted, there was no doubt as to his power to
+get it. What he wanted was not usual, and was explained with a frankness
+which might have seemed unsophisticated, but, singularly, did not. He
+wanted to have a private talk with some feminine power in charge, and
+she must be some one who knew exactly what ladies ought to have.
+
+Being shown into a room, such a feminine power was brought to him and
+placed at his service. She was a middle-aged person, wearing beautifully
+fitted garments and having an observant eye and a dignified suavity of
+manner. She looked the young American over with a swift inclusion of
+all possibilities. He was by this time wearing extremely well-fitting
+garments himself, but she was at once aware that his tailored perfection
+was a new thing to him.
+
+He went to his point without apologetic explanation.
+
+“You know all the things any kind of a lady ought to have,” he
+said--“all the things that would make any one feel comfortable and as if
+they'd got plenty? Useful things as well as ornamental ones?”
+
+“Yes, sir,” she replied, with rising interest. “I have been in the
+establishment thirty years.”
+
+“Good business,” Tembarom replied. Already he felt relieved. “I've got
+a relation, a little old lady, and I want her to fix herself out just
+as she ought to be fixed. Now, what I'm afraid of is that she won't get
+everything she ought to unless I manage it for her somehow beforehand.
+She's got into a habit of--well, economizing. Now the time's past for
+that, and I want her to get everything a woman like you would know she
+really wants, so that she could look her best, living in a big country
+house, with a relation that thinks a lot of her.”
+
+He paused a second or so, and then went further, fixing a clear and
+astonishingly shrewd eye upon the head of the department listening to
+him.
+
+“I found out this was a high-class place,” he explained. “I made sure of
+that before I came in. In a place that was second or third class there
+might be people who'd think they'd caught a 'sucker' that would take
+anything that was unloaded on to him, because he didn't know. The things
+are for Miss Temple Barholm, and she DOES know. I shall ask her to come
+here herself to-morrow morning, and I want you to take care of her, and
+show her the best you've got that's suitable.” He seemed to like the
+word; he repeated it--“Suitable,” and quickly restrained a sudden,
+unexplainable, wide smile.
+
+The attending lady's name was Mrs. Mellish. Thirty years' experience
+had taught her many lessons. She was a hard woman and a sharp one, but
+beneath her sharp hardness lay a suppressed sense of the perfect in
+taste. To have a customer with unchecked resources put into her hands to
+do her best by was an inspiring incident. A quiver of enlightenment had
+crossed her countenance when she had heard the name of Temple Barholm.
+She had a newspaper knowledge of the odd Temple Barholm story. This
+was the next of kin who had blacked boots in New York, and the obvious
+probability that he was a fool, if it had taken the form of a hope, had
+been promptly nipped in the bud. The type from which he was furthest
+removed was that of the fortune-intoxicated young man who could be
+obsequiously flattered into buying anything which cost money enough.
+
+“Not a thing's to be unloaded on her that she doesn't like,” he added,
+“and she's not a girl that goes to pink teas. She's a--a--lady--and not
+young--and used to quiet ways.”
+
+The evidently New York word “unload” revealed him to his hearer as by a
+flash, though she had never heard it before.
+
+“We have exactly the things which will be suitable, sir,” she said. “I
+think I quite understand.” Tembarom smiled again, and, thanking her,
+went away still smiling, because he knew Miss Alicia was safe.
+
+There were of course difficulties in the way of persuading Miss Alicia
+that her duty lay in the direction of spending mornings in the most
+sumptuous of Bond Street shops, ordering for herself an entire wardrobe
+on a basis of unlimited resources. Tembarom was called upon to employ
+the most adroitly subtle reasoning, entirely founded on his “claim” and
+her affectionate willingness to give him pleasure.
+
+He really made love to her in the way a joyful young fellow can make
+love to his mother or his nicest aunt. He made her feel that she counted
+for so much in his scheme of enjoyment that to do as he asked would be
+to add a glow to it.
+
+“And they won't spoil you,” he said. “The Mellish woman that's the boss
+has promised that. I wouldn't have you spoiled for a farm,” he added
+heartily.
+
+And he spoke the truth. If he had been told that he was cherishing her
+type as though it were a priceless bit of old Saxe, he would have stared
+blankly and made a jocular remark. But it was exactly this which he
+actually clung to and adored. He even had a second private interview
+with Mrs. Mellish, and asked her to “keep her as much like she was” as
+was possible.
+
+Stimulated by the suppressed touch of artistic fervor, Mrs. Mellish
+guessed at something even before her client arrived; but the moment she
+entered the showroom all was revealed to her at once. The very hint of
+flush and tremor in Miss Alicia's manner was an assistance. Surrounded
+by a small and extremely select court composed of Mrs. Mellish and two
+low-voiced, deft-handed assistants, it was with a fine little effort
+that Miss Alicia restrained herself from exterior suggestion of
+her feeling that there was something almost impious in thinking of
+possessing the exquisite stuffs and shades displayed to her in flowing
+beauty on every side. Such linens and batistes and laces, such delicate,
+faint grays and lavenders and soft-falling blacks! If she had been
+capable of approaching the thought, such luxury might even have hinted
+at guilty splendor.
+
+Mrs. Mellish became possessed of an “idea” To create the costume of
+an exquisite, early-Victorian old lady in a play done for the most
+fashionable and popular actor manager of the most “drawing-room” of West
+End theaters, where one saw royalty in the royal box, with bouquets on
+every side, the orchestra breaking off in the middle of a strain to play
+“God Save the Queen,” and the audience standing up as the royal party
+came in--that was her idea. She carried it out, steering Miss Alicia
+with finished tact through the shoals and rapids of her timidities. And
+the result was wonderful; color,--or, rather, shades,--textures, and
+forms were made subservient by real genius. Miss Alicia--as she was
+turned out when the wardrobe was complete--might have been an elderly
+little duchess of sweet and modest good taste in the dress of forty
+years earlier. It took time, but some of the things were prepared as
+though by magic, and the night the first boxes were delivered at the
+hotel Miss Alicia, on going to bed, in kneeling down to her devotions
+prayed fervently that she might not be “led astray by fleshly desires,”
+ and that her gratitude might be acceptable, and not stained by a too
+great joy “in the things which corrupt.”
+
+The very next day occurred Rose. She was the young person to whom
+Pearson was engaged, and it appeared that if Miss Alicia would make up
+her mind to oblige Mr. Temple Barholm by allowing the girl to come to
+her as lady's-maid, even if only temporarily, she would be doing a most
+kind and charitable thing. She was a very nice, well-behaved girl, and
+unfortunately she had felt herself forced to leave her place because her
+mistress's husband was not at all a nice man. He had shown himself so
+far from nice that Pearson had been most unhappy, and Rose had been
+compelled to give notice, though she had no other situation in prospect
+and her mother was dependent on her. This was without doubt not Mr.
+Temple Barholm's exact phrasing of the story, but it was what Miss
+Alicia gathered, and what moved her deeply. It was so cruel and so sad!
+That wicked man! That poor girl! She had never had a lady's-maid, and
+might be rather at a loss at first, but it was only like Mr. Temple
+Barholm's kind heart to suggest such a way of helping the girl and poor
+Pearson.
+
+So occurred Rose, a pretty creature whose blue eyes suppressed grateful
+tears as she took Miss Alicia's instructions during their first
+interview. And Pearson arrived the same night, and, waiting upon
+Tembarom, stood before him, and with perfect respect, choked.
+
+“Might I thank you, if you please, sir,” he began, recovering
+himself--“might I thank you and say how grateful--Rose and me, sir--”
+ and choked again.
+
+“I told you it would be all right,” answered Tembarom. “It is all right.
+I wish I was fixed like you are, Pearson.”
+
+When the Countess of Mallowe called, Rose had just dressed Miss Alicia
+for the afternoon in one of the most perfect of the evolutions of
+Mrs. Mellish's idea. It was a definite creation, as even Lady Mallowe
+detected the moment her eyes fell upon it. Its hue was dull, soft gray,
+and how it managed to concede points and elude suggestions of modes
+interred, and yet remain what it did remain, and accord perfectly with
+the side ringlets and the lace cap of Mechlin, only dressmaking genius
+could have explained. The mere wearing of it gave Miss Alicia a support
+and courage which she could scarcely believe to be her own. When the
+cards of Lady Mallowe and Lady Joan Fayre were brought up to her, she
+was absolutely not really frightened; a little nervous for a moment,
+perhaps, but frightened, no. A few weeks of relief and ease, of cheery
+consideration, of perfectly good treatment and good food and good
+clothes, had begun a rebuilding of the actual cells of her.
+
+Lady Mallowe entered alone. She was a handsome person, and astonishingly
+young when considered as the mother of a daughter of twenty-seven. She
+wore a white veil, and looked pink through it. She swept into the room,
+and shook hands with Miss Alicia with delicate warmth.
+
+“We do not really know each other at all,” she said. “It is disgraceful
+how little relatives see of one another.”
+
+The disgrace, if measured by the extent of the relationship, was not
+immense. Perhaps this thought flickered across Miss Alicia's mind among
+a number of other things. She had heard “dear papa” on Lady Mallowe,
+and, howsoever lacking in graces, the vicar of Rowcroft had not lacked
+an acrid shrewdness. Miss Alicia's sensitively self-accusing soul shrank
+before a hasty realization of the fact that if he had been present when
+the cards were brought up, he would, on glancing over them through his
+spectacles, have jerked out immediately: “What does the woman want?
+She's come to get something.” Miss Alicia wished she had not been so
+immediately beset by this mental vision.
+
+Lady Mallowe had come for something. She had come to be amiable to Miss
+Temple Barholm and to establish relations with her.
+
+“Joan should have been here to meet me,” she explained. “Her dressmaker
+is keeping her, of course. She will be so annoyed. She wanted very much
+to come with me.”
+
+It was further revealed that she might arrive at any moment, which gave
+Miss Alicia an opportunity to express, with pretty grace, the hope that
+she would, and her trust that she was quite well.
+
+“She is always well,” Lady Mallowe returned. “And she is of course
+as interested as we all are in this romantic thing. It is perfectly
+delicious, like a three-volumed novel.”
+
+“It is romantic,” said Miss Alicia, wondering how much her visitor knew
+or thought she knew, and what circumstances would present themselves to
+her as delicious.
+
+“Of course one has heard only the usual talk one always hears when
+everybody is chattering about a thing,” Lady Mallowe replied, with a
+propitiating smile. “No one really knows what is true and what isn't.
+But it is nice to notice that all the gossip speaks so well of him. No
+one seems to pretend that he is anything but extremely nice himself,
+notwithstanding his disadvantages.”
+
+She kept a fine hazel eye, surrounded by a line which artistically
+represented itself as black lashes, steadily resting on Miss Alicia as
+she said the last words.
+
+“He is,” said Miss Alicia, with gentle firmness, “nicer than I had ever
+imagined any young man could be--far nicer.”
+
+Lady Mallowe's glance round the luxurious private sitting-room and
+over the perfect “idea” of Mrs. Mellish was so swift as to be almost
+imperceptible.
+
+“How delightful!” she said. “He must be unusually agreeable, or you
+would not have consented to stay and take care of him.”
+
+“I cannot tell you how HAPPY I am to have been asked to stay with him,
+Lady Mallowe,” Miss Alicia replied, the gentle firmness becoming a soft
+dignity.
+
+“Which of course shows all the more how attractive he must be. And in
+view of the past lack of advantages, what a help you can be to him!
+It is quite wonderful for him to have a relative at hand who is an
+Englishwoman and familiar with things he will feel he must learn.”
+
+A perhaps singular truth is that but for the unmistakable nature of the
+surroundings she quickly took in the significance of, and but for the
+perfection of the carrying out of Mrs. Mellish's delightful idea, it
+is more than probable that her lady-ship's manner of approaching Miss
+Alicia and certain subjects on which she desired enlightenment would
+have been much more direct and much less propitiatory. Extraordinary as
+it was, “the creature”--she thought of Tembarom as “the creature”--had
+plainly been so pleased with the chance of being properly coached that
+he had put everything, so to speak, in the little old woman's hands.
+She had got a hold upon him. It was quite likely that to regard her as a
+definite factor would only be the part of the merest discretion. She was
+evidently quite in love with him in her early-Victorian, spinster way.
+One had to be prudent with women like that who had got hold of a male
+creature for the first time in their lives, and were almost unaware
+of their own power. Their very unconsciousness made them a dangerous
+influence.
+
+With a masterly review of these facts in her mind Lady Mallowe went on
+with a fluent and pleasant talk, through the medium of which she managed
+to convey a large number of things Miss Alicia was far from being clever
+enough to realize she was talking about. She lightly waved wings of
+suggestion across the scene, she dropped infinitesimal seeds in passing,
+she left faint echoes behind her--the kind of echoes one would find
+oneself listening to and trying to hear as definitely formed sounds. She
+had been balancing herself on a precarious platform of rank and title,
+unsupported by any sordid foundation of a solid nature, through a
+lifetime spent in London. She had learned to catch fiercely at straws of
+chance, and bitterly to regret the floating past of the slightest, which
+had made of her a finished product of her kind. She talked lightly,
+and was sometimes almost witty. To her hearer she seemed to know every
+brilliant personage and to be familiar with every dazzling thing. She
+knew well what social habits and customs meant, what their value,
+or lack of value, was. There were customs, she implied skilfully,
+so established by time that it was impossible to ignore them.
+Relationships, for instance, stood for so much that was fine in England
+that one was sometimes quite touched by the far-reachingness of family
+loyalty. The head of the house of a great estate represented a certain
+power in the matter of upholding the dignity of his possessions, of
+caring for his tenantry, of standing for proper hospitality and friendly
+family feeling. It was quite beautiful as one often saw it. Throughout
+the talk there were several references to Joan, who really must come
+in shortly, which were very interesting to Miss Alicia. Lady Joan,
+Miss Alicia heard casually, was a great beauty. Her perfection and her
+extreme cleverness had made her perhaps a trifle difficile. She had
+not done--Lady Mallowe put it with a lightness of phrasing which was
+delicacy itself--what she might have done, with every exalted advantage,
+so many times. She had a profound nature. Here Lady Mallowe waved away,
+as it were, a ghost of a sigh. Since Miss Temple Barholm was a relative,
+she had no doubt heard of the unfortunate, the very sad incident which
+her mother sometimes feared prejudiced the girl even yet.
+
+“You mean--poor Jem!” broke forth involuntarily from Miss Alicia's lips.
+Lady Mallowe stared a little.
+
+“Do you call him that?” she asked. “Did you know him, then?”
+
+“I loved him,” answered Miss Alicia, winking her eyes to keep back the
+moisture in them, “though it was only when he was a little boy.”
+
+“Oh,” said Lady Mallowe, with a sudden, singular softness, “I must tell
+Joan that.”
+
+Lady Joan had not appeared even after they had had tea and her mother
+went away, but somehow Miss Alicia had reached a vaguely yearning
+feeling for her and wished very much the dressmaker had released her.
+She was quite stirred when it revealed itself almost at the last moment
+that in a few weeks both she and Lady Mallowe were to pay a visit at no
+great distance from Temple Barholm itself, and that her ladyship would
+certainly arrange to drive over to continue her delightful acquaintance
+and to see the beautiful old place again.
+
+“In any case one must, even if he lived in lonely state, pay one's
+respects to the head of the house. The truth is, of course, one is
+extremely anxious to meet him, and it is charming to know that one is
+not merely invading the privacy of a bachelor,” Lady Mallowe put it.
+
+“She'll come for YOU,” Little Ann had soberly remarked.
+
+Tembarom remembered the look in her quiet, unresentful blue eyes when
+he came in to dinner and Miss Alicia related to him the events of the
+afternoon.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+
+The spring, when they traveled back to the north, was so perceptibly
+nearer that the fugitive soft days strayed in advance at intervals that
+were briefer. They chose one for their journey, and its clear sunshine
+and hints at faint greenness were so exhilarating to Miss Alicia that
+she was a companion to make any journey an affair to rank with
+holidays and adventures. The strange luxury of traveling in a reserved
+first-class carriage, of being made timid by no sense of unfitness of
+dress or luggage, would have filled her with grateful rapture; but Rose,
+journeying with Pearson a few coaches behind, appeared at the carriage
+window at every important station to say, “Is there anything I may
+do for you, ma'am?” And there really never was anything she could do,
+because Mr. Temple Barholm remembered everything which could make her
+comfort perfect. In the moods of one who searches the prospect for
+suggestions as to pleasure he can give to himself by delighting a
+dear child, he had found and bought for her a most elegant little
+dressing-bag, with the neatest of plain-gold fittings beautifully
+initialed. It reposed upon the cushioned seat near her, and made her
+heart beat every time she caught sight of it anew. How wonderful it
+would be if poor dear, darling mama could look down and see everything
+and really know what happiness had been vouchsafed to her unworthy
+child!
+
+Having a vivid recollection of the journey made with Mr. Palford,
+Tembarom felt that his whole world had changed for him. The landscape
+had altered its aspect. Miss Alicia pointed out bits of freshening
+grass, was sure of the breaking of brown leaf-buds, and more than
+once breathlessly suspected a primrose in a sheltered hedge corner. A
+country-bred woman, with country-bred keenness of eye and a country-bred
+sense of the seasons' change, she saw so much that he had never known
+that she began to make him see also. Bare trees would be thick-leaved
+nesting-places, hedges would be white with hawthorn, and hold blue eggs
+and chirps and songs. Skylarks would spring out of the fields and soar
+into the sky, dropping crystal chains of joyous trills. The cottage
+gardens would be full of flowers, there would be poppies gleaming
+scarlet in the corn, and in buttercup-time all the green grass would be
+a sheet of shining gold.
+
+“When it all happens I shall be like a little East-Sider taken for a
+day in the country. I shall be asking questions at every step,” Tembarom
+said. “Temple Barholm must be pretty fine then.”
+
+“It is so lovely,” said Miss Alicia, turning to him almost solemnly,
+“that sometimes it makes one really lose one's breath.”
+
+He looked out of the window with sudden wistfulness.
+
+“I wish Ann--” he began and then, seeing the repressed question in her
+eyes, made up his mind.
+
+He told her about Little Ann. He did not use very many words, but
+she knew a great deal when he had finished. And her spinster soul was
+thrilled. Neither she nor poor Emily had ever had an admirer, and it was
+not considered refined for unsought females to discuss “such subjects.”
+ Domestic delirium over the joy of an engagement in families in which
+daughters were a drug she had seen. It was indeed inevitable that there
+should be more rejoicing over one Miss Timson who had strayed from the
+fold into the haven of marriage than over the ninety-nine Misses Timson
+who remained behind. But she had never known intimately any one who was
+in love--really in love. Mr. Temple Barholm must be. When he spoke of
+Little Ann he flushed shyly and his eyes looked so touching and nice.
+His voice sounded different, and though of course his odd New York
+expressions were always rather puzzling, she felt as though she saw
+things she had had no previous knowledge of--things which thrilled her.
+
+“She must be a very--very nice girl,” she ventured at length. “I am
+afraid I have never been into old Mrs. Hutchinson's cottage. She is
+quite comfortably off in her way, and does not need parish care. I wish
+I had seen Miss Hutchinson.”
+
+“I wish she had seen you,” was Tembarom's answer.
+
+Miss Alicia reflected.
+
+“She must be very clever to have such--sensible views,” she remarked.
+
+If he had remained in New York, and there had been no question of his
+inheriting Temple Barholm, the marriage would have been most suitable.
+But however “superior” she might be, a vision of old Mrs. Hutchinson's
+granddaughter as the wife of Mr. Temple Barholm, and of noisy old Mr.
+Hutchinson as his father-in-law was a staggering thing.
+
+“You think they were sensible?” asked Tembarom. “Well, she never did
+anything that wasn't. So I guess they were. And what she says GOES. I
+wanted you to know, anyhow. I wouldn't like you not to know. I'm too
+fond of you, Miss Alicia.” And he put his hand round her neat glove and
+squeezed it. The tears of course came into her tender eyes. Emotion of
+any sort always expressed itself in her in this early-Victorian manner.
+
+“This Lady Joan girl,” he said suddenly not long afterward, “isn't she
+the kind that I'm to get used to--the kind in the pictorial magazine
+Ann talked about? I bought one at the news-stand at the depot before
+we started. I wanted to get on to the pictures and see what they did to
+me.”
+
+He found the paper among his belongings and regarded it with the
+expression of a serious explorer. It opened at a page of illustrations
+of slim goddesses in court dresses. By actual measurement, if regarded
+according to scale, each was about ten feet high; but their long lines,
+combining themselves with court trains, waving plumes, and falling
+veils, produced an awe-inspiring effect. Tembarom gazed at them in
+absorbed silence.
+
+“Is she something like any of these?” he inquired finally.
+
+Miss Alicia looked through her glasses.
+
+“Far more beautiful, I believe,” she answered. “These are only
+fashion-plates, and I have heard that she is a most striking girl.”
+
+“A beaut' from Beautsville!” he said. “So that's what I'm up against! I
+wonder how much use that kind of a girl would have for me.”
+
+He gave a good deal of attention to the paper before he laid it aside.
+As she watched him, Miss Alicia became gradually aware of the existence
+of a certain hint of determined squareness in his boyish jaw. It was
+perhaps not much more than a hint, but it really was there, though she
+had not noticed it before. In fact, it usually hid itself behind his
+slangy youthfulness and his readiness for any good cheer.
+
+One may as well admit that it sustained him during his novitiate and
+aided him to pass through it without ignominy or disaster. He was
+strengthened also by a private resolve to bear himself in such a manner
+as would at least do decent credit to Little Ann and her superior
+knowledge. With the curious eyes of servants, villagers, and secretly
+outraged neighborhood upon him, he was shrewd enough to know that he
+might easily become a perennial fount of grotesque anecdote, to be used
+as a legitimate source of entertainment in cottages over the consumption
+of beans and bacon, as well as at great houses when dinner-table talk
+threatened to become dull if not enlivened by some spice. He would not
+have thought of this or been disturbed by it but for Ann. She knew, and
+he was not going to let her be met on her return from America with what
+he called “a lot of funny dope” about him.
+
+“No girl would like it,” he said to himself. “And the way she said she
+'cared too much' just put it up to me to see that the fellow she cares
+for doesn't let himself get laughed at.”
+
+Though he still continued to be jocular on subjects which to his valet
+seemed almost sacred, Pearson was relieved to find that his employer
+gradually gave himself into his hands in a manner quite amenable. In the
+touching way in which nine out of ten nice, domesticated American males
+obey the behests of the women they are fond of, he had followed Ann's
+directions to the letter. Guided by the adept Pearson, he had gone to
+the best places in London and purchased the correct things, returning to
+Temple Barholm with a wardrobe to which any gentleman might turn at any
+moment without a question.
+
+“He's got good shoulders, though he does slouch a bit,” Pearson said to
+Rose. “And a gentleman's shoulders are more than half the battle.”
+
+What Tembarom himself felt cheered by was the certainty that if Ann
+saw him walking about the park or the village, or driving out with Miss
+Alicia in the big landau, or taking her in to dinner every evening, or
+even going to church with her, she would not have occasion to flush at
+sight of him.
+
+The going to church was one of the duties of his position he found
+out. Miss Alicia “put him on” to that. It seemed that he had to present
+himself to the villagers “as an example.” If the Temple Barholm pews
+were empty, the villagers, not being incited to devotional exercise by
+his exalted presence, would feel at liberty to remain at home, and in
+the irreligious undress of shirt-sleeves sit and smoke their pipes, or,
+worse still, gather at “the Hare and Hounds” and drink beer. Also, it
+would not be “at all proper” not to go to church.
+
+Pearson produced a special cut of costume for this ceremony, and
+Tembarom walked with Miss Alicia across the park to the square-towered
+Norman church.
+
+In a position of dignity the Temple Barholm pews over-looked the
+congregation. There was the great square pew for the family, with two
+others for servants. Footmen and house-maids gazed reverentially at
+prayer-books. Pearson, making every preparation respectfully to declare
+himself a “miserable sinner” when the proper moment arrived, could
+scarcely re-strain a rapid side glance as the correctly cut and fitted
+and entirely “suitable” work of his hands opened the pew-door for Miss
+Alicia, followed her in, and took his place.
+
+Let not the fact that he had never been to church before be counted
+against him. There was nothing very extraordinary in the fact. He had
+felt no antipathy to church-going, but he had not by chance fallen under
+proselyting influence, and it had certainly never occurred to him that
+he had any place among the well-dressed, comfortable-looking people
+he had seen flocking into places of worship in New York. As far as
+religious observances were concerned, he was an unadulterated heathen,
+and was all the more to be congratulated on being a heathen of genial
+tendencies.
+
+The very large pew, under the stone floor of which his ancestors had
+slept undisturbedly for centuries, interested him greatly. A recumbent
+marble crusader in armor, with feet crossed in the customary manner,
+fitted into a sort of niche in one side of the wall. There were carved
+tablets and many inscriptions in Latin wheresoever one glanced. The
+place was like a room. A heavy, round table, on which lay prayer-books,
+Bibles, and hymn-books, occupied the middle. About it were arranged
+beautiful old chairs, with hassocks to kneel on. Toward a specially
+imposing chair with arms Miss Alicia directed, him with a glance. It was
+apparently his place. He was going to sit down when he saw Miss Alicia
+gently push forward a hassock with her foot, and kneel on it, covering
+her face with her hands as she bent her head. He hastily drew forth his
+hassock and followed her example.
+
+That was it, was it? It wasn't only a matter of listening to a sermon;
+you had to do things. He had better watch out and see that he didn't
+miss anything. She didn't know it was his first time, and it might worry
+her to the limit if he didn't put it over all right. One of the things
+he had noticed in her was her fear of attracting attention by failing to
+do exactly the “proper thing.” If he made a fool of himself by kneeling
+down when he ought to stand up, or lying down when he ought to sit,
+she'd get hot all over, thinking what the villagers or the other people
+would say. Well, Ann hadn't wanted him to look different from other
+fellows or to make breaks. He'd look out from start to finish. He
+directed a watchful eye at Miss Alicia through his fingers. She remained
+kneeling a few moments, and then very quietly got up. He rose with her,
+and took his big chair when she sat down. He breathed more freely when
+they had got that far. That was the first round.
+
+It was not a large church, but a gray and solemn impression of dignity
+brooded over it. It was dim with light, which fell through stained-glass
+memorial windows set deep in the thick stone walls. The silence
+which reigned throughout its spaces seemed to Tembarom of a new kind,
+different from the silence of the big house. The occasional subdued
+rustle of turned prayer-book leaves seemed to accentuate it; the
+most careful movement could not conceal itself; a slight cough was
+a startling thing. The way, Tembarom thought, they could get things
+dead-still in English places!
+
+The chimes, which had been ringing their last summons to the tardy,
+slackened their final warning notes, became still slower, stopped.
+There was a slight stir in the benches occupied by the infant school. It
+suggested that something new was going to happen. From some unseen place
+came the sound of singing voices--boyish voices and the voices of men.
+Tembarom involuntarily turned his head. Out of the unseen place came a
+procession in white robes. Great Scott! every one was standing up! He
+must stand up, too. The boys and men in white garments filed into their
+seats. An elderly man, also in white robes, separated himself from them,
+and, going into his special place, kneeled down. Then he rose and began
+to read:
+
+“When the wicked man turneth away from his wickedness--”
+
+Tembarom took the open book which Miss Alicia had very delicately pushed
+toward him. He read the first words,--that was plain sailing,--then he
+seemed to lose his place. Miss Alicia turned a leaf. He turned one also.
+
+“Dearly beloved brethren--”
+
+There you were. This was once more plain sailing. He could follow it.
+What was the matter with Miss Alicia? She was kneeling again, everybody
+was kneeling. Where was the hassock? He went down upon his knees, hoping
+Miss Alicia had not seen that he wasn't going to kneel at all. Then when
+the minister said “Amen,” the congregation said it, too, and he came in
+too late, so that his voice sounded out alone. He must watch that. Then
+the minister knelt, and all the people prayed aloud with him. With the
+book before him he managed to get in after the first few words; but he
+was not ready with the responses, and in the middle of them everybody
+stood up again. And then the organ played, and every one sang. He
+couldn't sing, anyhow, and he knew he couldn't catch on to the kind of
+thing they were doing. He hoped Miss Alicia wouldn't mind his standing
+up and holding his book and doing nothing. He could not help seeing that
+eyes continually turned toward him. They'd notice every darned break he
+made, and Miss Alicia would know they did. He felt quite hot more than
+once. He watched Miss Alicia like a hawk; he sat down and listened to
+reading, he stood up and listened to singing; he kneeled, he tried to
+chime in with “Amens” and to keep up with Miss Alicia's bending of head
+and knee. But the creed, with its sudden turn toward the altar, caught
+him unawares, he lost himself wholly in the psalms, the collects left
+him in deep water, hopeless of ever finding his place again, and the
+litany baffled him, when he was beginning to feel safe, by changing from
+“miserable sinners” to “Spare us Good Lord” and “We beseech thee to hear
+us.” If he could just have found the place he would have been all
+right, but an honest anxiety to be right excited him, and the fear of
+embarrassing Miss Alicia by going wrong made the morning a strenuous
+thing. He was so relieved to find he might sit still when the sermon
+began that he gave the minister an attention which might have marked
+him, to the chance beholder, as a religious enthusiast.
+
+By the time the service had come to an end the stately peace of the
+place had seemed to sink into his being and become part of himself.
+The voice of the minister bestowing his blessing, the voices of the
+white-clothed choir floating up into the vaulted roof, stirred him to a
+remote pleasure. He liked it, or he knew he would like it when he knew
+what to do. The filing out of the choristers, the silent final prayer,
+the soft rustle of people rising gently from their knees, somehow
+actually moved him by its suggestion of something before unknown. He was
+a heathen still, but a heathen vaguely stirred.
+
+He was very quiet as he walked home across the park with Miss Alicia.
+
+“How did you enjoy the sermon?” she asked with much sweetness.
+
+“I 'm not used to sermons, but it seemed all right to me,” he answered.
+“What I've got to get on to is knowing when to stand up and when to sit
+down. I wasn't much of a winner at it this morning. I guess you noticed
+that.”
+
+But his outward bearing had been much more composed than his inward
+anxiety had allowed him to believe. His hesitations had not produced the
+noticeable effect he had feared.
+
+“Do you mean you are not quite familiar with the service?” she said.
+Poor dear boy! he had perhaps not been able to go to church regularly at
+all.
+
+“I'm not familiar with any service,” he answered without prejudice. “I
+never went to church before.”
+
+She slightly started and then smiled.
+
+“Oh, you mean you have never been to the Church of England,” she said.
+
+Then he saw that, if he told her the exact truth, she would be
+frightened and shocked. She would not know what to say or what to think.
+To her unsophisticated mind only murderers and thieves and criminals
+NEVER went to church. She just didn't know. Why should she? So he smiled
+also.
+
+“No, I've never been to the Church of England,” he said.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+
+The country was discreetly conservative in its social attitude. The gulf
+between it and the new owner of Temple Barholm was too wide and deep to
+be crossed without effort combined with immense mental agility. It was
+on the whole, much easier not to begin a thing at all than to begin it
+and find one must hastily search about for not too noticeable methods
+of ending it. A few unimportant, tentative calls were made, and
+several ladies who had remained unaware of Miss Alicia during her first
+benefactor's time drove over to see what she was like and perhaps by
+chance hear something of interest. One or two of them who saw Tembarom
+went away puzzled and amazed. He did not drop his h's, which they had
+of course expected, and he was well dressed, and not bad-looking; but
+it was frequently impossible to understand what he was talking about, he
+used such odd phrases. He seemed good natured enough, and his way with
+little old Miss Temple Barholm was really quite nice, queer as it was.
+It was queer because he was attentive to her in a manner in which
+young men were not usually attentive to totally insignificant, elderly
+dependents.
+
+Tembarom derived an extremely diluted pleasure from the visits. The few
+persons he saw reminded him in varying degrees of Mr. Palford. They had
+not before seen anything like his species, and they did not know what
+to do with him. He also did not know what to do with them. A certain
+inelasticity frustrated him at the outset. When, in obedience to Miss
+Alicia's instructions, he had returned the visits, he felt he had not
+gone far.
+
+Serious application enabled him to find his way through the church
+service, and he accompanied Miss Alicia to church with great regularity.
+He began to take down the books from the library shelves and look them
+over gravely. The days gradually ceased to appear so long, but he had
+a great deal of time on his hands, and he tried to find ways of filling
+it. He wondered if Ann would be pleased if he learned things out of
+books.
+
+When he tentatively approached the subject of literature with Miss
+Alicia, she glowed at the delightful prospect of his reading aloud to
+her in the evenings--“reading improving things like history and the
+poets.”
+
+“Let's take a hack at it some night,” he said pleasantly.
+
+The more a fellow knew, the better it was for him, he supposed; but he
+wondered, if anything happened and he went back to New York, how much
+“improving things” and poetry would help a man in doing business.
+
+The first evening they began with Gray's “Elegy,” and Miss Alicia felt
+that it did not exhilarate him; she was also obliged to admit that
+he did not read it very well. But she felt sure he would improve.
+Personally she was touchingly happy. The sweetly domestic picture of
+the situation, she sitting by the fire with her knitting and he
+reading aloud, moved and delighted her. The next evening she suggested
+Tennyson's “Maud.” He was not as much stirred by it as she had hoped. He
+took a somewhat humorous view of it.
+
+“He had it pretty bad, hadn't he?”' he said of the desperate lover.
+
+“Oh, if only you could once have heard Sims Reeves sing 'Come into the
+Garden, Maud'!” she sighed. “A kind friend once took me to hear him, and
+I have never, never forgotten it.”
+
+But Mr. Temple Barholm notably did not belong to the atmosphere of
+impassioned tenors.
+
+On still another evening they tried Shakspere. Miss Alicia felt that
+a foundation of Shakspere would be “improving” indeed. They began with
+“Hamlet.”
+
+He found play-reading difficult and Shaksperian language baffling, but
+he made his way with determination until he reached a point where he
+suddenly grew quite red and stopped.
+
+“Say, have you read this?” he inquired after his hesitation.
+
+“The plays of Shakspere are a part of every young lady's education,” she
+answered; “but I am afraid I am not at all a Shaksperian scholar.”
+
+“A young lady's education?” he repeated. “Gee whizz!” he added softly
+after a pause.
+
+He glanced over a page or so hastily, and then laid the book down.
+
+“Say,” he suggested, with an evasive air, “let's go over that 'Maud' one
+again. It's--well, it's easier to read aloud.”
+
+The crude awkwardness of his manner suddenly made Miss Alicia herself
+flush and drop a stitch in her knitting. How dreadful of her not to have
+thought of that!
+
+“The Elizabethan age was, I fear, a rather coarse one in some respects.
+Even history acknowledges that Queen Elizabeth herself used profane
+language.” She faltered and coughed a little apologetic cough as she
+picked up her stitch again.
+
+“I bet Ann's never seen inside Shakspere,” said Tembarom. Before reading
+aloud in the future he gave some previous personal attention to the poem
+or subject decided upon. It may be at once frankly admitted that when he
+read aloud it was more for Miss Alicia's delectation than for his own.
+He saw how much she enjoyed the situation.
+
+His effect of frankness and constant boyish talk was so inseparable from
+her idea of him that she found it a puzzling thing to realize that she
+gradually began to feel aware of a certain remote reserve in him,
+or what might perhaps be better described as a habit of silence upon
+certain subjects. She felt it marked in the case of Strangeways. She
+surmised that he saw Strangeways often and spent a good deal of time
+with him, but he spoke of him rarely, and she never knew exactly what
+hours were given to him. Sometimes she imagined he found him a greater
+responsibility than he had expected. Several times when she believed
+that he had spent part of a morning or afternoon in his room, he was
+more silent than usual and looked puzzled and thoughtful. She observed,
+as Mr. Palford had, that the picture-gallery, with its portraits of his
+ancestors, had an attraction. A certain rainy day he asked her to go
+with him and look them over. It was inevitable that she should soon
+wander to the portrait of Miles Hugo and remain standing before it.
+Tembarom followed, and stood by her side in silence until her sadness
+broke its bounds with a pathetic sigh.
+
+“Was he very like him?” he asked.
+
+She made an unconscious, startled movement. For the moment she had
+forgotten his presence, and she had not really expected him to remember.
+
+“I mean Jem,” he answered her surprised look. “How was he like him? Was
+there--” he hesitated and looked really interested--“was he like him in
+any particular thing?”
+
+“Yes,” she said, turning to the portrait of Miles Hugo again. “They both
+had those handsome, drooping eyes, with the lashes coming together
+at the corners. There is something very fascinating about them, isn't
+there? I used to notice it so much in dear little Jem. You see how
+marked they are in Miles Hugo.”
+
+“Yes,” Tembarom answered. “A fellow who looked that way at a girl when
+he made love to her would get a strangle-holt. She wouldn't forget him
+soon.”
+
+“It strikes you in that way, too?” said Miss Alicia, shyly. “I used to
+wonder if it was--not quite nice of me to think of it. But it did seem
+that if any one did look at one like that--” Maidenly shyness overcame
+her. “Poor Lady Joan!” she sighed.
+
+“There's a sort of cleft in his chin, though it's a good, square chin,”
+ he suggested. “And that smile of his--Were Jem's--?”
+
+“Yes, they were. The likeness was quite odd sometimes--quite.”
+
+“Those are things that wouldn't be likely to change much when he grew
+up,” Tembarom said, drawing a little closer to the picture. “Poor Jem!
+He was up against it hard and plenty. He had it hardest. This chap only
+died.”
+
+There was no mistaking his sympathy. He asked so many questions that
+they sat down and talked instead of going through the gallery. He was
+interested in the detail of all that had occurred after the ghastly
+moment when Jem had risen from the card-table and stood looking around,
+like some baited dying animal, at the circle of cruel faces drawing in
+about him. How soon had he left London? Where had he gone first? How had
+he been killed? He had been buried with others beneath a fall of earth
+and stones. Having heard this much, Tembarom saw he could not ask more
+questions. Miss Alicia became pale, and her hands trembled. She could
+not bear to discuss details so harrowing.
+
+“Say, I oughtn't to let you talk about that,” he broke out, and he
+patted her hand and made her get up and finish their walk about the
+gallery. He held her elbow in his own odd, nice way as he guided her,
+and the things he said, and the things he pretended to think or not to
+understand, were so amusing that in a short time he had made her
+laugh. She knew him well enough by this time to be aware that he was
+intentionally obliging her to forget what it only did her harm to
+remember. That was his practical way of looking at it.
+
+“Getting a grouch on or being sorry for what you can't help cuts no
+ice,” he sometimes said. “When it does, me for getting up at daybreak
+and keeping at it! But it doesn't, you bet your life on that.”
+
+She could see that he had really wanted to hear about Jem, but he knew
+it was bad for her to recall things, and he would not allow her to dwell
+on them, just as she knew he would not allow himself to dwell on little
+Miss Hutchinson, remotely placed among the joys of his beloved New York.
+
+Two other incidents besides the visit to Miles Hugo afterward marked
+that day when Miss Alicia looked back on it. The first was his unfolding
+to her his plans for the house-party, which was characteristic of his
+habit of thinking things over and deciding them before he talked about
+them.
+
+“If I'm going to try the thing out, as Ann says I must,” he began when
+they had gone back to the library after lunch, “I've got to get going.
+I'm not seeing any of those Pictorial girls, and I guess I've got to see
+some.”
+
+“You will be invited to dine at places,” said Miss Alicia,--“presently,”
+ she added bravely, in fact, with an air of greater conviction than she
+felt.
+
+“If it's not the law that they've got to invite me or go to jail,” said
+Tembarom, “I don't blame 'em for not doing it if they're not stuck on
+me. And they're not; and it's natural. But I've got to get in my fine
+work, or my year'll be over before I've 'found out for myself,' as Ann
+called it. There's where I'm at, Miss Alicia--and I've been thinking of
+Lady Joan and her mother. You said you thought they'd come and stay here
+if they were properly asked.”
+
+“I think they would,” answered Miss Alicia with her usual delicacy.
+“I thought I gathered from Lady Mallowe that, as she was to be in the
+neighborhood, she would like to see you and Temple Barholm, which she
+greatly admires.”
+
+“If you'll tell me what to do, I'll get her here to stay awhile,” he
+said, “and Lady Joan with her. You'd have to show me how to write to ask
+them; but perhaps you'd write yourself.”
+
+“They will be at Asshawe Holt next week,” said Miss Alicia, “and we
+could go and call on them together. We might write to them in London
+before they leave.”
+
+“We'll do it,” answered Tembarom. His manner was that of a practical
+young man attacking matter-of-fact detail. “From what I hear, Lady Joan
+would satisfy even Ann. They say she's the best-looker on the slate. If
+I see her every day I shall have seen the blue-ribbon winner. Then if
+she's here, perhaps others of her sort'll come, too; and they'll have to
+see me whether they like it or not--and I shall see them. Good Lord!” he
+added seriously, “I'd let 'em swarm all over me and bite me all summer
+if it would fix Ann.”
+
+He stood up, with his hands thrust deep in his pockets, and looked down
+at the floor.
+
+“I wish she knew T. T. like T. T. knows himself,” he said. It was quite
+wistful.
+
+It was so wistful and so boyish that Miss Alicia was thrilled as he
+often thrilled her.
+
+“She ought to be a very happy girl,” she exclaimed.
+
+“She's going to be,” he answered, “sure as you're alive. But whatever
+she does, is right, and this is as right as everything else. So it just
+goes.”
+
+They wrote their letters at once, and sent them off by the afternoon
+post. The letter Miss Alicia composed, and which Tembarom copied, he
+read and reread, with visions of Jim Bowles and Julius looking over his
+shoulder. If they picked it up on Broadway, with his name signed to it,
+and read it, they'd throw a fit over it, laughing. But he supposed she
+knew what you ought to write.
+
+It had not, indeed, the masculine touch. When Lady Mallowe read it, she
+laughed several times. She knew quite well that he had not known what
+to say, and, allowing Miss Alicia to instruct him, had followed her
+instructions to the letter. But she did not show the letter to Joan,
+who was difficult enough to manage without being given such material to
+comment upon.
+
+The letters had just been sent to the post when a visitor was
+announced--Captain Palliser. Tembarom remembered the name, and recalled
+also certain points connected with him. He was the one who was a
+promoter of schemes--“One of the smooth, clever ones that get up
+companies,” Little Ann had said.
+
+That in a well-bred and not too pronounced way he looked smooth and
+clever might be admitted. His effect was that of height, finished
+slenderness of build, and extremely well-cut garments. He was no longer
+young, and he had smooth, thin hair and a languidly observant gray eye.
+
+“I have been staying at Detchworth Grange,” he explained when he had
+shaken hands with the new Temple Barholm and Miss Alicia. “It gave me an
+excellent opportunity to come and pay my respects.”
+
+There was a hint of uncertainty in the observant gray eye. The fact was
+that he realized in the space of five minutes that he knew his ground
+even less than he had supposed he did. He had not spent his week at
+Detchworth Grange without making many quiet investigations, but he had
+found out nothing whatever. The new man was an ignoramus, but no one had
+yet seemed to think him exactly a fool. He was not excited by the new
+grandeurs of his position and he was not ashamed of himself. Captain
+Palliser wondered if he was perhaps sharp--one of those New Yorkers
+shrewd even to light-fingeredness in clever scheming. Stories of a newly
+created method of business dealing involving an air of candor and
+almost primitive good nature--an American method--had attracted Captain
+Palliser's attention for some time. A certain Yankee rawness of manner
+played a part as a factor, a crudity which would throw a man off guard
+if he did not recognize it. The person who employed the method was
+of philosophical non-combativeness. The New York phrase was that “He
+jollied a man along.” Immense schemes had been carried through in that
+way. Men in London, in England, were not sufficiently light of touch
+in their jocularity. He wondered if perhaps this young fellow, with his
+ready laugh and rather loose-jointed, casual way of carrying himself,
+was of this dangerous new school.
+
+What, however, could he scheme for, being the owner of Temple Barholm's
+money? It may be mentioned at once that Captain Palliser's past had
+been such as had fixed him in the belief that every one was scheming
+for something. People with money wanted more or were privately arranging
+schemes to prevent other schemers from getting any shade the better of
+them. Debutantes with shy eyes and slim figures had their little plans
+to engineer delicately. Sometimes they were larger plans than the
+uninitiated would have suspected as existing in the brains of creatures
+in their 'teens, sometimes they were mere fantastic little ideas
+connected with dashing young men or innocent dances which must be
+secured or lovely young rivals who must be evaded. Young men had also
+deft things to do--people to see or not to see, reasons for themselves
+being seen or avoiding observation. As years increased, reasons for
+schemes became more numerous and amazingly more varied. Women with
+daughters, with sons, with husbands, found in each relationship
+a necessity for active, if quiet, manoeuvering. Women like Lady
+Mallowe--good heaven! by what schemes did not that woman live and have
+her being--and her daughter's--from day to day! Without money, without
+a friend who was an atom more to be relied on than she would have been
+herself if an acquaintance had needed her aid, her outwardly well-to-do
+and fashionable existence was a hand-to-hand fight. No wonder she had
+turned a still rather brilliant eye upon Sir Moses Monaldini, the great
+Israelite financier. All of these types passed rapidly before his mental
+vision as he talked to the American Temple Barholm. What could he want,
+by chance? He must want something, and it would be discreet to find out
+what it chanced to be.
+
+If it was social success, he would be better off in London, where in
+these days you could get a good run for your money and could swing
+yourself up from one rung of the ladder to another if you paid some
+one to show you how. He himself could show him how. A youngster who
+had lived the beastly hard life he had lived would be likely to find
+exhilaration in many things not difficult to purchase. It was an odd
+thing, by the way, the fancy he had taken to the little early-Victorian
+spinster. It was not quite natural. It perhaps denoted tendencies--or
+lack of tendencies--it would also be well to consider. Palliser was
+a sufficiently finished product himself to be struck greatly by the
+artistic perfection of Miss Alicia, and to wonder how much the new man
+understood it.
+
+He did not talk to him about schemes. He talked to him of New York,
+which he had never seen and hoped sometime shortly to visit. The
+information he gained was not of the kind he most desired, but it
+edified him. Tembarom's knowledge of high finance was a street lad's
+knowledge of it, and he himself knew its limitations and probable
+unreliability. Such of his facts as rested upon the foundation of
+experience did not include multimillionaires and their resources.
+
+Captain Palliser passed lightly to Temple Barholm and its neighborhood.
+He knew places and names, and had been to Detchworth more than once.
+He had never visited Temple Barholm, and his interest suggested that he
+would like to walk through the gardens. Tembarom took him out, and they
+strolled about for some time. Even an alert observer would not have
+suspected the fact that as they strolled, Tembarom slouching a trifle
+and with his hands in his pockets, Captain Palliser bearing himself with
+languid distinction, each man was summing up the other and considering
+seriously how far and in what manner he could be counted as an asset.
+
+“You haven't been to Detchworth yet?” Palliser inquired.
+
+“No, not yet,” answered Tembarom. The Granthams were of those who had
+not yet called.
+
+“It's an agreeable house. The Granthams are agreeable people.”
+
+“Are there any young people in the family?” Tembarom asked.
+
+“Young people? Male or female?” Palliser smilingly put it. Suddenly it
+occurred to him that this might give him a sort of lead.
+
+“Girls,” said Tembarom, crudely--“just plain girls.”
+
+Palliser laughed. Here it was, perhaps.
+
+“They are not exactly 'plain' girls, though they are not beauties.
+There are four Misses Grantham. Lucy is the prettiest. Amabel is quite
+tremendous at tennis.”
+
+“Are they ladies?” inquired Tembarom.
+
+Captain Palliser turned and involuntarily stared at him. What was the
+fellow getting at?
+
+“I'm afraid I don't quite understand,” he said.
+
+The new Temple Barholm looked quite serious. He did not, amazing to
+relate, look like a fool even when he gave forth his extraordinary
+question. It was his almost business-like seriousness which saved him.
+
+“I mean, do you call them Lady Lucy and Lady Amabel?” he answered.
+
+If he had been younger, less hardened, or less finished, Captain
+Palliser would have laughed outright. But he answered without
+self-revelation.
+
+“Oh, I see. You were asking whether the family is a titled one. No;
+it is a good old name, quite old, in fact, but no title goes with the
+estate.”
+
+“Who are the titled people about here?” Tembarom asked, quite unabashed.
+
+“The Earl of Pevensy at Pevensy Park, the Duke of Stone at Stone Hover,
+Lord Hambrough at Doone. Doone is in the next county, just over the
+border.”
+
+“Have they all got daughters?”
+
+Captain Palliser found it expedient to clear his throat before speaking.
+
+“Lord Pevensy has daughters, so has the duke. Lord Hambrough has three
+sons.”
+
+“How many daughters are there--in a bunch?” Mr. Temple Barholm suggested
+liberally.
+
+There Captain Palliser felt it safe to allow himself to smile, as though
+taking it with a sense of humor.
+
+“'In a bunch' is an awfully good way of putting it,” he said. “It
+happens to apply perhaps rather unfortunately well; both families are
+much poorer than they should be, and daughters must be provided for.
+Each has four. 'In a bunch' there are eight: Lady Alice, Lady Edith,
+Lady Ethel, and Lady Celia at Stone Hover; Lady Beatrice, Lady Gwynedd,
+Lady Honora, and Lady Gwendolen at Pevensy Park. And not a fortune among
+them, poor girls!”
+
+“It's not the money that matters so much,” said the astounding
+foreigner, “it's the titles.”
+
+Captain Palliser stopped short in the garden path for a moment. He could
+scarcely believe his ears. The crude grotesqueness of it so far got the
+better of him that if he had not coughed he would have betrayed himself.
+
+“I've had a confounded cold lately,” he said. “Excuse me; I must get it
+over.”
+
+He turned a little aside and coughed energetically.
+
+After watching him a few seconds Tembarom slipped two fingers into his
+waistcoat pocket and produced a small tube of tablets.
+
+“Take two of these,” he said as soon as the cough stopped. “I always
+carry it about with me. It's a New York thing called 'G. Destroyer.' G
+stands for grippe.”
+
+Palliser took it.
+
+“Thanks. With water? No? Just dissolve in the mouth. Thanks awfully.”
+ And he took two, with tears still standing in his eyes.
+
+“Don't taste bad, do they?” Mr. Temple Barholm remarked encouragingly.
+
+“Not at all. I think I shall be all right now. I just needed the relief.
+I have been trying to restrain it.”
+
+“That's a mistake,” said Tembarom. They strolled on a pace or so, and
+he began again, as though he did not mean to let the subject drop. “It's
+the titles,” he said, “and the kind. How many of them are good-lookers?”
+
+Palliser reflected a moment, as though making mental choice.
+
+“Lady Alice and Lady Celia are rather plain,” he said, “and both of them
+are invalidish. Lady Ethel is tall and has handsome eyes, but Lady Edith
+is really the beauty of the family. She rides and dances well and has a
+charming color.”
+
+“And the other ones,” Tembaron suggested as he paused--“Lady Beatrice
+and Lady Gwynedd and Lady Honora and Lady Gwendolen.”
+
+“You remember their names well,” Palliser remarked with a half-laugh.
+
+“Oh, I shall remember them all right,” Tembarom answered. “I earned
+twenty-five per in New York by getting names down fine.”
+
+“The Talchesters are really all rather taking. Talchester is Lord
+Pevensy's family name,” Palliser explained. “They are girls who have
+pretty little noses and bright complexions and eyes. Lady Gwynedd and
+Lady Honora both have quite fascinating dimples.”
+
+“Dimples!” exclaimed his companion. “Good business.”
+
+“Do you like dimples particularly?” Palliser inquired with an impartial
+air.
+
+“I'd always make a bee-line for a dimple,” replied Mr. Temple Barholm.
+“Clear the way when I start.”
+
+This was New York phrasing, and was plainly humorous; but there was
+something more than humor in his eye and smile--something hinting
+distantly at recollection.
+
+“You'll find them at Pevensy Park,” said Palliser.
+
+“What about Lady Joan Fayre?” was the next inquiry.
+
+Palliser's side glance at him was observant indeed. He asked himself how
+much the man could know. Taking the past into consideration, Lady Joan
+might turn out to be a subject requiring delicate handling. It was not
+the easiest thing in the world to talk at all freely to a person with
+whom one desired to keep on good terms, about a young woman supposed
+still to cherish a tragic passion for the dead man who ought to stand
+at the present moment in the person's, figuratively speaking, extremely
+ill-fitting shoes.
+
+“Lady Joan has been from her first season an undeniable beauty,” he
+replied.
+
+“She and the old lady are going to stay at a place called Asshawe Holt.
+I think they're going next week,” Tembarom said.
+
+“The old lady?” repeated Captain Palliser.
+
+“I mean her mother. The one that's the Countess of Mallowe.”
+
+“Have you met Lady Mallowe?” Palliser inquired with a not wholly
+repressed smile. A vision of Lady Mallowe over-hearing their
+conversation arose before him.
+
+“No, I haven't. What's she like?”
+
+“She is not the early-or mid-Victorian old lady,” was Palliser's reply.
+“She wears Gainsborough hats, and looks a quite possible eight and
+thirty. She is a handsome person herself.”
+
+He was not aware that the term “old lady” was, among Americans of the
+class of Mrs. Bowse's boarders, a sort of generic term signifying almost
+anything maternal which had passed thirty.
+
+Tembarom proceeded.
+
+“After they get through at the Asshawe Holt place, I've asked them to
+come here.”
+
+“Indeed,” said Palliser, with an inward start. The man evidently did
+not know what other people did. After all, why should he? He had been
+selling something or other in the streets of New York when the thing
+happened, and he knew nothing of London.
+
+“The countess called on Miss Alicia when we were in London,” he heard
+next. “She said we were relations.”
+
+“You are--as we are. The connection is rather distant, but it is near
+enough to form a sort of link.”
+
+“I've wanted to see Lady Joan,” explained Tembarom. “From what I've
+heard, I should say she was one of the 'Lady's Pictorial' kind.”
+
+“I am afraid--” Palliser's voice was slightly unsteady for the
+moment--“I have not studied the type sufficiently to know. The
+'Pictorial' is so exclusively a women's periodical.”
+
+His companion laughed.
+
+“Well, I've only looked through it once myself just to find out. Some
+way I always think of Lady Joan as if she was like one of those Beaut's
+from Beautsville, with trains as long as parlor-cars and feathers
+in their heads--dressed to go to see the queen. I guess she's been
+presented at court,” he added.
+
+“Yes, she has been presented.”
+
+“Do they let 'em go more than once?” he asked with casual curiosity.
+
+“Confound this cough!” exclaimed Captain Palliser, and he broke forth
+again.
+
+“Take another G,” said Tembarom, producing his tube. “Say, just take the
+bottle and keep it in your pocket.”
+
+When the brief paroxysm was over and they moved on again, Palliser was
+looking an odd thing or so in the face. “I always think of Lady Joan”
+ was one of them. “Always” seemed to go rather far. How often and why had
+he “always thought”? The fellow was incredible. Did his sharp, boyish
+face and his slouch conceal a colossal, vulgar, young ambition? There
+was not much concealment about it, Heaven knew. And as he so evidently
+was not aware of the facts, how would they affect him when he discovered
+them? And though Lady Mallowe was a woman not in the least distressed or
+hampered by shades of delicacy and scruple, she surely was astute
+enough to realize that even this bounder's dullness might be awakened
+to realize that there was more than a touch of obvious indecency in
+bringing the girl to the house of the man she had tragically loved, and
+manoeuvering to work her into it as the wife of the man who, monstrously
+unfit as he was, had taken his place. Captain Palliser knew well that
+the pressing of the relationship had meant only one thing. And how, in
+the name of the Furies! had she dragged Lady Joan into the scheme with
+her?
+
+It was as unbelievable as was the new Temple Barholm himself. And how
+unconcerned the fellow looked! Perhaps the man he had supplanted was no
+more to him than a scarcely remembered name, if he was as much as that.
+Then Tembarom, pacing slowly by his side, hands in pockets, eyes on the
+walk, spoke:
+
+“Did you ever see Jem Temple Barholm?” he asked.
+
+It was like a thunderbolt. He said it as though he were merely carrying
+his previous remarks on to their natural conclusion; but Palliser felt
+himself so suddenly unadjusted, so to speak, that he palpably hesitated.
+
+“Did you?” his companion repeated.
+
+“I knew him well,” was the answer made as soon as readjustment was
+possible.
+
+“Remember just how he looked?”
+
+“Perfectly. He was a striking fellow. Women always said he had
+fascinating eyes.”
+
+“Sort of slant downward on the outside corners--and black eyelashes
+sorter sweeping together?”
+
+Palliser turned with a movement of surprise.
+
+“How did you know? It was just that odd sort of thing.”
+
+“Miss Alicia told me. And there's a picture in the gallery that's like
+him.”
+
+Captain Palliser felt as embarrassed as Miss Alicia had felt, but it was
+for a different reason. She had felt awkward because she had feared she
+had touched on a delicate subject. Palliser was embarrassed because he
+was entirely thrown out of all his calculations. He felt for the moment
+that there was no calculating at all, no security in preparing paths.
+You never know where they would lead. Here had he been actually alarmed
+in secret! And the oaf stood before him undisturbedly opening up the
+subject himself.
+
+“For a fellow like that to lose a girl as he lost Lady Joan was pretty
+tough,” the oaf said. “By gee! it was tough!”
+
+He knew it all--the whole thing, scandal, tragically broken marriage,
+everything. And knowing it, he was laying his Yankee plans for getting
+the girl to Temple Barholm to look her over. It was of a grossness
+one sometimes heard of in men of his kind, and yet it seemed in its
+casualness to out-leap any little scheme of the sort he had so far
+looked on at.
+
+“Lady Joan felt it immensely,” he said.
+
+A footman was to be seen moving toward them, evidently bearing a
+message. Tea was served in the drawing-room, and he had come to announce
+the fact.
+
+They went back to the house, and Miss Alicia filled cups for them and
+presided over the splendid tray with a persuasive suggestion in the
+matter of hot or cold things which made it easy to lead up to any
+subject. She was the best of unobtrusive hostesses.
+
+
+Palliser talked of his visit at Detchworth, which had been shortened
+because he had gone to “fit in” and remain until a large but uncertain
+party turned up. It had turned up earlier than had been anticipated, and
+of course he could only delicately slip away.
+
+“I am sorry it has happened, however,” he said, “not only because one
+does not wish to leave Detchworth, but because I shall miss Lady Mallowe
+and Lady Joan, who are to be at Asshawe Holt next week. I particularly
+wanted to see them.”
+
+Miss Alicia glanced at Tembarom to see what he would do. He spoke before
+he could catch her glance.
+
+“Say,” he suggested, “why don't you bring your grip over here and stay?
+I wish you would.”
+
+“A grip means a Gladstone bag,” Miss Alicia murmured in a rapid
+undertone.
+
+Palliser replied with appreciative courtesy. Things were going extremely
+well.
+
+“That's awfully kind of you,” he answered. “I should like it
+tremendously. Nothing better. You are giving me a delightful
+opportunity. Thank you, thank you. If I may turn up on Thursday I shall
+be delighted.”
+
+There was satisfaction in this at least in the observant gray eye when
+he went away.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+
+Dinner at Detchworth Grange was most amusing that evening. One of the
+chief reasons--in fact, it would not be too venturesome to say THE chief
+reason--for Captain Palliser's frequent presence in very good country
+houses was that he had a way of making things amusing. His relation of
+anecdotes, of people and things, was distinguished by a manner which
+subtly declined to range itself on the side of vulgar gossip. Quietly
+and with a fine casualness he conveyed the whole picture of the new
+order at Temple Barholm. He did it with wonderfully light touches, and
+yet the whole thing was to be seen--the little old maid in her exquisite
+clothes, her unmistakable stamp of timid good breeding, her protecting
+adoration combined with bewilderment; the long, lean, not altogether
+ill-looking New York bounder, with his slight slouch, his dangerously
+unsophisticated-looking face, and his American jocularity of slang
+phrase.
+
+“He's of a class I know nothing about. I own he puzzled me a trifle at
+first,” Palliser said with his cool smile. “I'm not sure that I've 'got
+on to him' altogether yet. That's an expressive New York phrase of his
+own. But when we were strolling about together, he made revelations
+apparently without being in the least aware that they were revelations.
+He was unbelievable. My fear was that he would not go on.”
+
+“But he did go on?” asked Amabel. “One must hear something of the
+revelations.”
+
+Then was given in the best possible form the little drama of the talk in
+the garden. No shade of Mr. Temple Barholm's characteristics was lost.
+Palliser gave occasionally an English attempt at the reproduction of his
+nasal twang, but it was only a touch and not sufficiently persisted in
+to become undignified.
+
+“I can't do it,” he said. “None of us can really do it. When English
+actors try it on the stage, it is not in the least the real thing. They
+only drawl through their noses, and it is more than that.”
+
+The people of Detchworth Grange were not noisy people, but their
+laughter was unrestrained before the recital was finished. Nobody had
+gone so far as either to fear or to hope for anything as undiluted in
+its nature as this was.
+
+“Then he won't give us a chance, the least chance,” cried Lucy and
+Amabel almost in unison. “We are out of the running.”
+
+“You won't get even a look in--because you are not 'ladies,'” said their
+brother.
+
+“Poor Jem Temple Barholm! What a different thing it would have been if
+we had had him for a neighbor!” Mr. Grantham fretted.
+
+“We should have had Lady Joan Fayre as well,” said his wife.
+
+“At least she's a gentlewoman as well as a 'lady,'” Mr. Grantham said.
+“She would not have become so bitter if that hideous thing had not
+occurred.”
+
+They wondered if the new man knew anything about Jem. Palliser had not
+reached that part of his revelation when the laughter had broken into
+it. He told it forthwith, and the laughter was overcome by a sort of
+dismayed disgust. This did not accord with the rumors of an almost
+“nice” good nature.
+
+“There's a vulgar horridness about it,” said Lucy.
+
+“What price Lady Mallowe!” said the son. “I'll bet a sovereign she began
+it.”
+
+“She did,” remarked Palliser; “but I think one may leave Mr. Temple
+Barholm safely to Lady Joan.” Mr. Grantham laughed as one who knew
+something of Lady Joan.
+
+“There's an Americanism which I didn't learn from him,” Palliser added,
+“and I remembered it when he was talking her over. It's this: when you
+dispose of a person finally and forever, you 'wipe up the earth with
+him.' Lady Joan will 'wipe up the earth' with your new neighbor.”
+
+There was a little shout of laughter. “Wipe up the earth” was entirely
+new to everybody, though even the country in England was at this time by
+no means wholly ignorant of American slang.
+
+This led to so many other things both mirth-provoking and serious, even
+sometimes very serious indeed, that the entire evening at Detchworth was
+filled with talk of Temple Barholm. Very naturally the talk did not end
+by confining itself to one household. In due time Captain Palliser's
+little sketches were known in divers places, and it became a habit to
+discuss what had happened, and what might possibly happen in the future.
+There were those who went to the length of calling on the new man
+because they wanted to see him face to face. People heard new things
+every few days, but no one realized that it was vaguely through Palliser
+that there developed a general idea that, crude and self-revealing as
+he was, there lurked behind the outward candor of the intruder a hint of
+over-sharpness of the American kind. There seemed no necessity for
+him to lay schemes beyond those he had betrayed in his inquiries about
+“ladies,” but somehow it became a fixed idea that he was capable of
+doing shady things if at any time the temptation arose. That was really
+what his boyish casualness meant. That in truth was Palliser's final
+secret conclusion. And he wanted very much to find out why exactly
+little old Miss Temple Barholm had been taken up. If the man wanted
+introductions, he could have contrived to pick up a smart and
+enterprising unprofessional chaperon in London who would have done for
+him what Miss Temple Barholm would never presume to attempt. And yet he
+seemed to have chosen her deliberately. He had set her literally at the
+head of his house. And Palliser, having heard a vague rumor that he had
+actually settled a decent income upon her, had made adroit inquiries and
+found it was true.
+
+It was. To arrange the matter had been one of his reasons for going to
+see Mr. Palford during their stay in London.
+
+“I wanted to fix you--fix you safe,” he said when he told Miss Alicia
+about it. “I guess no one can take it away from you, whatever old thing
+happens.”
+
+“What could happen, dear Mr. Temple Barholm?” said Miss Alicia in the
+midst of tears of gratitude and tremulous joy. “You are so young and
+strong and--everything! Don't even speak of such a thing in jest. What
+could happen?”
+
+“Anything can happen,” he answered, “just anything. Happening's the one
+thing you can't bet on. If I was betting, I'd put my money on the thing
+I was sure couldn't happen. Look at this Temple Barholm song and dance!
+Look at T. T. as he was half strangling in the blizzard up at Harlem
+and thanking his stars little Munsberg didn't kick him out of his
+confectionery store less than a year ago! So long as I'm all right,
+you're all right. But I wanted you fixed, anyhow.”
+
+He paused and looked at her questioningly for a moment. He wanted to
+say something and he was not sure he ought. His reverence for her little
+finenesses and reserves increased instead of wearing away. He was always
+finding out new things about her.
+
+“Say,” he broke forth almost impetuously after his hesitation, “I wish
+you wouldn't call me Mr. Temple Barholm.”
+
+“D-do you?” she fluttered. “But what could I call you?”
+
+“Well,” he answered, reddening a shade or so, “I'd give a house and lot
+if you could just call me Tem.”
+
+“But it would sound so unbecoming, so familiar,” she protested.
+
+“That's just what I'm asking for,” he said--“some one to be familiar
+with. I'm the familiar kind. That's what's the matter with me. I'd be
+familiar with Pearson, but he wouldn't let me. I'd frighten him half to
+death. He'd think that he wasn't doing his duty and earning his wages,
+and that somehow he'd get fired some day without a character.”
+
+He drew nearer to her and coaxed.
+
+“Couldn't you do it?” he asked almost as though he were asking a favor
+of a girl. “Just Tem? I believe that would come easier to you than T. T.
+I get fonder and fonder of you every day, Miss Alicia, honest Injun. And
+I'd be so grateful to you if you'd just be that unbecomingly familiar.”
+
+He looked honestly in earnest; and if he grew fonder and fonder of her,
+she without doubt had, in the face of everything, given her whole heart
+to him.
+
+“Might I call you Temple--to begin with?” she asked. “It touches me so
+to think of your asking me. I will begin at once. Thank you--Temple,”
+ with a faint gasp. “I might try the other a little later.”
+
+It was only a few evenings later that he told her about the flats in
+Harlem. He had sent to New York for a large bundle of newspapers, and
+when he opened them he read aloud an advertisement, and showed her a
+picture of a large building given up entirely to “flats.”
+
+He had realized from the first that New York life had a singular
+attraction for her. The unrelieved dullness of her life--those few
+years of youth in which she had stifled vague longings for the joys
+experienced by other girls; the years of middle age spent in the
+dreary effort to be “submissive to the will of God,” which, honestly
+translated, signified submission to the exactions and domestic tyrannies
+of “dear papa” and others like him--had left her with her capacities for
+pleasure as freshly sensitive as a child's. The smallest change in the
+routine of existence thrilled her with excitement. Tembarom's casual
+references to his strenuous boyhood caused her eyes to widen with
+eagerness to hear more. Having seen this, he found keen delight in
+telling her stories of New York life--stories of himself or of other
+lads who had been his companions. She would drop her work and gaze at
+him almost with bated breath. He was an excellent raconteur when he
+talked of the things he knew well. He had an unconscious habit of
+springing from his seat and acting his scenes as he depicted them,
+laughing and using street-boy phrasing:
+
+“It's just like a tale,” Miss Alicia would breathe, enraptured as he
+jumped from one story to another. “It's exactly like a wonderful tale.”
+
+She learned to know the New York streets when they blazed with heat,
+when they were hard with frozen snow, when they were sloppy with melting
+slush or bright with springtime sunshine and spring winds blowing, with
+pretty women hurrying about in beflowered spring hats and dresses and
+the exhilaration of the world-old springtime joy. She found herself
+hurrying with them. She sometimes hung with him and his companions on
+the railing outside dazzling restaurants where scores of gay people ate
+rich food in the sight of their boyish ravenousness. She darted in and
+out among horses and vehicles to find carriages after the theater or
+opera, where everybody was dressed dazzlingly and diamonds glittered.
+
+“Oh, how rich everybody must have seemed to you--how cruelly rich, poor
+little boy!”
+
+“They looked rich, right enough,” he answered when she said it. “And
+there seemed a lot of good things to eat all corralled in a few places.
+And you wished you could be let loose inside. But I don't know as it
+seemed cruel. That was the way it was, you know, and you couldn't help
+it. And there were places where they'd give away some of what was left.
+I tell you, we were in luck then.”
+
+There was some spirit in his telling it all--a spirit which had surely
+been with him through his hardest days, a spirit of young mirth in
+rags--which made her feel subconsciously that the whole experience had,
+after all, been somehow of the nature of life's high adventure. He had
+never been ill or heart-sick, and he laughed when he talked of it, as
+though the remembrance was not a recalling of disaster.
+
+“Clemmin' or no clemmin'. I wish I'd lived the loife tha's lived,”
+ Tummas Hibblethwaite had said.
+
+Her amazement would indeed have been great if she had been told that she
+secretly shared his feeling.
+
+“It seems as if somehow you had never been dull,” was her method of
+expressing it.
+
+“Dull! Holy cats! no,” he grinned. “There wasn't any time for being
+anything. You just had to keep going.”
+
+She became in time familiar with Mrs. Bowse's boarding-house and
+boarders. She knew Mrs. Peck and Mr. Jakes and the young lady from the
+notion counter (those wonderful shops!). Julius and Jem and the hall
+bedroom and the tilted chairs and cloud of smoke she saw so often that
+she felt at home with them.
+
+“Poor Mrs. Bowse,” she said, “must have been a most respectable,
+motherly, hard-working creature. Really a nice person of her class.” She
+could not quite visualize the “parlor,” but it must have been warm and
+comfortable. And the pianola--a piano which you could play without even
+knowing your notes--What a clever invention! America seemed full of the
+most wonderfully clever things.
+
+Tembarom was actually uplifted in soul when he discovered that she laid
+transparent little plans for leading him into talk about New York. She
+wanted him to talk about it, and the Lord knows he wanted to talk
+about himself. He had been afraid at first. She might have hated it,
+as Palford did, and it would have hurt him somehow if she hadn't
+understood. But she did. Without quite realizing the fact, she was
+beginning to love it, to wish she had seen it. Her Somerset vicarage
+imagination did not allow of such leaps as would be implied by the
+daring wish that sometime she might see it.
+
+But Tembarom's imagination was more athletic.
+
+“Jinks! wouldn't it be fine to take her there! The lark in London
+wouldn't be ace high to it.”
+
+The Hutchinsons were not New Yorkers, but they had been part of the
+atmosphere of Mrs. Bowse's. Mr. Hutchinson would of course be rather a
+forward and pushing man to be obliged to meet, but Little Ann! She
+did so like Little Ann! And the dear boy did so want, in his heart of
+hearts, to talk about her at times. She did not know whether, in the
+circumstances, she ought to encourage him; but he was so dear, and
+looked so much dearer when he even said “Little Ann,” that she could not
+help occasionally leading him gently toward the subject.
+
+When he opened the newspapers and found the advertisements of the flats,
+she saw the engaging, half-awkward humorousness come into his eyes.
+
+“Here's one that would do all right,” he said--“four rooms and a bath,
+eleventh floor, thirty-five dollars a month.”
+
+He spread the newspaper on the table and rested on his elbow, gazing
+at it for a few minutes wholly absorbed. Then he looked up at her and
+smiled.
+
+“There's a plan of the rooms,” he said. “Would you like to look at it?
+Shall I bring your chair up to the table while we go over it together?”
+
+He brought the chair, and side by side they went over it thoroughly.
+To Miss Alicia it had all the interest of a new kind of puzzle. He
+explained it in every detail. One of his secrets had been that on
+several days when Galton's manner had made him hopeful he had visited
+certain flat buildings and gone into their intricacies. He could
+therefore describe with color their resources--the janitor; the
+elevator; the dumb-waiters to carry up domestic supplies and carry down
+ashes and refuse; the refrigerator; the unlimited supply of hot and cold
+water, the heating plan; the astonishing little kitchen, with stationary
+wash-tubs; the telephone, if you could afford it,--all the conveniences
+which to Miss Alicia, accustomed to the habits of Rowcroft Vicarage,
+where you lugged cans of water up-stairs and down if you took a bath or
+even washed your face; seemed luxuries appertaining only to the rich and
+great.
+
+“How convenient! How wonderful! Dear me! Dear me!” she said again and
+again, quite flushed with excitement. “It is like a fairy-story. And
+it's not big at all, is it?”
+
+“You could get most of it into this,” he answered, exulting. “You could
+get all of it into that big white-and gold parlor.”
+
+“The white saloon?”
+
+He showed his teeth.
+
+“I guess I ought to remember to call it that,” he said, “but it always
+makes me think of Kid MacMurphy's on Fourth Avenue. He kept what was
+called a saloon, and he'd had it painted white.”
+
+“Did you know him?” Miss Alicia asked.
+
+“Know him! Gee! no! I didn't fly as high as that. He'd have thought me
+pretty fresh if I'd acted like I knew him. He thought he was one of the
+Four Hundred. He'd been a prize-fighter. He was the fellow that knocked
+out Kid Wilkens in four rounds.” He broke off and laughed at himself.
+“Hear me talk to you about a tough like that!” he ended, and he gave her
+hand the little apologetic, protective pat which always made her heart
+beat because it was so “nice.”
+
+He drew her back to the advertisements, and drew such interesting
+pictures of what the lives of two people--mother and son or father
+and daughter or a young married couple who didn't want to put on
+style--might be in the tiny compartments, that their excitement mounted
+again.
+
+This could be a bedroom, that could be a bedroom, that could be the
+living-room, and if you put a bit of bright carpet on the hallway and
+hung up a picture or so, it would look first-rate. He even went into
+the matter of measurements, which made it more like putting a puzzle
+together than ever, and their relief when they found they could fit
+a piece of furniture he called “a lounge” into a certain corner was a
+thing of flushing delight. The “lounge,” she found, was a sort of cot
+with springs. You could buy them for three dollars, and when you put on
+a mattress and covered it with a “spread,” you could sit on it in the
+daytime and sleep on it at night, if you had to.
+
+From measurements he went into calculations about the cost of things.
+He had seen unpainted wooden tables you could put mahogany stain on, and
+they'd look all you'd want. He'd seen a splendid little rocking-chair in
+Second Avenue for five dollars, one of the padded kind that ladies
+like. He had seen an arm-chair for a man that was only seven; but there
+mightn't be room for both, and you'd have to have the rocking-chair. He
+had once asked the price of a lot of plates and cups and saucers with
+roses on them, and you could get them for six; and you didn't need a
+stove because there was the range.
+
+He had once heard Little Ann talking to Mrs. Bowse about the price of
+frying-pans and kettles, and they seemed to cost next to nothing.
+He'd looked into store windows and noticed the prices of groceries
+and vegetables and things like that--sugar, for instance; two people
+wouldn't use much sugar in a week--and they wouldn't need a ton of tea
+or flour or coffee. If a fellow had a mother or sister or wife who had
+a head and knew about things, you could “put it over” on mighty little,
+and have a splendid time together, too. You'd even be able to work in a
+cheap seat in a theater every now and then. He laughed and flushed as he
+thought of it.
+
+Miss Alicia had never had a doll's house. Rowcroft Vicarage did not run
+to dolls and their belongings. Her thwarted longing for a doll's house
+had a sort of parallel in her similarly thwarted longing for “a little
+boy.”
+
+And here was her doll's house so long, so long unpossessed! It was like
+that, this absorbed contriving and fitting of furniture into corners.
+She also flushed and laughed. Her eyes were so brightly eager and her
+cheeks so pink that she looked quite girlish under her lace cap.
+
+“How pretty and cozy it might be made, how dear!” she exclaimed. “And
+one would be so high up on the eleventh floor, that one would feel like
+a bird in a nest.”
+
+His face lighted. He seemed to like the idea tremendously.
+
+“Why, that's so,” he laughed. “That idea suits me down to the ground.
+A bird in a nest. But there'd have to be two. One would be lonely. Say,
+Miss Alicia, how would you like to live in a place like that?”
+
+“I am sure any one would like it--if they had some dear relative with
+them.”
+
+He loved her “dear relative,” loved it. He knew how much it meant of
+what had lain hidden unacknowledged, even unknown to her, through a
+lifetime in her early-Victorian spinster breast.
+
+“Let's go to New York and rent one and live in it together. Would you
+come?” he said, and though he laughed, he was not jocular in the usual
+way. “Would you, if we waked up and found this Temple Barholm thing was
+a dream?”
+
+Something in his manner, she did not know what, puzzled her a little.
+
+“But if it were a dream, you would be quite poor again,” she said,
+smiling.
+
+“No, I wouldn't. I'd get Galton to give me back the page. He'd do it
+quick--quick,” he said, still with a laugh. “Being poor's nothing,
+anyhow. We'd have the time of our lives. We'd be two birds in a nest.
+You can look out those eleventh-story windows 'way over to the Bronx,
+and get bits of the river. And perhaps after a while Ann would do like
+she said, and we'd be three birds.”
+
+“Oh!” she sighed ecstatically. “How beautiful it would be! We should be
+a little family!”
+
+“So we should,” he exulted. “Think of T. T. with a family!” He drew his
+paper of calculations toward him again. “Let's make believe we're going
+to do it, and work out what it would cost--for three. You know about
+housekeeping, don't you? Let's write down a list.”
+
+If he had warmed to his work before, he warmed still more after this.
+Miss Alicia was drawn into it again, and followed his fanciful plans
+with a new fervor. They were like two children who had played at
+make-believe until they had lost sight of commonplace realities.
+
+Miss Alicia had lived among small economies and could be of great
+assistance to him. They made lists and added up lines of figures until
+the fine, huge room and its thousands of volumes melted away. In the
+great hall, guarded by warriors in armor, the powdered heads of the
+waiting footmen drooped and nodded while the prices of pounds of butter
+and sugar and the value of potatoes and flour and nutmegs were balanced
+with a hectic joy, and the relative significance of dollars and cents
+and shillings and half-crowns and five-cent pieces caused Miss Alicia a
+mild delirium.
+
+By the time that she had established the facts that a shilling was
+something like twenty-five cents, a dollar was four and twopence,
+and twenty-five dollars was something over five pounds, it was past
+midnight.
+
+They heard the clock strike the half-hour, and stopped to stare at each
+other.
+
+Tembarom got up with yet another laugh.
+
+“Say, I mustn't keep you up all night,” he said. “But haven't we had a
+fine time--haven't we? I feel as if I'd been there.”
+
+They had been there so entirely that Miss Alicia brought herself back
+with difficulty.
+
+“I can scarcely believe that we have not,” she said. “I feel as if I
+didn't like to leave it. It was so delightful.” She glanced about her.
+“The room looks huge,” she said--“almost too huge to live in.”
+
+“Doesn't it?” he answered. “Now you know how I feel.” He gathered his
+scraps of paper together with a feeling touch. “I didn't want to come
+back myself. When I get a bit of a grouch I shall jerk these out and go
+back there again.”
+
+“Oh, do let me go with you!” she said. “I have so enjoyed it.”
+
+“You shall go whenever you like,” he said. “We'll keep it up for a sort
+of game on rainy days. How much is a dollar, Miss Alicia?”
+
+“Four and twopence. And sugar is six cents a pound.”
+
+“Go to the head,” he answered. “Right again.”
+
+The opened roll of newspapers was lying on the table near her. They were
+copies of The Earth, and the date of one of them by merest chance caught
+her eye.
+
+“How odd!” she said. “Those are old papers. Did you notice? Is it a
+mistake? This one is dated” She leaned forward, and her eye caught a
+word in a head-line.
+
+“The Klondike,” she read. “There's something in it about the Klondike.”
+ He put his hand out and drew the papers away.
+
+“Don't you read that,” he said. “I don't want you to go to bed and dream
+about the Klondike. You've got to dream about the flat in Harlem.”
+
+“Yes,” she answered. “I mustn't think about sad things. The flat in
+Harlem is quite happy. But it startled me to see that word.”
+
+“I only sent for them--because I happened to want to look something up,”
+ he explained. “How much is a pound, Miss Alicia?”
+
+“Four dollars and eighty-six cents,” she replied, recovering herself.
+
+“Go up head again. You're going to stay there.”
+
+When she gave him her hand on their parting for the night he held it a
+moment. A subtle combination of things made him do it. The calculations,
+the measurements, the nest from which one could look out over the Bronx,
+were prevailing elements in its make-up. Ann had been in each room of
+the Harlem flat, and she always vaguely reminded him of Ann.
+
+“We are relations, ain't we?” he asked.
+
+“I am sure we often seem quite near relations--Temple.” She added the
+name with very pretty kindness.
+
+“We're not distant ones any more, anyhow,” he said. “Are we near
+enough--would you let me kiss you good night, Miss Alicia?”
+
+An emotional flush ran up to her cap ribbons.
+
+“Indeed, my dear boy--indeed, yes.”
+
+Holding her hand with a chivalric, if slightly awkward, courtesy, he
+bent, and kissed her cheek. It was a hearty, affectionately grateful
+young kiss, which, while it was for herself, remotely included Ann.
+
+“It's the first time I've ever said good night to any one like that,” he
+said. “Thank you for letting me.”
+
+He patted her hand again before releasing it. She went up-stairs
+blushing and feeling rather as though she had been proposed to, and yet,
+spinster though she was, somehow quite understanding about the nest and
+Ann.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+
+Lady Mallowe and her daughter did not pay their visit to Asshawe Holt,
+the absolute, though not openly referred to, fact being that they had
+not been invited. The visit in question had merely floated in the air as
+a delicate suggestion made by her ladyship in her letter to Mrs. Asshe
+Shaw, to the effect that she and Joan were going to stay at Temple
+Barholm, the visit to Asshawe they had partly arranged some time ago
+might now be fitted in.
+
+The partial arrangement itself, Mrs. Asshe Shaw remarked to her eldest
+daughter when she received the suggesting note, was so partial as to
+require slight consideration, since it had been made “by the woman
+herself, who would push herself and her daughter into any house in
+England if a back door were left open.” In the civilly phrased letter
+she received in answer to her own, Lady Mallowe read between the lines
+the point of view taken, and writhed secretly, as she had been made to
+writhe scores of times in the course of her career. It had happened so
+often, indeed, that it might have been imagined that she had become used
+to it; but the woman who acted as maid to herself and Joan always knew
+when “she had tried to get in somewhere” and failed.
+
+The note of explanation sent immediately to Miss Alicia was at once
+adroit and amiable. They had unfortunately been detained in London a day
+or two past the date fixed for their visit to Asshawe, and Lady
+Mallowe would not allow Mrs. Asshe Shawe, who had so many guests, to
+be inconvenienced by their arriving late and perhaps disarranging her
+plans. So if it was quite convenient, they would come to Temple
+Barholm a week earlier; but not, of course, if that would be the least
+upsetting.
+
+When they arrived, Tembarom himself was in London. He had suddenly found
+he was obliged to go. The business which called him was something which
+could not be put off. He expected to return at once. It was made very
+easy for him when he made his excuses to Palliser, who suggested that
+he might even find himself returning by the same train with his guests,
+which would give him opportunities. If he was detained, Miss Alicia
+could take charge of the situation. They would quite understand when she
+explained. Captain Palliser foresaw for himself some quiet entertainment
+in his own meeting with the visitors. Lady Mallowe always provided a
+certain order of amusement for him, and no man alive objected to finding
+interest and even a certain excitement in the society of Lady Joan. It
+was her chief characteristic that she inspired in a man a vague, even if
+slightly irritated, desire to please her in some degree. To lead her
+on to talk in her sometimes brilliant, always heartlessly unsparing,
+fashion, perhaps to smile her shade of a bitter smile, gave a man
+something to do, especially if he was bored. Palliser anticipated a
+possible chance of repeating the dialogue of “the ladies,” not, however,
+going into the Jem Temple Barholm part of it. When one finds a man whose
+idle life has generated in him the curiosity which is usually called
+feminine, it frequently occupies him more actively than he is aware or
+will admit.
+
+A fashionable male gossip is a curious development. Palliser was, upon
+the whole, not aware that he had an intense interest in finding out the
+exact reason why Lady Mallowe had not failed utterly in any attempt to
+drag her daughter to this particular place, to be flung headlong, so
+to speak, at this special man. Lady Mallowe one could run and read, but
+Lady Joan was in this instance unexplainable. And as she never deigned
+the slightest concealment, the story of the dialogue would no doubt
+cause her to show her hand. She must have a hand, and it must be one
+worth seeing.
+
+It was not he, however, who could either guess or understand. The
+following would have been his summing up of her: “Flaringly handsome
+girl, brought up by her mother to one end. Bad temper to begin with.
+Girl who might, if she lost her head, get into some frightful mess.
+Meets a fascinating devil in the first season. A regular Romeo and
+Juliet passion blazes up--all for love and the world well lost. All
+London looking on. Lady Mallowe frantic and furious. Suddenly the
+fascinating devil ruined for life, done for. Bolts, gets killed. Lady
+Mallowe triumphant. Girl dragged about afterward like a beautiful young
+demon in chains. Refuses all sorts of things. Behaves infernally. Nobody
+knows anything else.”
+
+Nobody did know; Lady Mallowe herself did not. From the first year in
+which Joan had looked at her with child consciousness she had felt
+that there was antagonism in the deeps of her eyes. No mother likes to
+recognize such a thing, and Lady Mallowe was a particularly vain woman.
+The child was going to be an undeniable beauty, and she ought to adore
+the mother who was to arrange her future. Instead of which, she plainly
+disliked her. By the time she was three years old, the antagonism had
+become defiance and rebellion. Lady Mallowe could not even indulge
+herself in the satisfaction of showing her embryo beauty off, and thus
+preparing a reputation for her. She was not cross or tearful, but she
+had the temper of a little devil. She would not be shown off. She hated
+it, and her bearing dangerously suggested that she hated her handsome
+young mother. No effects could be produced with her.
+
+Before she was four the antagonism was mutual, and it increased with
+years. The child was of a passionate nature, and had been born intensely
+all her mother was not, and intensely not all her mother was. A
+throw-back to some high-spirited and fiercely honest ancestor created in
+her a fury at the sight of mean falsities and dishonors. Before she was
+old enough to know the exact cause of her rage she was shaken by it. She
+thought she had a bad temper, and was bad enough to hate her own mother
+without being able to help it. As she grew older she found out that
+she was not really so bad as she had thought, though she was obliged to
+concede that nothing palliative could be said about the temper. It had
+been violent from the first, and she had lived in an atmosphere which
+infuriated it. She did not suppose such a thing could be controlled.
+It sometimes frightened her. Had not the old Marquis of Norborough
+been celebrated through his entire life for his furies? Was there not a
+hushed-up rumor that he had once thrown a decanter at his wife, and so
+nearly killed her that people had been asking one another in whispers if
+a peer of the realm could be hanged. He had been born that way, so had
+she. Her school-room days had been a horror to her, and also a terror,
+because she had often almost flung ink-bottles and heavy rulers at her
+silly, lying governesses, and once had dug a pair of scissors into one
+sneaking old maid fool's arm when she had made her “see red” by her
+ignoble trickeries. Perhaps she would be hanged some day herself. She
+once prayed for a week that she might be made better tempered,--not that
+she believed in prayer,--and of course nothing came of it.
+
+Every year she lived she raged more furiously at the tricks she saw
+played by her mother and every one who surrounded her; the very servants
+were greater liars and pilferers than any other servants. Her mother was
+always trying to get things from people which they did not want to give
+her. She would carry off slights and snubs as though they were actual
+tributes, if she could gain her end. The girl knew what the meaning of
+her own future would be. Since she definitely disliked her daughter,
+Lady Mallowe did not mince matters when they were alone. She had no
+money, she was extremely good looking, she had a certain number of years
+in which to fight for her own hand among the new debutantes who were
+presented every season. Her first season over, the next season other
+girls would be fresher than she was, and newer to the men who were worth
+marrying. Men like novelty. After her second season the debutantes would
+seem fresher still by contrast. Then people would begin to say, “She
+was presented four or five years ago.” After that it would be all
+struggle,--every season it would be worse. It would become awful.
+Unmarried women over thirty-five would speak of her as though they had
+been in the nursery together. Married girls with a child or so would
+treat her as though she were a maiden aunt. She knew what was before
+her. Beggary stared them both in the face if she did not make the most
+of her looks and waste no time. And Joan knew it was all true, and that
+worse, far worse things were true also. She would be obliged to spend
+a long life with her mother in cheap lodgings, a faded, penniless,
+unmarried woman, railed at, taunted, sneered at, forced to be part of
+humiliating tricks played to enable them to get into debt and then to
+avoid paying what they owed. Had she not seen one horrible old woman of
+their own rank who was an example of what poverty might bring one to,
+an old harpy who tried to queen it over her landlady in an actual back
+street, and was by turns fawned upon and disgustingly “your ladyshiped”
+ or outrageously insulted by her landlady?
+
+Then that first season! Dear, dear God! that first season when she met
+Jem! She was not nineteen, and the facile world pretended to be at her
+feet, and the sun shone as though London were in Italy, and the park was
+marvelous with flowers, and there were such dances and such laughter!
+
+And it was all so young--and she met Jem! It was at a garden-party at
+a lovely old house on the river, a place with celebrated gardens which
+would always come back to her memory as a riot of roses. The frocks of
+the people on the lawn looked as though they were made of the petals of
+flowers, and a mad little haunting waltz was being played by the band,
+and there under a great copper birch on the green velvet turf near her
+stood Jem, looking at her with dark, liquid, slanting eyes! They were
+only a few feet from each other,--and he looked, and she looked, and the
+haunting, mad little waltz played on, and it was as though they had been
+standing there since the world began, and nothing else was true.
+
+Afterward nothing mattered to either of them. Lady Mallowe herself
+ceased to count. Now and then the world stops for two people in this
+unearthly fashion. At such times, as far as such a pair are concerned,
+causes and effects cease. Her bad temper fled, and she knew she would
+never feel its furious lash again.
+
+With Jem looking at her with his glowing, drooping eyes, there would be
+no reason for rage and shame. She confessed the temper to him and told
+of her terror of it; he confessed to her his fondness for high play, and
+they held each other's hands, not with sentimental youthful lightness,
+but with the strong clasp of sworn comrades, and promised on honor that
+they would stand by each other every hour of their lives against their
+worst selves.
+
+They would have kept the pact. Neither was a slight or dishonest
+creature. The phase of life through which they passed is not a new
+one, but it is not often so nearly an omnipotent power as was their
+three-months' dream.
+
+It lasted only that length of time. Then came the end of the world. Joan
+did not look fresh in her second season, and before it was over men were
+rather afraid of her. Because she was so young the freshness returned to
+her cheek, but it never came back to her eyes.
+
+What exactly had happened, or what she thought, it was impossible to
+know. She had delicate, black brows, and between them appeared two
+delicate, fierce lines. Her eyes were of a purplish-gray, “the color of
+thunder,” a snubbed admirer had once said. Between their black lashes
+they were more deeply thunder-colored. Her life with her mother was a
+thing not to be spoken of. To the desperate girl's agony of rebellion
+against the horror of fate Lady Mallowe's taunts and beratings were
+devilish. There was a certain boudoir in the house in Hill Street which
+was to Joan like the question chamber of the Inquisition. Shut up in it
+together, the two went through scenes which in their cruelty would have
+done credit to the Middle Ages. Lady Mallowe always locked the door to
+prevent the unexpected entrance of a servant, but servants managed to
+hover about it, because her ladyship frequently forgot caution so far as
+to raise her voice at times, as ladies are not supposed to do.
+
+“We fight,” Joan said with a short, horrible laugh one morning--“we
+fight like cats and dogs. No, like two cats. A cat-and-dog fight is more
+quickly over. Some day we shall scratch each other's eyes out.”
+
+“Have you no shame?” her mother cried.
+
+“I am burning with it. I am like St. Lawrence on his gridiron. 'Turn me
+over on the other side,'” she quoted.
+
+This was when she had behaved so abominably to the Duke of Merthshire
+that he had actually withdrawn his more than half-finished proposal.
+That which she hated more than all else was the God she had prayed to
+when she asked she might be helped to control her temper.
+
+She had not believed in Him at the time, but because she was frightened
+after she had stuck the scissors into Fraulein she had tried the appeal
+as an experiment. The night after she met Jem, when she went to her
+room in Hill Street for the night, she knelt down and prayed because she
+suddenly did believe. Since there was Jem in the world, there must be
+the other somewhere.
+
+As day followed day, her faith grew with her love. She told Jem about
+it, and they agreed to say a prayer together at the same hour every
+night. The big young man thought her piety beautiful, and, his voice was
+unsteady as they talked. But she told him that she was not pious, but
+impious.
+
+“I want to be made good,” she said. “I have been bad all my life. I was
+a bad child, I have been a bad girl; but now I must be good.”
+
+On the night after the tragic card-party she went to her room and
+kneeled down in a new spirit. She knelt, but not to cover her face, she
+knelt with throat strained and her fierce young face thrown back and
+upward.
+
+Her hands were clenched to fists and flung out and shaken at the
+ceiling. She said things so awful that her own blood shuddered as she
+uttered them. But she could not--in her mad helplessness--make them
+awful enough. She flung herself on the carpet at last, her arms
+outstretched like a creature crucified face downward on the cross.
+
+“I believed in You!” she gasped. “The first moment you gave me a reason
+I believed. I did! I did! We both said our prayer to You every night,
+like children. And you've done this--this--this!” And she beat with her
+fists upon the floor.
+
+Several years had passed since that night, and no living being knew what
+she carried in her soul. If she had a soul, she said to herself, it was
+black--black. But she had none. Neither had Jem had one; when the earth
+and stones had fallen upon him it had been the end, as it would have
+been if he had been a beetle.
+
+This was the guest who was coming to the house where Miles Hugo smiled
+from his frame in the picture-gallery--the house which would to-day have
+been Jem's if T. Tembarom had not inherited it.
+
+Tembarom returned some twenty-four hours after Miss Alicia had received
+his visitors for him. He had been “going into” absorbing things in
+London. His thoughts during his northward journey were puzzled and
+discouraged ones. He sat in the corner of the railway carriage and
+stared out of the window without seeing the springtime changes in the
+flying landscape.
+
+The price he would have given for a talk with Ann would not have been
+easy to compute. Her head, her level little head, and her way of seeing
+into things and picking out facts without being rattled by what didn't
+really count, would have been worth anything. The day itself was a
+discouraging one, with heavy threatenings of rain which did not fall.
+
+The low clouds were piles of dark-purple gray, and when the sun tried
+to send lances of ominous yellow light through them, strange and lurid
+effects were produced, and the heavy purple-gray masses rolled together
+again. He wondered why he did not hear low rumblings of thunder.
+
+He went to his room at once when he reached home. He was late, and
+Pearson told him that the ladies were dressing for dinner. Pearson was
+in waiting with everything in readiness for the rapid performance of his
+duties. Tembarom had learned to allow himself to be waited upon. He
+had, in fact, done this for the satisfying of Pearson, whose respectful
+unhappiness would otherwise have been manifest despite his efforts
+to conceal it. He dressed quickly and asked some questions about
+Strangeways. Otherwise Pearson thought he seemed preoccupied. He only
+made one slight joke.
+
+“You'd be a first-rate dresser for a quick-change artist, Pearson,” he
+remarked.
+
+On his way to the drawing-room he deflected from the direct path,
+turning aside for a moment to the picture-gallery because for a reason
+of his own he wanted to take a look at Miles Hugo. He took a look at
+Miles Hugo oftener than Miss Alicia knew.
+
+The gallery was dim and gloomy enough, now closing in in the purple-gray
+twilight. He walked through it without glancing at the pictures until
+he came to the tall boy in the satin and lace of Charles II period.
+He paused there only for a short time, but he stood quite near the
+portrait, and looked hard at the handsome face.
+
+“Gee!” he exclaimed under his breath, “it's queer, gee!”
+
+Then he turned suddenly round toward one of the big windows. He turned
+because he had been startled by a sound, a movement. Some one was
+standing before the window. For a second's space the figure seemed
+as though it was almost one with the purple-gray clouds that were its
+background. It was a tall young woman, and her dress was of a thin
+material of exactly their color--dark-gray and purple at once. The
+wearer held her head high and haughtily. She had a beautiful, stormy
+face, and the slender, black brows were drawn together by a frown.
+Tembarom had never seen a girl as handsome and disdainful. He had,
+indeed, never been looked at as she looked at him when she moved
+slightly forward.
+
+He knew who it was. It was the Lady Joan girl, and the sudden sight of
+her momentarily “rattled” him.
+
+“You quite gave me a jolt,” he said awkwardly, and knowing that he said
+it like a “mutt.” “I didn't know any one was in the gallery.”
+
+“What are you doing here?” she asked. She spoke to him as though she
+were addressing an intruding servant. There was emphasis on the word
+“you.”
+
+Her intention was so evident that it increased his feeling of being
+“rattled.” To find himself confronting deliberate ill nature of a
+superior and finished kind was like being spoken to in a foreign
+language.
+
+“I--I'm T. Tembarom.” he answered, not able to keep himself from staring
+because she was such a “winner” as to looks.
+
+“T. Tembarom?” she repeated slowly, and her tone made him at once see
+what a fool he had been to say it.
+
+“I forgot,” he half laughed. “I ought to have said I'm Temple Barholm.”
+
+“Oh!” was her sole comment. She actually stood still and looked him up
+and down.
+
+She knew perfectly well who he was, and she knew perfectly well that no
+palliative view could possibly be taken by any well-bred person of her
+bearing toward him. He was her host. She had come, a guest, to his house
+to eat his bread and salt, and the commonest decency demanded that she
+should conduct herself with civility. But she cared nothing for the
+commonest, or the most uncommon, decency. She was thinking of other
+things. As she had stood before the window she had felt that her soul
+had never been so black as it was when she turned away from Miles Hugo's
+portrait--never, never. She wanted to hurt people. Perhaps Nero had felt
+as she did and was not so hideous as he seemed.
+
+The man's tailor had put him into proper clothes, and his features were
+respectable enough, but nothing on earth could make him anything but
+what he so palpably was. She had seen that much across the gallery as
+she had watched him staring at Miles Hugo.
+
+“I should think,” she said, dropping the words slowly again, “that you
+would often forget that you are Temple Barholm.”
+
+“You're right there,” he answered. “I can't nail myself down to it. It
+seems like a sort of joke.”
+
+She looked him over again.
+
+“It is a joke,” she said.
+
+It was as though she had slapped him in the face, though she said it so
+quietly. He knew he had received the slap, and that, as it was a woman,
+he could not slap back. It was a sort of surprise to her that he did not
+giggle nervously and turn red and shuffle his feet in impotent misery.
+He kept quite still a moment or so and looked at her, though not as she
+had looked at him. She wondered if he was so thick-skinned that he did
+not feel anything at all.
+
+“That's so,” he admitted. “That's so.” Then he actually smiled at her.
+“I don't know how to behave myself, you see,” he said. “You're Lady
+Joan Fayre, ain't you? I'm mighty glad to see you. Happy to make your
+acquaintance, Lady Joan.”
+
+He took her hand and shook it with friendly vigor before she knew what
+he was going to do.
+
+“I'll bet a dollar dinner's ready,” he added, “and Burrill's waiting.
+It scares me to death to keep Burrill waiting. He's got no use for me,
+anyhow. Let's go and pacify him.”
+
+He did not lead the way or drag her by the arm, as it seemed to her
+quite probable that he might, as costermongers do on Hampstead Heath.
+He knew enough to let her pass first through the door; and when Lady
+Mallowe looked up to see her enter the drawing-room, he was behind
+her. To her ladyship's amazement and relief, they came in, so to speak,
+together. She had been spared the trying moment of assisting at the
+ceremony of their presentation to each other.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+
+In a certain sense she had been dragged to the place by her mother. Lady
+Mallowe had many resources, and above all she knew how to weary her into
+resistlessness which was almost indifference. There had been several
+shameless little scenes in the locked boudoir. But though she had been
+dragged, she had come with an intention. She knew what she would find
+herself being forced to submit to if the intruder were not disposed of
+at the outset, and if the manoeuvering began which would bring him to
+London. He would appear at her elbow here and there and at every corner,
+probably unaware that he was being made an offensive puppet by the
+astute cleverness against which she could not defend herself, unless
+she made actual scenes in drawing-rooms, at dinner-tables, in the very
+streets themselves. Gifted as Lady Mallowe was in fine and light-handed
+dealing of her cards in any game, her stakes at this special juncture
+were seriously high. Joan knew what they were, and that she was in a
+mood touched with desperation. The defenselessly new and ignorant Temple
+Barholm was to her mind a direct intervention of Providence, and it was
+only Joan herself who could rob her of the benefits and reliefs he could
+provide. With regard to Lady Joan, though Palliser's quoted New Yorkism,
+“wipe up the earth,” was unknown to her, the process she had in mind
+when she left London for Lancashire would have been well covered by it.
+As in feudal days she might have ordered the right hand of a creature
+such as this to be struck off, forgetting that he was a man, so was she
+capable to-day of inflicting upon him any hurt which might sweep him out
+of her way. She had not been a tender-hearted girl, and in these years
+she was absolutely callous. The fellow being what he was, she had not
+the resources she might have called upon if he had been a gentleman.
+He would not understand the chills and slights of good manners. In
+the country he would be easier to manage than in town, especially if
+attacked in his first timidity before his new grandeurs. His big house
+no doubt frightened him, his servants, the people who were of a class
+of which he knew nothing. When Palliser told his story she saw new
+openings. He would stand in servile awe of her and of others like her.
+He would be afraid of her, to begin with, and she could make him more
+so.
+
+But though she had come to alarm him so that he would be put to absolute
+flight, she had also come for another reason. She had never seen Temple
+Barholm, and she had discovered before they had known each other a week
+that it was Jem's secret passion. He had loved it with a slighted and
+lonely child's romantic longing; he had dreamed of it as boy and man,
+knowing that it must some time be his own, his home, and yet prevented
+by his uncle's attitude toward him from daring to act as though he
+remembered the fact. Old Mr. Temple Barholm's special humor had been
+that of a man guarding against presumption.
+
+Jem had not intended to presume, but he had been snubbed with relentless
+cruelty even for boyish expressions of admiration. And he had hid his
+feeling in his heart until he poured it out to Joan. To-day it would
+have been his. Together, together, they would have lived in it and loved
+every stone of it, every leaf on every great tree, every wild daffodil
+nodding in the green grass. Most people, God be thanked! can forget. The
+wise ones train themselves beyond all else to forgetting.
+
+Joan had been a luckless, ill-brought-up, passionate child and girl. In
+her Mayfair nursery she had been as little trained as a young savage.
+Since her black hour she had forgotten nothing, allowed herself no
+palliating moments. Her brief dream of young joy had been the one
+real thing in her life. She absolutely had lain awake at night and
+reconstructed the horror of Jem's death, had lived it over again,
+writhing in agony on her bed, and madly feeling that by so doing she was
+holding her love close to her life.
+
+And the man who stood in the place Jem had longed for, the man who sat
+at the head of his table, was this “thing!” That was what she felt him
+to be, and every hurt she could do him, every humiliation which should
+write large before him his presumption and grotesque unfitness, would be
+a blow struck for Jem, who could never strike a blow for himself again.
+It was all senseless, but she had not want to reason. Fate had not
+reasoned in her behalf. She watched Tembarom under her lids at the
+dinner-table.
+
+He had not wriggled or shuffled when she spoke to him in the gallery; he
+did neither now, and made no obvious efforts to seem unembarrassed.
+He used his knife and fork in odd ways, and he was plainly not used to
+being waited upon. More than once she saw the servants restrain smiles.
+She addressed no remarks to him herself, and answered with chill
+indifference such things as he said to her. If conversation had flagged
+between him and Mr. Palford because the solicitor did not know how
+to talk to him, it did not even reach the point of flagging with her,
+because she would not talk and did not allow it to begin. Lady Mallowe,
+sick with annoyance, was quite brilliant. She drew out Miss Alicia by
+detailed reminiscences of a visit paid to Rowlton Hall years before.
+The vicar had dined at the hall while she had been there. She remembered
+perfectly his charm of manner and powerful originality of mind, she said
+sweetly. He had spoken with such affection of his “little Alicia,” who
+was such a help to him in his parish work.
+
+“I thought he was speaking of a little girl at first,” she said
+smilingly, “but it soon revealed itself that 'little Alicia' was only
+his caressing diminutive.”
+
+A certain widening of Miss Alicia's fascinated eye, which could not
+remove itself from her face, caused her to quail slightly.
+
+“He was of course a man of great force of character and--and
+expression,” she added. “I remember thinking at the time that his
+eloquent frankness of phrase might perhaps seem even severe to frivolous
+creatures like myself. A really remarkable personality.”
+
+“His sermons,” faltered Miss Alicia, as a refuge, “were indeed
+remarkable. I am sure he must greatly have enjoyed his conversations
+with you. I am afraid there were very few clever women in the
+neighborhood of Rowlton.”
+
+Casting a bitter side glance on her silent daughter, Lady Mallowe
+lightly seized upon New York as a subject. She knew so much of it from
+delightful New Yorkers. London was full of delightful New Yorkers.
+She would like beyond everything to spend a winter in New York. She
+understood that the season there was in the winter and that it was most
+brilliant. Mr. Temple Barholm must tell them about it.
+
+“Yes,” said Lady Joan, looking at him through narrowed lids, “Mr. Temple
+Barholm ought to tell us about it.”
+
+She wanted to hear what he would say, to see how he would try to get out
+of the difficulty or flounder staggeringly through it. Her mother knew
+in an instant that her own speech had been a stupid blunder. She had put
+the man into exactly the position Joan would enjoy seeing him in. But he
+wasn't in a position, it appeared.
+
+“What is the season, anyhow?” he said. “You've got one on me when you
+talk about seasons.”
+
+“In London,” Miss Alicia explained courageously, “it is the time when
+her Majesty is at Buckingham Palace, and when the drawing-rooms are
+held, and Parliament sits, and people come up to town and give balls.”
+
+She wished that Lady Mallowe had not made her remark just at this time.
+She knew that the quietly moving servants were listening, and that their
+civilly averted eyes had seen Captain Palliser smile and Lady Joan's
+curious look, and that the whole incident would form entertainment for
+their supper-table.
+
+“I guess they have it in the winter in New York, then, if that's it,”
+ he said. “There's no Buckingham Palace there, and no drawing-rooms, and
+Congress sits in Washington. But New York takes it out in suppers at
+Sherry's and Delmonico's and theaters and receptions. Miss Alicia knows
+how I used to go to them when I was a little fellow, don't you, Miss
+Alicia?” he added, smiling at her across the table.
+
+“You have told me,” she answered. She noticed that Burrill and the
+footmen stood at attention in their places.
+
+“I used to stand outside in the snow and look in through the windows
+at the people having a good time,” he said. “Us kids that were selling
+newspapers used to try to fill ourselves up with choosing whose plate
+we'd take if we could get at it. Beefsteak and French fried potatoes
+were the favorites, and hot oyster stews. We were so all-fired hungry!”
+
+“How pathetic!” exclaimed Lady Mallowe. “And how interesting, now that
+it is all over!”
+
+She knew that her manner was gushing, and Joan's slight side glance of
+subtle appreciation of the fact exasperated her almost beyond endurance.
+What could one do, what could one talk about, without involving oneself
+in difficulties out of which one's hasty retreat could be effected
+only by gushing? Taking into consideration the awkwardness of the whole
+situation and seeing Joan's temper and attitude, if there had not been
+so much at stake she would have received a summoning telegram from
+London the next day and taken flight. But she had been forced to hold
+her ground before in places she detested or where she was not wanted,
+and she must hold it again until she had found out the worst or the
+best. And, great heaven! how Joan was conducting herself, with that
+slow, quiet insultingness of tone and look, the wicked, silent insolence
+of bearing which no man was able to stand, however admiringly he began!
+The Duke of Merthshire had turned his back upon it even after all
+the world had known his intentions, even after the newspapers had
+prematurely announced the engagement and she herself had been convinced
+that he could not possibly retreat. She had worked desperately that
+season, she had fawned on and petted newspaper people, and stooped to
+little things no one but herself could have invented and which no one
+but herself knew of. And never had Joan been so superb; her beauty
+had seemed at its most brilliant height. The match would have been
+magnificent; but he could not stand her, and would not. Why, indeed,
+should any man? She glanced at her across the table. A beauty, of
+course; but she was thinner, and her eyes had a hungry fierceness in
+them, and the two delicate, straight lines between her black brows were
+deepening.
+
+And there were no dukes on the horizon. Merthshire had married almost
+at once, and all the others were too young or had wives already. If this
+man would take her, she might feel herself lucky. Temple Barholm and
+seventy thousand a year were not to be trifled with by a girl who had
+made herself unpopular and who was twenty-six. And for her own luck the
+moment had come just before it was too late--a second marriage, wealth,
+the end of the hideous struggle. Joan was the obstacle in her path, and
+she must be forced out of it. She glanced quickly at Tembarom. He was
+trying to talk to Joan now. He was trying to please her. She evidently
+had a fascination for him. He looked at her in a curious way when she
+was not looking at him. It was a way different from that of other men
+whom she had watched as they furtively stared. It had struck her that he
+could not take his eyes away. That was because he had never before been
+on speaking terms with a woman of beauty and rank.
+
+Joan herself knew that he was trying to please her, and she was asking
+herself how long he would have the courage and presumption to keep it
+up. He could scarcely be enjoying it.
+
+He was not enjoying it, but he kept it up. He wanted to be friends with
+her for more reasons than one. No one had ever remained long at enmity
+with him. He had “got over” a good many people in the course of his
+career, as he had “got over” Joseph Hutchinson. This had always been
+accomplished because he presented no surface at which arrows could be
+thrown. She was the hardest proposition he had ever come up against, he
+was thinking; but if he didn't let himself be fool enough to break loose
+and get mad, she'd not hate him so much after a while. She would begin
+to understand that it wasn't his fault; then perhaps he could get her to
+make friends. In fact, if she had been able to read his thoughts, there
+is no certainty as to how far her temper might have carried her. But
+she could see him only as a sharp-faced, common American of the shop-boy
+class, sitting at the head of Jem Temple Barholm's table, in his chair.
+
+As they passed through the hall to go to the drawing-room after the meal
+was over, she saw a neat, pale young man speaking to Burrill and heard a
+few of his rather anxiously uttered words.
+
+“The orders were that he was always to be told when Mr. Strangeways was
+like this, under all circumstances. I can't quiet him, Mr. Burrill. He
+says he must see him at once.”
+
+Burrill walked back stiffly to the dining-room.
+
+“It won't trouble HIM much to be disturbed at his wine,” he muttered
+before going. “He doesn't know hock from port.”
+
+When the message was delivered to him, Tembarom excused himself with
+simple lack of ceremony.
+
+“I 'll be back directly,” he said to Palliser. “Those are good cigars.”
+ And he left the room without going into the matter further.
+
+Palliser took one of the good cigars, and in taking it exchanged a
+glance with Burrill which distantly conveyed the suggestion that perhaps
+he had better remain for a moment or so. Captain Palliser's knowledge of
+interesting detail was obtained “by chance here and there,” he sometimes
+explained, but it was always obtained with a light and casual air.
+
+“I am not sure,” he remarked as he took the light Burrill held for
+him and touched the end of his cigar--“I am not quite sure that I know
+exactly who Mr. Strangeways is.”
+
+“He's the gentleman, sir, that Mr. Temple Barholm brought over from New
+York,” replied Burrill with a stolidity clearly expressive of distaste.
+
+“Indeed, from New York! Why doesn't one see him?”
+
+“He's not in a condition to see people, sir,” said Burrill, and
+Palliser's slightly lifted eyebrow seeming to express a good deal, he
+added a sentence, “He's not all there, sir.”
+
+“From New York, and not all there. What seems to be the matter?”
+ Palliser asked quietly. “Odd idea to bring a lunatic all the way from
+America. There must be asylums there.”
+
+“Us servants have orders to keep out of the way,” Burrill said with
+sterner stolidity. “He's so nervous that the sight of strangers does him
+harm. I may say that questions are not encouraged.”
+
+“Then I must not ask any more,” said Captain Palliser. “I did not know I
+was edging on to a mystery.”
+
+“I wasn't aware that I was myself, sir,” Burrill remarked, “until I
+asked something quite ordinary of Pearson, who is Mr. Temple Barholm's
+valet, and it was not what he said, but what he didn't, that showed me
+where I stood.”
+
+“A mystery is an interesting thing to have in a house,” said Captain
+Palliser without enthusiasm. He smoked his cigar as though he was
+enjoying its aroma, and even from his first remark he had managed not to
+seem to be really quite addressing himself to Burrill. He was certainly
+not talking to him in the ordinary way; his air was rather that of
+a gentleman overhearing casual remarks in which he was only vaguely
+interested. Before Burrill left the room, however, and he left it under
+the impression that he had said no more than civility demanded, Captain
+Palliser had reached the point of being able to deduce a number of
+things from what he, like Pearson, had not said.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+
+The man who in all England was most deeply submerged in deadly boredom
+was, the old Duke of Stone said with wearied finality, himself. He had
+been a sinful young man of finished taste in 1820; he had cultivated
+these tastes, which were for literature and art and divers other things,
+in the most richly alluring foreign capitals until finding himself
+becoming an equally sinful and finished elderly man, he had decided to
+marry. After the birth of her four daughters, his wife had died and left
+them on his hands. Developing at that time a tendency to rheumatic gout
+and a daily increasing realization of the fact that the resources of
+a poor dukedom may be hopelessly depleted by an expensive youth passed
+brilliantly in Vienna, Paris, Berlin, and London, when it was endurable,
+he found it expedient to give up what he considered the necessities
+of life and to face existence in the country in England. It is not
+imperative that one should enter into detail. There was much, and it
+covered years during which his four daughters grew up and he “grew
+down,” as he called it. If his temper had originally been a bad one, it
+would doubtless have become unbearable; as he had been born an amiable
+person, he merely sank into the boredom which threatens extinction.
+His girls bored him, his neighbors bored him, Stone Hover bored him,
+Lancashire bored him, England had always bored him except at abnormal
+moments.
+
+“I read a great deal, I walk when I can,” this he wrote once to a friend
+in Rome. “When I am too stiff with rheumatic gout, I drive myself about
+in a pony chaise and feel like an aunt in a Bath chair. I have so
+far escaped the actual chair itself. It perpetually rains here, I may
+mention, so I don't get out often. You who gallop on white roads in the
+sunshine and hear Italian voices and vowels, figure to yourself your
+friend trundling through damp, lead-colored Lancashire lanes and being
+addressed in the Lancashire dialect. But so am I driven by necessity
+that I listen to it gratefully. I want to hear village news from
+villagers. I have become a gossip. It is a wonderful thing to be a
+gossip. It assists one to get through one's declining years. Do not wait
+so long as I did before becoming one. Begin in your roseate middle age.”
+
+An attack of gout more severe than usual had confined him to his room
+for some time after the arrival of the new owner of Temple Barholm.
+He had, in fact, been so far indisposed that a week or two had passed
+before he had heard of him. His favorite nurse had been chosen by him,
+because she was a comfortable village woman whom he had taught to lay
+aside her proper awe and talk to him about her own affairs and her
+neighbors when he was in the mood to listen. She spoke the broadest
+possible dialect,--he liked dialect, having learned much in his youth
+from mellow-eyed Neapolitan and Tuscan girls,--and she had never been
+near a hospital, but had been trained by the bedsides of her children
+and neighbors.
+
+“If I were a writing person, she would become literature, impinging upon
+Miss Mitford's tales of 'Our Village,' Miss Austen's varieties, and the
+young Bronte woman's 'Wuthering Heights.' Mon Dieu! what a resource it
+would be to be a writing person!” he wrote to the Roman friend.
+
+To his daughters he said:
+
+“She brings back my tenderest youth. When she pokes the fire in the
+twilight and lumbers about the room, making me comfortable, I lie in my
+bed and watch the flames dancing on the ceiling and feel as if I were
+six and had the measles. She tucks me in, my dears--she tucks me in, I
+assure you. Sometimes I feel it quite possible that she will bend over
+and kiss me.”
+
+She had tucked him in luxuriously in his arm-chair by the fire on the
+first day of his convalescence, and as she gave him his tray, with his
+beef tea and toast, he saw that she contained anecdotal information of
+interest which tactful encouragement would cause to flow.
+
+“Now that I am well enough to be entertained, Braddle,” he said, “tell
+me what has been happening.”
+
+“A graidely lot, yore Grace,” she answered; “but not so much i' Stone
+Hover as i' Temple Barholm. He's coom!”
+
+Then the duke vaguely recalled rumors he had heard sometime before his
+indisposition.
+
+“The new Mr. Temple Barholm? He's an American, isn't he? The lost heir
+who had to be sought for high and low--principally low, I understand.”
+
+The beef tea was excellently savory, the fire was warm, and relief from
+two weeks of pain left a sort of Nirvana of peace. Rarely had the duke
+passed a more delightfully entertaining morning. There was a richness
+in the Temple Barholm situation, as described in detail by Mrs. Braddle,
+which filled him with delight. His regret that he was not a writing
+person intensified itself. Americans had not appeared upon the horizon
+in Miss Mitford's time, or in Miss Austen's, or in the Brontes' the
+type not having entirely detached itself from that of the red Indian. It
+struck him, however, that Miss Austen might have done the best work with
+this affair if she had survived beyond her period. Her finely demure and
+sly sense of humor would have seen and seized upon its opportunities.
+Stark moorland life had not encouraged humor in the Brontes, and village
+patronage had not roused in Miss Mitford a sense of ironic contrasts.
+Yes, Jane Austen would have done it best.
+
+That the story should be related by Mrs. Braddle gave it extraordinary
+flavor. No man or woman of his own class could have given such a
+recounting, or revealed so many facets of this jewel of entertainment.
+He and those like him could have seen the thing only from their own
+amused, outraged, bewildered, or cynically disgusted point of view.
+Mrs. Braddle saw it as the villagers saw it--excited, curious, secretly
+hopeful of undue lavishness from “a chap as had nivver had brass before
+an' wants to chuck it away for brag's sake,” or somewhat alarmed at the
+possible neglecting of customs and privileges by a person ignorant
+of memorial benefactions. She saw it as the servants saw it--secretly
+disdainful, outwardly respectful, waiting to discover whether the
+sacrifice of professional distinction would be balanced by liberties
+permitted and lavishness of remuneration and largess. She saw it also
+from her own point of view--that of a respectable cottage dweller whose
+great-great-grandfather had been born in a black-and-white timbered
+house in a green lane, and who knew what were “gentry ways” and what
+nature of being could never even remotely approach the assumption of
+them. She had seen Tembarom more than once, and summed him up by no
+means ill-naturedly.
+
+“He's not such a bad-lookin' chap. He is na short-legged or
+turn-up-nosed, an' that's summat. He con stride along, an' he looks
+healthy enow for aw he's thin. A thin chap nivver looks as common as a
+fat un. If he wur pudgy, it ud be a lot more agen him.”
+
+“I think, perhaps,” amiably remarked the duke, sipping his beef tea,
+“that you had better not call him a `chap,' Braddle. The late Mr. Temple
+Barholm was never referred to as a `chap' exactly, was he?”
+
+Mrs. Braddle gave vent to a sort of internal-sounding chuckle. She had
+not meant to be impertinent, and she knew her charge was aware that she
+had not, and that he was neither being lofty or severe with her.
+
+“Eh, I'd 'a'loiked to ha' heard somebody do it when he was nigh,” she
+said. “Happen I'd better be moindin' ma P's an' Q's a bit more. But
+that's what this un is, yore Grace. He's a `chap' out an' out. An'
+theer's some as is sayin' he's not a bad sort of a chap either. There's
+lots o' funny stories about him i' Temple Barholm village. He goes in to
+th' cottages now an' then, an' though a fool could see he does na know
+his place, nor other people's, he's downreet open-handed. An' he maks
+foak laugh. He took a lot o' New York papers wi' big pictures in 'em
+to little Tummas Hibblethwaite. An' wot does tha think he did one rainy
+day? He walks in to the owd Dibdens' cottage, an' sits down betwixt 'em
+as they sit one each side o' th' f're, an' he tells 'em they've got to
+cheer him up a bit becos he's got nought to do. An' he shows 'em th'
+picter-papers, too, an' tells 'em about New York, an' he ends up wi'
+singin' 'em a comic song. They was frightened out o' their wits at
+first, but somehow he got over 'em, an' made 'em laugh their owd heads
+nigh off.”
+
+Her charge laid his spoon down, and his shrewd, lined face assumed a new
+expression of interest.
+
+“Did he! Did he, indeed!” he exclaimed. “Good Lord! what an exhilarating
+person! I must go and see him. Perhaps he'd make me laugh my `owd head
+nigh off.' What a sensation!”
+
+There was really immense color in the anecdotes and in the side views
+accompanying them; the routing out of her obscurity of the isolated,
+dependent spinster relative, for instance. Delicious! The man was either
+desperate with loneliness or he was one of the rough-diamond benefactors
+favored by novelists, in which latter case he would not be so
+entertaining. Pure self-interest caused the Duke of Stone quite
+unreservedly to hope that he was anguished by the unaccustomedness of
+his surroundings, and was ready to pour himself forth to any one who
+would listen. There would be originality in such a situation, and one
+could draw forth revelations worth forming an audience to. He himself
+had thought that the volte-face such circumstances demanded would surely
+leave a man staring at things foreign enough to bore him. This, indeed,
+had been one of his cherished theories; but the only man he had ever
+encountered who had become a sort of millionaire between one day
+and another had been an appalling Yorkshire man, who had had some
+extraordinary luck with diamond-mines in South Africa, and he had been
+simply drunk with exhilaration and the delight of spending money with
+both hands, while he figuratively slapped on the back persons who six
+weeks before would have kicked him for doing it.
+
+This man did not appear to be excited. The duke mentally rocked with
+gleeful appreciation of certain things Mrs. Braddle detailed. She
+gave, of course, Burrill's version of the brief interview outside the
+dining-room door when Miss Alicia's status in the household bad been
+made clear to him. But the duke, being a man endowed with a subtle sense
+of shades, was wholly enlightened as to the inner meaning of Burrill's
+master.
+
+“Now, that was good,” he said to himself, almost chuckling. “By the
+Lord! the man might have been a gentleman.”
+
+When to all this was added the story of the friend or poor relative, or
+what not, who was supposed to be “not quoite reet i' th' yed,” and was
+taken care of like a prince, in complete isolation, attended by a valet,
+visited and cheered up by his benefactor, he felt that a boon had
+indeed been bestowed upon him. It was a nineteenth century “Mysteries of
+Udolpho” in embryo, though too greatly diluted by the fact that though
+the stranger was seen by no one, the new Temple Barholm made no secret
+of him.
+
+If he had only made a secret of him, the whole thing would have been
+complete. There was of course in the situation a discouraging suggestion
+that Temple Barholm MIGHT turn out to be merely the ordinary noble
+character bestowing boons.
+
+“I will burn a little candle to the Virgin and offer up prayers that
+he may NOT. That sort of thing would have no cachet whatever, and would
+only depress me,” thought his still sufficiently sinful Grace.
+
+“When, Braddle, do you think I shall be able to take a drive again?” he
+asked his nurse.
+
+Braddle was not prepared to say upon her own responsibility, but the
+doctor would tell him when he came in that afternoon.
+
+“I feel astonishingly well, considering the sharpness of the attack,”
+ her patient said. “Our little talk has quite stimulated me. When I go
+out,”--there was a gleam in the eye he raised to hers,--“I am going to
+call at Temple Barholm.”
+
+“I knowed tha would,” she commented with maternal familiarity. “I dunnot
+believe tha could keep away.”
+
+And through the rest of the morning, as he sat and gazed into the
+fire, she observed that he several times chuckled gently and rubbed his
+delicate, chill, swollen knuckled hands together.
+
+A few weeks later there were some warm days, and his Grace chose to go
+out in his pony carriage. Much as he detested the suggestion of “the
+aunt in the Bath chair,” he had decided that he found the low, informal
+vehicle more entertaining than a more imposing one, and the desperation
+of his desire to be entertained can be comprehended only by those who
+have known its parallel. If he was not in some way amused, he found
+himself whirling, with rheumatic gout and seventy years, among
+recollections of vivid pictures better hung in galleries with closed
+doors. It was always possible to stop the pony carriage to look at
+views--bits of landscape caught at by vision through trees or under
+their spreading branches, or at the end of little green-hedged lanes
+apparently adorned with cottages, or farm-houses with ricks and
+barn-yards and pig-pens designed for the benefit of Morland and other
+painters of rusticity. He could also slacken the pony's pace and draw up
+by roadsides where solitary men sat by piles of stone, which they broke
+at leisure with hammers as though they were cracking nuts. He had spent
+many an agreeable half-hour in talk with a road-mender who could be led
+into conversation and was left elated by an extra shilling. As in years
+long past he had sat under chestnut-trees in the Apennines and shared
+the black bread and sour wine of a peasant, so in these days he
+frequently would have been glad to sit under a hedge and eat bread and
+cheese with a good fellow who did not know him and whose summing up of
+the domestic habits and needs of “th' workin' mon” or the amiabilities
+or degeneracies of the gentry would be expressed, figuratively speaking,
+in thoughts and words of one syllable. The pony, however, could not
+take him very far afield, and one could not lunch on the grass with a
+stone-breaker well within reach of one's own castle without an air of
+eccentricity which he no more chose to assume than he would have chosen
+to wear long hair and a flowing necktie. Also, rheumatic gout had
+not hovered about the days in the Apennines. He did not, it might be
+remarked, desire to enter into conversation with his humble fellow-man
+from altruistic motives. He did it because there was always a chance
+more or less that he would be amused. He might hear of little tragedies
+or comedies,--he much preferred the comedies,--and he often learned new
+words or phrases of dialect interestingly allied to pure Anglo-Saxon.
+When this last occurred, he entered them in a notebook he kept in his
+library. He sometimes pretended to himself that he was going to write a
+book on dialects; but he knew that he was a dilettante sort of creature
+and would really never do it. The pretense, however, was a sort of
+asset. In dire moments during rains or foggy weather when he felt
+twinges and had read till his head ached, he had wished that he had
+not eaten all his cake at the first course of life's feast, that he had
+formed a habit or so which might have survived and helped him to eke out
+even an easy-chair existence through the last courses. He did not
+find consolation in the use of the palliative adjective as applied to
+himself. A neatly cynical sense of humor prevented it. He knew he had
+always been an entirely selfish man and that he was entirely selfish
+still, and was not revoltingly fretful and domineering only because he
+was constitutionally unirritable.
+
+He was, however, amiably obstinate, and was accustomed to getting his
+own way in most things. On this day of his outing he insisted on driving
+himself in the face of arguments to the contrary. He was so fixed in
+his intention that his daughters and Mrs. Braddle were obliged to admit
+themselves overpowered.
+
+“Nonsense! Nonsense!” he protested when they besought him to allow
+himself to be driven by a groom. “The pony is a fat thing only suited to
+a Bath chair. He does not need driving. He doesn't go when he is driven.
+He frequently lies down and puts his cheek on his hand and goes to
+sleep, and I am obliged to wait until he wakes up.”
+
+“But, papa, dear,” Lady Edith said, “your poor hands are not very
+strong. And he might run away and kill you. Please do be reasonable!”
+
+“My dear girl,” he answered, “if he runs, I shall run after him and kill
+him when I catch him. George,” he called to the groom holding the plump
+pony's head, “tell her ladyship what this little beast's name is.”
+
+“The Indolent Apprentice, your Grace,” the groom answered, touching his
+hat and suppressing a grin.
+
+“I called him that a month ago,” said the duke. “Hogarth would have
+depicted all sorts of evil ends for him. Three weeks since, when I
+was in bed being fed by Braddle with a spoon, I could have outrun him
+myself. Let George follow me on a horse if you like, but he must keep
+out of my sight. Half a mile behind will do.”
+
+He got into the phaeton, concealing his twinges with determination, and
+drove down the avenue with a fine air, sitting erect and smiling. Indoor
+existence had become unendurable, and the spring was filling the woods.
+
+“I love the spring,” he murmured to himself. “I am sentimental about it.
+I love sentimentality, in myself, when I am quite alone. If I had been
+a writing person, I should have made verses every year in April and sent
+them to magazines--and they would have been returned to me.”
+
+The Indolent Apprentice was, it is true, fat, though comely, and he was
+also entirely deserving of his name. Like his Grace of Stone, however,
+he had seen other and livelier days, and now and then he was beset by
+recollections. He was still a rather high, though slow, stepper--the
+latter from fixed preference. He had once stepped fast, as well as with
+a spirited gait. During his master's indisposition he had stood in his
+loose box and professed such harmlessness that he had not been annoyed
+by being taken out for exercise as regularly as he might have been. He
+had champed his oats and listened to the repartee of the stable-boys,
+and he had, perhaps, felt the coming of the spring when the cuckoo
+insisted upon it with thrilling mellowness across the green sweeps of
+the park land. Sometimes it made him sentimental, as it made his master,
+sometimes it made him stamp his small hoofs restlessly in his straw and
+want to go out. He did not intend, when he was taken out, to emulate the
+Industrious Apprentice by hastening his pace unduly and raising false
+hopes for the future, but he sniffed in the air the moist green of
+leafage and damp moss, massed with yellow primroses cuddling in it as
+though for warmth, and he thought of other fresh scents and the feel of
+the road under a pony's feet.
+
+Therefore, when he found himself out in the world again, he shook his
+head now and then and even tossed it with the recurring sensations of a
+pony who was a mere boy and still slight in the waist.
+
+“You feel it too, do you?” said the duke. “I won't remind you of your
+years.”
+
+The drive from Stone Hover to the village of Temple Barholm was an easy
+one, of many charms of leaf-arched lanes and green-edged road. The duke
+had always had a partiality for it, and he took it this morning. He
+would probably have taken it in any case, but Mrs. Braddle's anecdotes
+had been floating through his mind when he set forth and perhaps
+inclined him in its direction.
+
+The groom was a young man of three and twenty, and he felt the spring
+also. The horse he rode was a handsome animal, and he himself was not
+devoid of a healthy young man's good looks. He knew his belted livery
+was becoming to him, and when on horseback he prided himself on what
+he considered an almost military bearing. Sarah Hibson, farmer Hibson's
+dimple-chinned and saucy-eyed daughter, had been “carryin' on a good
+bit” with a soldier who was a smart, well-set-up, impudent fellow, and
+it was the manifest duty of any other young fellow who had considered
+himself to be “walking out with her” to look after his charges. His
+Grace had been most particular about George's keeping far enough behind
+him; and as half a mile had been mentioned as near enough, certainly one
+was absolved from the necessity of keeping in sight. Why should not one
+turn into the lane which ended at Hibson's farm-yard, and drop into the
+dairy, and “have it out wi' Sarah?”
+
+Dimpled chins and saucy eyes, and bare, dimpled arms and hands patting
+butter while heads are tossed in coquettishly alluring defiance, made
+even “having it out” an attractive and memory-obscuring process. Sarah
+was a plump and sparkling imp of prettiness, and knew the power of every
+sly glance and every dimple and every golden freckle she possessed.
+George did not know it so well, and in ten minutes had lost his head and
+entirely forgotten even the half-mile behind.
+
+He was lover-like, he was masterful, he brought the spring with him; he
+“carried on,” as Sarah put it, until he had actually out-distanced
+the soldier, and had her in his arms, kissing her as she laughed and
+prettily struggled.
+
+“Shame o' tha face! Shame o' tha face, George!” she scolded and dimpled
+and blushed. “Wilt tha be done now? Wilt tha be done? I'll call mother.”
+
+And at that very moment mother came without being called, running, red
+of face, heavy-footed, and panting, with her cap all on one side.
+
+“Th' duke's run away! Th' duke's run away!” she shouted. “Jo seed him.
+Pony got freetened at summat--an' what art doin' here, George Bind? Get
+o' thy horse an' gallop. If he's killed, tha 'rt a ruined man.”
+
+There was an odd turn of chance in it, the duke thought afterward.
+Though friskier than usual, the Indolent Apprentice had behaved
+perfectly well until they neared the gates of Temple Barholm, which
+chanced to be open because a cart had just passed through. And it was
+not the cart's fault, for the Indolent Apprentice regarded it with
+friendly interest. It happened, however, that perhaps being absorbed
+in the cart, which might have been drawn by a friend or even a distant
+relative, the Indolent Apprentice was horribly startled by a large
+rabbit which leaped out of the hedge almost under his nose, and, worse
+still, was followed the next instant by another rabbit even larger and
+more sudden and unexpected in its movements. The Indolent Apprentice
+snorted, pawed, whirled, dashed through the open gateway,--the duke's
+hands were even less strong than his daughter had thought,--and
+galloped, head in air and bit between teeth, up the avenue, the low
+carriage rocking from side to side.
+
+“Damn! Damn!” cried the duke, rocking also. “Oh, damn! I shall be killed
+in a runaway perambulator!”
+
+And ridiculous as it was, things surged through his brain, and once,
+though he laughed at himself bitterly afterward, he gasped “Ah,
+Heloise;” as he almost whirled over a jagged tree-stump; gallop and
+gallop and gallop, off the road and through trees, and back again on to
+the sward, and gallop and gallop and jerk and jolt and jerk, and he
+was nearing the house, and a long-legged young man ran down the steps,
+pushing aside footmen, and was ahead of the drunken little beast of a
+pony, and caught him just as the phaeton overturned and shot his grace
+safely though not comfortably in a heap upon the grass.
+
+It was of course no trifle of a shock, but its victim's sensations gave
+him strong reason to hope, as he rolled over, that no bones were broken.
+The following servants were on the spot almost at once, and took the
+pony's head.
+
+The young man helped the duke to his feet and dusted him with masterly
+dexterity. He did not know he was dusting a duke, and he would not have
+cared if he had.
+
+“Hello,” he said, “you're not hurt. I can see that. Thank the Lord! I
+don't believe you've got a scratch.”
+
+His grace felt a shade shaky, and he was slightly pale, but he smiled
+in a way which had been celebrated forty years earlier, and the charm of
+which had survived even rheumatic gout.
+
+“Thank you. I'm not hurt in the least. I am the Duke of Stone. This
+isn't really a call. It isn't my custom to arrive in this way. May I
+address you as my preserver, Mr. Temple Barholm?”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+
+Upon the terrace, when he was led up the steps, stood a most perfect
+little elderly lady in a state of agitation much greater than his own or
+his rescuer's. It was an agitation as perfect in its femininity as she
+herself was. It expressed its kind tremors in the fashion which belonged
+to the puce silk dress and fine bits of collar and undersleeve the
+belated gracefulness of which caused her to present herself to him
+rather as a figure cut neatly from a book of the styles he had admired
+in his young manhood. It was of course Miss Alicia, who having, with
+Tembarom, seen the galloping pony from a window, had followed him when
+he darted from the room. She came forward, looking pale with charming
+solicitude.
+
+“I do so hope you are not hurt,” she exclaimed. “It really seemed that
+only divine Providence could prevent a terrible accident.”
+
+“I am afraid that it was more grotesque than terrible,” he answered a
+shade breathlessly.
+
+“Let me make you acquainted with the Duke of Stone, Miss Alicia,”
+ Tembarom said in the formula of Mrs. Bowse's boarders on state
+occasions of introduction. “Duke, let me make you acquainted, sir, with
+my--relation--Miss Alicia Temple Barholm.”
+
+The duke's bow had a remote suggestion of almost including a kissed hand
+in its gallant courtesy. Not, however, that Early Victorian ladies had
+been accustomed to the kissing of hands; but at the period when he had
+best known the type he had daily bent over white fingers in Continental
+capitals.
+
+“A glass of wine,” Miss Alicia implored. “Pray let me give you a glass
+of wine. I am sure you need it very much.”
+
+He was taken into the library and made to sit in a most comfortable
+easy-chair. Miss Alicia fluttered about him with sympathy still
+delicately tinged with alarm. How long, how long, it had been since he
+had been fluttered over! Nearly forty years. Ladies did not flutter
+now, and he remembered that it was no longer the fashion to call them
+“ladies.” Only the lower-middle classes spoke of “ladies.” But he found
+himself mentally using the word again as he watched Miss Alicia.
+
+It had been “ladies” who had fluttered and been anxious about a man in
+this quite pretty way.
+
+He could scarcely remove his eyes from her as he sipped his wine. She
+felt his escape “providential,” and murmured such devout little phrases
+concerning it that he was almost consoled for the grotesque inward
+vision of himself as an aged peer of the realm tumbling out of a
+baby-carriage and rolled over on the grass at the feet of a man on whom
+later he had meant to make, in proper state, a formal call. She put her
+hand to her side, smiling half apologetically.
+
+“My heart beats quite fast yet,” she said. Whereupon a quaintly novel
+thing took place, at the sight of which the duke barely escaped opening
+his eyes very wide indeed. The American Temple Barholm put his arm about
+her in the most casual and informally accustomed way, and led her to a
+chair, and put her in it, so to speak.
+
+“Say,” he announced with affectionate authority, “you sit down right
+away. It's you that needs a glass of wine, and I'm going to give it to
+you.”
+
+The relations between the two were evidently on a basis not common in
+England even among people who were attached to one another. There was a
+spontaneous, every-day air of natural, protective petting about it, as
+though the fellow was fond of her in his crude fashion, and meant to
+take care of her. He was fond of her, and the duke perceived it with
+elation, and also understood. He might be the ordinary bestower of
+boons, but the protective curve of his arm included other things. In the
+blank dullness of his unaccustomed splendors he had somehow encountered
+this fine, delicately preserved little relic of other days, and had
+seized on her and made her his own.
+
+“I have not seen anything as delightful as Miss Temple Barholm for many
+a year,” the duke said when Miss Alicia was called from the room and
+left them together.
+
+“Ain't she great?” was Tembarom's reply. “She's just great.”
+
+“It's an exquisite survival of type,” said the duke. “She belongs to my
+time, not yours,” he added, realizing that “survival of type” might not
+clearly convey itself.
+
+“Well, she belongs to mine now,” answered Tembarom. “I wouldn't lose her
+for a farm.”
+
+“The voice, the phrases, the carriage might survive,-they do in
+remote neighborhoods, I suppose--but the dress is quite delightfully
+incredible. It is a work of art,” the duke went on. She had seemed too
+good to be true. Her clothes, however, had certainly not been dug out of
+a wardrobe of forty years ago.
+
+“When I went to talk to the head woman in the shop in Bond Street I
+fixed it with 'em hard and fast that she was not to spoil her. They were
+to keep her like she was. She's like her little cap, you know, and her
+little mantles and tippets. She's like them,” exclaimed Tembarom.
+
+Did he see that? What an odd feature in a man of his sort! And how
+thoroughly New Yorkish it was that he should march into a fashionable
+shop and see that he got what he wanted and the worth of his money!
+There had been no rashness in the hope that the unexplored treasure
+might be a rich one. The man's simplicity was an actual complexity. He
+had a boyish eye and a grin, but there was a business-like line about
+his mouth which was strong enough to have been hard if it had not been
+good-natured.
+
+“That was confoundedly clever of you,” his grace commented
+heartily--“confoundedly. I should never have had the wit to think of it
+myself, or the courage to do it if I had. Shop-women make me shy.”
+
+“Oh, well, I just put it up to them,” Tembarom answered easily.
+
+“I believe,” cautiously translated the duke, “that you mean that you
+made them feel that they alone were responsible.”
+
+“Yes, I do,” assented Tembarom, the grin slightly in evidence. “Put it
+up to them's the short way of saying it.”
+
+“Would you mind my writing that down?” said the duke. “I have a fad for
+dialects and new phrases.” He hastily scribbled the words in a tablet
+that he took from his pocket. “Do you like living in England?” he asked
+in course of time.
+
+“I should like it if I'd been born here,” was the answer.
+
+“I see, I see.”
+
+“If it had not been for finding Miss Alicia, and that I made a promise
+I'd stay for a year, anyhow, I'd have broken loose at the end of the
+first week and worked my passage back if I hadn't had enough in my
+clothes to pay for it.” He laughed, but it was not real laughter. There
+was a thing behind it. The situation was more edifying than one could
+have hoped. “I made a promise, and I'm going to stick it out,” he said.
+
+He was going to stick it out because he had promised to endure for a
+year Temple Barholm and an income of seventy thousand pounds! The duke
+gazed at him as at a fond dream realized.
+
+“I've nothing to do,” Tembarom added.
+
+“Neither have I,” replied the Duke of Stone.
+
+“But you're used to it, and I'm not. I'm used to working 'steen hours
+a day, and dropping into bed as tired as a dog, but ready to sleep like
+one and get up rested.”
+
+“I used to play twenty hours a day once,” answered the duke, “but I
+didn't get up rested. That's probably why I have gout and rheumatism
+combined. Tell me how you worked, and I will tell you how I played.”
+
+It was worth while taking this tone with him. It had been worth while
+taking it with the chestnut-gathering peasants in the Apennines,
+sometimes even with a stone-breaker by an English roadside. And this one
+was of a type more unique and distinctive than any other--a fellow who,
+with the blood of Saxon kings and Norman nobles in his veins, had known
+nothing but the street life of the crudest city in the world, who spoke
+a sort of argot, who knew no parallels of the things which surrounded
+him in the ancient home he had inherited and in which he stood apart, a
+sort of semi-sophisticated savage. The duke applied himself with grace
+and finished ability to drawing him out. The questions he asked were
+all seemingly those of a man of the world charmingly interested in the
+superior knowledge of a foreigner of varied experience. His method was
+one which engaged the interest of Tembarom himself. He did not know that
+he was not only questioned, but, so to speak, delicately cross-examined
+and that before the end of the interview the Duke of Stone knew more of
+him, his past existence and present sentiments, than even Miss Alicia
+knew after their long and intimate evening talks. The duke, however, had
+the advantage of being a man and of cherishing vivid recollections of
+the days of his youth, which, unlike as it had been to that of
+Tembarom, furnished a degree of solid foundation upon which go to build
+conjecture.
+
+“A young man of his age,” his grace reflected astutely, “has always just
+fallen out of love, is falling into it, or desires vaguely to do so. Ten
+years later there would perhaps be blank spaces, lean years during which
+he was not in love at all; but at his particular period there must be
+a young woman somewhere. I wonder if she is employed in one of the
+department stores he spoke of, and how soon he hopes to present her to
+us. His conversation has revealed so far, to use his own rich simile,
+'neither hide nor hair' of her.”
+
+On his own part, he was as ready to answer questions as to ask them. In
+fact, he led Tembarom on to asking.
+
+“I will tell you how I played” had been meant. He made a human document
+of the history he enlarged, he brilliantly diverged, he included, he
+made pictures, and found Tembarom's point of view or lack of it gave
+spice and humor to relations he had thought himself tired of. To tell
+familiar anecdotes of courts and kings to a man who had never quite
+believed that such things were realities, who almost found them humorous
+when they were casually spoken of, was edification indeed. The novel
+charm lay in the fact that his class in his country did not include them
+as possibilities. Peasants in other countries, plowmen, shopkeepers,
+laborers in England--all these at least they knew of, and counted them
+in as factors in the lives of the rich and great; but this dear young
+man--!
+
+“What's a crown like? I'd like to see one. How much do you guess such a
+thing would cost--in dollars?”
+
+“Did not Miss Temple Barholm take you to see the regalia in the Tower
+of London? I am quite shocked,” said the duke. He was, in fact, a trifle
+disappointed. With the puce dress and undersleeves and little fringes
+she ought certainly to have rushed with her pupil to that seat of
+historical instruction on their first morning in London, immediately
+after breakfasting on toast and bacon and marmalade and eggs.
+
+“She meant me to go, but somehow it was put off. She almost cried on our
+journey home when she suddenly remembered that we'd forgotten it, after
+all.”
+
+“I am sure she said it was a wasted opportunity,” suggested his grace.
+
+“Yes, that was what hit her so hard. She'd never been to London before,
+and you couldn't make her believe she could ever get there again, and
+she said it was ungrateful to Providence to waste an opportunity. She's
+always mighty anxious to be grateful to Providence, bless her!”
+
+“She regards you as Providence,” remarked the duke, enraptured. With a
+touch here and there, the touch of a master, he had gathered the
+whole little story of Miss Alicia, and had found it of a whimsical
+exquisiteness and humor.
+
+“She's a lot too good to me,” answered Tembarom. “I guess women as nice
+as her are always a lot too good to men. She's a kind of little old
+angel. What makes me mad is to think of the fellows that didn't get busy
+and marry her thirty-five years ago.”
+
+“Were there--er--many of 'em?” the duke inquired.
+
+“Thousands of 'em, though most of 'em never saw her. I suppose you never
+saw her then. If you had, you might have done it.”
+
+The duke, sitting with an elbow on each arm of his chair, put the tips
+of his fine, gouty fingers together and smiled with a far-reaching
+inclusion of possibilities.
+
+“So I might,” he said; “so I might. My loss entirely--my abominable
+loss.”
+
+They had reached this point of the argument when the carriage from Stone
+Hover arrived. It was a stately barouche the coachman and footman of
+which equally with its big horses seemed to have hastened to an extent
+which suggested almost panting breathlessness. It contained Lady Edith
+and Lady Celia, both pale, and greatly agitated by the news which had
+brought them horrified from Stone Hover without a moment's delay.
+
+They both ascended in haste and swept in such alarmed anxiety up the
+terrace steps and through the hall to their father's side that they had
+barely a polite gasp for Miss Alicia and scarcely saw Tembarom at all.
+
+“Dear Papa!” they cried when he revealed himself in his chair in the
+library intact and smiling. “How wicked of you, dear! How you have
+frightened us!”
+
+“I begged you to be good, dearest,” said Lady Edith, almost in tears.
+“Where was George? You must dismiss him at once. Really--really--”
+
+“He was half a mile away, obeying my orders,” said the duke. “A groom
+cannot be dismissed for obeying orders. It is the pony who must be
+dismissed, to my great regret; or else we must overfeed him until he is
+even fatter than he is and cannot run away.”
+
+Were his arms and legs and his ribs and collar-bones and head quite
+right? Was he sure that he had not received any internal injury when he
+fell out of the pony-carriage? They could scarcely be convinced, and
+as they hung over and stroked and patted him, Tembarom stood aside and
+watched them with interest. They were the girls he had to please Ann by
+“getting next to,” giving himself a chance to fall in love with them,
+so that she'd know whether they were his kind or not. They were
+nice-looking, and had a way of speaking that sounded rather swell, but
+they weren't ace high to a little slim, redheaded thing that looked at
+you like a baby and pulled your heart up into your throat.
+
+“Don't poke me any more, dear children. I am quite, quite sound,” he
+heard the duke say. “In Mr. Temple Barholm you behold the preserver
+of your parent. Filial piety is making you behave with shocking
+ingratitude.”
+
+They turned to Tembarom at once with a pretty outburst of apologies
+and thanks. Lady Celia wasn't, it is true, “a looker,” with her narrow
+shoulders and rather long nose, but she had an air of breeding, and the
+charming color of which Palliser had spoken, returning to Lady Edith's
+cheeks, illuminated her greatly.
+
+They both were very polite and made many agreeably grateful speeches,
+but in the eyes of both there lurked a shade of anxiety which they hoped
+to be able to conceal. Their father watched them with a wicked pleasure.
+He realized clearly their well-behaved desire to do and say exactly the
+right thing and bear themselves in exactly the right manner, and also
+their awful uncertainty before an entirely unknown quantity. Almost any
+other kind of young man suddenly uplifted by strange fortune they might
+have known some parallel for, but a newsboy of New York! All the New
+Yorkers they had met or heard of had been so rich and grand as to make
+them feel themselves, by contrast, mere country paupers, quite shivering
+with poverty and huddling for protection in their barely clean rags,
+so what was there to go on? But how dreadful not to be quite right,
+precisely right, in one's approach--quite familiar enough, and yet not
+a shade too familiar, which of course would appear condescending! And be
+it said the delicacy of the situation was added to by the fact that they
+had heard something of Captain Palliser's extraordinary little story
+about his determination to know “ladies.” Really, if Willocks the
+butcher's boy had inherited Temple Barholm, it would have been easier to
+know where one stood in the matter of being civil and agreeable to
+him. First Lady Edith, made perhaps bold by the suggestion of physical
+advantage bestowed by the color, talked to him to the very best of her
+ability; and when she felt herself fearfully flagging, Lady Celia took
+him up and did her very well-conducted best. Neither she nor her sister
+were brilliant talkers at any time, and limited by the absence of any
+common familiar topic, effort was necessary. The neighborhood he did
+not know; London he was barely aware of; social functions it would be an
+impertinence to bring in; games he did not play; sport he had scarcely
+heard of. You were confined to America, and if you knew next to nothing
+of American life, there you were.
+
+Tembarom saw it all,--he was sharp enough for that,--and his habit
+of being jocular and wholly unashamed saved him from the misery of
+awkwardness that Willocks would have been sure to have writhed under.
+His casual frankness, however, for a moment embarrassed Lady Edith to
+the bitterest extremity. When you are trying your utmost to make a queer
+person oblivious to the fact that his world is one unknown to you, it is
+difficult to know where do you stand when he says.
+
+“It's mighty hard to talk to a man who doesn't know a thing that belongs
+to the kind of world you've spent your life in, ain't it? But don't you
+mind me a minute. I'm glad to be talked to anyhow by people like you.
+When I don't catch on, I'll just ask. No man was ever electrocuted for
+not knowing, and that's just where I am. I don't know, and I'm glad to
+be told. Now, there's one thing. Burrill said 'Your Ladyship' to you, I
+heard him. Ought I to say it, er oughtn't I?”
+
+“Oh, no,” she answered, but somehow without distaste in the momentary
+stare he had startled her into; “Burrill is--”
+
+“He's a servant,” he aided encouragingly. “Well, I've never been a
+butler, but I've been somebody's servant all my life, and mighty glad of
+the chance. This is the first time I've been out of a job.”
+
+What nice teeth he had! What a queer, candid, unresentful creature! What
+a good sort of smile! And how odd that it was he who was putting her
+more at her ease by the mere way in which he was saying this almost
+alarming thing! By the time he had ended, it was not alarming at all,
+and she had caught her breath again.
+
+She was actually sorry when the door opened and Lady Joan Fayre came in,
+followed almost immediately by Lady Mallowe and Captain Palliser, who
+appeared to have just returned from a walk and heard the news.
+
+Lady Mallowe was most sympathetic. Why not, indeed? The Duke of Stone
+was a delightful, cynical creature, and Stone Hover was, despite its
+ducal poverty, a desirable place to be invited to, if you could manage
+it. Her ladyship's method of fluttering was not like Miss Alicia's,
+its character being wholly modern; but she fluttered, nevertheless.
+The duke, who knew all about her, received her amiabilities with
+appreciative smiles, but it was the splendidly handsome, hungry-eyed
+young woman with the line between her black brows who engaged his
+attention. On the alert, as he always was, for a situation, he detected
+one at once when he saw his American address her. She did not address
+him, and scarcely deigned a reply when he spoke to her. When he spoke
+to others, she conducted herself as though he were not in the room, so
+obviously did she choose to ignore his existence. Such a bearing toward
+one's host had indeed the charm of being an interesting novelty. And
+what a beauty she was, with her lovely, ferocious eyes and the small,
+black head poised on the exquisite long throat, which was on the verge
+of becoming a trifle too thin! Then as in a flash he recalled between
+one breath and another the quite fiendish episode of poor Jem Temple
+Barholm--and she was the girl!
+
+Then he became almost excited in his interest. He saw it all. As he had
+himself argued must be the case, this poor fellow was in love. But it
+was not with a lady in the New York department stores; it was with a
+young woman who would evidently disdain to wipe her feet upon him. How
+thrilling! As Lady Mallowe and Palliser and the others chattered, he
+watched him, observing his manner. He stood the handsome creature's
+steadily persistent rudeness very well; he made no effort to push into
+the talk when she coolly held him out of it. He waited without external
+uneasiness or spasmodic smiles. If he could do that despite the
+inevitable fact that he must feel his position uncomfortable, he was
+possessed of fiber. That alone would make him worth cultivating. And if
+there were persons who were to be made uncomfortable, why not cut in and
+circumvent the beauty somewhat and give her a trifle of unease? It
+was with the light and adroit touch of accustomedness to all orders of
+little situations that his grace took the matter in hand, with a shade,
+also, of amiable malice. He drew Tembarom adroitly into the center of
+things; he knew how to lead him to make easily the odd, frank
+remarks which were sufficiently novel to suggest that he was actually
+entertaining. He beautifully edged Lady Joan out of her position. She
+could not behave ill to him, he was far too old, he said to himself,
+leaving out the fact that a Duke of Stone is a too respectable personage
+to be quite waved aside.
+
+Tembarom began to enjoy himself a little more. Lady Celia and Lady Edith
+began to enjoy themselves a little more also. Lady Mallowe was filled
+with admiring delight. Captain Palliser took in the situation, and asked
+himself questions about it. On her part, Miss Alicia was restored to
+the happiness any lack of appreciation of her “dear boy” touchingly
+disturbed. In circumstances such as these he appeared to the advantage
+which in a brief period would surely reveal his wonderful qualities. She
+clung so to his “wonderful qualities” because in all the three-volumed
+novels of her youth the hero, debarred from early advantages and raised
+by the turn of fortune's wheel to splendor, was transformed at once into
+a being of the highest accomplishments and the most polished breeding,
+and ended in the third volume a creature before whom emperors paled.
+And how more than charmingly cordial his grace's manner was when he left
+them!
+
+“To-morrow,” he said, “if my daughters do not discover that I have
+injured some more than vital organ, I shall call to proffer my thanks
+with the most immense formality. I shall get out of the carriage in
+the manner customary in respectable neighborhoods, not roll out at your
+feet. Afterward you will, I hope, come and dine with us. I am devoured
+by a desire to become more familiar with The Earth.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+
+It was Lady Mallowe who perceived the moment when he became the fashion.
+The Duke of Stone called with the immense formality he had described,
+and his visit was neither brief nor dull. A little later Tembarom with
+his guests dined at Stone Hover, and the dinner was further removed from
+dullness than any one of numerous past dinners always noted for being
+the most agreeable the neighborhood afforded. The duke managed his guest
+as an impresario might have managed his tenor, though this was done with
+subtly concealed methods. He had indeed a novelty to offer which had
+been discussed with much uncertainty of point of view. He presented it
+to an only languidly entertained neighborhood as a trouvaille of his own
+choice. Here was drama, here was atmosphere, here was charm verging in
+its character upon the occult. You would not see it if you were not a
+collector of such values.
+
+“Nobody will be likely to see him as he is unless he is pointed out to
+them,” was what he said to his daughters. “But being bored to death,--we
+are all bored,--once adroitly assisted to suspect him of being alluring,
+most of them will spring upon him and clasp him to their wearied
+breasts. I haven't the least idea what will happen afterward. I shall in
+fact await the result with interest.”
+
+Being told Palliser's story of the “Ladies,” he listened, holding the
+tips of his fingers together, and wearing an expression of deep interest
+slightly baffled in its nature. It was Lady Edith who related the
+anecdote to him.
+
+“Now,” he said, “it would be very curious and complicating if that were
+true; but I don't believe it is. Palliser, of course, likes to tell a
+good story. I shall be able to discover in time whether it is true or
+not; but at present I don't believe it.”
+
+Following the dinner party at Stone Hover came many others. All the
+well-known carriages began to roll up the avenue to Temple Barholm. The
+Temple Barholm carriages also began to roll down the avenue and between
+the stone griffins on their way to festive gatherings of varied order.
+Burrill and the footmen ventured to reconsider their early plans for
+giving warning. It wasn't so bad if the country was going to take him
+up.
+
+“Do you see what is happening?” Lady Mallowe said to Joan. “The man is
+becoming actually popular.”
+
+“He is popular as a turn at a music hall is,” answered Joan. “He will be
+dropped as he was taken up.”
+
+“There's something about him they like, and he represents what everybody
+most wants. For God's sake! Joan, don't behave like a fool this time.
+The case is more desperate. There is nothing else--nothing.”
+
+“There never was,” said Joan, “and I know the desperateness of the
+case. How long are you going to stay here?”
+
+“I am going to stay for some time. They are not conventional people. It
+can be managed very well. We are relatives.”
+
+“Will you stay,” inquired Joan in a low voice, “until they ask you to
+remove yourself?”
+
+Lady Mallowe smiled an agreeably subtle smile.
+
+“Not quite that,” she answered. “Miss Alicia would never have the
+courage to suggest it. It takes courage and sophistication to do that
+sort of thing. Mr. Temple Barholm evidently wants us to remain. He will
+be willing to make as much of the relationship as we choose to let him.”
+
+“Do you choose to let him make as much of it as will establish us here
+for weeks--or months?” Joan asked, her low voice shaking a little.
+
+“That will depend entirely upon circumstances. It will, in fact, depend
+entirely upon you,” said Lady Mallowe, her lips setting themselves into
+a straight, thin line.
+
+For an appreciable moment Joan was silent; but after it she lost her
+head and whirled about.
+
+“I shall go away,” she cried.
+
+“Where?” asked Lady Mallowe.
+
+“Back to London.”
+
+“How much money have you?” asked her mother. She knew she had none. She
+was always sufficiently shrewd to see that she had none. If the girl had
+had a pound a week of her own, her mother had always realized that she
+would have been unmanageable. After the Jem Temple Barholm affair she
+would have been capable of going to live alone in slums. As it was,
+she knew enough to be aware that she was too handsome to walk out into
+Piccadilly without a penny in her pocket; so it had been just possible
+to keep her indoors.
+
+“How much money have you?” she repeated quietly. This was the way in
+which their unbearable scenes began--the scenes which the servants
+passing the doors paused to listen to in the hope that her ladyship
+would forget that raised voices may be heard by the discreet outsider.
+
+“How much money have you?” she said again.
+
+Joan looked at her; this time it was for about five seconds. She turned
+her back on her and walked out of the room. Shortly afterward Lady
+Mallowe saw her walking down the avenue in the rain, which was beginning
+to fall.
+
+She had left the house because she dared not stay in it. Once out in
+the park, she folded her long purple cloak about her and pulled her soft
+purple felt hat down over her brows, walking swiftly under the big trees
+without knowing where she intended to go before she returned. She liked
+the rain, she liked the heavy clouds; she wore her dark purples because
+she felt a fantastic, secret comfort in calling them her mourning--her
+mourning which she would wear forevermore.
+
+No one could know so well as herself how desperate from her own point of
+view the case was. She had long known that her mother would not hesitate
+for a moment before any chance of a second marriage which would totally
+exclude her daughter from her existence. Why should she, after all, Joan
+thought? They had always been antagonists. The moment of chance had been
+looming on the horizon for months. Sir Moses Monaldini had hovered
+about fitfully and evidently doubtfully at first, more certainly and
+frequently of late, but always with a clearly objecting eye cast askance
+upon herself. With determination and desire to establish a social
+certainty, astute enough not to care specially for young beauty and
+exactions he did not purpose to submit to, and keen enough to see the
+advantage of a handsome woman with bitter reason to value what was
+offered to her in the form of a luxurious future, Sir Moses was moving
+toward action, though with proper caution. He would have no penniless
+daughters hanging about scowling and sneering. None of that for him. And
+the ripest apple upon the topmost bow in the highest wind would not drop
+more readily to his feet than her mother would, Joan knew with sharp and
+shamed burnings.
+
+As the rain fell, she walked in her purple cloak, unpaid for, and her
+purple hat, for which they had been dunned with threatening insults, and
+knew that she did not own and could not earn a penny. She could not dig,
+and to beg she was ashamed, and all the more horribly because she had
+been a beggar of the meaner order all her life. It made her sick to
+think of the perpetual visits they had made where they were not wanted,
+of the times when they had been politely bundled out of places, of the
+methods which had been used to induce shop-keepers to let them run up
+bills. For years her mother and she had been walking advertisements of
+smart shops because both were handsome, wore clothes well, and carried
+them where they would be seen and talked about. Now this would be all
+over, since it had been Lady Mallowe who had managed all details. Thrown
+upon her own resources, Joan would have none of them, even though she
+must walk in rags. Her education had prepared her for only one thing--to
+marry well, if luck were on her side. It had never been on her side. If
+she had never met Jem, she would have married somebody, since that would
+have been better than the inevitable last slide into an aging life spent
+in cheap lodgings with her mother. But Jem had been the beginning and
+the end.
+
+She bit her lips as she walked, and suddenly tears swept down her cheeks
+and dripped on to the purple cloth folded over her breast.
+
+“And he sits in Jem's place! And every day that common, foolish stare
+will follow me!” she said.
+
+He sat, it was true, in the place Jem Temple Barholm would have occupied
+if he had been a living man, and he looked at her a good deal. Perhaps
+he sometimes unconsciously stared because she made him think of many
+things. But if she had been in a state of mind admitting of judicial
+fairness, she would have been obliged to own that it was not quite a
+foolish stare. Absorbed, abstracted, perhaps, but it was not foolish.
+Sometimes, on the contrary, it was searching and keen.
+
+Of course he was doing his best to please her. Of all the “Ladies,” it
+seemed evident that he was most attracted by her. He tried to talk to
+her despite her unending rebuffs, he followed her about and endeavored
+to interest her, he presented a hide-bound unsensitiveness when she did
+her worst. Perhaps he did not even know that she was being icily rude.
+He was plainly “making up to her” after the manner of his class. He
+was perhaps playing the part of the patient adorer who melted by noble
+long-suffering in novels distinguished by heroes of humble origin.
+
+She had reached the village when the rain changed its mind, and without
+warning began to pour down as if the black cloud passing overhead had
+suddenly opened. She was wondering if she would not turn in somewhere
+for shelter until the worst was over when a door opened and Tembarom ran
+out with an umbrella.
+
+“Come in to the Hibblethwaites cottage, Lady Joan,” he said. “This will
+be over directly.”
+
+He did not affectionately hustle her in by the arm as he would have
+hustled in Miss Alicia, but he closely guarded her with the umbrella
+until he guided her inside.
+
+“Thank you,” she said.
+
+The first object she became aware of was a thin face with pointed chin
+and ferret eyes peering at her round the end of a sofa, then a sharp
+voice.
+
+“Tak' off her cloak an' shake th' rain off it in th' wash 'us',” it
+said. “Mother an' Aunt Susan's out. Let him unbutton it fer thee.”
+
+“I can unbutton it myself, thank you,” said Lady Joan. Tembarom took it
+when she had unbuttoned it. He took it from her shoulders before she had
+time to stop him. Then he walked into the tiny “wash 'us” and shook it
+thoroughly. He came back and hung it on a chair before the fire.
+
+Tummas was leaning back in his pillows and gazing at her.
+
+“I know tha name,” he said. “He towd me,” with a jerk of the head toward
+Tembarom.
+
+“Did he?” replied Lady Joan without interest.
+
+A flaringly illustrated New York paper was spread out upon his sofa. He
+pushed it aside and pulled the shabby atlas toward him. It fell open at
+a map of North America as if through long habit.
+
+“Sit thee down,” he ordered.
+
+Tembarom had stood watching them both.
+
+“I guess you'd better not do that,” he suggested to Tummas.
+
+“Why not?” said the boy, sharply. “She's th' wench he was goin' to
+marry. It's th' same as if he'd married her. If she wur his widder,
+she'd want to talk about him. Widders allus wants to talk. Why shouldn't
+she? Women's women. He'd ha' wanted to talk about her.”
+
+“Who is `he'?” asked Joan with stiff lips.
+
+“The Temple Barholm as' 'd be here if he was na.”
+
+Joan turned to Tembarom.
+
+“Do you come here to talk to this boy about HIM?” she said. “How dare
+you!”
+
+Tummas's eyes snapped; his voice snapped also.
+
+“He knew next to nowt about him till I towd him,” he said. “Then he came
+to ax me things an' foind out more. He knows as much as I do now. Us
+sits here an' talks him over.”
+
+Lady Joan still addressed Tembarom.
+
+“What interest can you have in the man who ought to be in your place?”
+ she asked. “What possible interest?”
+
+“Well,” he answered awkwardly, “because he ought to be, I suppose. Ain't
+that reason enough?”
+
+He had never had to deal with women who hated him and who were angry and
+he did not know exactly what to say. He had known very few women, and
+he had always been good-natured with them and won their liking in some
+measure. Also, there was in his attitude toward this particular woman
+a baffled feeling that he could not make her understand him. She would
+always think of him as an enemy and believe he meant things he did not
+mean. If he had been born and educated in her world, he could have used
+her own language; but he could use only his own, and there were so many
+things he must not say for a time at least.
+
+“Do you not realize,” she said, “that you are presuming upon your
+position--that you and this boy are taking liberties?”
+
+Tummas broke in wholly without compunction.
+
+“I've taken liberties aw my loife,” he stated, “an' I'm goin' to tak'
+'em till I dee. They're th' on'y things I can tak', lyin' here crippled,
+an' I'm goin' to tak' 'em.”
+
+“Stop that, Tummas!” said Tembarom with friendly authority. “She
+doesn't catch on, and you don't catch on, either. You're both of you
+'way off. Stop it!”
+
+“I thought happen she could tell me things I didn't know,” protested
+Tummas, throwing himself back on his pillows. “If she conna, she conna,
+an' if she wunnot, she wunnot. Get out wi' thee!” he said to Joan. “I
+dunnot want thee about th' place.”
+
+“Say,” said Tembarom, “shut up!”
+
+“I am going,” said Lady Joan and turned to open the door.
+
+The rain was descending in torrents, but she passed swiftly out into its
+deluge walking as rapidly as she could. She thought she cared nothing
+about the rain, but it dashed in her face and eyes, taking her breath
+away, and she had need of breath when her heart was beating with such
+fierceness.
+
+“If she wur his widder,” the boy had said.
+
+Even chance could not let her alone at one of her worst moments. She
+walked faster and faster because she was afraid Tembarom would follow
+her, and in a few minutes she heard him splashing behind her, and then
+he was at her side, holding the umbrella over her head.
+
+“You're a good walker,” he said, “but I'm a sprinter. I trained running
+after street cars and catching the 'L' in New York.”
+
+She had so restrained her miserable hysteric impulse to break down and
+utterly humiliate herself under the unexpected blow of the episode in
+the cottage that she had had no breath to spare when she left the room,
+and her hurried effort to escape had left her so much less that she did
+not speak.
+
+“I'll tell you something,” he went on. “He's a little freak, but you
+can't blame him much. Don't be mad at him. He's never moved from that
+corner since he was born, I guess, and he's got nothing to do or to
+think of but just hearing what's happening outside. He's sort of crazy
+curious, and when he gets hold of a thing that suits him he just holds
+on to it till the last bell rings.”
+
+She said nothing whatever, and he paused a moment because he wanted to
+think over the best way to say the next thing.
+
+“Mr. James Temple Barholm “--he ventured it with more delicacy of
+desire not to seem to “take liberties” than she would have credited him
+with--“saw his mother sitting with him in her arms at the cottage door
+a week or so after he was born. He stopped at the gate and talked to
+her about him, and he left him a sovereign. He's got it now. It seems
+a fortune to him. He's made a sort of idol of him. That's why he talks
+like he does. I wouldn't let it make me mad if I were you.”
+
+He did not know that she could not have answered him if she would, that
+she felt that if he did not stop she might fling herself down upon the
+wet heather and wail aloud.
+
+“You don't like me,” he began after they had walked a few steps farther.
+“You don't like me.”
+
+This was actually better. It choked back the sobs rising in her throat.
+The stupid shock of it, his tasteless foolishness, helped her by its
+very folly to a sort of defense against the disastrous wave of emotion
+she might not have been able to control. She gathered herself together.
+
+“It must be an unusual experience,” she answered.
+
+“Well, it is--sort of,” he said, but in a manner curiously free from
+fatuous swagger. “I've had luck that way. I guess it's been because I'd
+GOT to make friends so as I could earn a living. It seems sort of queer
+to know that some one's got a grouch against me that--that I can't get
+away with.”
+
+She looked up the avenue to see how much farther they must walk
+together, since she was not “a sprinter” and could not get away from
+him. She thought she caught a glimpse through the trees of a dog-cart
+driven by a groom, and hoped she had not mistaken and that it was
+driving in their direction.
+
+“It must, indeed,” she said, “though I am not sure I quite understand
+what a grouch is.”
+
+“When you've got a grouch against a fellow,” he explained impersonally,
+“you want to get at him. You want to make him feel like a mutt; and a
+mutt's the worst kind of a fool. You've got one against me.”
+
+She looked before her between narrowed lids and faintly smiled--the
+most disagreeable smile she was capable of. And yet for some too
+extraordinary reason he went on. But she had seen men go on before this
+when all the odds were against them. Sometimes their madness took them
+this way.
+
+“I knew there was a lot against me when I came here,” he persisted. “I
+should have been a fool if I hadn't. I knew when you came that I was up
+against a pretty hard proposition; but I thought perhaps if I got busy
+and SHOWED you--you've got to SHOW a person--”
+
+“Showed me what?” she asked contemptuously.
+
+“Showed you--well--me,” he tried to explain.
+
+“You!”
+
+“And that I wanted to be friends,” he added candidly.
+
+Was the man mad? Did he realize nothing? Was he too thick of skin even
+to see?
+
+“Friends! You and I?” The words ought to have scorched him, pachyderm
+though he was.
+
+“I thought you'd give me a chance--a sort of chance--”
+
+She stopped short on the avenue.
+
+“You did?”
+
+She had not been mistaken. The dog-cart had rounded the far-off curve
+and was coming toward them. And the man went on talking.
+
+“You've felt every minute that I was in a place that didn't belong to
+me. You know that if the man that it did belong to was here, you'd be
+here with him. You felt as if I'd robbed him of it--and I'd robbed you.
+It was your home--yours. You hated me too much to think of anything
+else. Suppose--suppose there was a way I could give it back to you--make
+it your home again.”
+
+His voice dropped and was rather unsteady. The fool, the gross, brutal,
+vulgar, hopeless fool! He thought this was the way to approach her, to
+lead her to listen to his proposal of marriage! Not for a second did she
+guess that they were talking at cross purposes. She did not know that as
+he kept himself steady under her contemptuousness he was thinking that
+Ann would have to own that he had been up against it hard and plenty
+while the thing was going on.
+
+“I'm always up against it when I'm talking to you,” he said. “You get
+me rattled. There's things I want to talk about and ask you. Suppose you
+give me a chance, and let us start out by being sort of friends.”
+
+“I am staying in your house,” she answered in a deadly voice, “and I
+cannot go away because my mother will not let me. You can force yourself
+upon me, if you choose, because I cannot help it; but understand once
+for all that I will not give you your ridiculous chance. And I will not
+utter one word to you when I can avoid it.”
+
+He was silent for a moment and seemed to be thinking rather deeply. She
+realized now that he saw the nearing dog-cart.
+
+“You won't. Then it's up to me,” he said. Then with a change of tone, he
+added, “I'll stop the cart and tell the man to drive you to the house.
+I'm not going to force myself on you, as you call it. It'd be no use.
+Perhaps it'll come all right in the end.”
+
+
+He made a sign to the groom, who hastened his horse's pace and drew up
+when he reached them.
+
+“Take this lady back to the house,” he said.
+
+The groom, who was a new arrival, began to prepare to get down and give
+up his place.
+
+“You needn't do that,” said Tembarom.
+
+“Won't you get up and take the reins, sir?” the man asked uncertainly.
+
+“No. I can't drive. You'll have to do it. I'll walk.”
+
+And to the groom's amazement, they left him standing under the trees
+looking after them.
+
+“It's up to me,” he was saying. “The whole durned thing's up to me.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+
+The neighborhood of Temple Barholm was not, upon the whole, a brilliant
+one. Indeed, it had been frankly designated by the casual guest as dull.
+The country was beautiful enough, and several rather large estates lay
+within reach of one another, but their owners were neither very rich nor
+especially notable personages. They were of extremely good old blood,
+and were of established respectability. None of them, however, was given
+to entertaining house parties made up of the smart and dazzlingly sinful
+world of fashion said by moralists to be composed entirely of young and
+mature beauties, male and female, capable of supplying at any moment
+enlivening detail for the divorce court--glittering beings whose
+wardrobes were astonishing and whose conversations were composed wholly
+of brilliant paradox and sparkling repartee.
+
+Most of the residents took their sober season in London, the men of the
+family returning gladly to their pheasants, the women not regretfully to
+their gardens and tennis, because their successes in town had not been
+particularly delirious. The guests who came to them were generally
+as respectable and law-abiding as themselves, and introduced no
+iconoclastic diversions. For the greater portion of the year, in fact,
+diners out were of the neighborhood and met the neighborhood, and were
+reduced to discussing neighborhood topics, which was not, on the whole,
+a fevered joy. The Duke of Stone was, perhaps, the one man who might
+have furnished topics. Privately it was believed, and in part known,
+that he at least had had a brilliant, if not wholly unreprehensible,
+past. He might have introduced enlivening elements from London, even
+from Paris, Vienna, Berlin, and Rome; but the sobering influence of
+years of rheumatic gout and a not entirely sufficing income prevented
+activities, and his opinions of his social surroundings were vaguely
+guessed to be those of a not too lenient critic.
+
+“I do not know anything technical or scientific about ditch-water,” he
+had expressed himself in the bosom of his family. “I never analyzed it,
+but analyzers, I gather, consider it dull. If anything could be duller
+than ditch-water, I should say it was Stone Hover and its surrounding
+neighborhood.” He had also remarked at another time: “If our society
+could be enriched by some of the characters who form the house parties
+and seem, in fact, integral parts of all country society in modern
+problem or even unproblem novels, how happy one might be, how edified
+and amused! A wicked lady or so of high, or extremely low, rank, of
+immense beauty and corruscating brilliancy; a lovely creature, male or
+female, whom she is bent upon undoing--”
+
+“Dear papa!” protested Lady Celia.
+
+“Reproach me, dearest. Reproach me as severely as you please. It
+inspires me. It makes me feel like a wicked, dangerous man, and I have
+not felt like one for many years. Such persons as I describe form the
+charm of existence, I assure you. A ruthless adventuress with any kind
+of good looks would be the making of us. Several of them, of different
+types, a handsome villain, and a few victims unknowing of their fate,
+would cause life to flow by like a peaceful stream.”
+
+Lady Edith laughed an unseemly little laugh--unseemly, since filial
+regret at paternal obliquity should have restrained it.
+
+“Papa, you are quite horrible,” she said. “You ought not to make your
+few daughters laugh at improper things.”
+
+“I would make my daughters laugh at anything so long as I must doom them
+to Stone Hover--and Lady Pevensy and Mrs. Stoughton and the rector, if
+one may mention names,” he answered. “To see you laugh revives me by
+reminding me that once I was considered a witty person--quite so. Some
+centuries ago, however; about the time when things were being rebuilt
+after the flood.”
+
+In such circumstances it cannot be found amazing that a situation such
+as Temple Barholm presented should provide rich food for conversation,
+supposition, argument, and humorous comment.
+
+T. Tembarom himself, after the duke had established him, furnished an
+unlimited source of interest. His household became a perennial fount of
+quiet discussion. Lady Mallowe and her daughter were the members of it
+who met with the most attention. They appeared to have become members of
+it rather than visitors. Her ladyship had plainly elected to extend her
+stay even beyond the period to which a fond relative might feel entitled
+to hospitality. She had been known to extend visits before with great
+cleverness, but this one assumed an established aspect. She was not
+going away, the neighborhood decided, until she had achieved that which
+she had come to accomplish. The present unconventional atmosphere of the
+place naturally supported her. And how probable it seemed, taking into
+consideration Captain Palliser's story, that Mr. Temple Barholm wished
+her to stay. Lady Joan would be obliged to stay also, if her mother
+intended that she should. But the poor American--there were some
+expressions of sympathy, though the situation was greatly added to by
+the feature--the poor American was being treated by Lady Joan as only
+she could treat a man. It was worth inviting the whole party to dinner
+or tea or lunch merely to see the two together. The manner in which
+she managed to ignore him and be scathing to him without apparently
+infringing a law of civility, and the number of laws she sometimes chose
+to sweep aside when it was her mood to do so, were extraordinary. If
+she had not been a beauty, with a sort of mystic charm for the male
+creature, surely he would have broken his chains. But he did not. What
+was he going to do in the end? What was she going to do? What was
+Lady Mallowe going to do if there was no end at all? He was not as
+unhappy-looking a lover as one might have expected, they said. He
+kept up his spirits wonderfully. Perhaps she was not always as icily
+indifferent to him as she chose to appear in public. Temple Barholm was
+a great estate, and Sir Moses Monaldini had been mentioned by rumor. Of
+course there would be something rather strange and tragic in it if she
+came to Temple Barholm as its mistress in such singular circumstances.
+But he certainly did not look depressed or discouraged. So they talked
+it over as they looked on.
+
+“How they gossip! How delightfully they gossip!” said the duke. “But it
+is such a perfect subject. They have never been so enthralled before.
+Dear young man! how grateful we ought to be for him!”
+
+One of the most discussed features of the case was the duke's own
+cultivation of the central figure. There was an actual oddity about
+it. He drove from Stone Hover to Temple Barholm repeatedly. He invited
+Tembarom to the castle and had long talks with him--long, comfortable
+talks in secluded, delightful rooms or under great trees on a lawn.
+He wanted to hear anecdotes of his past, to draw him on to giving his
+points of view. When he spoke of him to his daughters, he called him “T.
+Tembarom,” but the slight derision of his earlier tone modified itself.
+
+“That delightful young man will shortly become my closest intimate,” he
+said. “He not only keeps up my spirits, but he opens up vistas. Vistas
+after a man's seventy-second birthday! At times I could clasp him to my
+breast.”
+
+“I like him first rate,” Tembarom said to Miss Alicia. “I liked him the
+minute he got up laughing like an old sport when he fell out of the pony
+carriage.”
+
+As he became more intimate with him, he liked him still better. Obscured
+though it was by airy, elderly persiflage, he began to come upon a
+background of stability and points of view wholly to be relied on in
+his new acquaintance. It had evolved itself out of long and varied
+experience, with the aid of brilliant mentality. The old peer's reasons
+were always logical. He laughed at most things, but at a few he did not
+laugh at all. After several of the long conversations Tembarom began
+to say to himself that this seemed like a man you need not be afraid to
+talk things over with--things you didn't want to speak of to everybody.
+
+“Seems to me,” he said thoughtfully to Miss Alicia, “he's an old fellow
+you could tie to. I've got on to one thing when I've listened to him: he
+talks all he wants to and laughs a lot, but he never gives himself away.
+He wouldn't give another fellow away either if he said he wouldn't. He
+knows how not to.”
+
+There was an afternoon on which during a drive they took together the
+duke was enlightened as to several points which had given him cause for
+reflection, among others the story beloved of Captain Palliser and his
+audiences.
+
+“I guess you've known a good many women,” T. Tembarom remarked on this
+occasion after a few minutes of thought. “Living all over the world as
+you've done, you'd be likely to come across a whole raft of them one
+time and another.”
+
+“A whole raft of them, one time and another,” agreed the duke. “Yes.”
+
+“You've liked them, haven't you?”
+
+“Immensely. Sometimes a trifle disastrously. Find me a more absolutely
+interesting object in the universe than a woman--any woman--and I will
+devote the remainder of my declining years to the study of it,” answered
+his grace.
+
+He said it with a decision which made T. Tembarom turn to look at him,
+and after his look decide to proceed.
+
+“Have you ever known a bit of a slim thing”--he made an odd embracing
+gesture with his arm--“the size that you could pick up with one hand
+and set on your knee as if she was a child”--the duke remained still,
+knowing this was only the beginning and pricking up his ears as he took
+a rapid kaleidoscopic view of all the “Ladies” in the neighborhood, and
+as hastily waved them aside--“a bit of a thing that some way seems to
+mean it all to you--and moves the world?” The conclusion was one which
+brought the incongruous touch of maturity into his face.
+
+“Not one of the `Ladies,”' the duke was mentally summing the matter up.
+“Certainly not Lady Joan, after all. Not, I think, even the young person
+in the department store.”
+
+He leaned back in his corner the better to inspect his companion
+directly.
+
+“You have, I see,” he replied quietly. “Once I myself did.” (He had
+cried out, “Ah! Heloise!” though he had laughed at himself when he
+seemed facing his ridiculous tragedy.)
+
+“Yes,” confessed T. Tembarom. “I met her at the boarding-house where I
+lived. Her father was a Lancashire man and an inventor. I guess you've
+heard of him; his name is Joseph Hutchinson.”
+
+The whole country had heard of him; more countries, indeed, than one
+had heard. He was the man who was going to make his fortune in America
+because T. Tembarom had stood by him in his extremity. He would make a
+fortune in America and another in England and possibly several others
+on the Continent. He had learned to read in the village school, and the
+girl was his daughter.
+
+“Yes,” replied the duke.
+
+“I don't know whether the one you knew had that quiet little way of
+seeing right straight into a thing, and making you see it, too,” said
+Tembarom.
+
+“She had,” answered the duke, and an odd expression wavered in his
+eyes because he was looking backward across forty years which seemed a
+hundred.
+
+“That's what I meant by moving the world,” T. Tembarom went on. “You
+know she's RIGHT, and you've got to do what she says, if you love her.”
+
+“And you always do,” said the duke--“always and forever. There are very
+few. They are the elect.”
+
+T. Tembarom took it gravely.
+
+“I said to her once that there wasn't more than one of her in the world
+because there couldn't be enough to make two of that kind. I wasn't
+joshing either; I meant it. It's her quiet little voice and her quiet,
+babyfied eyes that get you where you can't move. And it's something
+else you don't know anything about. It's her never doing anything for
+herself, but just doing it because it's the right thing for you.”
+
+The duke's chin had sunk a little on his breast, and looking back across
+the hundred years, he forgot for a moment where he was. The one he
+remembered had been another man's wife, a little angel brought up in a
+convent by white-souled nuns, passed over by her people to an elderly
+vaurien of great magnificence, and she had sent the strong, laughing,
+impassioned young English peer away before it was too late, and with
+the young, young eyes of her looking upward at him in that way which saw
+“straight into a thing” and with that quiet little voice. So long ago!
+So long ago!
+
+“Ah! Heloise!” he sighed unconsciously.
+
+“What did you say?” asked T. Tembarom. The duke came back.
+
+“I was thinking of the time when I was nine and twenty,” he answered.
+“It was not yesterday nor even the day before. The one I knew died when
+she was twenty-four.”
+
+“Died!” said Tembarom. “Good Lord!” He dropped his head and even changed
+color. “A fellow can't get on to a thing like that. It seems as if it
+couldn't happen. Suppose--” he caught his breath hard and then pulled
+himself up--“Nothing could happen to her before she knew that I've
+proved what I said--just proved it, and done every single thing she told
+me to do.”
+
+“I am sure you have,” the duke said.
+
+“It's because of that I began to say this.” Tembarom spoke hurriedly
+that he might thrust away the sudden dark thought. “You're a man, and
+I'm a man; far away ahead of me as you are, you're a man, too. I was
+crazy to get her to marry me and come here with me, and she wouldn't.”
+
+The duke's eyes lighted anew.
+
+“She had her reasons,” he said.
+
+“She laid 'em out as if she'd been my mother instead of a little
+red-headed angel that you wanted to snatch up and crush up to you so she
+couldn't breathe. She didn't waste a word. She just told me what I was
+up against. She'd lived in the village with her grandmother, and she
+knew. She said I'd got to come and find out for myself what no one else
+could teach me. She told me about the kind of girls I'd see--beauties
+that were different from anything I'd ever seen before. And it was up to
+me to see all of them--the best of them.”
+
+“Ladies?” interjected the duke gently.
+
+“Yes. With titles like those in novels, she said, and clothes like those
+in the Ladies' Pictorial. The kind of girls, she said, that would make
+her look like a housemaid. Housemaid be darned!” he exclaimed, suddenly
+growing hot. “I've seen the whole lot of them; I've done my darndest to
+get next, and there's not one--” he stopped short. “Why should any of
+them look at me, anyhow?” he added suddenly.
+
+“That was not her point,” remarked the duke. “She wanted you to look
+at them, and you have looked.” T. Tembarom's eagerness was inspiring to
+behold.
+
+“I have, haven't I?” he cried. “That was what I wanted to ask you. I've
+done as she said. I haven't shirked a thing. I've followed them around
+when I knew they hadn't any use on earth for me. Some of them have
+handed me the lemon pretty straight. Why shouldn't they? But I don't
+believe she knew how tough it might be for a fellow sometimes.”
+
+“No, she did not,” the duke said. “Also she probably did not know that
+in ancient days of chivalry ladies sent forth their knights to bear
+buffeting for their sakes in proof of fealty. Rise up, Sir Knight!” This
+last phrase of course T. Tembarom did not know the poetic significance
+of.
+
+To his hearer Palliser's story became an amusing thing, read in the
+light of this most delicious frankness. It was Palliser himself who
+played the fool, and not T. Tembarom, who had simply known what he
+wanted, and had, with businesslike directness, applied himself to
+finding a method of obtaining it. The young women he gave his time to
+must be “Ladies” because Miss Hutchinson had required it from him. The
+female flower of the noble houses had been passed in review before
+him to practise upon, so to speak. The handsomer they were, the more
+dangerously charming, the better Miss Hutchinson would be pleased. And
+he had been regarded as a presumptuous aspirant. It was a situation for
+a comedy. But the “Ladies” would not enjoy it if they were told. It was
+also not the Duke of Stone who would tell them. They could not in
+the least understand the subtlety of the comedy in which they had
+unconsciously taken part. Ann Hutchinson's grandmother curtsied to them
+in her stiff old way when they passed. Ann Hutchinson had gone to the
+village school and been presented with prizes for needlework and good
+behavior. But what a girl she must be, the slim bit of a thing with a
+red head! What a clear-headed and firm little person!
+
+In courts he had learned to wear a composed countenance when he was
+prompted to smile, and he wore one now. He enjoyed the society of T.
+Tembarom increasingly every hour. He provided him with every joy.
+
+Their drive was a long one, and they talked a good deal. They talked of
+the Hutchinsons, of the invention, of the business “deals” Tembarom
+had entered into at the outset, and of their tremendously encouraging
+result. It was not mere rumor that Hutchinson would end by being a rich
+man. The girl would be an heiress. How complex her position would be!
+And being of the elect who unknowingly bear with them the power
+that “moves the world,” how would she affect Temple Barholm and its
+surrounding neighborhood?
+
+“I wish to God she was here now!” exclaimed Tembarom, suddenly.
+
+It had been an interesting talk, but now and then the duke had wondered
+if, as it went on, his companion was as wholly at his ease as was usual
+with him. An occasional shade of absorption in his expression, as if
+he were thinking of two things at once despite himself, a hint of
+restlessness, revealed themselves occasionally. Was there something more
+he was speculating on the possibility of saying, something more to tell
+or explain? If there was, let him take his time. His audience, at all
+events, was possessed of perceptions. This somewhat abrupt exclamation
+might open the way.
+
+“That is easily understood, my dear fellow,” replied the duke.
+
+“There's times when you want a little thing like that just to talk
+things over with, just to ask, because you--you're dead sure she'd never
+lose her head and give herself away without knowing she was doing
+it. She could just keep still and let the waves roll over her and
+be standing there ready and quiet when the tide had passed. It's the
+keeping your mouth shut that's so hard for most people, the not saying a
+darned thing, whatever happens, till just the right time.”
+
+“Women cannot often do it,” said the duke. “Very few men can.”
+
+“You're right,” Tembarom answered, and there was a trifle of anxiety in
+his tone.
+
+“There's women, just the best kind, that you daren't tell a big thing
+to. Not that they'd mean to give it away--perhaps they wouldn't know
+when they did it--but they'd feel so anxious they'd get--they'd get--”
+
+“Rattled,” put in the duke, and knew who he was thinking of. He saw Miss
+Alicia's delicate, timid face as he spoke.
+
+T. Tembarom laughed.
+
+“That's just it,” he answered. “They wouldn't go back on you for worlds,
+but--well, you have to be careful with them.”
+
+“He's got something on his mind,” mentally commented the duke. “He
+wonders if he will tell it to me.”
+
+“And there's times when you'd give half you've got to be able to talk a
+thing out and put it up to some one else for a while. I could do it with
+her. That's why I said I wish to God that she was here.”
+
+“You have learned to know how to keep still,” the duke said. “So have I.
+We learned it in different schools, but we have both learned.”
+
+As he was saying the words, he thought he was going to hear something;
+when he had finished saying them he knew that he would without a doubt.
+T. Tembarom made a quick move in his seat; he lost a shade of color and
+cleared his throat as he bent forward, casting a glance at the backs of
+the coachman and footman on the high seat above them.
+
+“Can those fellows hear me?” he asked.
+
+“No,” the duke answered; “if you speak as you are speaking now.”
+
+“You are the biggest man about here,” the young man went on. “You stand
+for everything that English people care for, and you were born knowing
+all the things I don't. I've been carrying a big load for quite a while,
+and I guess I'm not big enough to handle it alone, perhaps. Anyhow, I
+want to be sure I'm not making fool mistakes. The worst of it is that
+I've got to keep still if I'm right, and I've got to keep still if I'm
+wrong. I've got to keep still, anyhow.”
+
+“I learned to hold my tongue in places where, if I had not held it, I
+might have plunged nations into bloodshed,” the duke said. “Tell me all
+you choose.”
+
+As a result of which, by the time their drive had ended and they
+returned to Stone Hover, he had told him, and, the duke sat in his
+corner of the carriage with an unusual light in his eyes and a flush of
+somewhat excited color on his cheek.
+
+“You're a queer fellow, T. Tembarom,” he said when they parted in the
+drawing-room after taking tea. “You exhilarate me. You make me laugh. If
+I were an emotional person, you would at moments make me cry. There's an
+affecting uprightness about you. You're rather a fine fellow too, 'pon
+my life.” Putting a waxen, gout-knuckled old hand on his shoulder, and
+giving him a friendly push which was half a pat, he added, “You are, by
+God!”
+
+
+
+And after his guest had left him, the duke stood for some minutes gazing
+into the fire with a complicated smile and the air of a man who finds
+himself quaintly enriched.
+
+“I have had ambitions in the course of my existence--several of them,”
+ he said, “but even in over-vaulting moments never have I aspired to such
+an altitude as this--to be, as it were, part of a melodrama. One feels
+that one scarcely deserves it.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+
+
+“Mr. Temple Barholm seems in better spirits,” Lady Mallowe said to
+Captain Palliser as they walked on the terrace in the starlight dusk
+after dinner.
+
+Captain Palliser took his cigar from his mouth and looked at the glowing
+end of it.
+
+“Has it struck you that he has been in low spirits?” he inquired
+speculatively. “One does not usually connect him with depression.”
+
+“Certainly not with depression. He's an extraordinary creature.
+One would think he would perish from lack of the air he is used to
+breathing--New York air.”
+
+“He is not perishing. He's too shrewd,” returned Palliser. “He mayn't
+exactly like all this, but he's getting something out of it.”
+
+“He is not getting much of what he evidently wants most. I am out of all
+patience,” said Lady Mallowe.
+
+Her acquaintance with Palliser had lasted through a number of years.
+They argued most matters from the same basis of reasoning. They were at
+times almost candid with each other. It may be acknowledged, however,
+that of the two Lady Mallowe was the more inclined to verge on
+self-revelation. This was of course because she was the less clever and
+had more temper. Her temper, she had, now and then, owned bitterly to
+herself, had played her tricks. Captain Palliser's temper never did
+this. It was Lady Mallowe's temper which spoke now, but she did not
+in the least mind his knowing that Joan was exasperating her beyond
+endurance. He knew the whole situation well enough to be aware of it
+without speech on her part. He had watched similar situations several
+times before.
+
+“Her manner toward him is, to resort to New York colloquialisms, `the
+limit,'” Palliser said quietly. “Is it your idea that his less good
+spirits have been due to Lady Joan's ingenuities? They are ingenious,
+you know.”
+
+“They are devilish,” exclaimed her mother. “She treads him in the mire
+and sails about professing to be conducting herself flawlessly. She is
+too clever for me,” she added with bitterness.
+
+Palliser laughed softly.
+
+“But very often you have been too clever for her,” he suggested. “For my
+part, I don't quite see how you got her here.”
+
+Lady Mallowe became not almost, but entirely, candid.
+
+“Upon the whole, I don't quite know myself. I believe she really came
+for some mysterious reason of her own.”
+
+“That is rather my impression,” said Palliser. “She has got something up
+her sleeve, and so has he.”
+
+“He!” Lady Mallowe quite ejaculated the word. “She always has. That's
+her abominable secretive way. But he! T. Tembarom with something up his
+sleeve! One can't imagine it.”
+
+“Almost everybody has. I found that out long years ago,” said Palliser,
+looking at his cigar end again as if consulting it. “Since I arrived at
+the conclusion, I always take it for granted, and look out for it. I've
+become rather clever in following such things up, and I have taken an
+unusual interest in T. Tembarom from the first.”
+
+Lady Mallowe turned her handsome face, much softened by an enwreathing
+gauze scarf, toward him anxiously.
+
+“Do you think his depression, or whatever it is, means Joan?” she asked.
+
+“If he is depressed by her, you need not be discouraged,” smiled
+Palliser. “The time to lose hope would be when, despite her ingenuities,
+he became entirely cheerful. But,” he added after a moment of pause, “I
+have an idea there is some other little thing.”
+
+“Do you suppose that some young woman he has left behind in New York
+is demanding her rights?” said Lady Mallowe, with annoyance. “That
+is exactly the kind of thing Joan would like to hear, and so entirely
+natural. Some shop-girl or other.”
+
+“Quite natural, as you say; but he would scarcely be running up to
+London and consulting Scotland Yard about her,” Palliser answered.
+
+“Scotland Yard!” ejaculated his companion. “How in the world did you
+find that out?”
+
+Captain Palliser did not explain how he had done it. Presumably his
+knowledge was due to the adroitness of the system of “following such
+things up.”
+
+“Scotland Yard has also come to him,” he went on. “Did you chance to see
+a red-faced person who spent a morning with him last week?”
+
+“He looked like a butcher, and I thought he might be one of his
+friends,” Lady Mallowe said.
+
+“I recognized the man. He is an extremely clever detective, much
+respected for his resources in the matter of following clues which are
+so attenuated as to be scarcely clues at all.”
+
+“Clues have no connection with Joan,” said Lady Mallowe, still more
+annoyed. “All London knows her miserable story.”
+
+“Have you--” Captain Palliser's tone was thoughtful, “--has any one ever
+seen Mr. Strangeways?”
+
+“No. Can you imagine anything more absurdly romantic? A creature without
+a memory, shut up in a remote wing of a palace like this, as if he were
+the Man with the Iron Mask. Romance is not quite compatible with T.
+Tembarom.”
+
+“It is so incongruous that it has entertained me to think it over a good
+deal,” remarked Palliser. “He leaves everything to one's imagination.
+All one knows is that he isn't a relative; that he isn't mad, but only
+too nervous to see or be seen. Queer situation. I've found there is
+always a reason for things; the queerer they are, the more sure it is
+that there's a reason. What is the reason Strangeways is kept here, and
+where would a detective come in? Just on general principles I'm rather
+going into the situation. There's a reason, and it would be amusing to
+find it out. Don't you think so?”
+
+He spoke casually, and Lady Mallowe's answer was casual, though she knew
+from experience that he was not as casual as he chose to seem. He was
+clever enough always to have certain reasons of his own which formulated
+themselves into interests large and small. He knew things about people
+which were useful. Sometimes quite small things were useful. He was
+always well behaved, and no one had ever accused him of bringing
+pressure to bear; but it was often possible for him to sell things
+or buy things or bring about things in circumstances which would have
+presented difficulties to other people. Lady Mallowe knew from long
+experience all about the exigencies of cases when “needs must,” and she
+was not critical. Temple Barholm as the estate of a distant relative
+and T. Tembarom as its owner were not assets to deal with indifferently.
+When a man made a respectable living out of people who could be
+persuaded to let you make investments for them, it was not an
+unbusinesslike idea to be in the position to advise an individual
+strongly.
+
+“It's quite natural that you should feel an interest,” she answered.
+“But the romantic stranger is too romantic, though I will own Scotland
+Yard is a little odd.”
+
+“Yes, that is exactly what I thought,” said Palliser.
+
+He had in fact thought a good deal and followed the thing up in a quiet,
+amateur way, though with annoyingly little result. Occasionally he had
+felt rather a fool for his pains, because he had been led to so few
+facts of importance and had found himself so often confronted by T.
+Tembarom's entirely frank grin. His own mental attitude was not a
+complex one. Lady Mallowe's summing up had been correct enough on the
+whole. Temple Barholm ought to be a substantial asset, regarded in its
+connection with its present owner. Little dealings in stocks--sometimes
+rather large ones when luck was with him--had brought desirable returns
+to Captain Palliser throughout a number of years. Just now he was
+taking an interest in a somewhat imposing scheme, or what might prove
+an imposing one if it were managed properly and presented to the right
+persons. If T. Tembarom had been sufficiently lured by the spirit of
+speculation to plunge into old Hutchinson's affair, as he evidently had
+done, he was plainly of the temperament attracted by the game of chance.
+There had been no reason but that of temperament which could have led
+him to invest. He had found himself suddenly a moneyed man and had
+liked the game. Never having so much as heard of Little Ann Hutchinson,
+Captain Palliser not unnaturally argued after this wise. There seemed no
+valid reason why, if a vague invention had allured, a less vague scheme,
+managed in a more businesslike manner, should not. This Mexican silver
+and copper mine was a dazzling thing to talk about. He could go into
+details. He had, in fact, allowed a good deal of detail to trail through
+his conversation at times. It had not been difficult to accomplish this
+in his talks with Lady Mallowe in his host's presence. Lady Mallowe was
+always ready to talk of mines, gold, silver, or copper. It happened at
+times that one could manage to secure a few shares without the actual
+payment of money. There were little hospitalities or social amiabilities
+now and then which might be regarded as value received. So she had made
+it easy for Captain Palliser to talk, and T. Tembarom had heard much
+which would have been of interest to the kind of young man he appeared
+to be. Sometimes he had listened absorbedly, and on a few occasions he
+had asked a few questions which laid him curiously bare in his role of
+speculator. If he had no practical knowledge of the ways and means of
+great mining companies, he at least professed none. At all events, if
+there was any little matter he preferred to keep to himself, there was
+no harm in making oneself familiar with its aspect and significance. A
+man's arguments, so far as he himself is concerned, assume the character
+with which his own choice of adjectives and adverbs labels them. That
+is, if he labels them. The most astute do not. Captain Palliser did not.
+He dealt merely with reasoning processes which were applicable to the
+subject in hand, whatsoever its nature. He was a practical man of
+the world--a gentleman, of course. It was necessary to adjust matters
+without romantic hair-splitting. It was all by the way.
+
+T. Tembarom had at the outset seemed to present, so to speak, no
+surface. Palliser had soon ceased to be at all sure that his social
+ambitions were to be relied on as a lever. Besides which, when the old
+Duke of Stone took delighted possession of him, dined with him, drove
+with him, sat and gossiped with him by the hour, there was not much one
+could offer him. Strangeways had at first meant only eccentricity. A
+little later he had occasionally faintly stirred curiosity, and perhaps
+the fact that Burrill enjoyed him as a grievance and a mystery had
+stimulated the stirring. The veriest chance had led him to find himself
+regarding the opening up of possible vistas.
+
+From a certain window in a certain wing of the house a much-praised view
+was to be seen. Nothing was more natural than that on the occasion of a
+curious sunset Palliser should, in coming from his room, decide to take
+a look at it. As he passed through a corridor Pearson came out of a room
+near him.
+
+“How is Mr. Strangeways to-day?” Palliser asked.
+
+“Not quite so well, I am afraid, sir,” was the answer.
+
+“Sorry to hear it,” replied Palliser, and passed on.
+
+On his return he walked somewhat slowly down the corridor. As he turned
+into it he thought he heard the murmur of voices. One was that of T.
+Tembarom, and he was evidently using argument. It sounded as if he were
+persuading some one to agree with him, and the persuasion was earnest.
+He was not arguing with Pearson or a housemaid. Why was he arguing with
+his pensioner? His voice was as low as it was eager, and the other man's
+replies were not to be heard. Only just after Palliser had passed the
+door there broke out an appeal which was a sort of cry.
+
+“No! My God, no! Don't send me away? Don't send me away!”
+
+One could not, even if so inclined, stand and listen near a door while
+servants might chance to be wandering about. Palliser went on his way
+with a sense of having been slightly startled.
+
+“He wants to get rid of him, and the fellow is giving him trouble,” he
+said to himself. “That voice is not American. Not in the least.” It set
+him thinking and observing. When Tembarom wore the look which was not a
+look of depression, but of something more puzzling, he thought that he
+could guess at its reason. By the time he talked with Lady Mallowe he
+had gone much further than he chose to let her know.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII
+
+
+The popularity of Captain Palliser's story of the “Ladies” had been
+great at the outset, but with the passage of time it had oddly waned.
+This had resulted from the story's ceasing to develop itself, as the
+simplest intelligence might have anticipated, by means of the only
+person capable of its proper development. The person in question was of
+course T. Tembarom. Expectations, amusing expectations, of him had been
+raised, and he had singularly failed in the fulfilling of them. The
+neighborhood had, so to speak, stood upon tiptoe,--the feminine portion
+of it, at least,--looking over shoulders to get the first glimpses of
+what would inevitably take place.
+
+As weeks flew by, the standing on tiptoe became a thing of the past. The
+whole thing flattened out most disappointingly. No attack whatever was
+made upon the “Ladies.” That the Duke of Stone had immensely taken up
+Mr. Temple Barholm had of course resulted in his being accepted in such
+a manner as gave him many opportunities to encounter one and all. He
+appeared at dinners, teas, and garden parties. Miss Alicia, whom he had
+in some occult manner impressed upon people until they found themselves
+actually paying a sort of court to her, was always his companion.
+
+“One realizes one cannot possibly leave her out of anything,” had been
+said. “He has somehow established her as if she were his mother or his
+aunt--or his interpreter. And such clothes, my dear, one doesn't behold.
+Worth and Paquin and Doucet must go sleepless for weeks to invent them.
+They are without a flaw in shade or line or texture.” Which was true,
+because Mrs. Mellish of the Bond Street shop had become quite obsessed
+by her idea and committed extravagances Miss Alicia offered up contrite
+prayer to atone for, while Tembarom, simply chortling in his glee,
+signed checks to pay for their exquisite embodiment. That he was not
+reluctant to avail himself of social opportunities was made manifest by
+the fact that he never refused an invitation. He appeared upon any spot
+to which hospitality bade him, and unashamedly placed himself on record
+as a neophyte upon almost all occasions. His well-cut clothes began in
+time to wear more the air of garments belonging to him, but his hat
+made itself remarked by its trick of getting pushed back on his head
+or tilted on side, and his New York voice and accent rang out sharp and
+finely nasal in the midst of low-pitched, throaty, or mellow English
+enunciations. He talked a good deal at times because he found himself
+talked to by people who either wanted to draw him out or genuinely
+wished to hear the things he would be likely to say.
+
+That the hero of Palliser's story should so comport himself as to
+provide either diversion or cause for haughty displeasure would have
+been only a natural outcome of his ambitions. In a brief period of time,
+however, every young woman who might have expected to find herself
+an object of such ambitions realized that his methods of approach and
+attack were not marked by the usual characteristics of aspirants of his
+class. He evidently desired to see and be seen. He presented himself, as
+it were, for inspection and consideration, but while he was attentive,
+he did not press attentions upon any one. He did not make advances in
+the ordinary sense of the word. He never essayed flattering or even
+admiring remarks. He said queer things at which one often could not help
+but laugh, but he somehow wore no air of saying them with the intention
+of offering them as witticisms which might be regarded as allurements.
+He did not ogle, he did not simper or shuffle about nervously and turn
+red or pale, as eager and awkward youths have a habit of doing under
+the stress of unrequited admiration. In the presence of a certain
+slightingness of treatment, which he at the outset met with not
+infrequently, he conducted himself with a detached good nature which
+seemed to take but small account of attitudes less unoffending than his
+own. When the slightingness disappeared from sheer lack of anything to
+slight, he did not change his manner in any degree.
+
+“He is not in the least forward,” Beatrice Talchester said, the time
+arriving when she and her sisters occasionally talked him over with
+their special friends, the Granthams, “and he is not forever under one's
+feet, as the pushing sort usually is. Do you remember those rich
+people from the place they called Troy--the ones who took Burnaby for
+a year--and the awful eldest son who perpetually invented excuses for
+calling, bringing books and ridiculous things?”
+
+“This one never makes an excuse,” Amabel Grantham put in.
+
+“But he never declines an invitation. There is no doubt that he wants
+to see people,” said Lady Honora, with the pretty little nose and the
+dimples. She had ceased to turn up the pretty little nose, and she
+showed a dimple as she added: “Gwynedd is tremendously taken with him.
+She is teaching him to play croquet. They spend hours together.”
+
+“He's beginning to play a pretty good game,” said Gwynedd. “He's not
+stupid, at all events.”
+
+“I believe you are the first choice, if he is really choosing,” Amabel
+Grantham decided. “I should like to ask you a question.”
+
+“Ask it, by all means,” said Gwynedd.
+
+“Does he ever ask you to show him how to hold his mallet, and then do
+idiotic things, such as managing to touch your hand?”
+
+“Never,” was Gwynedd's answer. “The young man from Troy used to do it,
+and then beg pardon and turn red.”
+
+“I don't understand him, or I don't understand Captain Palliser's
+story,” Amabel Grantham argued. “Lucy and I are quite out of the
+running, but I honestly believe that he takes as much notice of us as
+he does of any of you. If he has intentions, he 'doesn't act the part,'
+which is pure New York of the first water.”
+
+“He said, however, that the things that mattered were not only titles,
+but looks. He asked how many of us were 'lookers.' Don't be modest,
+Amabel. Neither you nor Lucy are out of the running,” Beatrice amiably
+suggested.
+
+“Ladies first,” commented Amabel, pertly. There was no objection to
+being supported in one's suspicion that, after all, one was a “looker.”
+
+“There may be a sort of explanation,” Honora put the idea forward
+somewhat thoughtfully. “Captain Palliser insists that he is much
+shrewder than he seems. Perhaps he is cautious, and is looking us all
+over before he commits himself.”
+
+“He is a Temple Barholm, after all,” said Gwynedd, with boldness. “He's
+rather good looking. He has the nicest white teeth and the most cheering
+grin I ever saw, and he's as 'rich as grease is,' as I heard a
+housemaid say one day. I'm getting quite resigned to his voice, or it
+is improving, I don't know which. If he only knew the mere A B C of
+ordinary people like ourselves, and he committed himself to me, I
+wouldn't lay my hand on my heart and say that one might not think him
+over.”
+
+“I told you she was tremendously taken with him,” said her sister. “It's
+come to this.”
+
+“But,” said Lady Gwynedd, “he is not going to commit himself to any of
+us, incredible as it may seem. The one person he stares at sometimes is
+Joan Fayre, and he only looks at her as if he were curious and wouldn't
+object to finding out why she treats him so outrageously. He isn't
+annoyed; he's only curious.”
+
+“He's been adored by salesladies in New York,” said Honora, “and he
+can't understand it.”
+
+“He's been liked,” Amabel Grantham summed him up. “He's a likable thing.
+He's even rather a dear. I've begun to like him myself.”
+
+“I hear you are learning to play croquet,” the Duke of Stone remarked to
+him a day or so later. “How do you like it?”
+
+“Lady Gwynedd Talchester is teaching me,” Tembarom answered. “I'd learn
+to iron shirt-waists if she would give me lessons. She's one of the two
+that have dimples,” he added, reflection in his tone. “I guess that'll
+count. Shouldn't you think it would?”
+
+“Miss Hutchinson?” queried the duke.
+
+Tembarom nodded.
+
+“Yes, it's always her,” he answered without a ray of humor. “I just want
+to stack 'em up.”
+
+“You are doing it,” the duke replied with a slightly twisted mouth.
+There were, in fact, moments when he might have fallen into fits of
+laughter while Tembarom was seriousness itself. “I must, however, call
+your attention to the fact that there is sometimes in your manner a hint
+of a businesslike pursuit of a fixed object which you must beware
+of. The Lady Gwynedds might not enjoy the situation if they began to
+suspect. If they decided to flout you,--'to throw you down,' I ought to
+say--where would little Miss Hutchinson be?”
+
+Tembarom looked startled and disturbed.
+
+“Say,” he exclaimed, “do I ever look that way? I must do better than
+that. Anyhow, it ain't all put on. I'm doing my stunt, of course, but I
+like them. They're mighty nice to me when you consider what they're up
+against. And those two with the dimples,--Lady Gwynned and Lady Honora,
+are just peaches. Any fellow might”--he stopped and looked serious
+again--“That's why they'd count,” he added.
+
+They were having one of their odd long talks under a particularly
+splendid copper beech which provided the sheltered out-of-door corner
+his grace liked best. When they took their seats together in this
+retreat, it was mysteriously understood that they were settling
+themselves down to enjoyment of their own, and must not be disturbed.
+
+“When I am comfortable and entertained,” Moffat, the house steward, had
+quoted his master as saying, “you may mention it if the castle is in
+flames; but do not annoy me with excitement and flurry. Ring the bell in
+the courtyard, and call up the servants to pass buckets; but until the
+lawn catches fire, I must insist on being left alone.”
+
+“What dear papa talks to him about, and what he talks about to dear
+papa,” Lady Celia had more than once murmured in her gently remote,
+high-nosed way, “I cannot possibly imagine. Sometimes when I have passed
+them on my way to the croquet lawn I have really seen them both look as
+absorbed as people in a play. Of course it is very good for papa. It has
+had quite a marked effect on his digestion. But isn't it odd!”
+
+“I wish,” Lady Edith remarked almost wistfully, “that I could get on
+better with him myself conversationally. But I don't know what to talk
+about, and it makes me nervous.”
+
+Their father, on the contrary, found in him unique resources, and this
+afternoon it occurred to him that he had never so far heard him express
+himself freely on the subject of Palliser. If led to do so, he would
+probably reveal that he had views of Captain Palliser of which he might
+not have been suspected, and the manner in which they would unfold
+themselves would more than probably be illuminating. The duke was, in
+fact, serenely sure that he required neither warning nor advice, and he
+had no intention of offering either. He wanted to hear the views.
+
+“Do you know,” he said as he stirred his tea, “I've been thinking about
+Palliser, and it has occurred to me more than once that I should like to
+hear just how he strikes you?”
+
+“What I got on to first was how I struck him,” answered Tembarom, with a
+reasonable air. “That was dead easy.”
+
+There was no hint of any vaunt of superior shrewdness. His was merely
+the level-toned manner of an observer of facts in detail.
+
+“He has given you an opportunity of seeing a good deal of him,” the duke
+added. “What do you gather from him--unless he has made up his mind that
+you shall not gather anything at all?”
+
+“A fellow like that couldn't fix it that way, however much he wanted
+to,” Tembarom answered again reasonably. “Just his trying to do it would
+give him away.”
+
+“You mean you have gathered things?”
+
+“Oh, I've gathered enough, though I didn't go after it. It hung on the
+bushes. Anyhow, it seemed to me that way. I guess you run up against
+that kind everywhere. There's stacks of them in New York--different
+shapes and sizes.”
+
+“If you met a man of his particular shape and size in New York, how
+would you describe him?” the duke asked.
+
+“I should never have met him when I was there. He wouldn't have come
+my way. He'd have been on Wall Street, doing high-class bucket-shop
+business, or he'd have had a swell office selling copper-mines--any old
+kind of mine that's going to make ten million a minute, the sort of
+deal he's in now. If he'd been the kind I might have run up against,”
+ he added with deliberation, “he wouldn't have been as well dressed or
+as well spoken. He'd have been either flashy or down at heel. You'd have
+called him a crook.”
+
+The duke seemed pleased with his tea as, after having sipped it, he put
+it down on the table at his side.
+
+“A crook?” he repeated. “I wonder if that word is altogether American?”
+
+“It's not complimentary, but you asked me,” said Tembarom. “But I don't
+believe you asked me because you thought I wasn't on to him.”
+
+“Frankly speaking, no,” answered the duke. “Does he talk to you about
+the mammoth mines and the rubber forests?”
+
+“Say, that's where he wins out with me,” Tembarom replied admiringly.
+“He gets in such fine work that I switch him on to it whenever I want
+cheering up. It makes me sorter forget things that worry me just to see
+a man act the part right up to the top notch the way he does it. The
+very way his clothes fit, the style he's got his hair brushed, and that
+swell, careless lounge of his, are half of the make-up. You see, most of
+us couldn't mistake him for anything else but just what he looks like--a
+gentleman visiting round among his friends and a million miles from
+wanting to butt in with business. The thing that first got me interested
+was watching how he slid in the sort of guff he wanted you to get worked
+up about and think over. Why, if I'd been what I look like to him, he'd
+have had my pile long ago, and he wouldn't be loafing round here any
+more.”
+
+“What do you think you look like to him?” his host inquired.
+
+“I look as if I'd eat out of his hand,” Tembarom answered, quite
+unbiased by any touch of wounded vanity. “Why shouldn't I? And I'm not
+trying to wake him up, either. I like to look that way to him and to
+his sort. It gives me a chance to watch and get wise to things. He's a
+high-school education in himself. I like to hear him talk. I asked him
+to come and stay at the house so that I could hear him talk.”
+
+“Did he introduce the mammoth mines in his first call?” the duke
+inquired.
+
+“Oh, I don't mean that kind of talk. I didn't know how much good I was
+going to get out of him at first. But he was the kind I hadn't known,
+and it seemed like he was part of the whole thing--like the girls with
+title that Ann said I must get next to. And an easy way of getting next
+to the man kind was to let him come and stay. He wanted to, all right.
+I guess that's the way he lives when he's down on his luck, getting
+invited to stay at places. Like Lady Mallowe,” he added, quite without
+prejudice.
+
+“You do sum them up, don't you?” smiled the duke.
+
+“Well, I don't see how I could help it,” he said impartially. “They're
+printed in sixty-four point black-face, seems to me.”
+
+“What is that?” the duke inquired with interest. He thought it might be
+a new and desirable bit of slang. “I don't know that one.”
+
+“Biggest type there is,” grinned Tembarom. “It's the kind that's used
+for head-lines. That's newspaper-office talk.”
+
+“Ah, technical, I see. What, by the way, is the smallest lettering
+called?” his grace followed up.
+
+“Brilliant,” answered Tembarom.
+
+“You,” remarked the duke, “are not printed in sixty-four-point
+black-face so far as they are concerned. You are not even brilliant.
+They don't find themselves able to sum you up. That fact is one of my
+recreations.”
+
+“I'll tell you why,” Tembarom explained with his clearly unprejudiced
+air. “There's nothing much about me to sum up, anyhow. I'm too sort of
+plain sailing and ordinary. I'm not making for anywhere they'd think I'd
+want to go. I'm not hiding anything they'd be sure I'd want to hide.”
+
+“By the Lord! you're not!” exclaimed the duke.
+
+“When I first came here, every one of them had a fool idea I'd want
+to pretend I'd never set eyes on a newsboy or a boot-black, and that I
+couldn't find my way in New York when I got off Fifth Avenue. I used
+to see them thinking they'd got to look as if they believed it, if they
+wanted to keep next. When I just let out and showed I didn't care a darn
+and hadn't sense enough to know that it mattered, it nearly made them
+throw a fit. They had to turn round and fix their faces all over again
+and act like it was 'interesting.' That's what Lady Mallowe calls it.
+She says it's so 'interesting!'”
+
+“It is,” commented the duke.
+
+“Well, you know that, but she doesn't. Not on your life! I guess it
+makes her about sick to think of it and have to play that it's just what
+you'd want all your men friends to have done. Now, Palliser--” he paused
+and grinned again. He was sitting in a most casual attitude, his hands
+clasped round one up-raised knee, which he nursed, balancing himself. It
+was a position of informal ease which had an air of assisting enjoyable
+reflection.
+
+“Yes, Palliser? Don't let us neglect Palliser,” his host encouraged him.
+
+“He's in a worse mix-up than the rest because he's got more to lose. If
+he could work this mammoth-mine song and dance with the right people,
+there'd be money enough in it to put him on Easy Street. That's where
+he's aiming for. The company's just where it has to have a boost.
+It's just GOT to. If it doesn't, there'll be a bust up that may end in
+fitting out a high-toned promoter or so in a striped yellow-and-black
+Jersey suit and set him to breaking rocks or playing with oakum. I'll
+tell you, poor old Palliser gets the Willies sometimes after he's read
+his mail. He turns the color of ecru baby Irish. That's a kind of lace I
+got a dressmaker to tell me about when I wrote up receptions and dances
+for the Sunday Earth. Ecru baby Irish--that's Palliser's color after
+he's read his letters.”
+
+“I dare say the fellow's in a devil of a mess, if the truth were known,”
+ the duke said.
+
+“And here's 'T. T.,' hand-made and hand-painted for the part of the kind
+of sucker he wants.” T. Tembarom's manner was almost sympathetic in its
+appreciation. “I can tell you I'm having a real good time with Palliser.
+It looked like I'd just dropped from heaven when he first saw me. If
+he'd been the praying kind, I'd have been just the sort he'd have prayed
+for when he said his `Now-I-lay-me's' before he went to bed. There
+wasn't a chance in a hundred that I wasn't a fool that had his head
+swelled so that he'd swallow any darned thing if you handed it to him
+smooth enough. First time he called he asked me a lot of questions about
+New York business. That was pretty smart of him. He wanted to find out,
+sort of careless, how much I knew--or how little.”
+
+The duke was leaning back luxuriously in his chair and gazing at him as
+he might have gazed at the work of an old master of which each line and
+shade was of absorbing interest.
+
+“I can see him,” he said. “I can see him.”
+
+“He found out I knew nothing,” Tembarom continued. “And what was to
+hinder him trying to teach me something, by gee! Nothing on top of the
+green earth. I was there, waiting with my mouth open, it seemed like.”
+
+“And he has tried--in his best manner?” said his grace.
+
+“What he hasn't tried wouldn't be worthy trying,” Tembarom answered
+cheerfully. “Sometimes it seems like a shame to waste it. I've got so
+I know how to start him when he doesn't know I'm doing it. I tell you,
+he's fine. Gentlemanly--that's his way, you know. High-toned friend that
+just happens to know of a good thing and thinks enough of you in a sort
+of reserved way to feel like it's a pity not to give you a chance to
+come in on the ground floor, if you've got the sense to see the favor
+he's friendly enough to do you. It's such a favor that it'd just disgust
+a man if you could possibly turn it down. But of course you're to take
+it or leave it. It's not to his interest to push it. Lord, no! Whatever
+you did his way is that he'd not condescend to say a darned word.
+High-toned silence, that's all.”
+
+The Duke of Stone was chuckling very softly. His chuckles rather broke
+his words when he spoke.
+
+“By--by--Jove!” he said. “You--you do see it, don't you? You do see it.”
+
+Tembarom nursed his knee comfortably.
+
+“Why,” he said, “it's what keeps me up. You know a lot more about me
+than any one else does, but there's a whole raft of things I think about
+that I couldn't hang round any man's neck. If I tried to hang them round
+yours, you'd know that I would be having a hell of a time here, if I'd
+let myself think too much. If I didn't see it, as you call it, if I
+didn't see so many things, I might begin to get sorry for myself.” There
+was a pause of a second. “Gee!” he said, “Gee! this not hearing a thing
+about Ann!--”
+
+
+“Good Lord! my dear fellow,” the duke said hastily, “I know. I know.”
+
+Tembarom turned and looked at him.
+
+“You've been there,” he remarked. “You've been there, I bet.”
+
+“Yes, I've been there,” answered the duke. “I've been there--and come
+back. But while it's going on--you have just described it. A man can
+have a hell of a time.”
+
+“He can,” Tembarom admitted unreservedly. “He's got to keep going to
+stand it. Well, Strangeways gives me some work to do. And I've got
+Palliser. He's a little sunbeam.”
+
+A man-servant approaching to suggest a possible need of hot tea started
+at hearing his grace break into a sudden and plainly involuntary crow
+of glee. He had not heard that one before either. Palliser as a little
+sunbeam brightening the pathway of T. Tembarom, was, in the particular
+existing circumstances, all that could be desired of fine humor. It
+somewhat recalled the situation of the “Ladies” of the noble houses of
+Pevensy, Talchester, and Stone unconsciously passing in review for
+the satisfaction of little Miss Hutchinson. Tembarom laughed a little
+himself, but he went on with a sort of seriousness,
+
+“There's one thing sure enough. I've got on to it by listening and
+working out what he would do by what he doesn't know he says. If he
+could put the screws on me in any way, he wouldn't hold back. It'd be
+all quite polite and gentlemanly, but he'd do it all the same. And he's
+dead-sure that everybody's got something they'd like to hide--or get.
+That's what he works things out from.”
+
+“Does he think you have something to hide--or get?” the duke inquired
+rather quickly.
+
+“He's sure of it. But he doesn't know yet whether it's get or hide. He
+noses about. Pearson's seen him. He asks questions and plays he ain't
+doing it and ain't interested, anyhow.”
+
+“He doesn't like you, he doesn't like you,” the duke said rather
+thoughtfully. “He has a way of conveying that you are far more subtle
+than you choose to look. He is given to enlarging on the fact that an
+air of entire frankness is one of the chief assets of certain promoters
+of huge American schemes.”
+
+Tembarom smiled the smile of recognition.
+
+“Yes,” he said, “it looks like that's a long way round, doesn't it? But
+it's not far to T. T. when you want to hitch on the connection. Anyhow,
+that's the way he means it to look. If ever I was suspected of being in
+any mix-up, everybody would remember he'd said that.”
+
+“It's very amusin',” said the duke. “It's very amusin'.”
+
+They had become even greater friends and intimates by this time than the
+already astonished neighborhood suspected them of being. That they spent
+much time together in an amazing degree of familiarity was the talk
+of the country, in fact, one of the most frequent resources of
+conversation. Everybody endeavored to find reason for the situation,
+but none had been presented which seemed of sufficiently logical
+convincingness. The duke was eccentric, of course. That was easy to
+hit upon. He was amiably perverse and good-humoredly cynical. He was
+of course immensely amused by the incongruity of the acquaintance. This
+being the case, why exactly he had never before chosen for himself a
+companion equally out of the picture it was not easy to explain. There
+were plow-boys or clerks out of provincial shops who would surely have
+been quite as incongruous when surrounded by ducal splendors. He might
+have got a young man from Liverpool or Blackburn who would have known
+as little of polite society as Mr. Temple Barholm; there were few, of
+course, who could know less. But he had never shown the faintest desire
+to seek one out. Palliser, it is true, suggested it was Tembarom's
+“cheek” which stood him in good stead. The young man from behind the
+counter in a Liverpool or Blackburn shop would probably have been
+frightened to death and afraid to open his mouth in self-revelation,
+whereas Temple Barholm was so entirely a bounder that he did not know
+he was one, and was ready to make an ass of himself to any extent. The
+frankest statement of the situation, if any one had so chosen to put it,
+would have been that he was regarded as a sort of court fool without cap
+or bells.
+
+No one was aware of the odd confidences which passed between the weirdly
+dissimilar pair. No one guessed that the old peer sat and listened
+to stories of a red-headed, slim-bodied girl in a dingy New York
+boarding-house, that he liked them sufficiently to encourage their
+telling, that he had made a mental picture of a certain look in a pair
+of maternally yearning and fearfully convincing round young eyes, that
+he knew the burnished fullness and glow of the red hair until he could
+imagine the feeling of its texture and abundant warmth in the hand.
+And this subject was only one of many. And of others they talked with
+interest, doubt, argument, speculation, holding a living thrill.
+
+The tap of croquet mallets sounded hollow and clear from the sunken
+lawn below the mass of shrubs between them and the players as the duke
+repeated.
+
+“It's hugely amusin',” dropping his “g,” which was not one of his usual
+affectations.
+
+“Confound it!” he said next, wrinkling the thin, fine skin round his
+eyes in a speculative smile, “I wish I had had a son of my own just like
+you.”
+
+All of Tembarom's white teeth revealed themselves.
+
+“I'd have liked to have been in it,” he replied, “but I shouldn't have
+been like me.”
+
+“Yes, you would.” The duke put the tips of his fingers delicately
+together. “You are of the kind which in all circumstances is like
+itself.” He looked about him, taking in the turreted, majestic age
+and mass of the castle. “You would have been born here. You would have
+learned to ride your pony down the avenue. You would have gone to Eton
+and to Oxford. I don't think you would have learned much, but you would
+have been decidedly edifying and companionable. You would have had
+a sense of humor which would have made you popular in society and at
+court. A young fellow who makes those people laugh holds success in his
+hand. They want to be made to laugh as much as I do. Good God! how they
+are obliged to be bored and behave decently under it! You would have
+seen and known more things to be humorous about than you know now. I
+don't think you would have been a fool about women, but some of them
+would have been fools about you, because you've got a way. I had one
+myself. It's all the more dangerous because it's possibility suggesting
+without being sentimental. A friendly young fellow always suggests
+possibilities without being aware of it.
+
+“Would I have been Lord Temple Temple Barholm or something of that
+sort?” Tembarom asked.
+
+“You would have been the Marquis of Belcarey,” the duke replied, looking
+him over thoughtfully, “and your name would probably have been Hugh
+Lawrence Gilbert Henry Charles Adelbert, or words to that effect.”
+
+“A regular six-shooter,” said Tembarom.
+
+The duke was following it up with absorption in his eyes.
+
+“You'd have gone into the Guards, perhaps,” he said, “and drill would
+have made you carry yourself better. You're a good height. You'd have
+been a well-set-up fellow. I should have been rather proud of you. I can
+see you riding to the palace with the rest of them, sabres and chains
+clanking and glittering and helmet with plumes streaming. By Jove!
+I don't wonder at the effect they have on nursery-maids. On a sunny
+morning in spring they suggest knights in a fairytale.”
+
+“I should have liked it all right if I hadn't been born in Brooklyn,”
+ grinned Tembarom. “But that starts you out in a different way. Do you
+think, if I'd been born the Marquis of Bel--what's his name--I should
+have been on to Palliser's little song and dance, and had as much fun
+out of it?”
+
+“On my soul, I believe you would,” the duke answered. “Brooklyn or
+Stone Hover Castle, I'm hanged if you wouldn't have been YOU.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX
+
+
+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.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX
+
+
+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.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI
+
+
+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 to _me_. 'When a man's
+dead, it's too late.'”
+
+“It _is_ too 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 it _is_ your 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 even
+_know_ that 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.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII
+
+
+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.
+
+“Horace. In spite of his genius, he sometimes makes you feel he was
+rather a blackguard.”
+
+“Horace!” For the moment T. Tembarom forgot himself. “I always heard he
+was a sort of Y.M.C.A. old guy--old Horace Greeley. The Tribune was no
+yellow journal when he had it.”
+
+He was sorry he had spoken the next moment. Strangeways looked puzzled.
+
+“The Tribune,” he hesitated. “The Roman Tribune?”
+
+“No, New York. He started it--old Horace did. But perhaps we're not
+talking of the same man.”
+
+Strangeways hesitated again.
+
+“No, I think we're not,” he answered politely.
+
+“I've made a break,” thought Tembarom. “I ought to have kept my mouth
+shut. I must try to switch him back.”
+
+Strangeways was looking down at the back of the book he held in his
+hand.
+
+“This one was the Latin poet, Quintus Horatius Flaccus, 65 B. C. You
+know him,” he said.
+
+“Oh, that one!” exclaimed Tembarom, as if with an air of immense relief.
+“What a fool I was to forget! I'm glad it's him. Will you go on reading
+and let me hear some more? He's a winner from Winnersville--that Horace
+is.”
+
+Perhaps it was a sort of miracle, accomplished by his great desire to
+help the right thing to happen, to stave off any shadow of the wrong
+thing. Whatsoever the reason, Strangeways waited only a moment before
+turning to his book again. It seemed to be a link in some chain slowly
+forming itself to drag him back from his wanderings. And T. Tembarom,
+lightly sweating as a frightened horse will, sat smoking another pipe
+and listening intently to “Satires” and “Lampoons,” read aloud in the
+Latin of 65 B. C.
+
+“By gee!” he said faithfully, at intervals, when he saw on the reader's
+face that the moment was ripe. “He knew it all--old Horace--didn't he?”
+
+He had steered his charge back. Things were coming along the line to
+him. He'd learned Latin at one of these big English schools. Boys always
+learned Latin, the duke had told him. They just had to. Most of them
+hated it like thunder, and they used to be caned when they didn't recite
+it right. Perhaps if he went on he'd begin to remember the school. A
+queer part of it was that he did not seem to notice that he was not
+reading his own language.
+
+He did not, in fact, seem to remember anything in particular, but went
+on quite naturally for some minutes. He had replaced Horace on the shelf
+and was on the point of taking down another volume when he paused, as if
+recalling something else.
+
+“Weren't we going to see the picture-gallery?” he inquired. “Isn't it
+getting late? I should like to see the portraits.”
+
+“No hurry,” answered T. Tembarom. “I was just waiting till you were
+ready. But we'll go right away, if you like.”
+
+They went without further ceremony. As they walked through the hall and
+down the corridors side by side, an imaginative person might have felt
+that perhaps the eyes of an ancient darkling portrait or so looked
+down at the pair curiously: the long, loosely built New Yorker rather
+slouching along by the soldierly, almost romantic figure which, in a
+measure, suggested that others not unlike it might have trod the same
+oaken floor, wearing ruff and doublet, or lace jabot and sword. There
+was a far cry between the two, but they walked closely in friendly
+union. When they entered the picture-gallery Strangeways paused a moment
+again, and stood peering down its length.
+
+“It is very dimly lighted. How can we see?” he said.
+
+“I told Pearson to leave it dim,” Tembarom answered. “I wanted it just
+that way at first.”
+
+He tried--and succeeded tolerably well--to say it casually, as he led
+the way ahead of them. He and the duke had not talked the scheme over
+for nothing. As his grace had said, they had “worked the thing up.” As
+they moved down the gallery, the men and women in their frames looked
+like ghosts staring out to see what was about to happen.
+
+“We'll turn up the lights after a while,” T. Tembarom explained, still
+casually. “There's a picture here I think a good deal of. I've stood and
+looked at it pretty often. It reminded me of some one the first day I
+set eyes on it; but it was quite a time before I made up my mind who it
+was. It used to drive me half dotty trying to think it out.”
+
+“Which one was it?” asked Strangeways.
+
+“We're coming to it. I want to see if it reminds you of any one. And I
+want you to see it sudden.” “It's got to be sudden,” he had said to
+the duke. “If it's going to pan out, I believe it's got to be sudden.”
+ “That's why I had the rest of 'em left dim. I told Pearson to leave a
+lamp I could turn up quick,” he said to Strangeways.
+
+The lamp was on a table near by and was shaded by a screen. He took it
+from the shadow and lifted it suddenly, so that its full gleam fell upon
+the portrait of the handsome youth with the lace collar and the dark,
+drooping eyes. It was done in a second, with a dramatically unexpected
+swiftness. His heart jumped up and down.
+
+“Who's that?” he demanded, with abruptness so sharp-pitched that the
+gallery echoed with the sound. “Who's that?”
+
+He heard a hard, quick gasp, a sound which was momentarily a little
+horrible, as if the man's soul was being jerked out of his body's
+depths.
+
+“Who is he?” he cried again. “Tell me.”
+
+After the gasp, Strangeways stood still and stared. His eyes were glued
+to the canvas, drops of sweat came out on his forehead, and he was
+shuddering. He began to back away with a look of gruesome struggle. He
+backed and backed, and stared and stared. The gasp came twice again,
+and then his voice seemed to tear itself loose from some power that was
+holding it back.
+
+“Th--at!” he cried. “It is--it--is Miles Hugo!”
+
+The last words were almost a shout, and he shook as if he would have
+fallen. But T. Tembarom put his hand on his shoulder and held him,
+breathing fast himself. Gee! if it wasn't like a thing in a play!
+
+“Page at the court of Charles the Second,” he rattled off. “Died of
+smallpox when he was nineteen. Miles Hugo! Miles Hugo! You hold on to
+that for all your worth. And hold on to me. I'll keep you steady. Say it
+again.”
+
+“Miles Hugo.” The poor majestic-looking fellow almost sobbed it. “Where
+am I? What is the name of this place?”
+
+“It's Temple Barholm in the county of Lancashire, England. Hold on to
+that, too--like thunder!”
+
+Strangeways held the young man's arm with hands that clutched. He
+dragged at him. His nightmare held him yet; Tembarom saw it, but flashes
+of light were blinding him.
+
+“Who”--he pleaded in a shaking and hollow whisper--“are you?”
+
+Here was a stumper! By jings! By jings! And not a minute to think it
+out. But the answer came all right--all right!
+
+“My name's Tembarom. T. Tembarom.” And he grinned his splendid grin from
+sheer sense of relief. “I'm a New Yorker--Brooklyn. I was just forked
+in here anyhow. Don't you waste time thinking over me. You sit down here
+and do your durndest with Miles Hugo.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII
+
+
+Tembarom did not look as though he had slept particularly well, Miss
+Alicia thought, when they met the next morning; but when she asked him
+whether he had been disappointed in his last night's experiment, he
+answered that he had not. The experiment had come out all right, but
+Strangeways had been a good deal worked up, and had not been able
+to sleep until daylight. Sir Ormsby Galloway was to arrive in the
+afternoon, and he'd probably give him some-thing quieting. Had the
+coming downstairs seemed to help him to recall anything? Miss Alicia
+naturally inquired. Tembarom thought it had. He drove to Stone Hover and
+spent the morning with the duke; he even lunched with him. He returned
+in time to receive Sir Ormsby Galloway, however, and until that great
+personage left, they were together in Mr. Strangeways' rooms.
+
+“I guess I shall get him up to London to the place where Sir Ormsby
+wants him,” he said rather nervously, after dinner. “I'm not going to
+miss any chances. If he'll go, I can get him away quietly some time when
+I can fix it so there's no one about to worry him.”
+
+She felt that he had no inclination to go much into detail. He had never
+had the habit of entering into the details connected with his strange
+charge. She believed it was because he felt the subject too abnormal not
+to seem a little awesome to her sympathetic timidity. She did not ask
+questions because she was afraid she could not ask them intelligently.
+In fact, the knowledge that this unknown man was living through his
+struggle with his lost past in the remote rooms of the west wing, almost
+as though he were a secret prisoner, did seem a little awesome when one
+awoke in the middle of the dark night and thought of it.
+
+During the passage of the next few weeks, Tembarom went up to London
+several times. Once he seemed called there suddenly, as it was only
+during dinner that he told her he was going to take a late train, and
+should leave the house after she had gone to bed. She felt as though
+something important must have happened, and hoped it was nothing
+disturbing.
+
+When he had said that Captain Palliser would return to visit them, her
+private impression, despite his laugh, had been that it must surely be
+some time before this would occur. But a little more than three weeks
+later he appeared, preceded only half an hour by a telegram asking
+whether he might not spend a night with them on his way farther north.
+He could not at all understand why the telegram, which he said he had
+sent the day before, had been delayed.
+
+A certain fatigued haggardness in his countenance caused Miss Alicia to
+ask whether he had been ill, and he admitted that he had at least
+not been well, as a result of long and too hurried journeys, and the
+strenuousness of extended and profoundly serious interviews with his
+capitalist and magnates.
+
+“No man can engineer gigantic schemes to success without feeling the
+reaction when his load drops from his shoulders,” he remarked.
+
+“You've carried it quite through?” inquired Tembarom.
+
+“We have set on foot one of the largest, most substantially capitalized
+companies in the European business world,” Palliser replied, with the
+composure which is almost indifference.
+
+“Good!” said Tembarom cheerfully.
+
+He watched his guest a good deal during the day. He was a bad color for
+a man who had just steered clear of all shoals and reached the highest
+point of success. He had a haggard eye as well as a haggard face. It
+was a terrified eye when its desperate determination to hide its
+terrors dropped from it for an instant, as a veil might drop. A certain
+restlessness was manifest in him, and he talked more than usual. He
+was going to make a visit in Northumberland to an elderly lady of
+great possessions. It was to be vaguely gathered that she was somewhat
+interested in the great company--the Cedric. She was a remarkable old
+person who found a certain agreeable excitement in dabbling in stocks.
+She was rich enough to be in a position to regard it as a sort of game,
+and he had been able on several occasions to afford her entertainment.
+He would remain a few days, and spend his time chiefly in telling her
+the details of the great scheme and the manner in which they were to be
+developed.
+
+“If she can play with things that way, she'll be sure to want stock in
+it,” Tembarom remarked.
+
+“If she does, she must make up her mind quickly,” Palliser smiled, “or
+she will not be able to get it. It is not easy to lay one's hands on
+even now.”
+
+Tembarom thought of certain speculators of entirely insignificant
+standing of whom he had chanced to see and hear anecdotes in New York.
+Most of them were youths of obscure origin who sold newspapers or
+blacked boots, or “swapped” articles the value of which lay in the
+desire they could excite in other persons to possess them. A popular
+method known as “bluff” was their most trusted weapon, and even at
+twelve and fifteen years of age Tembarom had always regarded it as
+singularly obvious. He always detested “bluff,” whatsoever its disguise,
+and was rather mystified by its ingenious faith in itself.
+
+“He's got badly stung,” was his internal comment as he sucked at
+his pipe and smiled urbanely at Palliser across the room as they sat
+together. “He's come here with some sort of deal on that he knows he
+couldn't work with any one but just such a fool as he thinks I am. I
+guess,” he added in composed reflectiveness, “I don't really know how
+big a fool I do look.”
+
+Whatsoever the deal was, he would be likely to let it be known in time.
+
+“He'll get it off his chest if he's going away to-morrow,” decided
+Tembarom. “If there's anything he's found out, he'll use it. If it
+doesn't pan out as he thinks it will he'll just float away to his old
+lady.”
+
+He gave Palliser every chance, talking to him and encouraging him to
+talk, even asking him to let him look over the prospectus of the new
+company and explain details to him, as he was going to explain them to
+the old lady in Northumberland. He opened up avenues; but for a time
+Palliser made no attempt to stroll down them. His walk would be a
+stroll, Tembarom knew, being familiar with his methods. His aspect would
+be that of a man but little concerned. He would be capable of a slightly
+rude coldness if he felt that concern on his part was in any degree
+counted as a factor. Tembarom was aware, among other things, that
+innocent persons would feel that it was incumbent upon them to be very
+careful in their treatment of him. He seemed to be thinking things over
+before he decided upon the psychological moment at which he would begin,
+if he began. When a man had a good deal to lose or to win, Tembarom
+realized that he would be likely to hold back until he felt something
+like solid ground under him.
+
+After Miss Alicia had left them for the night, perhaps he felt, as a
+result of thinking the matter over, that he had reached a foothold of a
+firmness at least somewhat to be depended upon.
+
+“What a change you have made in that poor woman's life!” he said,
+walking to the side-table and helping himself to a brandy and soda.
+“What a change!”
+
+“It struck me that a change was needed just about the time I dropped
+in,” answered his host.
+
+“All the same,” suggested Palliser, tolerantly, “you were immensely
+generous. She wasn't entitled to expect it, you know.”
+
+“She didn't expect anything, not a darned thing,” said Tembarom. “That
+was what hit me.”
+
+Palliser smiled a cold, amiable smile. His slim, neatly fitted person
+looked a little shrunken and less straight than was its habit, and its
+slackness suggested itself as being part of the harry and fatigue which
+made his face and eyes haggard under his pale, smooth hair.
+
+“Do you purpose to provide for the future of all your indigent relatives
+even to the third and fourth generation, my dear chap?” he inquired.
+
+“I won't refuse till I'm asked, anyhow,” was the answer.
+
+“Asked!” Palliser repeated. “I'm one of them, you know, and Lady Mallowe
+is another. There are lots of us, when we come out of our holes. If it's
+only a matter of asking, we might all descend on you.”
+
+Tembarom, smiling, wondered whether they hadn't descended already, and
+whether the descent had so far been all that they had anticipated.
+
+Palliser strolled down his opened avenue with an incidental air
+which was entirely creditable to his training of himself. T. Tembarom
+acknowledged that much.
+
+“You are too generous,” said Palliser. “You are the sort of fellow
+who will always need all he has, and more. The way you go among the
+villagers! You think you merely slouch about and keep it quiet, but you
+don't. You've set an example no other landowner can expect to live up
+to, or intends to. It's too lavish. It's pernicious, dear chap. I have
+heard all about the cottage you are doing over for Pearson and his
+bride. You had better invest in the Cedric.”
+
+Tembarom wanted him to go on, if there was anything in it. He made his
+face look as he knew Palliser hoped it would look when the psychological
+moment came. Its expression was not a deterrent; in fact, it had a
+character not unlikely to lead an eager man, or one who was not as
+wholly experienced as he believed he was, to rush down a steep hill into
+the sea, after the manner of the swine in the parable.
+
+Heaven knew Palliser did not mean to rush, and was not aware when the
+rush began; but he had reason to be so much more eager than he professed
+to be that momentarily he swerved, despite himself, and ceased to be
+casual.
+
+“It is an enormous opportunity,” he said--“timber lands in Mexico, you
+know. If you had spent your life in England, you would realize that
+timber has become a desperate necessity, and that the difficulties which
+exist in the way of supplying the demand are almost insuperable. These
+forests are virtually boundless, and the company which controls them--”
+
+“That's a good spiel!” broke in Tembarom.
+
+It sounded like the crudely artless interruption of a person whose
+perceptions left much to be desired. T. Tembarom knew what it sounded
+like. If Palliser lost his temper, he would get over the ground faster,
+and he wanted him to get over the ground.
+
+“I'm afraid I don't understand,” he replied rather stiffly.
+
+“There was a fellow I knew in New York who used to sell type-writers,
+and he had a thing to say he used to reel off when any one looked like a
+customer. He used to call it his 'spiel.'”
+
+Palliser's quick glance at him asked questions, and his stiffness did
+not relax itself.
+
+“Is this New York chaff?” he inquired coldly.
+
+“No,” Tembarom said. “You're not doing it for ten per. He was”
+
+“No, not exactly,” said Palliser. “Neither would you be doing it for ten
+per if you went into it.” His voice changed. He became slightly haughty.
+“Perhaps it was a mistake on my part to think you might care to connect
+yourself with it. You have not, of course, been in the position to
+comprehend such matters.”
+
+“If I was what I look like, that'd stir me up and make me feel bad,”
+ thought T. Tembarom, with cheerful comprehension of this, at least. “I'd
+have to rush in and try to prove to him that I was as accustomed to big
+business as he is, and that it didn't rattle me. The way to do it that
+would come most natural would be to show I was ready to buy as big a
+block of stock as any other fellow.”
+
+But the expression of his face did not change. He only gave a
+half-awkward sort of laugh.
+
+“I guess I can learn,” he said.
+
+Palliser felt the foothold become firmer. The bounder was interested,
+but, after a bounder's fashion, was either nervous or imagined that
+a show of hesitation looked shrewd. The slight hit made at his
+inexperience in investment had irritated him and made him feel less
+cock-sure of himself. A slightly offended manner might be the best
+weapon to rely upon.
+
+“I thought you might care to have the thing made clear to you,” he
+continued indifferently. “I meant to explain. You may take the chance or
+leave it, as you like, of course. That is nothing to me at this stage of
+the game. But, after all, we are as I said, relatives of a sort, and it
+is a gigantic opportunity. Suppose we change the subject. Is that the
+Sunday Earth I see by you on the table?” He leaned forward to take the
+paper, as though the subject really were dropped; but, after a seemingly
+nervous suck or two at his pipe, Tembarom came to his assistance. It
+wouldn't do to let him quiet down too much.
+
+“I'm no Van Morganbilt,” he said hesitatingly, “but I can see that
+it's a big opportunity--for some one else. Let's have a look over the
+prospectus again.”
+
+Palliser paused in his unconcerned opening of the copy of the Sunday
+Earth. His manner somewhat disgustedly implied indecision as to whether
+it was worth while to allow oneself to be dropped and taken up by turns.
+
+“Do you really mean that?” he asked with a certain chill of voice.
+
+“Yes. I don't mind trying to catch on to what's doing in any big
+scheme.”
+
+Palliser did not lay aside his suggestion of cold semi-reluctance more
+readily than any man who knew his business would have laid it aside. His
+manner at the outset was quite perfect. His sole ineptitude lay in his
+feeling a too great confidence in the exact quality of his companion's
+type, as he summed it up. He did not calculate on the variations from
+all type sometimes provided by circumstances.
+
+He produced his papers without too obvious eagerness. He spread them
+upon the table, and coolly examined them himself before beginning his
+explanation. There was more to explain to a foreigner and one unused
+to investment than there would be to a man who was an Englishman and
+familiar with the methods of large companies, he said. He went into
+technicalities, so to speak, and used rapidly and lightly some imposing
+words and phrases, to which T. Tembarom listened attentively, but
+without any special air of illumination. He dealt with statistics and
+the resulting probabilities. He made apparent the existing condition
+of England's inability to supply an enormous and unceasing demand for
+timber. He had acquired divers excellent methods of stating his case to
+the party of the second part.
+
+“He made me feel as if a fellow had better hold on to a box of matches
+like grim death, and that the time wasn't out of sight when you'd
+have to give fifty-seven dollars and a half for a toothpick,” Tembarom
+afterwards said to the duke.
+
+What Tembarom was thinking as he listened to him was that he was
+not getting over the ground with much rapidity, and that it was time
+something was doing. He had not watched him for weeks without learning
+divers of his idiosyncrasies.
+
+“If he thought I wanted to know what he thinks I'd a heap rather NOT
+know, he'd never tell me,” he speculated. “If he gets a bit hot in the
+collar, he may let it out. Thing is to stir him up. He's lost his nerve
+a bit, and he'll get mad pretty easy.”
+
+He went on smoking and listening, and asking an unenlightened question
+now and then, in a manner which was as far from being a deterrent as the
+largely unilluminated expression of his face was.
+
+“Of course money is wanted,” Palliser said at length. “Money is always
+wanted, and as much when a scheme is a success as when it isn't.
+Good names, with a certain character, are wanted. The fact of your
+inheritance is known everywhere; and the fact that you are an American
+is a sort of guaranty of shrewdness.”
+
+“Is it?” said T. Tembarom. “Well,” he added slowly, “I guess Americans
+are pretty good business men.”
+
+Palliser thought that this was evolving upon perfectly natural lines, as
+he had anticipated it would. The fellow was flattered and pleased. You
+could always reach an American by implying that he was one of those who
+specially illustrate enviable national characteristics.
+
+He went on in smooth, casual laudation:
+
+“No American takes hold of a scheme of this sort until he knows jolly
+well what he's going to get out of it. You were shrewd enough,” he added
+significantly, “about Hutchinson's affair. You `got in on the ground
+floor' there. That was New York forethought, by Jove!”
+
+Tembarom shuffled a little in his chair, and grinned a faint, pleased
+grin.
+
+“I'm a man of the world, my boy--the business world,” Palliser
+commented, hoping that he concealed his extreme satisfaction. “I know
+New York, though I haven't lived there. I'm only hoping to. Your air of
+ingenuous ignorance is the cleverest thing about you,” which agreeable
+implication of the fact that he had been privately observant and
+impressed ought to have fetched the bounder if anything would.
+
+T. Tembarom's grin was no longer faint, but spread itself. Palliser's
+first impression was that he had “fetched” him. But when he answered,
+though the very crudeness of his words seemed merely the result of
+his betrayal into utter tactlessness by soothed vanity, there was
+something--a shade of something--not entirely satisfactory in his face
+and nasal twang.
+
+“Well, I guess,” he said, “New York DID teach a fellow not to buy a gold
+brick off every con man that came along.”
+
+Palliser was guilty of a mere ghost of a start. Was there something
+in it, or was he only the gross, blundering fool he had trusted to his
+being? He stared at him a moment, and saw that there WAS something under
+the words and behind his professedly flattered grin--something which
+must be treated with a high hand.
+
+“What do you mean?” he exclaimed haughtily. “I don't like your tone. Do
+you take ME for what you call a `con man'?”
+
+“Good Lord, no!” answered Tembarom; and he looked straight at Palliser
+and spoke slowly. “You're a gentleman, and you're paying me a visit. You
+could no more try on a game to do me in my own house than--well, than
+I could TELL you if I'd got on to you if I saw you doing it. You're a
+gentleman.”
+
+Palliser glared back into his infuriatingly candid eyes. He was a far
+cry from being a dullard himself; he was sharp enough to “catch on” to
+the revelation that the situation was not what he had thought it, the
+type was more complex than he had dreamed. The chap had been playing a
+part; he had absolutely been “jollying him along,” after the New York
+fashion. He became pale with humiliated rage, though he knew his only
+defense was to control himself and profess not to see through the trick.
+Until he could use his big lever, he added to himself.
+
+“Oh, I see,” he commented acridly. “I suppose you don't realize that
+your figures of speech are unfortunate.”
+
+“That comes of New York streets, too,” Tembarom answered with
+deliberation. “But you can't live as I've lived and be dead easy--not
+DEAD easy.”
+
+Palliser had left his chair, and stood in contemptuous silence.
+
+“You know how a fellow hates to be thought DEAD easy”--Tembarom actually
+went to the insolent length of saying the words with a touch of cheerful
+confidingness--“when he's NOT. And I'm not. Have another drink.”
+
+There was a pause. Palliser began to see, or thought he began to see,
+where he stood. He had come to Temple Barholm because he had been driven
+into a corner and had a dangerous fight before him. In anticipation of
+it he had been following a clue for some time, though at the outset it
+had been one of incredible slightness. Only his absolute faith in his
+theory that every man had something to gain or lose, which he concealed
+discreetly, had led him to it. He held a card too valuable to be used
+at the beginning of a game. Its power might have lasted a long time, and
+proved an influence without limit. He forbore any mental reference to
+blackmail; the word was absurd. One used what fell into one's hands.
+If Tembarom had followed his lead with any degree of docility, he would
+have felt it wiser to save his ammunition until further pressure was
+necessary. But behind his ridiculous rawness, his foolish jocularity,
+and his professedly candid good humor, had been hidden the Yankee
+trickster who was fool enough to think he could play his game through.
+Well, he could not.
+
+During the few moments' pause he saw the situation as by a photographic
+flashlight. He leaned over the table and supplied himself with a fresh
+brandy and soda from the tray of siphons and decanters. He gave himself
+time to take the glass up in his hand.
+
+“No,” he answered, “you are not `dead easy.' That's why I am going to
+broach another subject to you.”
+
+Tembarom was refilling his pipe.
+
+“Go ahead,” he said.
+
+“Who, by the way, is Mr. Strangeways?”
+
+He was deliberate and entirely unemotional. So was T. Tembarom when,
+with match applied to his tobacco, he replied between puffs as he
+lighted it:
+
+“You can search me. You can search him, too, for that matter. He doesn't
+know who he is himself.”
+
+“Bad luck for him!” remarked Palliser, and allowed a slight pause again.
+After it he added, “Did it ever strike you it might be good luck for
+somebody else?”
+
+“Somebody else?” Tembarom puffed more slowly, perhaps because his pipe
+was lighted.
+
+Palliser took some brandy in his soda.
+
+“There are men, you know,” he suggested, “who can be spared by their
+relatives. I have some myself, by Jove!” he added with a laugh. “You
+keep him rather dark, don't you?”
+
+“He doesn't like to see people.”
+
+“Does he object to people seeing him? I saw him once myself.”
+
+“When you threw the gravel at his window?”
+
+Palliser stared contemptuously.
+
+“What are you talking about? I did not throw stones at his window,” he
+lied. “I'm not a school-boy.”
+
+“That's so,” Tembarom admitted.
+
+“I saw him, nevertheless. And I can tell you he gave me rather a start.”
+
+“Why?”
+
+Palliser half laughed again. He did not mean to go too quickly; he would
+let the thing get on Tembarom's nerves gradually.
+
+“Well, I'm hanged if I didn't take him for a man who is dead.”
+
+“Enough to give any fellow a jolt,” Tembarom admitted again.
+
+“It gave me a `jolt.' Good word, that. But it would give you a bigger
+one, my dear fellow, if he was the man he looked like.”
+
+“Why?” Tembarom asked laconically.
+
+“He looked like Jem Temple Barholm.”
+
+He saw Tembarom start. There could be no denying it.
+
+“You thought that? Honest?” he said sharply, as if for a moment he had
+lost his head. “You thought that?”
+
+“Don't be nervous. Perhaps I couldn't have sworn to it. I did not see
+him very close.”
+
+T. Tembarom puffed rapidly at his pipe, and only, ejaculated:
+
+“Oh!”
+
+“Of course he's dead. If he wasn't,”--with a shrug of his
+shoulders,--“Lady Joan Fayre would be Lady Joan Temple Barholm, and the
+pair would be bringing up an interesting family here.” He looked about
+the room, and then, as if suddenly recalling the fact, added, “By
+George! you'd be selling newspapers, or making them--which was it?--in
+New York!”
+
+It was by no means unpleasing to see that he had made his hit there.
+T. Tembarom swung about and walked across the room with a suddenly
+perturbed expression.
+
+“Say,” he put it to him, coming back, “are you in earnest, or are you
+just saying it to give me a jolt?”
+
+Palliser studied him. The American sharpness was not always so keen as
+it sometimes seemed. His face would have betrayed his uneasiness to the
+dullest onlooker.
+
+“Have you any objection to my seeing him in his own room?” Palliser
+inquired.
+
+“It does him harm to see people,” Tembarom said, with nervous
+brusqueness. “It worries him.”
+
+Palliser smiled a quiet but far from agreeable smile. He enjoyed what he
+put into it.
+
+“Quite so; best to keep him quiet,” he returned. “Do you know what my
+advice would be? Put him in a comfortable sanatorium. A lot of stupid
+investigations would end in nothing, of course, but they'd be a
+frightful bore.”
+
+He thought it extraordinarily stupid in T. Tembarom to come nearer to
+him with an anxious eagerness entirely unconcealed, if he really knew
+what he was doing.
+
+“Are you sure that if you saw him close you'd KNOW, so that you could
+swear to him?” he demanded.
+
+“You're extremely nervous, aren't you?” Palliser watched him with
+smiling coolness. “Of course Jem Temple Barholm is dead; but I've no
+doubt that if I saw this man of yours, I could swear he had remained
+dead--if I were asked.”
+
+“If you knew him well, you could make me sure. You could swear one way
+or another. I want to be SURE,” said Tembarom.
+
+“So should I in your place; couldn't be too sure. Well, since you
+ask me, I COULD swear. I knew him well enough. He was one of my most
+intimate enemies. What do you say to letting me see him?”
+
+“I would if I could,” Tembarom replied, as if thinking it over. “I would
+if I could.”
+
+Palliser treated him to the far from pleasing smile again.
+
+“But it's quite impossible at present?” he suggested. “Excitement is
+not good for him, and all that sort of thing. You want time to think it
+over.”
+
+Tembarom's slowly uttered answer, spoken as if he were still considering
+the matter, was far from being the one he had expected.
+
+“I want time; but that's not the reason you can't see him right now. You
+can't see him because he's not here. He's gone.”
+
+Then it was Palliser who started, taken totally unaware in a manner
+which disgusted him altogether. He had to pull himself up.
+
+“He's gone!” he repeated. “You are quicker than I thought. You've got
+him safely away, have you? Well, I told you a comfortable sanatorium
+would be a good idea.”
+
+“Yes, you did.” T. Tembarom hesitated, seeming to be thinking it over
+again. “That's so.” He laid his pipe aside because it had gone out.
+
+He suddenly sat down at the table, putting his elbows on it and his face
+in his hands, with a harried effect of wanting to think it over in
+a sort of withdrawal from his immediate surroundings. This was as it
+should be. His Yankee readiness had deserted him altogether.
+
+“By Jove! you are nervous!” Palliser commented. “It's not surprising,
+though. I can sympathize with you.” With a markedly casual air he
+himself sat down and drew his documents toward him. “Let us talk of
+something else,” he said. He preferred to be casual and incidental, if
+he were allowed. It was always better to suggest things and let them
+sink in until people saw the advantage of considering them and you. To
+manage a business matter without open argument or too frank a display of
+weapons was at once more comfortable and in better taste.
+
+“You are making a great mistake in not going into this,” he suggested
+amiably. “You could go in now as you went into Hutchinson's affair, `on
+the ground floor.' That's a good enough phrase, too. Twenty thousand
+pounds would make you a million. You Americans understand nothing less
+than millions.”
+
+But T. Tembarom did not take him up. He muttered in a worried way from
+behind his shading hands, “We'll talk about that later.”
+
+“Why not talk about it now, before anything can interfere?” Palliser
+persisted politely, almost gently.
+
+Tembarom sprang up, restless and excited. He had plainly been planning
+fast in his temporary seclusion.
+
+“I'm thinking of what you said about Lady Joan,” he burst forth. “Say,
+she's gone through all this Jem Temple Barholm thing once; it about half
+killed her. If any one raised false hopes for her, she'd go through it
+all again. Once is enough for any woman.”
+
+His effect at professing heat and strong feeling made a spark of
+amusement show itself in Palliser's eye. It struck him as being
+peculiarly American in its affectation of sentiment and chivalry.
+
+“I see,” he said. “It's Lady Joan you're disturbed about. You want to
+spare her another shock, I see. You are a considerate fellow, as well as
+a man of business.”
+
+“I don't want her to begin to hope if--”
+
+“Very good taste on your part.” Palliser's polite approval was
+admirable, but he tapped lightly on the paper after expressing it. “I
+don't want to seem to press you about this, but don't you feel inclined
+to consider it? I can assure you that an investment of this sort would
+be a good thing to depend on if the unexpected happened. If you gave
+me your check now, it would be Cedric stock to-morrow, and quite safe.
+Suppose you--”
+
+“I--I don't believe you were right--about what you thought.” The
+sharp-featured face was changing from pale to red. “You'd have to be
+able to swear to it, anyhow, and I don't believe you can.” He looked at
+Palliser in eager and anxious uncertainty. “If you could,” he dragged
+out, “I shouldn't have a check-book. Where would you be then?”
+
+“I should be in comfortable circumstances, dear chap, and so would you
+if you gave me the money to-night, while you possess a check-book. It
+would be only a sort of temporary loan in any case, whatever turned up.
+The investment would quadruple itself. But there is no time to be lost.
+Understand that.”
+
+T. Tembarom broke out into a sort of boyish resentment.
+
+“I don't believe he did look like him, anyhow,” he cried. “I believe
+it's all a bluff.” His crude-sounding young swagger had a touch of final
+desperation in it as he turned on Palliser. “I'm dead sure it's a bluff.
+What a fool I was not to think of that! You want to bluff me into
+going into this Cedric thing. You could no more swear he was like him
+than--than I could.”
+
+The outright, presumptuous, bold stripping bare of his phrases
+infuriated Palliser too suddenly and too much. He stepped up to him and
+looked into his eyes.
+
+“Bluff you, you young bounder!” he flung out at him. “You're losing
+your head. You're not in New York streets here. You are talking to a
+gentleman. No,” he said furiously, “I couldn't swear that he was like
+him, but what I can swear in any court of justice is that the man I saw
+at the window was Jem Temple Barholm, and no other man on earth.”
+
+When he had said it, he saw the astonishing dolt change his expression
+utterly again, as if in a flash. He stood up, putting his hands in his
+pockets. His face changed, his voice changed.
+
+“Fine!” he said. “First-rate! That's what I wanted to get on to.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV
+
+
+After this climax the interview was not so long as it was interesting.
+Two men as far apart as the poles, as remote from each other in mind
+and body, in training and education or lack of it, in desires and
+intentions, in points of view and trend of being, as nature and
+circumstances could make them, talked in a language foreign to each
+other of a wildly strange thing. Palliser's arguments and points of
+aspect were less unknown to T. Tembarom than his own were to Palliser.
+He had seen something very like them before, though they had developed
+in different surroundings and had been differently expressed. The
+colloquialism “You're not doing that for your health” can be made
+to cover much ground in the way of the stripping bare of motives for
+action. This was what, in excellent and well-chosen English, Captain
+Palliser frankly said to his host. Of nothing which T. Tembarom said
+to him in his own statement did he believe one word or syllable. The
+statement in question was not long or detailed. It was, of course,
+Palliser saw, a ridiculously impudent flinging together of a farrago
+of nonsense, transparent in its effort beyond belief. Before he had
+listened five minutes with the distinctly “nasty” smile, he burst out
+laughing.
+
+“That is a good `spiel,' my dear chap,” he said. “It's as good a `spiel'
+as your typewriter friend used to rattle off when he thought he saw a
+customer; but I'm not a customer.”
+
+Tembarom looked at him interestedly for about ten seconds. His hands
+were thrust into his trousers pockets, as was his almost invariable
+custom. Absorption and speculation, even emotion and excitement, were
+usually expressed in this unconventional manner.
+
+
+
+“You don't believe a darned word of it,” was his sole observation.
+
+“Not a darned word,” Palliser smiled. “You are trying a `bluff,' which
+doesn't do credit to your usual sharpness. It's a bluff that is actually
+silly. It makes you look like an ass.”
+
+“Well, it's true,” said Tembarom; “it's true.”
+
+Palliser laughed again.
+
+“I only said it made you look like an ass,” he remarked. “I don't
+profess to understand you altogether, because you are a new species.
+Your combination of ignorance and sharpness isn't easy to calculate on.
+But there is one thing I have found out, and that is, that when you want
+to play a particular sharp trick you are willing to let people take
+you for a fool. I'll own you've deceived me once or twice, even when I
+suspected you. I've heard that's one of the most successful methods used
+in the American business world. That's why I only say you look like an
+ass. You are an ass in some respects; but you are letting yourself look
+like one now for some shrewd end. You either think you'll slip out of
+danger by it when I make this discovery public, or you think you'll
+somehow trick me into keeping my mouth shut.”
+
+“I needn't trick you into keeping your mouth shut,” Tembarom suggested.
+“There's a straightway to do that, ain't there?” And he indelicately
+waved his hand toward the documents pertaining to the Cedric Company.
+
+It was stupid as well as gross, in his hearer's opinion. If he had known
+what was good for him he would have been clever enough to ignore the
+practical presentation of his case made half an hour or so earlier.
+
+“No, there is not,” Palliser replied, with serene mendacity. “No
+suggestion of that sort has been made. My business proposition was given
+out on an entirely different basis. You, of course, choose to put your
+personal construction upon it.”
+
+“Gee whiz!” ejaculated T. Tembarom. “I was 'way off, wasn't I?”
+
+“I told you that professing to be an ass wouldn't be good enough in this
+case. Don't go on with it,” said Palliser, sharply.
+
+“You're throwing bouquets. Let a fellow be natural,” said Tembarom.
+
+“That is bluff, too,” Palliser replied more sharply still. “I am not
+taken in by it, bold as it is. Ever since you came here, you have been
+playing this game. It was your fool's grin and guffaw and pretense of
+good nature that first made me suspect you of having something up your
+sleeve. You were too unembarrassed and candid.”
+
+“So you began to look out,” Tembarom said, considering him curiously,
+“just because of that.” Then suddenly he laughed outright, the fool's
+guffaw.
+
+It somehow gave Palliser a sort of puzzled shock. It was so hearty that
+it remotely suggested that he appeared more secure than seemed possible.
+He tried to reply to him with a languid contempt of manner.
+
+“You think you have some tremendously sharp `deal' in your hand,” he
+said, “but you had better remember you are in England where facts are
+like sledge-hammers. You can't dodge from under them as you can in
+America. I dare say you won't answer me, but I should like to ask you
+what you propose to do.”
+
+“I don't know what I'm going to do any more than you do,” was the
+unilluminating answer. “I don't mind telling you that.”
+
+“And what do you think he will do?”
+
+“I've got to wait till I find out. I'm doing it. That was what I told
+you. What are you going to do?” he added casually.
+
+“I'm going to Lincoln's Inn Fields to have an interview with Palford &
+Grimby.”
+
+“That's a good enough move,” commented Tembarom, “if you think you can
+prove what you say. You've got to prove things, you know. I couldn't, so
+I lay low and waited, just like I told you.”
+
+“Of course, of course,” Palliser himself almost grinned in his derision.
+“You have only been waiting.”
+
+“When you've got to prove a thing, and haven't much to go on, you've got
+to wait,” said T. Tembarom--“to wait and keep your mouth shut, whatever
+happens, and to let yourself be taken for a fool or a horse-thief isn't
+as gilt-edged a job as it seems. But proof's what it's best to have
+before you ring up the curtain. You'd have to have it yourself. So
+would Palford & Grimby before it'd be stone-cold safe to rush things and
+accuse a man of a penitentiary offense.”
+
+He took his unconventional half-seat on the edge of the table, with one
+foot on the floor and the other one lightly swinging.
+
+“Palford & Grimby are clever old ducks, and they know that much. Thing
+they'd know best would be that to set a raft of lies going about a
+man who's got money enough to defend himself, and to make them pay big
+damages for it afterward, would be pretty bum business. I guess they
+know all about what proof stands for. They may have to wait; so may you,
+same as I have.”
+
+Palliser realized that he was in the position of a man striking at an
+adversary whose construction was of India-rubber. He struck home, but
+left no bruise and drew no blood, which was an irritating thing. He lost
+his temper.
+
+“Proof!” he jerked out. “There will be proof enough, and when it is made
+public, you will not control the money you threaten to use.”
+
+“When you get proof, just you let me hear about it,” T. Tembarom said.
+“And all the money I'm threatening on shall go where it belongs, and
+I'll go back to New York and sell papers if I have to. It won't come as
+hard as you think.”
+
+The flippant insolence with which he brazened out his pretense that he
+had not lied, that his ridiculous romance was actual and simple truth,
+suggested dangerous readiness of device and secret knowledge of power
+which could be adroitly used.
+
+“You are merely marking time,” said Palliser, rising, with cold
+determination to be juggled with no longer. “You have hidden him away
+where you think you can do as you please with a man who is an invalid.
+That is your dodge. You've got him hidden somewhere, and his friends had
+better get at him before it is too late.”
+
+“I'm not answering questions this evening, and I'm not giving addresses,
+though there are no witnesses to take them down. If he's hidden away,
+he's where he won't be disturbed,” was T. Tembarom's rejoinder. “You may
+lay your bottom dollar on that.”
+
+Palliser walked toward the door without speaking. He had almost reached
+it when he whirled about involuntarily, arrested by a shout of laughter.
+
+“Say,” announced Tembarom, “you mayn't know it, but this lay-out would
+make a first-rate turn in a vaudeville. You think I'm lying, I look like
+I'm lying, I guess every word I say sounds like I'm lying. To a fellow
+like you, I guess it couldn't help but sound that way. And I'm not
+lying. That's where the joke comes in. I'm not lying. I've not told you
+all I know because it's none of your business and wouldn't help; but
+what I have told you is the stone-cold truth.”
+
+He was keeping it up to the very end with a desperate determination
+not to let go his hold of his pose until he had made his private shrewd
+deal, whatsoever it was. At least, so it struck Palliser, who merely
+said:
+
+“I 'm leaving the house by the first train to-morrow morning.” He fixed
+a cold gray eye on the fool's grin.
+
+“Six forty-five,” said T. Tembarom. “I'll order the carriage. I might go
+up myself.”
+
+The door closed.
+
+
+Tembarom was looking cheerful enough when he went into his bedroom. He
+had become used to its size and had learned to feel that it was a good
+sort of place. It had the hall bedroom at Mrs. Bowse's boarding-house
+“beaten to a frazzle.” There was about everything in it that any man
+could hatch up an idea he'd like to have. He had slept luxuriously
+on the splendid carved bed through long nights, he had lain awake
+and thought out things on it, he had lain and watched the fire-light
+flickering on the ceiling, as he thought about Ann and made plans, and
+“fixed up” the Harlem flat which could be run on fifteen per. He had
+picked out the pieces of furniture from the Sunday Earth advertisement
+sheet, and had set them in their places. He always saw the six-dollar
+mahogany-stained table set for supper, with Ann at one end and himself
+at the other. He had grown actually fond of the old room because of the
+silence and comfort of it, which tended to give reality to his dreams.
+Pearson, who had ceased to look anxious, and who had acquired fresh
+accomplishments in the form of an entirely new set of duties, was
+waiting, and handed him a telegram.
+
+“This just arrived, sir,” he explained. “James brought it here because
+he thought you had come up, and I didn't send it down because I heard
+you on the stairs.”
+
+“That's right. Thank you, Pearson,” his master said.
+
+He tore the yellow envelop, and read the message. In a moment Pearson
+knew it was not an ordinary message, and therefore remained more than
+ordinarily impassive of expression. He did not even ask of himself what
+it might convey.
+
+Mr. Temple Barholm stood still a few seconds, with the look of a man who
+must think and think rapidly.
+
+“What is the next train to London, Pearson?” he asked.
+
+“There is one at twelve thirty-six, sir,” he answered. “It's the last
+till six in the morning. You have to change at Crowley.”
+
+“You're always ready, Pearson,” returned Mr. Temple Barholm. “I want to
+get that train.”
+
+Pearson was always ready. Before the last word was quite spoken he had
+turned and opened the bedroom door.
+
+“I'll order the dog-cart; that's quickest, sir,” he said. He was out of
+the room and in again almost immediately. Then he was at the wardrobe
+and taking out what Mr. Temple Barholm called his “grip,” but what
+Pearson knew as a Gladstone bag. It was always kept ready packed for
+unexpected emergencies of travel.
+
+Mr. Temple Barholm sat at the table and drew pen and paper toward him.
+He looked excited; he looked more troubled than Pearson had seen him
+look before.
+
+“The wire's from Sir Ormsby Galloway, Pearson,” he said.
+
+“It's about Mr. Strangeways. He's done what I used to be always watching
+out against: he's disappeared.”
+
+“Disappeared, sir!” cried Pearson, and almost dropped the Gladstone bag.
+“I beg pardon, sir. I know there's no time to lose.” He steadied the bag
+and went on with his task without even turning round.
+
+His master was in some difficulty. He began to write, and after dashing
+off a few words, stopped, and tore them up.
+
+“No,” he muttered, “that won't do. There's no time to explain.” Then he
+began again, but tore up his next lines also.
+
+“That says too much and not enough. It'd frighten the life out of her.”
+
+He wrote again, and ended by folding the sheet and putting it into an
+envelop.
+
+“This is a message for Miss Alicia,” he said to Pearson. “Give it to
+her in the morning. I don't want her to worry because I had to go in
+a hurry. Tell her everything's going to be all right; but you needn't
+mention that anything's happened to Mr. Strangeways.”
+
+“Yes, sir,” answered Pearson.
+
+Mr. Temple Barholm was already moving about the room, doing odd things
+for himself rapidly, and he went on speaking.
+
+“I want you and Rose to know,” he said, “that whatever happens, you are
+both fixed all right--both of you. I've seen to that.”
+
+“Thank you, sir,” Pearson faltered, made uneasy by something new in his
+tone. “You said whatever happened, sir--”
+
+“Whatever old thing happens,” his master took him up.
+
+“Not to you, sir. Oh, I hope, sir, that nothing--”
+
+Mr. Temple Barholm put a cheerful hand on his shoulder.
+
+“Nothing's going to happen that'll hurt any one. Things may change,
+that's all. You and Rose are all right, Miss Alicia's all right, I'm all
+right. Come along. Got to catch that train.”'
+
+In this manner he took his departure.
+
+Miss Alicia had from necessity acquired the habit of early rising at
+Rowcroft vicarage, and as the next morning was bright, she was clipping
+roses on a terrace before breakfast when Pearson brought her the note.
+
+“Mr. Temple Barholm received a telegram from London last night, ma'am,”
+ he explained, “and he was obliged to take the midnight train. He hadn't
+time to do any more than leave a few lines for you, but he asked me to
+tell you that nothing disturbing had occurred. He specially mentioned
+that everything was all right.”
+
+“But how very sudden!” exclaimed Miss Alicia, opening her note and
+beginning to read it. Plainly it had been written hurriedly indeed. It
+read as though he had been in such haste that he hadn't had time to be
+clear.
+
+
+Dear little Miss Alicia:
+
+I've got to light out of here as quick as I can make it. I can't even
+stop to tell you why. There's just one thing--don't get rattled, Miss
+Alicia. Whatever any one says or does, just don't let yourself get
+rattled.
+
+Yours affectionately,
+
+T. TEMBAROM.
+
+
+“Pearson,” Miss Alicia exclaimed, again looking up, “are you sure
+everything is all right?”
+
+“That was what he said, ma'am. `All right,' ma'am.”
+
+“Thank you, Pearson. I am glad to hear it.”
+
+She walked to and fro in the sunshine, reading the note and rereading
+it.
+
+“Of course if he said it was all right, it was all right,” she murmured.
+“It is only the phrasing that makes me slightly nervous. Why should he
+ask me not to get rattled?” The term was by this time as familiar to her
+as any in Dr. Johnson's dictionary. “Of course he knows I do get rattled
+much too easily; but why should I be in danger of getting rattled now
+if nothing has happened?” She gave a very small start as she remembered
+something. “Could it be that Captain Palliser--But how could he? Though
+I do not like Captain Palliser.”
+
+Captain Palliser, her distaste for whom at the moment quite agitated
+her, was this morning an early riser also, and as she turned in her walk
+she found him coming toward her.
+
+“I find I am obliged to take an early train to London this morning,”
+ he said, after their exchange of greetings. “It is quite unexpected. I
+spoke to Mr. Temple Barholm about it last night.”
+
+Perhaps the unexpectedness, perhaps a certain suggestion of coincidence,
+caused Miss Alicia's side ringlets to appear momentarily tremulous.
+
+“Then perhaps we had better go in to breakfast at once,” she said.
+
+“Is Mr. Temple Barholm down?” he inquired as they seated themselves at
+the breakfast-table.
+
+“He is not here,” she answered. “He, too, was called away unexpectedly.
+He went to London by the midnight train.”
+
+She had never been so aware of her unchristian lack of liking for
+Captain Palliser as she was when he paused a moment before he made any
+comment. His pause was as marked as a start, and the smile he indulged
+in was, she felt, most singularly disagreeable. It was a smile of the
+order which conceals an unpleasant explanation of itself.
+
+“Oh,” he remarked, “he has gone first, has he?”
+
+“Yes,” she answered, pouring out his coffee for him. “He evidently had
+business of importance.”
+
+They were quite alone, and she was not one of the women one need disturb
+oneself about. She had been browbeaten into hypersensitive timidity
+early in life, and did not know how to resent cleverly managed polite
+bullying. She would always feel herself at fault if she was tempted to
+criticize any one. She was innocent and nervous enough to betray herself
+to any extent, because she would feel it rude to refuse to answer
+questions, howsoever far they exceeded the limits of polite curiosity.
+He had learned a good deal from her in the past. Why not try what could
+be startled out of her now? Thus Captain Palliser said:
+
+“I dare say you feel a little anxious at such an extraordinarily sudden
+departure,” he suggested amiably. “Bolting off in the middle of the
+night was sudden, if he did not explain himself.”
+
+“He had no time to explain,” she answered.
+
+“That makes it appear all the more sudden. But no doubt he left you
+a message. I saw you were reading a note when I joined you on the
+terrace.”
+
+Lightly casual as he chose to make the words sound, they were an
+audacity he would have known better than to allow himself with any one
+but a timid early-Victorian spinster whose politeness was hypersensitive
+in its quality.
+
+“He particularly desired that I should not be anxious,” she said. “He is
+always considerate.”
+
+“He would, of course, have explained everything if he had not been so
+hurried?”
+
+“Of course, if it had been necessary,” answered Miss Alicia, nervously
+sipping her tea.
+
+“Naturally,” said Captain Palliser. “His note no doubt mentioned that he
+went away on business connected with his friend Mr. Strangeways?”
+
+There was no question of the fact that she was startled.
+
+“He had not time enough,” she said. “He could only write a few lines.
+Mr. Strangeways?”
+
+“We had a long talk about him last night. He told me a remarkable
+story,” Captain Palliser went on. “I suppose you are quite familiar with
+all the details of it?”
+
+“I know how he found him in New York, and I know how generous he has
+been to him.”
+
+“Have you been told nothing more?”
+
+“There was nothing more to tell. If there was anything, I am sure he had
+some good reason for not telling me,” said Miss Alicia, loyally. “His
+reasons are always good.”
+
+Palliser's air of losing a shade or so of discretion as a result of
+astonishment was really well done.
+
+“Do you mean to say that he has not even hinted that ever since he
+arrived at Temple Barholm he has strongly suspected Strangeways'
+identity--that he has even known who he is?” he exclaimed.
+
+Miss Alicia's small hands clung to the table-cloth.
+
+“He has not known at all. He has been most anxious to discover. He has
+used every endeavor,” she brought out with some difficulty.
+
+“You say he has been trying to find out?” Palliser interposed.
+
+“He has been more than anxious,” she protested. “He has been to London
+again and again; he has gone to great expense; he has even seen people
+from Scotland Yard. I have sometimes almost thought he was assuming more
+responsibility than was just to himself. In the case of a relative or an
+old friend, but for an entire stranger--Oh, really, I ought not to seem
+to criticize. I do not presume to criticize his wonderful generosity and
+determination and goodness. No one should presume to question him.”
+
+“If he knows that you feel like this--” Palliser began.
+
+“He knows all that I feel,” Miss Alicia took him up with a pretty,
+rising spirit. “He knows that I am full of unspeakable gratitude to him
+for his beautiful kindness to me; he knows that I admire and respect and
+love him in a way I could never express, and that I would do anything in
+the world he could wish me to do.”
+
+“Naturally,” said Captain Palliser. “I was only about to express my
+surprise that since he is aware of all this he has not told you who he
+has proved Strangeways to be. It is a little odd, you know.”
+
+“I think “--Miss Alicia was even gently firm in her reply--“that you
+are a little mistaken in believing Mr. Temple Barholm has proved Mr.
+Strangeways to be anybody. When he has proof, he will no doubt think
+proper to tell me about it. Until then I should prefer--”
+
+Palliser laughed as he finished her sentence.
+
+“Not to know. I was not going to betray him, Miss Alicia. He evidently
+has one of his excellent reasons for keeping things to himself. I may
+mention, however, that it is not so much he who has proof as I myself.”
+
+“You!” How could she help quite starting in her seat when his gray eyes
+fixed themselves on her with such a touch of finely amused malice?
+
+“I offered him the proof last night, and it rather upset him,” he said.
+“He thought no one knew but himself, and he was not inclined to tell the
+world. He was upset because I said I had seen the man and could swear to
+his identity. That was why he went away so hurriedly. He no doubt went
+to see Strangeways and talk it over.”
+
+“See Mr. Strangeways? But Mr. Strangeways--” Miss Alicia rose and rang
+the bell.
+
+“Tell Pearson I wish to see him at once,” she said to the footman.
+
+Palliser took in her mood without comment. He had no objection to being
+present when she made inquiries of Pearson.
+
+“I hear the wheels of the dog-cart,” he remarked. “You see, I must catch
+my train.”
+
+Pearson stood at the door.
+
+“Is not Mr. Strangeways in his room, Pearson?” Miss Alicia asked.
+
+“Mr. Temple Barholm took him to London when he last went, ma'am,”
+ answered Pearson. “You remember he went at night. The doctor thought it
+best.”
+
+“He did not tell you that, either?” said Palliser, casually.
+
+“The dog-cart is at the door, sir,” announced Pearson.
+
+Miss Alicia's hand was unsteady when the departing guest took it.
+
+“Don't be disturbed,” he said considerately, “but a most singular thing
+has happened. When I asked so many questions about Temple Barholm's Man
+with the Iron Mask I asked them for curious reasons. That must be my
+apology. You will hear all about it later, probably from Palford &
+Grimby.”
+
+When he had left the room Miss Alicia stood upon the hearth-rug as the
+dog-cart drove away, and she was pale. Her simple and easily disturbed
+brain was in a whirl. She could scarcely remember what she had heard,
+and could not in the least comprehend what it had seemed intended to
+imply, except that there had been concealed in the suggestions some
+disparagement of her best beloved.
+
+Singular as it was that Pearson should return without being summoned,
+when she turned and found that he mysteriously stood inside the
+threshold again, as if she had called him, she felt a great sense of
+relief.
+
+“Pearson,” she faltered, “I am rather upset by certain things which
+Captain Palliser has said. I am afraid I do not understand.”
+
+She looked at him helplessly, not knowing what more to say. She wished
+extremely that she could think of something definite.
+
+The masterly finish of Pearson's reply lay in its neatly restrained hint
+of unobtrusively perceptive sympathy.
+
+“Yes, Miss. I was afraid so. Which is why I took the liberty of stepping
+into the room again. I myself do not understand, but of course I do not
+expect to. If I may be so bold as to say it, Miss, whatever we don't
+understand, we both understand Mr. Temple Barholm. My instructions were
+to remind you, Miss, that everything would be all right.”
+
+Miss Alicia took up her letter from the table where she had laid it
+down.
+
+“Thank you, Pearson,” she said, her forehead beginning to clear itself
+a little. “Of course, of course. I ought not to--He told me not to--get
+rattled,” she added with plaintive ingenuousness, “and I ought not to,
+above all things.”
+
+“Yes, Miss. It is most important that you should not.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXV
+
+
+The story of the adventures, experiences, and journeyings of Mr. Joseph
+Hutchinson, his daughter, and the invention, if related in detail, would
+prove reading of interest; but as this is merely a study of the manner
+in which the untrained characteristics and varied limitations of one man
+adjusted or failed to adjust themselves to incongruous surroundings and
+totally unprepared-for circumstances, such details, whatsoever their
+potential picturesqueness, can be touched upon but lightly. No new idea
+of value to the world of practical requirements is presented to the
+public at large without the waking of many sleeping dogs, and the
+stirring of many snapping fish, floating with open ears and eyes in
+many pools. An uneducated, blustering, obstinate man of one idea, having
+resentfully borne discouragement and wounded egotism for years, and
+suddenly confronting immense promise of success, is not unlikely to be
+prey easily harpooned. Joseph Hutchinson's rebound from despair to high
+and well-founded hope made of him exactly what such a man is always
+made by such rebound. The testimony to his genius and judgment which
+acknowledgment of the value of his work implied was naturally, in his
+opinion, only a proper tribute which the public had been a bull-headed
+fool not to lay at his feet years before. So much time lost, and so much
+money for it, as well as for him, and served 'em all damned well right,
+he said. If Temple Barholm hadn't come into his money, and hadn't
+had more sense than the rest of them, where would they all have been?
+Perhaps they'd never have had the benefit of the thing he'd been telling
+them about for years. He prided himself immensely on the possession of a
+business shrewdness which was an absolute defense against any desire
+on the part of the iniquitous to overreach him. He believed it to be a
+peculiarly Lancashire characteristic, and kept it in view constantly.
+
+“Lancashire's not easy to do,” he would say hilariously, “Them that can
+do a Lancashire chap has got to look out that they get up early in the
+morning and don't go to bed till late.”
+
+Smooth-mannered and astute men of business who knew how to make a man
+talk were given diffuse and loud-voiced explanations of his methods and
+long-acknowledged merits and characteristics. His life, his morals, and
+his training, or rather lack of it, were laid before them as examples
+of what a man might work himself up to if “he had it in him.” Education
+didn't do it. He had never been to naught but a village school, where
+he'd picked up precious little but the three R's. It had to be born in a
+man. Look at him! His invention promised to bring him in a fortune like
+a duke's, if he managed it right and kept his eyes open for sharpers.
+This company and that company were after him, but Lancashire didn't snap
+up things without going into 'em, and under 'em, and through 'em, for
+the matter of that.
+
+The well-mannered gentlemen of business stimulated him greatly by their
+appreciative attention. He sometimes lost his head a trifle and almost
+bullied them, but they did not seem to mind it. Their apparently
+old-time knowledge of and respect for Lancashire business sagacity
+seemed invariably a marked thing. Men of genius and powerful character
+combined with practical shrewdness of outlook they intimated, were of
+enormous value to the business world. They were to be counted upon as
+important factors. They could see and deal with both sides of a proposal
+as those of weaker mind could not.
+
+“That they can,” Hutchinson would admit, rolling about in his chair and
+thrusting his hands in his pockets. “They've got some bottom to stand
+on.” And he would feel amenable to reason.
+
+Little Ann found her duties and responsibilities increasing daily. Many
+persons seemed to think it necessary to come and talk business, and
+father had so much to think of and reason out, so that he could be
+sure that he didn't make any mistakes. In a quiet, remote, and darkened
+corner of her mind, in which were stored all such things as it was well
+to say little or nothing about, there was discreetly kept for reference
+the secretly acquired knowledge that father did not know so much about
+business ways and business people as he thought he did. Mother had
+learned this somewhat important fact, and had secluded it in her own
+private mental store-room with much affectionate delicacy.
+
+“Father's a great man and a good man, Ann love,” she had confided to
+her, choosing an occasion when her husband was a hundred miles away,
+“and he IS right-down Lancashire in his clever way of seeing through
+people that think themselves sharp; but when a man is a genius and
+noble-minded he sometimes can't see the right people's faults and
+wickedness. He thinks they mean as honest as he does. And there's times
+when he may get taken in if some one, perhaps not half as clever as
+he is, doesn't look after him. When the invention's taken up, and
+everybody's running after him to try to cheat him out of his rights, if
+I'm not there, Ann, you must just keep with him and watch every minute.
+I've seen these sharp, tricky ones right-down flinch and quail when
+there was a nice, quiet-behaved woman in the room, and she just fixed
+her eye steady and clear-like on them and showed she'd took in every
+word and was like to remember. You know what I mean, Ann; you've got
+that look in your own eye.”
+
+She had. The various persons who interviewed Mr. Hutchinson became
+familiar with the fact that he had an unusual intimacy with and
+affection for his daughter. She was present on all occasions. If she had
+not been such a quiet and entirely unobtrusive little thing, she
+might have been an obstacle to freedom of expression. But she seemed a
+childish, unsophisticated creature, who always had a book with her when
+she waited in an office, and a trifle of sewing to occupy herself with
+when she was at home. At first she so obliterated herself that she was
+scarcely noticed; but in course of time it became observed by some that
+she was curiously pretty. The face usually bent over her book or work
+was tinted like a flower, and she had quite magnificent red hair. A
+stout old financier first remarked her eyes. He found one day that she
+had quietly laid her book on her lap, and that they were resting upon
+him like unflinching crystals as he talked to her father. Their serenity
+made him feel annoyed and uncomfortable. It was a sort of recording
+serenity. He felt as though she would so clearly remember every word he
+had said that she would be able to write it down when she went home; and
+he did not care to have it written down. So he began to wander somewhat
+in his argument, and did not reach his conclusions.
+
+“I was glad, Father, to see how you managed that gentleman this
+afternoon,” Little Ann said that night when Hutchinson had settled
+himself with his pipe after an excellent dinner.
+
+“Eh?” he exclaimed. “Eh?”
+
+“The one,” she exclaimed, “that thought he was so sure he was going to
+persuade you to sign that paper. I do wonder he could think you'd listen
+to such a poor offer, and tie up so much. Why, even I could see he
+was trying to take advantage, and I know nothing in the world about
+business.”
+
+The financier in question had been a brilliant and laudatory
+conversationalist, and had so soothed and exhilarated Mr. Hutchinson
+that such perils had beset him as his most lurid imaginings could never
+have conceived in his darkest moments of believing that the entire
+universe had ceased all other occupation to engage in that of defrauding
+him of his rights and dues. He had been so uplifted by the admiration of
+his genius so properly exhibited, and the fluency with which his future
+fortunes had been described, that he had been huffed when the arguments
+seemed to dwindle away. Little Ann startled him, but it was not he
+who would show signs of dismay at the totally unexpected expression of
+adverse opinion. He had got into the habit of always listening, though
+inadvertently, as it were, to Ann as he had inadvertently listened to
+her mother.
+
+“Rosenthal?” he said. “Are you talking about him?”
+
+“Yes, I am,” Little Ann answeered, smiling approvingly over her bit of
+sewing. “Father, I wish you'd try and teach me some of the things you
+know about business. I've learned a little by just listening to you
+talk; but I should so like to feel as if I could follow you when you
+argue. I do so enjoy hearing you argue. It's just an education.”
+
+“Women are not up to much at business,” reflected Hutchinson. “If you'd
+been a boy, I'd have trained you same as I've trained myself. You're a
+sharp little thing, Ann, but you're a woman. Not but what a woman's the
+best thing on earth,” he added almost severely in his conviction--“the
+best thing on earth in her place. I don't know what I'd ever have done
+without you, Ann, in the bad times.”
+
+He loved her, blundering old egotist, just as he had loved her mother.
+Ann always knew it, and her own love for him warmed all the world about
+them both. She got up and went to him to kiss him, and pat him, and
+stuff a cushion behind his stout back.
+
+“And now the good times have come,” she said, bestowing on him two or
+three special little pats which were caresses of her own invention, “and
+people see what you are and always have been, as they ought to have seen
+long ago, I don't want to feel as if I couldn't keep up with you and
+understand your plans. Perhaps I've got a little bit of your cleverness,
+and you might teach me to use it in small ways. I've got a good memory
+you know, Father love, and I might recollect things people say and make
+bits of notes of them to save you trouble. And I can calculate. I once
+got a copy of Bunyan's `Pilgrim's Progress' for a prize at the village
+school just for sums.”
+
+The bald but unacknowledged fact that Mr. Hutchinson had never exhibited
+gifts likely to entitle him to receive a prize for “sums” caused this
+suggestion to be one of some practical value. When business men talked
+to him of per cents., and tenth shares or net receipts, and expected him
+to comprehend their proportions upon the spot without recourse to
+pencil and paper, he felt himself grow hot and nervous and red, and was
+secretly terrified lest the party of the second part should detect that
+he was tossed upon seas of horrible uncertainty. T. Tembarom in the same
+situation would probably have said, “This is the place where T. T. sits
+down a while to take breath and count things up on his fingers. I am not
+a sharp on arithmetic, and I need time--lots of it.”
+
+Mr. Hutchinson's way was to bluster irritatedly.
+
+“Aye, aye, I see that, of course, plain enough. I see that.” And feel
+himself breaking into a cold perspiration. “Eh, this English climate
+is a damp un,” he would add when it became necessary to mop his red
+forehead somewhat with his big clean handkerchief.
+
+Therefore he found it easy to receive Little Ann's proposition with
+favor.
+
+“There's summat i' that,” he acknowledged graciously, dropping into
+Lancashire. “That's one of the little things a woman can do if she's
+sharp at figures. Your mother taught me that much. She always said women
+ought to look after the bits of things as was too small for a man to
+bother with.”
+
+“Men have the big things to look after. That's enough for anybody,”
+ said Little Ann. “And they ought to leave something for women to do.
+If you'll just let me keep notes for you and remember things and answer
+your letters, and just make calculations you're too busy to attend to, I
+should feel right-down happy, Father.”
+
+“Eh!” he said relievedly, “tha art like thy mother.”
+
+“That would make me happy if there was nothing else to do it,” said Ann,
+smoothing his shoulder.
+
+“You're her girl,” he said, warmed and supported.
+
+“Yes, I'm her girl, and I'm yours. Now, isn't there some little thing
+I could begin with? Would you mind telling me if I was right in what I
+thought you thought about Mr. Rosenthal's offer?”
+
+“What did you think I thought about it?” He was able to put affectionate
+condescension into the question.
+
+She went to her work-basket and took out a sheet of paper. She came back
+and sat cozily on the arm of his chair.
+
+“I had to put it all down when I came home,” she said. “I wanted to make
+sure I hadn't forgotten. I do hope I didn't make mistakes.”
+
+She gave it to him to look at, and as he settled himself down to its
+careful examination, she kept her blue eyes upon him. She herself did
+not know that it was a wonderful little document in its neatly jotted
+down notes of the exact detail most important to his interests.
+
+There were figures, there were calculations of profits, there were
+records of the gist of his replies, there were things Hutchinson
+himself could not possibly have fished out of the jumbled rag-bag of his
+uncertain recollections.
+
+“Did I say that?” he exclaimed once.
+
+“Yes, Father love, and I could see it upset him. I was watching his face
+because it wasn't a face I took to.”
+
+Joseph Hutchinson began to chuckle--the chuckle of a relieved and
+gratified stout man.
+
+“Tha kept thy eyes open, Little Ann,” he said. “And the way tha's put
+it down is a credit to thee. And I'll lay a sovereign that tha made no
+mistakes in what tha thought I was thinking.”
+
+He was a little anxious to hear what it had been. The memorandum had
+brought him up with a slight shock, because it showed him that he had
+not remembered certain points, and had passed over others which were of
+dangerous importance. Ann slipped her warm arm about his neck, as she
+nearly always did when she sat on the arm of his chair and talked things
+over with him. She had never thought, in fact she was not even aware,
+that her soft little instincts made her treat him as the big, good,
+conceited, blundering child nature had created him.
+
+“What I was seeing all the time was the way you were taking in his
+trick of putting whole lots of things in that didn't really matter, and
+leaving out things that did,” she explained. “He kept talking about
+what the invention would make in England, and how it would make it, and
+adding up figures and per cents. and royalties until my head was buzzing
+inside. And when he thought he'd got your mind fixed on England so that
+you'd almost forget there was any other country to think of, he read out
+the agreement that said `All rights,' and he was silly enough to think
+he could get you to sign it without reading it over and over yourself,
+and showing it to a clever lawyer that would know that as many tricks
+can be played by things being left out of a paper as by things being put
+in.”
+
+Small beads of moisture broke out on the bald part of Joseph
+Hutchinson's head. He had been first so flattered and exhilarated by the
+quoting of large figures, and then so flustrated and embarrassed by his
+inability to calculate and follow argument, and again so soothed and
+elated and thrilled by his own importance in the scheme and the honors
+which his position in certain companies would heap upon him, that an
+abyss had yawned before him of which he had been wholly unaware. He was
+not unaware of it now. He was a vainglorious, ignorant man, whose life
+had been spent in common work done under the supervision of those who
+knew what he did not know. He had fed himself upon the comforting belief
+that he had learned all the tricks of any trade. He had been openly
+boastful of his astuteness and experience, and yet, as Ann's soft little
+voice went on, and she praised his cleverness in seeing one point after
+another, he began to quake within himself before the dawning realization
+that he had seen none of them, that he had been carried along exactly
+as Rosenthal had intended that he should be, and that if luck had not
+intervened, he had been on the brink of signing his name to an agreement
+that would have implied a score of concessions he would have bellowed
+like a bull at the thought of making if he had known what he was doing.
+
+“Aye, lass,” he gulped out when he could speak--“aye, lass, tha wert
+right enow. I'm glad tha wert there and heard it, and saw what I was
+thinking. I didn't say much. I let the chap have rope enow to hang
+himself with. When he comes back I'll give him a bit o' my mind as'll
+startle him. It was right-down clever of thee to see just what I had i'
+my head about all that there gab about things as didn't matter, an' the
+leavin' out them as did--thinking I wouldn't notice. Many's the time
+I've said, `It is na so much what's put into a contract as what's left
+out.' I'll warrant tha'st heard me say it thysen.”
+
+“I dare say I have,” answered Ann, “and I dare say that was why it came
+into my mind.”
+
+“That was it,” he answered. “Thy mother was always tellin' me of things
+I'd said that I'd clean forgot myself.”
+
+He was beginning to recover his balance and self-respect. It would have
+been so like a Lancashire chap to have seen and dealt shrewdly with a
+business schemer who tried to outwit him that he was gradually convinced
+that he had thought all that had been suggested, and had comported
+himself with triumphant though silent astuteness. He even began to rub
+his hands.
+
+“I'll show him,” he said, “I'll send him off with a flea in his ear.”
+
+“If you'll help me, I'll study out the things I've written down on this
+paper,” Ann said, “and then I'll write down for you just the things you
+make up your mind to say. It will be such a good lesson for me, if you
+don't mind, Father. It won't be much to write it out the way you'll say
+it. You know how you always feel that in business the fewer words the
+better, and that, however much a person deserves it, calling names and
+showing you're angry is only wasting time. One of the cleverest things
+you ever thought was that a thief doesn't mind being called one if he's
+got what he wanted out of you; he'll only laugh to see you in a rage
+when you can't help yourself. And if he hasn't got what he wanted, it's
+only waste of strength to work yourself up. It's you being what you are
+that makes you know that temper isn't business.”
+
+“Well,” said Hutchinson, drawing a long and deep breath, “I was almost
+hot enough to have forgot that, and I'm glad you've reminded me. We'll
+go over that paper now, Ann. I'd like to give you your lesson while
+we've got a bit o' time to ourselves and what I've said is fresh in your
+mind. The trick is always to get at things while they're fresh in your
+mind.”
+
+The little daughter with the red hair was present during Rosenthal's
+next interview with the owner of the invention. The fellow, he told
+himself, had been thinking matters over, had perhaps consulted a lawyer;
+and having had time for reflection, he did not present a mass of mere
+inflated and blundering vanity as a target for adroit aim. He seemed a
+trifle sulky, but he did not talk about himself diffusely, and lose
+his head when he was smoothed the right way. He had a set of curiously
+concise notes to which he referred, and he stuck to his points with a
+bulldog obstinacy which was not to be shaken. Something had set him on
+a new tack. The tricks which could be used only with a totally ignorant
+and readily flattered and influenced business amateur were no longer in
+order. This was baffling and irritating.
+
+The worst feature of the situation was that the daughter did not read a
+book, as had seemed her habit at other times. She sat with a tablet and
+pencil on her knee, and, still as unobtrusively as ever, jotted down
+notes.
+
+“Put that down, Ann,” her father said to her more than once. “There's no
+objections to having things written down, I suppose?” he put it bluntly
+to Rosenthal. “I've got to have notes made when I'm doing business.
+Memory's all well enough, but black and white's better. No one can go
+back of black and white. Notes save time.”
+
+There was but one attitude possible. No man of business could resent
+the recording of his considered words, but the tablet and pencil and the
+quietly bent red head were extraordinary obstacles to the fluidity of
+eloquence. Rosenthal found his arguments less ready and his methods
+modifying themselves. The outlook narrowed itself. When he returned to
+his office and talked the situation over with his partner, he sat and
+bit his nails in restless irritation.
+
+“Ridiculous as it seems, outrageously ridiculous, I've an idea,” he
+said, “I've more than an idea that we have to count with the girl.”
+
+“Girl? What girl?”
+
+“Daughter. Well-behaved, quiet bit of a thing, who sits in a corner
+and listens while she pretends to sew or read. I'm certain of it. She's
+taken to making notes now, and Hutchinson's turned stubborn. You need
+not laugh, Lewis. She's in it. We've got to count with that girl, little
+female mouse as she looks.”
+
+This view, which was first taken by Rosenthal and passed on to his
+partner, was in course of time passed on to others and gradually
+accepted, sometimes reluctantly and with much private protest,
+sometimes with amusement. The well-behaved daughter went with
+Hutchinson wheresoever his affairs called him. She was changeless in the
+unobtrusiveness of her demeanor, which was always that of a dutiful and
+obedient young person who attended her parent because he might desire
+her humble little assistance in small matters.
+
+“She's my secretary,” Hutchinson began to explain, with a touch of
+swagger. “I've got to have a secretary, and I'd rather trust my private
+business to my own daughter than to any one else. It's safe with her.”
+
+It was so safe with her steady demureness that Hutchinson found himself
+becoming steady himself. The “lessons” he gave to Little Ann, and the
+notes made as a result, always ostensibly for her own security and
+instruction, began to form a singularly firm foundation for statement
+and argument. He began to tell himself that his memory was improving.
+Facts were no longer jumbled together in his mind. He could better
+follow a line of logical reasoning. He less often grew red and hot and
+flustered.
+
+“That's the thing I've said so often--that temper's got naught to do wi'
+business, and only upsets a man when he wants all his wits about
+him. It's the truest thing I ever worked out,” he not infrequently
+congratulated himself. “If a chap can keep his temper, he'll be like to
+keep his head and drive his bargain. I see it plainer every day o' my
+life.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVI
+
+
+It was in the course of the “lessons” that he realized that he had
+always argued that the best way to do business was to do it face to face
+with people. To stay in England, and let another chap make your bargains
+for you in France or Germany or some other outlandish place, where
+frog-eating foreigners ran loose, was a fool's trick. He'd said it often
+enough. “Get your eye on 'em, and let them know you've got it on them,
+and they'd soon find out they were dealing with Lancashire, and not with
+foreign knaves and nincompoops.” So, when it became necessary to deal
+with France, Little Ann packed him up neatly, so to speak, and in the
+role of obedient secretarial companion took him to that country, having
+for weeks beforehand mentally confronted the endless complications
+attending the step. She knew, in the first place, what the effect of the
+French language would be upon his temper: that it would present itself
+to him as a wall deliberately built by the entire nation as a means of
+concealing a deep duplicity the sole object of which was the baffling,
+thwarting, and undoing of Englishmen, from whom it wished to wrest their
+honest rights. Apoplexy becoming imminent, as a result of his impotent
+rage during their first few days in Paris, she paid a private visit to a
+traveler's agency, and after careful inquiry discovered that it was not
+impossible to secure the attendance and service of a well-mannered young
+man who spoke most of the languages employed by most of the inhabitants
+of the globe. She even found that she might choose from a number of such
+persons, and she therefore selected with great care.
+
+“One that's got a good temper, and isn't easy irritated,” she said to
+herself, in summing up the aspirants, “but not one that's easy-tempered
+because he's silly. He must have plenty of common sense as well as be
+willing to do what he's told.”
+
+When her father discovered that he himself had been considering the
+desirability of engaging the services of such a person, and had, indeed
+already, in a way, expressed his intention of sending her to “the agency
+chap” to look him up, she was greatly relieved.
+
+“I can try to teach him what you've taught me, Father,” she said, “and
+of course he'll learn just by being with you.”
+
+The assistant engaged was a hungry young student who had for weeks,
+through ill luck, been endeavoring to return with some courage the gaze
+of starvation, which had been staring him in the face.
+
+His name was Dudevant, and with desperate struggles he had educated
+himself highly, having cherished literary ambitions from his infancy. At
+this juncture it had become imperative that he should, for a few months
+at least, obtain food. Ann had chosen well by instinct. His speech had
+told her that he was intelligent, his eyes had told her that he would do
+anything on earth to earn his living.
+
+From the time of his advent, Joseph Hutchinson had become calmer and had
+ceased to be in peril of apoplectic seizure. Foreign nations became
+less iniquitous and dangerous, foreign languages were less of a barrier,
+easier to understand. A pleasing impression that through great facility
+he had gained a fair practical knowledge of French, German, and Italian,
+supported and exhilarated him immensely.
+
+“It's right-down wonderful how a chap gets to understand these fellows'
+lingo after he's listened to it a bit,” he announced to Ann. “I wouldn't
+have believed it of myself that I could see into it as quick as I have.
+I couldn't say as I understand everything they say just when they're
+saying it; but I understand it right enough when I've had time to
+translate like. If foreigners didn't talk so fast and run their words
+one into another, and jabber as if their mouths was full of puddin',
+it'd be easier for them as is English. Now, there's `wee' and `nong.' I
+know 'em whenever I hear 'em, and that's a good bit of help.”
+
+“Yes,” answered Ann, “of course that's the chief thing you want to know
+in business, whether a person is going to say `yes' or `no.'”
+
+He began to say “wee” and “nong” at meals, and once broke forth “Passy
+mor le burr” in a tone so casually Parisian that Ann was frightened,
+because she did not understand immediately, and also because she saw
+looming up before her a future made perilous by the sudden interjection
+of unexpected foreign phrases it would be incumbent upon her and
+Dudevant to comprehend instantaneously without invidious hesitation.
+
+“Don't you understand? Pass the butter. Don't you understand a bit o'
+French like that?” he exclaimed irritatedly. “Buy yourself one o' these
+books full of easy sentences and learn some of 'em, lass. You oughtn't
+to be travelin' about with your father in foreign countries and learnin'
+nothin'. It's not every lass that's gettin' your advantages.”
+
+Ann had not mentioned the fact that she spent most of her rare leisure
+moments in profound study of phrase-books and grammars, which she kept
+in her trunk and gave her attention to before she got up in the morning,
+after she went to her room at night, and usually while she was dressing.
+You can keep a book open before you when you are brushing your hair.
+Dudevant gave her a lesson or so whenever time allowed. She was as
+quick to learn as her father thought he was, and she was desperately
+determined. It was really not long before she understood much more than
+“wee and nong” when she was present at a business interview.
+
+“You are a wonderful young lady,” Dudevant said, with that well-known
+yearning in his eyes. “You are most wonderful.”
+
+“She's just a wonder,” Mrs. Bowse and her boarders had said. And the
+respectful yearning in the young Frenchman's eyes and voice were well
+known to her because she had seen it often before, and remembered it,
+in Jem Bowles and Julius Steinberger. That this young man had without an
+hour of delay fallen abjectly in love with her was a circumstance with
+which she dealt after her own inimitably kind and undeleterious method,
+which in itself was an education to any amorous youth.
+
+“I can understand all you tell me,” she said when he reached the point
+of confiding his hard past to her. “I can understand it because I knew
+some one who had to fight for himself just that way, only perhaps it was
+harder because he wasn't educated as you are.”
+
+“Did he--confide in you?” Dudevant ventured, with delicate hesitation.
+“You are so kind I am sure he did, Mademoiselle.”
+
+“He told me about it because he knew I wanted to hear,” she answered.
+“I was very fond of him,” she added, and her kind gravity was quite
+unshaded by any embarrassment. “I was right-down fond of him.”
+
+His emotion rendered him for a moment indiscreet, to her immediate
+realization and regret, as was evident by his breaking off in the midst
+of his question.
+
+“And now--are you?”
+
+“Yes, I always shall be, Mr. Dudevant.”
+
+His adoration naturally only deepened itself as all hope at once
+receded, as it could not but recede before the absolute pellucid truth
+of her.
+
+“However much he likes me, he will get over it in time. People do, when
+they know how things stand,” she was thinking, with maternal sympathy.
+
+It did him no bitter harm to help her with her efforts at learning
+what she most needed, and he found her intelligence and modest power
+of concentration remarkable. A singularly clear knowledge of her own
+specialized requirements was a practical background to them both. She
+had no desire to shine; she was merely steadily bent on acquiring as
+immediately as possible a comprehension of nouns, verbs, and phrases
+that would be useful to her father. The manner in which she applied
+herself, and assimilated what it was her quietly fixed intention to
+assimilate, bespoke her possession of a brain the powers of which being
+concentrated on large affairs might have accomplished almost startling
+results. There was, however, nothing startling in her intentions, and
+ambition did not touch her. Yet, as she went with Hutchinson from one
+country to another, more than one man of affairs had it borne in upon
+him that her young slimness and her silence represented an unanticipated
+knowledge of points under discussion which might wisely be considered
+as a factor in all decisions for or against. To realize that a
+soft-cheeked, child-eyed girl was an element to regard privately in
+discussions connected with the sale of, or the royalties paid on, a
+valuable patent appeared in some minds to be a situation not without
+flavor. She was the kind of little person a man naturally made love to,
+and a girl who was made love to in a clever manner frequently became
+amenable to reason, and might be persuaded to use her influence in the
+direction most desired. But such male financiers as began with this idea
+discovered that they had been led into errors of judgment through lack
+of familiarity with the variations of type. One personable young man
+of title, who had just been disappointed in a desirable marriage with
+a fortune, being made aware that the invention was likely to arrive at
+amazing results, was sufficiently rash to approach Mr. Hutchinson with
+formal proposals. Having a truly British respect for the lofty in
+place, and not being sufficiently familiar with titled personages to
+discriminate swiftly between the large and the small, Joseph Hutchinson
+was somewhat unduly elated.
+
+“The chap's a count, lass,” he said. “Tha'u'd go back to Manchester a
+countess.”
+
+“I've heard they're nearly all counts in these countries,” commented
+Ann. “And there's countesses that have to do their own washing, in a
+manner of speaking. You send him to me, Father.”
+
+When the young man came, and compared the fine little nose of Miss
+Hutchinson with the large and bony structure dominating the countenance
+of the German heiress he had lost, also when he gazed into the clearness
+of the infantile blue eyes, his spirits rose. He felt himself en veine;
+he was equal to attacking the situation. He felt that he approached it
+with alluring and chivalric delicacy. He almost believed all that he
+said.
+
+But the pellucid blueness of the gaze that met his was confusingly
+unstirred by any shade of suitable timidity or emotion. There
+was something in the lovely, sedate little creature, something so
+undisturbed and matter of fact, that it frightened him, because he
+suddenly felt like a fool whose folly had been found out.
+
+“That's downright silly,” remarked Little Ann, not allowing him to
+escape from her glance, which unhesitatingly summed up him and his
+situation. “And you know it is. You don't know anything about me, and
+you wouldn't like me if you did. And I shouldn't like you. We're too
+different. Please go away, and don't say anything more about it. I
+shouldn't have patience to talk it over.”
+
+“Father,” she said that night, “if ever I get married at all, there's
+only one person I'm going to marry. You know that.” And she would say no
+more.
+
+By the time they returned to England, the placing of the invention in
+divers countries had been arranged in a manner which gave assurance of
+a fortune for its owners on a foundation not likely to have established
+itself in more adverse circumstances. Mr. Hutchinson had really driven
+some admirable bargains, and had secured advantages which to his last
+hour he would believe could have been achieved only by Lancashire
+shrewdness and Lancashire ability to “see as far through a mile-stone
+as most chaps, an' a bit farther.” The way in which he had never allowed
+himself to be “done” caused him at times to chuckle himself almost
+purple with self-congratulation.
+
+“They got to know what they was dealing with, them chaps. They was
+sharp, but Joe was a bit sharper,” he would say.
+
+They found letters waiting for them when they reached London.
+
+“There's one fro' thy grandmother,” Hutchinson said, in dealing out the
+package. “She's written to thee pretty steady for an old un.”
+
+This was true. Letters from her had followed them from one place to
+another. This was a thick one in an envelop of good size.
+
+“Aren't tha going to read it?” he asked.
+
+“Not till you've had your dinner, Father. You've had a long day of it
+with that channel at the end. I want to see you comfortable with your
+pipe.”
+
+The hotel was a good one, and the dinner was good. Joseph Hutchinson
+enjoyed it with the appetite of a robust man who has had time to get
+over a not too pleasant crossing. When he had settled down into a stout
+easy-chair with the pipe, he drew a long and comfortable breath as he
+looked about the room.
+
+“Eh, Ann, lass,” he said, “thy mother 'd be fine an' set up if she could
+see aw this. Us having the best that's to be had, an' knowin' we can
+have it to the end of our lives, that's what it's come to, tha knows. No
+more third-class railway-carriages for you and me. No more `commercial'
+an' `temperance' hotels. Th' first cut's what we can have--th' upper
+cut. Eh, eh, but it's a good day for a man when he's begun to be
+appreciated as he should be.”
+
+“It's a good day for those that love him,” said Little Ann. “And I dare
+say mother knows every bit about it.”
+
+“I dare say she does,” admitted Hutchinson, with tender lenience. “She
+was one o' them as believed that way. And I never knowed her to be wrong
+in aught else, so I'm ready to give in as she was reet about that. Good
+lass she was, good lass.”
+
+He had fallen into a contented and utterly comfortable doze in his chair
+when Ann sat down to read her grandmother's letter. The old woman always
+wrote at length, giving many details and recording village events with
+shrewd realistic touches. Throughout their journeyings, Ann had been
+followed by a record of the estate and neighborhood of Temple Barholm
+which had lacked nothing of atmosphere. She had known what the new lord
+of the manor did, what people said, what the attitude of the gentry had
+become; that the visit of the Countess of Mallowe and her daughter had
+extended itself until curiosity and amusement had ceased to comment,
+and passively awaited results. She had heard of Miss Alicia and her
+reincarnation, and knew much of the story of the Duke of Stone, whose
+reputation as a “dommed clever owd chap” had earned for him a sort of
+awed popularity. There had been many “ladies.” The new Temple Barholm
+had boldly sought them out and faced them in their strongholds with the
+manner of one who would confront the worst and who revealed no tendency
+to flinch. The one at Stone Hover with the “pretty color” and the one
+with the dimples had appeared frequently upon the scene. Then there had
+been Lady Joan Fayre, who had lived at his elbow, sitting at his table,
+driving in his carriages with the air of cold aloofness which the
+cottagers “could na abide an' had no patience wi'.” She had sometimes
+sat and wondered and wondered about things, and sometimes had flushed
+daisy-red instead of daisy-pink; and sometimes she had turned rather
+pale and closed her soft mouth firmly. But, though she had written twice
+a week to her grandmother, she had recorded principally the successes
+and complexities of the invention, and had asked very few questions.
+Old Mrs. Hutchinson would tell her all she must know, and her choice of
+revelation would be made with a far-sightedness which needed no stimulus
+of questioning. The letter she had found awaiting her had been long on
+its way, having missed her at point after point and followed her at last
+to London. It looked and felt thick and solid in its envelop. Little Ann
+opened it, stirred by the suggestion of quickened pulse-beats with which
+she had become familiar. As she bent over it she looked sweetly flushed
+and warmed.
+
+
+
+Joseph Hutchinson's doze had almost deepened into sleep when he was
+awakened by the touch of her hand on his shoulder. She was standing by
+him, holding some sheets of her grandmother's letter, and several other
+sheets were lying on the table. Something had occurred which had changed
+her quiet look.
+
+“Has aught happened to your grandmother?” he asked.
+
+“No, Father, but this letter that's been following me from one place to
+another has got some queer news in it.”
+
+“What's up, lass? Tha looks as if summat was up.”
+
+“The thing that's happened has given me a great deal to think of,” was
+her answer. “It's about Mr. Temple Barholm and Mr. Strangeways.”
+
+He became wide-awake at once, sitting up and turning in his chair in
+testy anxiety.
+
+“Now, now,” he exclaimed, “I hope that cracked chap's not gone out an'
+out mad an' done some mischief. I towd Temple Barholm it was a foolish
+thing to do, taking all that trouble about him. Has he set fire to th'
+house or has he knocked th' poor lad on th' head?”
+
+“No, he hasn't, Father. He's disappeared, and Mr. Temple Barholm's
+disappeared, too.”
+
+“Disappeared?” Hutchinson almost shouted. “What for, i' the Lord's
+name?”
+
+“Nobody knows for certain, and people are talking wild. The village is
+all upset, and all sorts of silly things are being said.”
+
+“What sort o' things?”
+
+“You know what servants at big houses are--how they hear bits of
+talk and make much of it,” she explained. “They've been curious and
+chattering among themselves about Mr. Strangeways from the first. It was
+Burrill that said he believed he was some relation that was being hid
+away for some good reason. One night Mr. Temple Barholm and Captain
+Palliser were having a long talk together, and Burrill was about--”
+
+“Aye, he'd be about if he thought there was a chance of him hearing
+summat as was none of his business,” jerked out Hutchinson, irately.
+
+“They were talking about Mr. Strangeways, and Burrill heard Captain
+Palliser getting angry; and as he stepped near the door he heard him say
+out loud that he could swear in any court of justice that the man he had
+seen at the west room window--it's a startling thing, Father--was Mr.
+James Temple Barholm.” For the moment her face was pale.
+
+Hereupon Hutchinson sprang up.
+
+“What!” His second shout was louder than his first. “Th' liar! Th'
+chap's dead, an' he knows it. Th' dommed mischief-makin' liar!”
+
+Her eyes were clear and speculatively thoughtful, notwithstanding her
+lack of color.
+
+“There have been people that have been thought dead that have come
+back to their friends alive. It's happened many a time,” she said. “It
+wouldn't be so strange for a man that had no friends to be lost in a
+wild, far-off place where there was neither law nor order, and where
+every man was fighting for his own life and the gold he was mad after.
+Particularly a man that was shamed and desperate and wanted to hide
+himself. And, most of all, it would be easy, if he was like Mr.
+Strangeways, and couldn't remember, and had lost himself.”
+
+As her father listened, the angry redness of his countenance moderated
+its hue. His eyes gradually began to question and his under jaw fell
+slightly.
+
+“Si' thee, lass,” he broke out huskily, “does that mean to say tha
+believes it?”
+
+“It's not often you can believe what you don't know,” she answered. “I
+don't know anything about it. There's just one thing I believe, because
+I know it. I believe what grandmother does. Read that.”
+
+She handed him the final sheet of old Mrs. Hutchinson's letter. It was
+written with very black ink and in an astonishingly bold and clear hand.
+It was easy to read the sentences with which she ended.
+
+
+
+There's a lot said. There's always more saying than doing. But it's
+right-down funny to see how the lad has made hard and fast friends just
+going about in his queer way, and no one knowing how he did it. I
+like him myself. He's one of those you needn't ask questions about. If
+there's anything said that isn't to his credit, it's not true. There's
+no ifs, buts, or ands about that, Ann.
+
+
+
+Little Ann herself read the words as her father read them.
+
+“That's the thing I believe, because I know it,” was all she said.
+
+“It's the thing I'd swear to mysel',” her father answered bluffly. “But,
+by Judd--”
+
+She gave him a little push and spoke to him in homely Lancashire
+phrasing, and with some soft unsteadiness of voice.
+
+“Sit thee down, Father love,” she said, “and let me sit on thy knee.”
+
+He sat down with emotional readiness, and she sat on his stout knee like
+a child. It was a thing she did in tender or troubled moments as much
+in these days as she had done when she was six or seven. Her little
+lightness and soft young ways made it the most natural thing in the
+world, as well as the prettiest. She had always sat on his knee in the
+hours when he had been most discouraged over the invention. She had
+known it made him feel as though he were taking care of her, and as
+though she depended utterly on him to steady the foundations of her
+world. What could such a little bit of a lass do without “a father”?
+
+“It's upset thee, lass,” he said. “It's upset thee.”
+
+He saw her slim hands curl themselves into small, firm fists as they
+rested on her lap.
+
+“I can't bear to think that ill can be said of him, even by a wastrel
+like Captain Palliser,” she said. “He's MINE.”
+
+It made him fumble caressingly at her big knot of soft red hair.
+
+“Thine, is he?” he said. “Thine! Eh, but tha did say that just like
+thy mother would ha' said it; tha brings the heart i' my throat now and
+again. That chap's i' luck, I can tell him--same as I was once.”
+
+“He's mine now, whatever happens,” she went on, with a firmness which
+no skeptic would have squandered time in the folly of hoping to shake.
+“He's done what I told him to do, and it's ME he wants. He's found out
+for himself, and so have I. He can have me the minute he wants me--the
+very minute.”
+
+“He can?” said Hutchinson. “That settles it. I believe tha'd rather take
+him when he was i' trouble than when he was out of it. Same as tha'd
+rather take him i' a flat in Harlem on fifteen dollar a week than on
+fifteen hundred.”
+
+“Yes, Father, I would. It'd give me more to do for him.”
+
+“Eh, eh,” he grunted tenderly, “thy mother again. I used to tell her as
+the only thing she had agen me was that I never got i' jail so she could
+get me out an' stand up for me after it. There's only one thing worrits
+me a bit: I wish the lad hadn't gone away.”
+
+“I've thought that out, though I've not had much time to reason
+about things,” said Little Ann. “If he's gone away, he's gone to get
+something; and whatever it happens to be, he'll be likely to bring it
+back with him, Father.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVII
+
+
+Old Mrs. Hutchinson's letter had supplied much detail, but when her son
+and grand-daughter arrived in the village of Temple Barholm they heard
+much more, the greater part of it not in the least to be relied upon.
+
+“The most of it's lies, as folks enjoys theirsels pretendin' to
+believe,” the grand-mother commented. “It's servants'-hall talk and
+cottage gossip, and plenty made itself up out o' beer drunk in th'
+tap-room at th' Wool Park. In a place where naught much happens, people
+get into th' way 'o springin' on a bit o' news, and shakin' and worryin'
+it like a terrier does a rat. It's nature. That lad's given 'em lots to
+talk about ever since he coom. He's been a blessin' to 'em. If he'd been
+gentry, he'd not ha' been nigh as lively. Th' village lads tries to talk
+through their noses like him. Little Tummas Hibblethwaite does it i'
+broad Lancashire.”
+
+The only facts fairly authenticated were that the mysterious stranger
+had been taken away very late one night, some time before the interview
+between Mr. Temple Barholm and Captain Palliser, of which Burrill knew
+so much because he had “happened to be about.” When a domestic magnate
+of Burrill's type “happens to be about” at a crisis, he is not unlikely
+to hear a great deal. Burrill, it was believed, knew much more than
+he deigned to make public. The entire truth was that Captain Palliser
+himself, in one of his hasty appearances in the neighborhood of Temple
+Barholm, had bestowed a few words of cold caution on him.
+
+“Don't talk too much,” he had said. “Proof is required before talk is
+safe. The American was sharp enough to say that to me himself. He was
+sharp enough, too, to keep his man hidden. I was the only person that
+saw him who could have recognized him, and I saw him by chance. Palford
+& Grimby require proof. We are in search of it. Servants will talk;
+but if you don't want to run the risk of getting yourself into trouble,
+don't make absolute statements.”
+
+This had been a disappointment to Burrill, who had seen himself
+developing in magnitude; but he was a timid man, and therefore felt it
+wise to convey his knowledge merely through the conviction carried by
+a dignified silence after his first indiscreet revelation of having
+“happened to be about” had been made. It would have been some solace
+to him to intimate to Miss Alicia by his bearing and the manner of his
+services that she had been discovered, so to speak, in the character of
+a sort of accomplice; that her position was a perilously uncertain one,
+which would probably end in utter downfall, leaving her in her old
+and proper place as an elderly, insignificant, and unattractive poor
+relation, without a feature to recommend her. But being, as before
+remarked, a timid man, and recalling the interview between himself
+and his employer held outside the dining-room door, and having also a
+disturbing memory of the sharp, cool, boyish eye and the tone of the
+casual remark that he had “a head on his shoulders” and that it was “up
+to him to make the others understand,” it seemed as well to restrain his
+inclinations until the proof Palford & Grimby required was forthcoming.
+
+It was perhaps the moderate and precautionary attitude of Palford &
+Grimby, during their first somewhat startled though reserved interview
+with Captain Palliser, which had prevented the vaguely wild rumors
+from being regarded as more than villagers' exaggerated talk among
+themselves. The “gentry,” indeed, knew much less of the cottagers than
+the cottagers knew of the gentry; consequently events furnishing much
+excitement among the village people not infrequently remained unheard
+of by those in the class above them. A story less incredible might
+have been more considered; but the highly colored reasons given for the
+absence of the owner of Temple Barholm would, if heard of, have been
+more than likely to be received and passed over with a smile.
+
+The manner of Mr. Palford and also of Mr. Grimby during the deliberately
+unmelodramatic and carefully connected relation of Captain Palliser's
+singular story, was that of professional gentlemen who for reasons
+of good breeding were engaged in restraining outward expression of
+conviction that they were listening to utter nonsense. Palliser himself
+was aware of this, and upon the whole did not wonder at it in entirely
+unimaginative persons of extremely sober lives. In fact, he had begun
+by giving them some warning as to what they might expect in the way of
+unusualness.
+
+“You will, no doubt, think what I am about to tell you absurd and
+incredible,” he had prefaced his statements. “I thought the same myself
+when my first suspicions were aroused. I was, in fact, inclined to laugh
+at my own idea until one link connected itself with another.”
+
+Neither Mr. Grimby nor Mr. Palford was inclined to laugh. On the
+contrary, they were extremely grave, and continued to find it necessary
+to restrain their united tendency to indicate facially that the thing
+must be nonsense. It transcended all bounds, as it were. The delicacy
+with which they managed to convey this did them much credit. This
+delicacy was equaled by the moderation with which Captain Palliser drew
+their attention to the fact that it was not the thing likely-to-happen
+on which were founded the celebrated criminal cases of legal history;
+it was the incredible and almost impossible events, the ordinarily
+unbelievable duplicities, moral obliquities and coincidences, which made
+them what they were and attracted the attention of the world. This, Mr.
+Palford and his partner were obviously obliged to admit. What they did
+not admit was that such things never having occurred in one's own world,
+they had been mentally relegated to the world of newspaper and criminal
+record as things that could not happen to oneself. Mr. Palford cleared
+his throat in a seriously cautionary way.
+
+“This is, of course, a matter suggesting too serious an accusation not
+to be approached in the most conservative manner,” he remarked.
+
+“Most serious consequences have resulted in cases implying libelous
+assertions which have been made rashly,” added Mr. Grimby. “As Mr.
+Temple Barholm intimated to you, a man of almost unlimited means has
+command of resources which it might not be easy to contend with if he
+had reason to feel himself injured.”
+
+The fact that Captain Palliser had in a bitterly frustrated moment
+allowed himself to be goaded into losing his temper, and “giving away”
+ to Tembarom the discovery on which he had felt that he could rely as
+a lever, did not argue that a like weakness would lead him into more
+dangerous indiscretion. He had always regarded himself as a careful man
+whose defenses were well built about him at such crises in his career
+as rendered entrenchment necessary. There would, of course, be some
+pleasure in following the matter up and getting more than even with a
+man who had been insolent to him; but a more practical feature of the
+case was that if, through his alert observation and shrewd aid, Jem
+Temple Barholm was restored to his much-to-be-envied place in the
+world, a far from unnatural result would be that he might feel suitable
+gratitude and indebted-ness to the man who, not from actual personal
+liking but from a mere sense of justice, had rescued him. As for the
+fears of Messrs. Palford & Grimby, he had put himself on record with
+Burrill by commanding him to hold his tongue and stating clearly that
+proof was both necessary and lacking. No man could be regarded as
+taking risks whose attitude was so wholly conservative and non-accusing.
+Servants will gossip. A superior who reproves such gossip holds an
+unattackable position. In the private room of Palford & Grimby, however,
+he could confidently express his opinions without risk.
+
+“The recognition of a man lost sight of for years, and seen only for a
+moment through a window, is not substantial evidence,” Mr. Grimby had
+proceeded. “The incident was startling, but not greatly to be relied
+upon.”
+
+“I knew him.” Palliser was slightly grim in his air of finality. “He was
+a man most men either liked or hated. I didn't like him. I detested a
+trick he had of staring at you under his drooping lids. By the way, do
+you remember the portrait of Miles Hugo which was so like him?”
+
+Mr. Palford remembered having heard that there was a certain portrait in
+the gallery which Mr. James Temple Barholm had been said to resemble. He
+had no distinct recollection of the ancestor it represented.
+
+“It was a certain youngster who was a page in the court of Charles the
+Second and who died young. Miles Hugo Charles James was his name. He
+is my strongest clue. The American seemed rather keen the first time we
+talked together. He was equally keen about Jem Temple Barholm. He wanted
+to know what he looked like, and whether it was true that he was like
+the portrait.”
+
+“Indeed!” exclaimed Palford and Grimby, simultaneously.
+
+“It struck me that there was something more than mere curiosity in his
+manner,” Palliser enlarged. “I couldn't make him out then. Later, I
+began to see that he was remarkably anxious to keep every one from
+Strangeways. It was a sort of Man in the Iron Mask affair. Strangeways
+was apparently not only too excitable to be looked at or spoken to, but
+too excitable to be spoken of. He wouldn't talk about him.”
+
+“That is exceedingly curious,” remarked Mr. Palford, but it was not
+in response to Palliser. A few moments before he had suddenly looked
+thoughtful. He wore now the aspect of a man trying to recall something
+as Palliser continued.
+
+“One day, after I had been to look at a sunset through a particular
+window in the wing where Strangeways was kept, I passed the door of his
+sitting-room, and heard the American arguing with him. He was evidently
+telling him he was to be taken elsewhere, and the poor devil was
+terrified. I heard him beg him for God's sake not to send him away.
+There was panic in his voice. In connection with the fact that he has
+got him away secretly--at midnight-it's an ugly thing to recall.”
+
+“It would seem to have significance.” Grimby said it uneasily.
+
+“It set me thinking and looking into things,” Palliser went on. “Pearson
+was secretive, but the head man, Burrill, made casual enlightening
+remarks. I gathered some curious details, which might or might not have
+meant a good deal. When Strangeways suddenly appeared at his window one
+evening a number of things fitted themselves together. My theory is that
+the American--Tembarom, as he used to call himself--may not have
+been certain of the identity at first, but he wouldn't have brought
+Strangeways with him if he had not had some reason to suspect who he
+was. He daren't lose sight of him, and he wanted time to make sure and
+to lay his plans. The portrait of Miles Hugo was a clue which alarmed
+him, and no doubt he has been following it. If he found it led to
+nothing, he could easily turn Strangeways over to the public charge and
+let him be put into a lunatic asylum. If he found it led to a revelation
+which would make him a pauper again, it would be easy to dispose of
+him.”
+
+“Come! Come! Captain Palliser! We mustn't go too far!” ejaculated Mr.
+Grimby, alarmedly. It shocked him to think of the firm being dragged
+into a case dealing with capital crime and possible hangmen! That was
+not its line of the profession.
+
+Captain Palliser's slight laugh contained no hint of being shocked by
+any possibilities whatever.
+
+“There are extremely private asylums and so-called sanatoriums where the
+discipline is strict, and no questions are asked. One sometimes reads
+in the papers of cases in which mild-mannered keepers in defending
+themselves against the attacks of violent patients are obliged to
+use force--with disastrous results. It is in such places that our
+investigations should begin.”
+
+“Dear me! Dear me!” Mr. Grimby broke out. “Isn't that going rather far?
+You surely don't think--”
+
+“Mr. Tembarom's chief characteristic was that he was a practical
+and direct person. He would do what he had to do in exactly that
+businesslike manner. The inquiries I have been making have been as
+to the whereabouts of places in which a superfluous relative might be
+placed without attracting attention.”
+
+“That is really astute, but--but--what do you think, Palford?” Mr.
+Grimby turned to his partner, still wearing the shocked and disturbed
+expression.
+
+“I have been recalling to mind a circumstance which probably bears upon
+the case,” said Mr. Palford. “Captain Palliser's mention of the portrait
+reminded me of it. I remember now that on Mr. Temple Barholm's first
+visit to the picture-gallery he seemed much attracted by the portrait of
+Miles Hugo. He stopped and examined it curiously. He said he felt as
+if he had seen it before. He turned to it once or twice; and finally
+remarked that he might have seen some one like it at a great fancy-dress
+ball which had taken place in New York.”
+
+“Had he been invited to the ball?” laughed Palliser.
+
+“I did not gather that,” replied Mr. Palford gravely. “He had apparently
+watched the arriving guests from some railings near by--or perhaps it
+was a lamp-post--with other news-boys.”
+
+“He recognized the likeness to Strangeways, no doubt, and it gave
+him what he calls a 'jolt,'” said Captain Palliser. “He must have
+experienced a number of jolts during the last few months.”
+
+Palford & Grimby's view of the matter continued to be marked by extreme
+distaste for the whole situation and its disturbing and irritating
+possibilities. The coming of the American heir to the estate of Temple
+Barholm had been trying to the verge of extreme painfulness; but,
+sufficient time having lapsed and their client having troubled them but
+little, they had outlived the shock of his first appearance and settled
+once more into the calm of their accustomed atmosphere and routine. That
+he should suddenly reappear upon their dignified horizon as a probable
+melodramatic criminal was a fault of taste and a lack of consideration
+beyond expression. To be dragged-into vulgar detective work, to be
+referred to in news-papers in a connection which would lead to confusing
+the firm with the representatives of such branches of the profession as
+dealt with persons who had committed acts for which in vulgar parlance
+they might possibly “swing,” if their legal defenders did not “get them
+off,” to a firm whose sole affairs had been the dealing with noble and
+ancient estates, with advising and supporting personages of stately
+name, and with private and weighty family confidences. If the worst came
+to the worst, the affair would surely end in the most glaring and odious
+notoriety: in head-lines and daily reports even in London, in appalling
+pictures of every one concerned in every New York newspaper, even in
+baffled struggles to keep abominable woodcuts of themselves--Mr. Edward
+James Palford and Mr. James Matthew Grimby--from being published in
+sensational journalistic sheets! Professional duty demanded that the
+situation should be dealt with, that investigation should be entered
+into, that the most serious even if conservative steps should be
+taken at once. With regard to the accepted report of Mr. James Temple
+Barholm's tragic death, it could not be denied that Captain Palliser's
+view of the naturalness of the origin of the mistake that had been made
+had a logical air.
+
+“In a region full of rioting derelicts crazed with the lawless
+excitement of their dash after gold,” he had said, “identities and
+names are easily lost. Temple Barholm himself was a derelict and in a
+desperate state. He was in no mood to speak of himself or try to make
+friends. He no doubt came and went to such work as he did scarcely
+speaking to any one. A mass of earth and debris of all sorts suddenly
+gives way, burying half-a-dozen men. Two or three are dug out dead, the
+others not reached. There was no time to spare to dig for dead men. Some
+one had seen Temple Barholm near the place; he was seen no more. Ergo,
+he was buried with the rest. At that time, those who knew him in England
+felt it was the best thing that could have happened to him. It would
+have been if his valet had not confessed his trick, and old Temple
+Barholm had not died. My theory is that he may have left the place days
+before the accident without being missed. His mental torment caused some
+mental illness, it does not matter what. He lost his memory and wandered
+about--the Lord knows how or where he lived; he probably never knew
+himself. The American picked him up and found that he had money. For
+reasons of his own, he professed to take care of him. He must have come
+on some clue just when he heard of his new fortune. He was naturally
+panic-stricken; it must have been a big blow at that particular moment.
+He was sharp enough to see what it might mean, and held on to the poor
+chap like grim death, and has been holding on ever since.”
+
+“We must begin to take steps,” decided Palford & Grimby. “We must of
+course take steps at once, but we must begin with discretion.”
+
+After grave private discussion, they began to take the steps in question
+and with the caution that it seemed necessary to observe until they felt
+solid ground under their feet. Captain Palliser was willing to assist
+them. He had been going into the matter himself. He went down to the
+neighborhood of Temple Barholm and quietly looked up data which might
+prove illuminating when regarded from one point or another. It was on
+the first of these occasions that he saw and warned Burrill. It was from
+Burrill he heard of Tummas Hibblethwaite.
+
+“There's an impident little vagabond in the village, sir,” he said,
+“that Mr. Temple Barholm used to go and see and take New York newspapers
+to. A cripple the lad is, and he's got a kind of craze for talking about
+Mr. James Temple Barholm. He had a map of the place where he was said
+to be killed. If I may presume to mention it, sir,” he added with great
+dignity, “it is my opinion that the two had a good deal of talk together
+on the subject.”
+
+“I dare say,” Captain Palliser admitted indifferently, and made no
+further inquiry or remark.
+
+He sauntered into the Hibblethwaite cottage, however, late the next
+afternoon.
+
+Tummas was in a bad temper, for reasons quite sufficient for himself,
+and he regarded him sourly.
+
+“What has tha coom for?” he demanded. “I did na ask thee.”
+
+“Don't be cheeky!” said Captain Palliser. “I will give you a sovereign
+if you'll let me see the map you and Mr. Temple Barholm used to look at
+and talk so much about.”
+
+He laid the sovereign down on the small table by Tummas's sofa, but
+Tummas did not pick it up.
+
+“I know who tha art. Tha'rt Palliser, an' tha wast th' one as said as
+him as was killed in th' Klondike had coom back alive.”
+
+“You've been listening to that servants' story, have you?” remarked
+Palliser. “You had better be careful as to what you say. I suppose you
+never heard of libel suits. Where would you find yourself if you were
+called upon to pay Mr. Temple Barholm ten thousand pounds' damages?
+You'd be obliged to sell your atlas.”
+
+“Burrill towd as he heard thee say tha'd swear in court as it was th'
+one as was killed as tha'd seen.”
+
+“That's Burrill's story, not mine. And Burrill had better keep his mouth
+shut,” said Palliser. “If it were true, how would you like it? I've
+heard you were interested in 'th' one as was killed.'”
+
+Tummas's eyes burned troublously.
+
+“I've got reet down taken wi' th' other un,” he answered. “He's noan
+gentry, but he's th' reet mak'. I--I dunnot believe as him as was killed
+has coom back.”
+
+“Neither do I,” Palliser answered, with amiable tolerance. “The American
+gentleman had better come back himself and disprove it. When you used to
+talk about the Klondike, he never said anything to make you feel as if
+he doubted that the other man was dead?”
+
+“Not him,” answered Tummas.
+
+“Eh! Tummas, what art tha talkin' about?” exclaimed Mrs. Hibblethwaite,
+who was mending at the other end of the room. “I heerd him say mysel,
+`Suppose th' story hadn't been true an' he was alive somewhere now, it'd
+make a big change, would na' it?' An' he laughed.”
+
+“I never heerd him,” said Tummas, in stout denial.
+
+“Tha's losin' tha moind,” commented his mother. “As soon as I heerd
+th' talk about him runnin' away an' takin' th' mad gentleman wi' him I
+remembered it. An' I remembered as he sat still after it and said nowt
+for a minute or so, same as if he was thinkin' things over. Theer was
+summat a bit queer about it.”
+
+“I never heerd him,” Tummas asserted, obstinately, and shut his mouth.
+
+“He were as ready to talk about th' poor gentleman as met with th'
+accident as tha wert thysel', Tummas,” Mrs. Hibblethwaite proceeded,
+moved by the opportunity offered for presenting her views on the
+exciting topic. “He'd ax thee aw sorts o' questions about what tha'd
+found out wi' pumpin' foak. He'd ax me questions now an' agen about
+what he was loike to look at, an' how tall he wur. Onct he axed me if I
+remembered what soart o' chin he had an' how he spoke.”
+
+“It wur to set thee goin' an' please me,” volunteered Tummas,
+grudgingly. “He did it same as he'd look at th' map to please me an'
+tell me tales about th' news-lads i' New York.”
+
+It had not seemed improbable that a village cripple tied to a sofa would
+be ready enough to relate all he knew, and perhaps so much more that it
+would be necessary to use discretion in selecting statements of value.
+To drop in and give him a sovereign and let him talk had appeared
+simple. Lads of his class liked to be listened to, enjoyed enlarging
+upon and rendering dramatic such material as had fallen into their
+hands. But Tummas was an eccentric, and instinct led him to close like
+an oyster before a remote sense of subtly approaching attack. It was
+his mother, not he, who had provided information; but it was not
+sufficiently specialized to be worth much.
+
+“What did tha say he'd run away fur?” Tummas said to his parent later.
+“He's not one o' th' runnin' away soart.”
+
+“He has probably been called away by business,” remarked Captain
+Palliser, as he rose to go after a few minutes' casual talk with Mrs.
+Hibblethwaite. “It was a mistake not to leave an address behind him.
+Your mother is mistaken in saying that he took the mad gentleman with
+him. He had him removed late at night some time before he went himself.”
+
+“Tak tha sov'rin',” said Tummas, as Palliser moved away. “I did na show
+thee th' atlas. Tha did na want to see it.”
+
+“I will leave the sovereign for your mother,” said Palliser. “I'm sorry
+you are not in a better humor.”
+
+His interest in the atlas had indeed been limited to his idea that it
+would lead to subjects of talk which might cast illuminating side-lights
+and possibly open up avenues and vistas. Tummas, however, having
+instinctively found him displeasing, he had gained but little.
+
+Avenues and vistas were necessary--avenues through which the steps of
+Palford and Grimby might wander, vistas which they might explore
+with hesitating, investigating glances. So far, the scene remained
+unpromisingly blank. The American Temple Barholm had simply disappeared,
+as had his mysterious charge. Steps likely to lead to definite results
+can scarcely be taken hopefully in the case of a person who has seemed
+temporarily to cease to exist. You cannot interrogate him, you cannot
+demand information, whatsoever the foundations upon which rest your
+accusations, if such accusation can be launched only into thin air and
+the fact that there is nobody to reply to--to acknowledge or indignantly
+refute them--is in itself a serious barrier to accomplishment. It was
+also true that only a few weeks had elapsed since the accused had, so to
+speak, dematerialized. It was also impossible to calculate upon what
+an American of his class and peculiarities would be likely to do in any
+circumstances whatever.
+
+In private conference, Palford and Grimby frankly admitted to each other
+that they would almost have preferred that Captain Palliser should have
+kept his remarkable suspicions to himself, for the time being at least.
+Yet when they had admitted this they were confronted by the disturbing
+possibility--suggested by Palliser--that actual crime had been or might
+be committed. They had heard unpleasant stories of private lunatic
+asylums and their like. Things to shudder at might be going on at
+the very moment they spoke to each other. Under this possibility, no
+supineness would be excusable. Efforts to trace the missing man must at
+least be made. Efforts were made, but with no result. Painful as it was
+to reflect on the subject of the asylums, careful private inquiry was
+made, information was quietly collected, there were even visits to
+gruesomely quiet places on various polite pretexts.
+
+“If a longer period of time had elapsed,” Mr. Palford remarked several
+times, with some stiffness of manner, “we should feel that we had more
+solid foundation for our premises.”
+
+“Perfectly right,” Captain Palliser agreed with him, “but it is lapse of
+time which may mean life or death to Jem Temple Barholm; so it's perhaps
+as well to be on the safe side and go on quietly following small clues.
+I dare say you would feel more comfortable yourselves.”
+
+Both Mr. Palford and Mr. Grimby, having made an appointment with
+Miss Alicia, arrived one afternoon at Temple Barholm to talk to her
+privately, thereby casting her into a state of agonized anxiety which
+reduced her to pallor.
+
+“Our visit is merely one of inquiry, Miss Temple Barholm,” Mr. Palford
+began. “There is perhaps nothing alarming in our client's absence.”
+
+“In the note which he left me he asked me to--feel no anxiety,” Miss
+Alicia said.
+
+“He left you a note of explanation? I wish we had known this earlier!”
+ Mr. Palford's tone had the note of relieved exclamation. Perhaps there
+was an entirely simple solution of the painful difficulty.
+
+But his hope had been too sanguine.
+
+“It was not a note of explanation, exactly. He went away too suddenly to
+have time to explain.”
+
+The two men looked at each other disturbedly.
+
+“He had not mentioned to you his intention of going?” asked Mr. Grimby.
+
+“I feel sure he did not know he was going when he said good-night. He
+remained with Captain Palliser talking for some time.” Miss Alicia's
+eyes held wavering and anxious question as she looked from one to the
+other. She wondered how much more than herself her visitors knew. “He
+found a telegram when he went to his room. It contained most disquieting
+news about Mr. Strangeways. He--he had got away from the place where--”
+
+“Got away!” Mr. Palford was again exclamatory. “Was he in some
+institution where he was kept under restraint?”
+
+Miss Alicia was wholly unable to explain to herself why some quality in
+his manner filled her with sudden distress.
+
+“Oh, I think not! Surely not! Surely nothing of that sort was necessary.
+He was very quiet always, and he was getting better every day. But it
+was important that he should be watched over. He was no doubt under the
+care of a physician in some quiet sanatorium.”
+
+“Some quiet sanatorium!” Mr. Palford's disturbance of mind was manifest.
+“But you did not know where?”
+
+“No. Indeed, Mr. Temple Barholm talked very little of Mr. Strangeways. I
+believe he knew that it distressed me to feel that I could be of no real
+assistance as--as the case was so peculiar.”
+
+Each perturbed solicitor looked again with rapid question at the other.
+Miss Alicia saw the exchange of glances and, so to speak, broke down
+under the pressure of their unconcealed anxiety. The last few weeks with
+their suggestion of accusation too vague to be met had been too much for
+her.
+
+“I am afraid--I feel sure you know something I do not,” she began. “I
+am most anxious and unhappy. I have not liked to ask questions, because
+that would have seemed to imply a doubt of Mr. Temple Barholm. I have
+even remained at home because I did not wish to hear things I could not
+understand. I do not know what has been said. Pearson, in whom I have
+the greatest confidence, felt that Mr. Temple Barholm would prefer that
+I should wait until he returned.”
+
+“Do you think he will return?” said Mr. Grimby, amazedly.
+
+“Oh!” the gentle creature ejaculated. “Can you possibly think he will
+not? Why? Why?”
+
+Mr. Palford had shared his partner's amazement. It was obvious that she
+was as ignorant as a babe of the details of Palliser's extraordinary
+story. In her affectionate consideration for Temple Barholm she had
+actually shut herself up lest she should hear anything said against him
+which she could not refute. She stood innocently obedient to his wishes,
+like the boy upon the burning deck, awaiting his return and his version
+of whatsoever he had been accused of. There was something delicately
+heroic in the little, slender old thing, with her troubled eyes and her
+cap and her quivering sideringlets.
+
+“You,” she appealed, “are his legal advisers, and will be able to tell
+me if there is anything he would wish me to know. I could not allow
+myself to listen to villagers or servants; but I may ask you.”
+
+“We are far from knowing as much as we desire to know,” Mr. Palford
+replied.
+
+“We came here, in fact,” added Grimby, “to ask questions of you, Miss
+Temple Barholm.”
+
+“The fact that Miss Temple Barholm has not allowed herself to be
+prejudiced by village gossip, which is invariably largely unreliable,
+will make her an excellent witness,” Mr. Palford said to his partner,
+with a deliberation which held suggestive significance. Each man,
+in fact, had suddenly realized that her ignorance would leave her
+absolutely unbiased in her answers to any questions they might put, and
+that it was much better in cross-examining an emotional elderly lady
+that such should be the case.
+
+“Witness!” Miss Alicia found the word alarming. Mr. Palford's bow was
+apologetically palliative.
+
+“A mere figure of speech, madam,” he said.
+
+“I really know so little every one else doesn't know.” Miss Alicia's
+protest had a touch of bewilderment in it. What could they wish to ask
+her?
+
+“But, as we understand it, your relations with Mr. Temple Barholm were
+most affectionate and confidential.”
+
+“We were very fond of each other,” she answered.
+
+“For that reason he no doubt talked to you more freely than to other
+people,” Mr. Grimby put it. “Perhaps, Palford, it would be as well to
+explain to Miss Temple Barholm that a curious feature of this matter
+is that it--in a way--involves certain points concerning the late Mr.
+Temple Barholm.”
+
+Miss Alicia uttered a pathetic exclamation.
+
+“Poor Jem--who died so cruelly!”
+
+Mr. Palford bent his head in acquiescence.
+
+“Perhaps you can tell me what the present Mr. Temple Barholm knew of
+him--how much he knew?”
+
+“I told him the whole story the first time we took tea together,” Miss
+Alicia replied; and, between her recollection of that strangely happy
+afternoon and her wonder at its connection with the present moment, she
+began to feel timid and uncertain.
+
+“How did it seem to impress him?”
+
+She remembered it all so well--his queer, dear New York way of
+expressing his warm-hearted indignation at the cruelty of what had
+happened.
+
+“Oh, he was very much excited. He was so sorry for him. He wanted to
+know everything about him. He asked me what he looked like.”
+
+“Oh!” said Palford. “He wanted to know that?”
+
+“He was so full of sympathy,” she replied, her explanation gaining
+warmth. “When I told him that the picture of Miles Hugo in the gallery
+was said to look like Jem as a boy, he wanted very much to see it.
+Afterward we went and saw it together. I shall always remember how he
+stood and looked at it. Most young men would not have cared. But he
+always had such a touching interest in poor Jem.”
+
+“You mean that he asked questions about him--about his death, and so
+forth?” was Mr. Palford's inquiry.
+
+“About all that concerned him. He was interested especially in his looks
+and manner of speaking and personality, so to speak. And in the awful
+accident which ended his life, though he would not let me talk about
+that after he had asked his first questions.”
+
+“What kind of questions?” suggested Grimby.
+
+“Only about what was known of the time and place, and how the sad story
+reached England. It used to touch me to think that the only person who
+seemed to care was the one who--might have been expected to be almost
+glad the tragic thing had happened. But he was not.”
+
+Mr. Palford watched Mr. Grimby, and Mr. Grimby gave more than one
+dubious and distressed glance at Palford.
+
+“His interest was evident,” remarked Palford, thoughtfully. “And unusual
+under the circumstances.”
+
+For a moment he hesitated, then put another question: “Did he ever
+seem--I should say, do you remember any occasion when he appeared to
+think that--there might be any reason to doubt that Mr. James Temple
+Barholm was one of the men who died in the Klondike?”
+
+He felt that through this wild questioning they had at least reached a
+certain testimony supporting Captain Palliser's views; and his interest
+reluctantly increased. It was reluctant because there could be no shadow
+of a question that this innocent spinster lady told the absolute truth;
+and, this being the case, one seemed to be dragged to the verge of
+depths which must inevitably be explored. Miss Alicia's expression was
+that of one who conscientiously searched memory.
+
+“I do not remember that he really expressed doubt,” she answered,
+carefully. “Not exactly that, but--”
+
+“But what?” prompted Palford as she hesitated. “Please try to recall
+exactly what he said. It is most important.”
+
+The fact that his manner was almost eager, and that eagerness was not
+his habit, made her catch her breath and look more questioning and
+puzzled than before.
+
+“One day he came to my sitting-room when he seemed rather excited,” she
+explained. “He had been with Mr. Strangeways, who had been worse than
+usual. Perhaps he wanted to distract himself and forget about it. He
+asked me questions and talked about poor Jem for about an hour. And
+at last he said, `Do you suppose there's any sort of chance that it
+mightn't be true--that story that came from the Klondike?' He said it so
+thoughtfully that I was startled and said, `Do you think there could
+be such a chance--do you?' And he drew a long breath and answered, `You
+want to be sure about things like that; you've got to be sure.' I was
+a little excited, so he changed the subject very soon afterward, and I
+never felt quite certain of what he was really thinking. You see what he
+said was not so much an expression of doubt as a sort of question.”
+
+A touch of the lofty condemnatory made Mr. Palford impressive.
+
+“I am compelled to admit that I fear that it was a question of which he
+had already guessed the answer,” he said.
+
+At this point Miss Alicia clasped her hands quite tightly together upon
+her knees.
+
+“If you please,” she exclaimed, “I must ask you to make things a
+little clear to me. What dreadful thing has happened? I will regard any
+communication as a most sacred confidence.”
+
+“I think we may as well, Palford?” Mr. Grimby suggested to his partner.
+
+“Yes,” Palford acquiesced. He felt the difficulty of a blank
+explanation. “We are involved in a most trying position,” he said.
+“We feel that great discretion must be used until we have reached more
+definite certainty. An extraordinary--in fact, a startling thing has
+occurred. We are beginning, as a result of cumulative evidence, to
+feel that there was reason to believe that the Klondike story was to be
+doubted--”
+
+“That poor Jem--!” cried Miss Alicia.
+
+“One begins to be gravely uncertain as to whether he has not been
+in this house for months, whether he was not the mysterious Mr.
+Strangeways!”
+
+“Jem! Jem!” gasped poor little Miss Temple Barholm, quite white with
+shock.
+
+“And if he was the mysterious Strangeways,” Mr. Grimby assisted to
+shorten the matter, “the American Temple Barholm apparently knew the
+fact, brought him here for that reason, and for the same reason kept him
+secreted and under restraint.”
+
+“No! No!” cried Miss Alicia. “Never! Never! I beg you not to say such a
+thing. Excuse me--I cannot listen! It would be wrong--ungrateful. Excuse
+me!” She got up from her seat, trembling with actual anger in her sense
+of outrage. It was a remarkable thing to see the small, elderly creature
+angry, but this remarkable thing had happened. It was as though she were
+a mother defending her young.
+
+“I loved poor Jem and I love Temple, and, though I am only a woman who
+never has been the least clever, I know them both. I know neither of
+them could lie or do a wicked, cunning thing. Temple is the soul of
+honor.”
+
+It was quite an inspirational outburst. She had never before in her life
+said so much at one time. Of course tears began to stream down her face,
+while Mr. Palford and Mr. Grimby gazed at her in great embarrassment.
+
+“If Mr. Strangeways was poor Jem come back alive, Temple did not
+know--he never knew. All he did for him was done for kindness' sake.
+I--I--” It was inevitable that she should stammer before going to this
+length of violence, and that the words should burst from her: “I would
+swear it!”
+
+It was really a shock to both Palford and Grimby. That a lady of Miss
+Temple Barholm's age and training should volunteer to swear to a thing
+was almost alarming. It was also in rather unpleasing taste.
+
+“Captain Palliser obliged Mr. Temple Temple Barholm to confess that he
+had known for some time,” Mr. Palford said with cold regret. “He also
+informed him that he should communicate with us without delay.”
+
+“Captain Palliser is a bad man.” Miss Alicia choked back a gasp to make
+the protest.
+
+“It was after their interview that Mr. Temple Barholm almost immediately
+left the house.”
+
+“Without any explanation whatever,” added Grimby.
+
+“He left a few lines for me,” defended Miss Alicia.
+
+“We have not seen them.” Mr. Palford was still as well as cold. Poor
+little Miss Alicia took them out of her pocket with an unsteady hand.
+They were always with her, and she could not on such a challenge seem
+afraid to allow them to be read. Mr. Palford took them from her with
+a slight bow of thanks. He adjusted his glasses and read aloud, with
+pauses between phrases which seemed somewhat to puzzle him.
+
+
+
+“Dear little Miss Alicia:
+
+“I've got to light out of here as quick as I can make it. I can't even
+stop to tell you why. There's just one thing--don't get rattled, Miss
+Alicia. Whatever any one says or does, don't get rattled.
+
+“Yours affectionately,
+
+“T. TEMBAROM.”
+
+
+
+There was a silence, Mr. Palford passed the paper to his partner, who
+gave it careful study. Afterward he refolded it and handed it back to
+Miss Alicia.
+
+“In a court of law,” was Mr. Palford's sole remark, “it would not be
+regarded as evidence for the defendant.”
+
+Miss Alicia's tears were still streaming, but she held her ringleted
+head well up.
+
+“I cannot stay! I beg your pardon, I do indeed!” she said. “But I must
+leave you. You see,” she added, with her fine little touch of dignity,
+“as yet this house is still Mr. Temple Barholm's home, and I am the
+grateful recipient of his bounty. Burrill will attend you and make you
+quite comfortable.” With an obeisance which was like a slight curtsey,
+she turned and fled.
+
+In less than an hour she walked up the neat bricked path, and old Mrs.
+Hutchinson, looking out, saw her through the tiers of flower-pots in
+the window. Hutchinson himself was in London, but Ann was reading at the
+other side of the room.
+
+“Here's poor little owd Miss Temple Barholm aw in a flutter,” remarked
+her grandmother. “Tha's got some work cut out for thee if tha's going to
+quiet her. Oppen th' door, lass.”
+
+Ann opened the door, and stood by it with calm though welcoming dimples.
+
+“Miss Hutchinson “--Miss Alicia began all at once to realize that they
+did not know each other, and that she had flown to the refuge of her
+youth without being at all aware of what she was about to say. “Oh!
+Little Ann!” she broke down with frank tears. “My poor boy! My poor
+boy!”
+
+Little Ann drew her inside and closed the door.
+
+“There, Miss Temple Barholm,” she said. “There now Just come in and sit
+down. I'll get you a good cup of tea. You need one.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVIII
+
+
+The Duke of Stone had been sufficiently occupied with one of his
+slighter attacks of rheumatic gout to have been, so to speak, out of the
+running in the past weeks. His indisposition had not condemned him
+to the usual dullness, however. He had suffered less pain than was
+customary, and Mrs. Braddle had been more than usually interesting in
+conversation on those occasions when, in making him very comfortable in
+one way or another, she felt that a measure of entertainment would add
+to his well-being. His epicurean habit of mind tended toward causing
+him to find a subtle pleasure in the hearing of various versions of any
+story whatever. His intimacy with T. Tembarom had furnished forth many
+an agreeable mental repast for him. He had had T. Tembarom's version of
+himself, the version of the county, the version of the uneducated class,
+and his own version. All of these had had varying shades of their own.
+He had found a cynically fine flavor in Palliser's version, which he had
+gathered through talk and processes of exclusion and inclusion.
+
+“There is a good deal to be said for it,” he summed it up. “It's
+plausible on ordinary sophisticated grounds. T. Tembarom would say, `It
+looks sort of that way.”'
+
+As Mrs. Braddle had done what she could in the matter of expounding her
+views of the uncertainties of the village attitude, he had listened
+with stimulating interest. Mrs. Braddle's version on the passing of T.
+Tembarom stood out picturesquely against the background of the version
+which was his own--the one founded on the singular facts he had shared
+knowledge of with the chief character in the episode. He had not, like
+Miss Alicia, received a communication from Tembarom. This seemed to him
+one of the attractive features of the incident. It provided opportunity
+for speculation. Some wild development had called the youngster away in
+a rattling hurry. Of what had happened since his departure he knew no
+more than the villagers knew. What had happened for some months before
+his going he had watched with the feeling of an intelligently observant
+spectator at a play. He had been provided with varied emotions by the
+fantastic drama. He had smiled; he had found himself moved once or
+twice, and he had felt a good deal of the thrill of curious uncertainty
+as to what the curtain would rise and fall on. The situation was such
+that it was impossible to guess. Results could seem only to float in the
+air. One thing might happen; so might another, so might a dozen more.
+What he wished really to attain was some degree of certainty as to what
+was likely to occur in any case to the American Temple Barholm.
+
+He felt, the first time he drove over to call on Miss Alicia, that
+his indisposition and confinement to his own house had robbed him of
+something. They had deprived him of the opportunity to observe shades of
+development and to hear the expressing of views of the situation as it
+stood. He drove over with views of his own and with anticipations. He
+had reason to know that he would encounter in the dear lady indications
+of the feeling that she had reached a crisis. There was a sense of this
+crisis impending as one mounted the terrace steps and entered the
+hall. The men-servants endeavored to wipe from their countenances any
+expression denoting even a vague knowledge of it. He recognized
+their laudable determination to do so. Burrill was monumental in the
+unconsciousness of his outward bearing.
+
+Miss Alicia, sitting waiting on Fate in the library, wore precisely the
+aspect he had known she would wear. She had been lying awake at night
+and she had of course wept at intervals, since she belonged to the
+period the popular female view of which had been that only the unfeeling
+did not so relieve themselves in crises of the affections. Her eyelids
+were rather pink and her nice little face was tired.
+
+“It is very, very kind of you to come,” she said, when they shook hands.
+“I wonder “--her hesitance was touching in its obvious appeal to him
+not to take the wrong side,--“I wonder if you know how deeply troubled I
+have been?”
+
+“You see, I have had a touch of my abominable gout, and my treasure of a
+Braddle has been nursing me and gossiping,” he answered. “So, of course
+I know a great deal. None of it true, I dare say. I felt I must come and
+see you, however.”
+
+He looked so neat and entirely within the boundaries of finished and
+well-dressed modernity and every-day occurrence, in his perfectly
+fitting clothes, beautifully shining boots, and delicate fawn gaiters,
+that she felt a sort of support in his mere aspect. The mind connected
+such almost dapper freshness and excellent taste only with unexaggerated
+incidents and a behavior which almost placed the stamp of absurdity upon
+the improbable in circumstance. The vision of disorderly and illegal
+possibilities seemed actually to fade into an unreality.
+
+“If Mr. Palford and Mr. Grimby knew him as I know him--as--as you know
+him--” she added with a faint hopefulness.
+
+“Yes, if they knew him as we know him that would make a different matter
+of it,” admitted the duke, amiably. But, thought Miss Alicia, he might
+only have put it that way through consideration for her feelings, and
+because he was an extremely polished man who could not easily reveal to
+a lady a disagreeable truth. He did not speak with the note of natural
+indignation which she thought she must have detected if he had felt as
+she felt herself. He was of course a man whose manner had always
+the finish of composure. He did not seem disturbed or even very
+curious--only kind and most polite.
+
+“If we only knew where he was!” she began again. “If we only knew where
+Mr. Strangeways was!”
+
+“My impression is that Messrs. Palford & Grimby will probably find
+them both before long,” he consoled her. “They are no doubt exciting
+themselves unnecessarily.”
+
+He was not agitated at all; she felt it would have been kinder if he
+had been a little agitated. He was really not the kind of person
+whose feelings appeared very deep, being given to a light and graceful
+cynicism of speech which delighted people; so perhaps it was not natural
+that he should express any particular emotion even in a case affecting
+a friend--surely he had been Temple's friend. But if he had seemed a
+little distressed, or doubtful or annoyed, she would have felt that she
+understood better his attitude. As it was, he might almost have been on
+the other side--a believer or a disbeliever--or merely a person looking
+on to see what would happen. When they sat down, his glance seemed to
+include her with an interest which was sympathetic but rather as if she
+were a child whom he would like to pacify. This seemed especially so
+when she felt she must make clear to him the nature of the crisis which
+was pending, as he had felt when he entered the house.
+
+“You perhaps do not know”--the appeal which had shown itself in her eyes
+was in her voice--“that the solicitors have decided, after a great deal
+of serious discussion and private inquiry in London, that the time has
+come when they must take open steps.”
+
+“In the matter of investigation?” he inquired.
+
+“They are coming here this afternoon with Captain Palliser to--to
+question the servants, and some of the villagers. They will question
+me,” alarmedly.
+
+“They would be sure to do that,”--he really seemed quite to envelop her
+with kindness--“but I beg of you not to be alarmed. Nothing you could
+have to say could possibly do harm to Temple Barholm.” He knew it was
+her fear of this contingency which terrified her.
+
+“You do feel sure of that?” she burst forth, relievedly. “You
+do--because you know him?”
+
+“I do. Let us be calm, dear lady. Let us be calm.”
+
+“I will! I will!” she protested. “But Captain Palliser has arranged that
+a lady should come here--a lady who disliked poor Temple very much. She
+was most unjust to him.”
+
+“Lady Joan Fayre?” he suggested, and then paused with a remote smile as
+if lending himself for the moment to some humor he alone detected in the
+situation.
+
+“She will not injure his cause, I think I can assure you.”
+
+“She insisted on misunderstanding him. I am so afraid--”
+
+The appearance of Pearson at the door interrupted her and caused her to
+rise from her seat. The neat young man was pale and spoke in a nervously
+lowered voice.
+
+“I beg pardon, Miss. I beg your Grace's pardon for intruding, but--”
+
+Miss Alicia moved toward him in such a manner that he himself seemed to
+feel that he might advance.
+
+“What is it, Pearson? Have you anything special to say?”
+
+“I hope I am not taking too great a liberty, Miss, but I did come in for
+a purpose, knowing that his Grace was with you and thinking you might
+both kindly advise me. It is about Mr. Temple Barholm, your Grace--”
+ addressing him as if in involuntary recognition of the fact that he
+might possibly prove the greater support.
+
+“Our Mr. Temple Barholm, Pearson? We are being told there are two
+of them.” The duke's delicate emphasis on the possessive pronoun was
+delightful, and it so moved and encouraged sensitive little Pearson that
+he was emboldened to answer with modest firmness:
+
+“Yes,--ours. Thank you, your Grace.”
+
+“You feel him yours too, Pearson?” a shade more delightfully still.
+
+“I--I take the liberty, your Grace, of being deeply attached to him, and
+more than grateful.”
+
+“What did you want to ask advice about?”
+
+“The family solicitors. Captain Palliser and Lady Joan Fayre and Mr. and
+Miss Hutchinson are to be here shortly, and I have been told I am to be
+questioned. What I want to know, your Grace, is--” He paused, and looked
+no longer pale but painfully red as he gathered himself together for his
+anxious outburst--“Must I speak the truth?”
+
+Miss Alicia started alarmedly.
+
+The duke looked down at the delicate fawn gaiters covering his fine
+instep. His fleeting smile was not this time an external one.
+
+“Do you not wish to speak the truth, Pearson?”
+
+Pearson's manner could have been described only as one of obstinate
+frankness.
+
+“No, your Grace. I do not! Your Grace may misunderstand me--but I do
+not!”
+
+His Grace tapped the gaiters with the slight ebony cane he held in his
+hand.
+
+“Is this “--he put it with impartial curiosity--“because the truth might
+be detrimental to our Mr. Temple Barholm?”
+
+“If you please, your Grace,” Pearson made a firm step forward, “what is
+the truth?”
+
+“That is what Messrs. Palford & Grimby seem determined to find out.
+Probably only our Mr. Temple Barholm can tell them.”
+
+“Your Grace, what I'm thinking of is that if I tell the truth it may
+seem to prove something that's not the truth.”
+
+“What kinds of things, Pearson?” still impartially.
+
+“I can be plain with your Grace. Things like this: I was with Mr. Temple
+Barholm and Mr. Strangeways a great deal. They'll ask me about what I
+heard. They'll ask me if Mr. Strangeways was willing to go away to the
+doctor; if he had to be persuaded and argued with. Well, he had and he
+hadn't, your Grace. At first, just the mention of it would upset him so
+that Mr. Temple Barholm would have to stop talking about it and quiet
+him down. But when he improved--and he did improve wonderfully, your
+Grace--he got into the way of sitting and thinking it over and listening
+quite quiet. But if I'm asked suddenly--”
+
+“What you are afraid of is that you may be asked point-blank questions
+without warning?” his Grace put it with the perspicacity of experience.
+
+“That's why I should be grateful for advice. Must I tell the truth, your
+Grace, when it will make them believe things I'd swear are lies--I'd
+swear it, your Grace.”
+
+“So would I, Pearson.” His serene lightness was of the most baffling,
+but curiously supporting, order. “This being the case, my advice would
+be not to go into detail. Let us tell white lies--all of us--without a
+shadow of hesitancy. Miss Temple Barholm, even you must do your best.”
+
+“I will try--indeed, I will try!” And the Duke felt her tremulously
+ardent assent actually delicious.
+
+“There! we'll consider that settled, Pearson,” he said.
+
+“Thank you, your Grace. Thank you, Miss,” Pearson's relieved gratitude
+verged on the devout. He turned to go, and as he did so his attention
+was arrested by an approach he remarked through a window.
+
+“Mr. and Miss Hutchinson are arriving now, Miss,” he announced, hastily.
+
+“They are to be brought in here,” said Miss Alicia.
+
+The duke quietly left his seat and went to look through the window with
+frank and unembarrassed interest in the approach. He went, in fact, to
+look at Little Ann, and as he watched her walk up the avenue, her
+father lumbering beside her, he evidently found her aspect sufficiently
+arresting.
+
+“Ah!” he exclaimed softly, and paused. “What a lot of very nice red
+hair,” he said next. And then, “No wonder! No wonder!”
+
+“That, I should say,” he remarked as Miss Alicia drew near, “is what I
+once heard a bad young man call `a deserving case.'”
+
+He was conscious that she might have been privately a little shocked by
+such aged flippancy, but she was at the moment perturbed by something
+else.
+
+“The fact is that I have never spoken to Hutchinson,” she fluttered.
+“These changes are very confusing. I suppose I ought to say Mr.
+Hutchinson, now that he is such a successful person, and Temple--”
+
+“Without a shadow of a doubt!” The duke seemed struck by the happiness
+of the idea. “They will make him a peer presently. He may address me as
+'Stone' at any moment. One must learn to adjust one's self with agility.
+`The old order changeth.' Ah! she is smiling at him and I see the
+dimples.”
+
+Miss Alicia made a clean breast of it.
+
+“I went to her--I could not help it!” she confessed. “I was in such
+distress and dare not speak to anybody. Temple had told me that she was
+so wonderful. He said she always understood and knew what to do.”
+
+“Did she in this case?” he asked, smiling.
+
+Miss Alicia's manner was that of one who could express the extent of her
+admiration only in disconnected phrases.
+
+“She was like a little rock. Such a quiet, firm way! Such calm
+certainty! Oh, the comfort she has been to me! I begged her to come here
+to-day. I did not know her father had returned.”
+
+“No doubt he will have testimony to give which will be of the greatest
+assistance,” the duke said most encouragingly. “Perhaps he will be a
+sort of rock.”
+
+“I--I don't in the least know what he will be!” sighed Miss Alicia,
+evidently uncertain in her views.
+
+But when the father and daughter were announced she felt that his Grace
+was really enchanting in the happy facility of his manner. He at least
+adjusted himself with agility. Hutchinson was of course lumbering.
+Lacking the support of T. Tembarom's presence and incongruity, he
+himself was the incongruous feature. He would have been obliged to
+bluster by way of sustaining himself, even if he had only found himself
+being presented to Miss Alicia; but when it was revealed to him that he
+was also confronted with the greatest personage of the neighborhood, he
+became as hot and red as he had become during certain fateful business
+interviews. More so, indeed.
+
+“Th' other chaps hadn't been dukes;” and to Hutchinson the old order had
+not yet so changed that a duke was not an awkwardly impressive person to
+face unexpectedly.
+
+The duke's manner of shaking hands with him, however, was even touched
+with an amiable suggestion of appreciation of the value of a man of
+genius. He had heard of the invention, in fact knew some quite technical
+things about it. He realized its importance. He had congratulations for
+the inventor and the world of inventions so greatly benefited.
+
+“Lancashire must be proud of your success, Mr. Hutchinson.” How
+agreeably and with what ease he said it!
+
+“Aye, it's a success now, your Grace,” Hutchinson answered, “but I might
+have waited a good bit longer if it hadn't been for that lad an' his
+bold backing of me.”
+
+“Mr. Temple Barholm?” said the duke.
+
+“Aye. He's got th' way of making folks see things that they can't see
+even when they're hitting them in th' eyes. I'd that lost heart I could
+never have done it myself.”
+
+“But now it is done,” smiled his Grace. “Delightful!”
+
+“I've got there--same as they say in New York--I've got there,” said
+Hutchinson.
+
+He sat down in response to Miss Alicia's invitation. His unease was
+wonderfully dispelled. He felt himself a person of sufficient importance
+to address even a duke as man to man.
+
+“What's all this romancin' talk about th' other Temple Barholm comin'
+back, an' our lad knowin' an' hidin' him away? An' Palliser an' th'
+lawyers an' th' police bein' after 'em both?”
+
+“You have heard the whole story?” from the duke.
+
+“I've heard naught else since I come back.”
+
+“Grandmother knew a great deal before we came home,” said Little Ann.
+
+The duke turned his attention to her with an engaged smile. His look,
+his bow, his bearing, in the moment of their being presented to each
+other, had seemed to Miss Alicia the most perfect thing. His fine eye
+had not obviously wandered while he talked to her father, but it had
+in fact been taking her in with an inclusiveness not likely to miss
+agreeable points of detail.
+
+“What is her opinion, may I ask?” he said. “What does she say?”
+
+“Grandmother is very set in her ways, your Grace.” The limpidity of
+her blue eye and a flickering dimple added much to the quaint
+comprehensiveness of her answer. “She says the world's that full of
+fools that if they were all killed the Lord would have to begin again
+with a new Adam and Eve.”
+
+“She has entire faith in Mr. Temple Barholm--as you have,” put forward
+his Grace.
+
+“Mine's not faith exactly. I know him,” Little Ann answered, her tone as
+limpid as her eyes.
+
+“There's more than her has faith in him,” broke forth Hutchinson.
+“Danged if I don't like th' way them village chaps are taking it.
+They're ready to fight over it. Since they've found out what it's come
+to, an' about th' lawyers comin' down, they're talkin' about gettin' up
+a kind o' demonstration.”
+
+“Delightful!” ejaculated his Grace again. He leaned forward. “Quite what
+I should have expected. There's a good deal of beer drunk, I suppose.”
+
+“Plenty o' beer, but it'll do no harm.” Hutchinson began to chuckle.
+“They're talkin' o' gettin' out th' fife an' drum band an' marchin'
+round th' village with a calico banner with `Vote for T. Tembarom'
+painted on it, to show what they think of him.”
+
+The duke chuckled also.
+
+“I wonder how he's managed it?” he laughed. “They wouldn't do it for
+any of the rest of us, you know, though I've no doubt we're quite as
+deserving. I am, I know.”
+
+Hutchinson stopped laughing and turned on Miss Alicia.
+
+“What's that young woman comin' down here for?” he inquired.
+
+“Lady Joan was engaged to Mr. James Temple Barholm,” Miss Alicia
+answered.
+
+“Eh! Eh!” Hutchinson jerked out. “That'll turn her into a wildcat, I'll
+warrant. She'll do all th' harm she can. I'm much obliged to you for
+lettin' us come, ma'am. I want to be where I can stand by him.”
+
+“Father,” said Little Ann, “what you have got to remember is that you
+mustn't fly into a passion. You know you've always said it never did any
+good, and it only sends the blood to your head.”
+
+“You are not nervous, Miss Hutchinson?” the duke suggested.
+
+“About Mr. Temple Barholm? I couldn't be, your Grace. If I was to see
+two policemen bringing him in handcuffed I shouldn't be nervous. I
+should know the handcuffs didn't belong to him, and the policemen would
+look right-down silly to me.”
+
+Miss Alicia fluttered over to fold her in her arms.
+
+“Do let me kiss you,” she said. “Do let me, Little Ann!”
+
+Little Ann had risen at once to meet her embrace. She put a hand on her
+arm.
+
+“We don't know anything about this really,” she said. “We've only heard
+what people say. We haven't heard what he says. I'm going to wait.” They
+were all looking at her,--the duke with such marked interest that she
+turned toward him as she ended. “And if I had to wait until I was as old
+as grandmother I'd wait--and nothing would change my mind.”
+
+“And I've been lying awake at night!” softly wailed Miss Alicia.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIX
+
+
+It was Mr. Hutchinson who, having an eye on the window, first announced
+an arriving carriage.
+
+“Some of 'em's comin' from the station,” he remarked. “There's no young
+woman with 'em, that I can see from here.”
+
+“I thought I heard wheels.” Miss Alicia went to look out, agitatedly.
+“It is the gentlemen. Perhaps Lady Joan--” she turned desperately to the
+duke. “I don't know what to say to Lady Joan. I don't know what she will
+say to me. I don't know what she is coming for, Little Ann, do keep near
+me!”
+
+It was a pretty thing to see Little Ann stroke her hand and soothe her.
+
+“Don't be frightened, Miss Temple Barholm. All you've got to do is to
+answer questions,” she said.
+
+“But I might say things that would be wrong--things that would harm
+him.”
+
+“No, you mightn't, Miss Temple Barholm. He's not done anything that
+could bring harm on him.”
+
+The Duke of Stone, who had seated himself in T. Tembarom's favorite
+chair, which occupied a point of vantage, seemed to Mr. Palford and
+Mr. Grimby when they entered the room to wear the aspect of a sort
+of presidiary audience. The sight of his erect head and clear-cut,
+ivory-tinted old face, with its alert, while wholly unbiased,
+expression, somewhat startled them both. They had indeed not expected to
+see him, and did not know why he had chosen to come. His presence
+might mean any one of several things, and the fact that he enjoyed a
+reputation for quite alarming astuteness of a brilliant kind presented
+elements of probable embarrassment. If he thought that they had allowed
+themselves to be led upon a wild-goose chase, he would express his
+opinions with trying readiness of phrase.
+
+His manner of greeting them, however, expressed no more than a lightly
+agreeable detachment from any view whatsoever. Captain Palliser felt
+this curiously, though he could not have said what he would have
+expected from him if he had known it would be his whim to appear.
+
+“How do you do? How d' you do?” His Grace shook hands with the amiable
+ease which scarcely commits a man even to casual interest, after which
+he took his seat again.
+
+“How d' do, Miss Hutchinson?” said Palliser. “How d' do, Mr. Hutchinson?
+Mr. Palford will be glad to find you here.”
+
+Mr. Palford shook hands with correct civility.
+
+“I am, indeed,” he said. “It was in your room in New York that I first
+saw Mr. Temple Temple Barholm.”
+
+“Aye, it was,” responded Hutchinson, dryly.
+
+“I thought Lady Joan was coming,” Miss Alicia said to Palliser.
+
+“She will be here presently. She came down in our train, but not with
+us.”
+
+“What--what is she coming for?” faltered Miss Alicia.
+
+“Yes,” put in the duke, “what, by the way, is she coming for?”
+
+“I wrote and asked her to come,” was Palliser's reply. “I have reason
+to believe she may be able to recall something of value to the inquiry
+which is being made.”
+
+“That's interesting,” said his Grace, but with no air of participating
+particularly. “She doesn't like him, though, does she? Wouldn't do to put
+her on the jury.”
+
+He did not wait for any reply, but turned to Mr. Palford.
+
+“All this is delightfully portentous. Do you know it reminds me of a
+scene in one of those numerous plays where the wrong man has murdered
+somebody--or hasn't murdered somebody--and the whole company must be
+cross-examined because the curtain cannot be brought down until the
+right man is unmasked. Do let us come into this, Mr. Palford; what we
+know seems so inadequate.”
+
+Mr. Palford and Mr. Grimby each felt that there lurked in this manner a
+possibility that they were being regarded lightly. All the objections to
+their situation loomed annoyingly large.
+
+“It is, of course, an extraordinary story,” Mr. Palford said, “but if we
+are not mistaken in our deductions, we may find ourselves involved in a
+cause celebre which will set all England talking.”
+
+“I am not mistaken,” Palliser presented the comment with a short and dry
+laugh.
+
+“Tha seems pretty cock-sure!” Hutchinson thrust in.
+
+“I am. No one knew Jem Temple Barbolm better than I did in the past. We
+were intimate--enemies.” And he laughed again.
+
+“Tha says tha'll swear th' chap tha saw through th' window was him?”
+ said Hutchinson.
+
+“I'd swear it,” with composure.
+
+The duke was reflecting. He was again tapping with his cane the gaiter
+covering his slender, shining boot.
+
+“If Mr. Temple Temple Barholm had remained here his actions would have
+seemed less suspicious?” he suggested.
+
+It was Palliser who replied.
+
+“Or if he hadn't whisked the other man away. He lost his head and played
+the fool.”
+
+“He didn't lose his head, that chap. It's screwed on th' right way--his
+head is,” grunted Hutchinson.
+
+“The curious fellow has a number of friends,” the duke remarked to
+Palford and Grimby, in his impartial tone. “I am hoping you are not
+thinking of cross-examining me. I have always been convinced that
+under cross-examination I could be induced to innocently give evidence
+condemnatory to both sides of any case whatever. But would you mind
+telling me what the exact evidence is so far?”
+
+Mr. Palford had been opening a budget of papers.
+
+“It is evidence which is cumulative, your Grace,” he said. “Mr. Temple
+Temple Barholm's position would have been a far less suspicious one--as
+you yourself suggested--if he had remained, or if he hadn't secretly
+removed Mr.--Mr. Strangeways.”
+
+“The last was Captain Palliser's suggestion, I believe,” smiled the
+duke. “Did he remove him secretly? How secretly, for instance?”
+
+“At night,” answered Palliser. “Miss Temple Barholm herself did not know
+when it happened. Did you?” turning to Miss Alicia, who at once flushed
+and paled.
+
+“He knew that I was rather nervous where Mr. Strangeways was concerned.
+I am sorry to say he found that out almost at once. He even told me
+several times that I must not think of him--that I need hear nothing
+about him.” She turned to the duke, her air of appeal plainly
+representing a feeling that he would understand her confession. “I
+scarcely like to say it, but wrong as it was I couldn't help feeling
+that it was like having a--a lunatic in the house. I was afraid he might
+be more--ill--than Temple realized, and that he might some time become
+violent. I never admitted so much of course, but I was.”
+
+“You see, she was not told,” Palliser summed it up succinctly.
+
+“Evidently,” the duke admitted. “I see your point.” But he seemed to
+disengage himself from all sense of admitting implications with entire
+calmness, as he turned again to Mr. Palford and his papers.
+
+“You were saying that the exact evidence was--?”
+
+Mr. Palford referred to a sheet of notes.
+
+“That--whether before or shortly after his arrival here is not at
+all certain--Mr. Temple Temple Barholm began strongly to suspect the
+identity of the person then known as Strangeways--”
+
+Palliser again emitted the short and dry laugh, and both the duke and
+Mr. Palford looked at him inquiringly.
+
+“He had `got on to' it before he brought him,” he answered their
+glances. “Be sure of that.”
+
+“Then why did he bring him?” the duke suggested lightly.
+
+“Oh, well,” taking his cue from the duke, and assuming casual lightness
+also, “he was obliged to come himself, and was jolly well convinced
+that he had better keep his hand on the man, also his eye. It was a
+good-enough idea. He couldn't leave a thing like that wandering about
+the States. He could play benefactor safely in a house of the size of
+this until he was ready for action.”
+
+The duke gave a moment to considering the matter--still detachedly.
+
+“It is, on the whole, not unlikely that something of the sort might
+suggest itself to the criminal mind,” he said. And his glance at Mr.
+Palford intimated that he might resume his statement.
+
+“We have secured proof that he applied himself to secret investigation.
+He is known to have employed Scotland Yard to make certain inquiries
+concerning the man said to have been killed in the Klondike. Having
+evidently reached more than suspicion he began to endeavor to persuade
+Mr. Strangeways to let him take him to London. This apparently took some
+time. The mere suggestion of removal threw the invalid into a state of
+painful excitement--”
+
+“Did Pearson tell you that?” the duke inquired.
+
+“Captain Palliser himself in passing the door of the room one day
+heard certain expressions of terrified pleading,” was Mr. Palford's
+explanation.
+
+“I heard enough,” Palliser took it up carelessly, “to make it worth
+while to question Pearson--who must have heard a great deal more.
+Pearson was ordered to hold his tongue from the first, but he will have
+to tell the truth when he is asked.”
+
+The duke did not appear to resent his view.
+
+“Pearson would be likely to know what went on,” he remarked. “He's an
+intelligent little fellow.”
+
+“The fact remains that in spite of his distress and reluctance Mr.
+Strangeways was removed privately, and there our knowledge ends. He has
+not been seen since--and a few hours after, Captain Palliser expressed
+his conviction, that the person he had seen through the West Room window
+was Mr. James Temple Barholm, Mr. Temple Temple Barholm left the house
+taking a midnight train, and leaving no clue as to his where-abouts or
+intentions.”
+
+“Disappeared!” said the duke. “Where has he been looked for?”
+
+The countenance of both Mr. Palford and his party expressed a certain
+degree of hesitance.
+
+“Principally in asylums and so-called sanatoriums,” Mr. Grimby admitted
+with a hint of reluctance.
+
+“Places where the curiosity of outsiders is not encouraged,” said
+Palliser languidly. “And where if a patient dies in a fit of mania there
+are always respectable witnesses to explain that his case was hopeless
+from the first.”
+
+Mr. Hutchinson had been breathing hard occasionally as he sat and
+listened, and now he sprang up uttering a sound dangerously near a
+violent snort.
+
+“Art tha accusin' that lad o' bein' black villain enough to be ready to
+do bloody murder?” he cried out.
+
+“He was in a very tight place, Hutchinson,” Palliser shrugged his
+shoulders as he said it. “But one makes suggestions at this stage--not
+accusations.”
+
+That Hutchinson had lost his head was apparent to his daughter at least.
+
+“Tha'd be in a tight place, my fine chap, if I had my way,” he flung
+forth irately. “I'd like to get thy head under my arm.”
+
+The roll of approaching wheels reached Miss Alicia.
+
+“There's another carriage,” was her agitated exclamation. “Oh, dear! It
+must be Lady Joan!”
+
+Little Ann left her seat to make her father return to his.
+
+“Father, you'd better sit down,” she said, gently pushing him in the
+right direction. “When you can't prove a thing's a lie, it's just as
+well to keep quiet until you can.” And she kept quiet herself,
+though she turned and stood before Palliser and spoke with clear
+deliberateness. “What you pretend to believe is not true, Captain
+Palliser. It's just not true,” she gave to him.
+
+They were facing and looking at each other when Burrill announced Lady
+Joan Fayre. She entered rather quickly and looked round the room with
+a sweeping glance, taking them all in. She went to the duke first, and
+they shook hands.
+
+“I am glad you are here!” she said.
+
+“I would not have been out of it, my dear young lady,” he answered,
+“`for a farm' That's a quotation.”
+
+“I know,” she replied, giving her hand to Miss Alicia, and taking in
+Palliser and the solicitors with a bow which was little more than a nod.
+Then she saw Little Ann, and walked over to her to shake hands.
+
+“I am glad you are here. I rather felt you would be,” was her greeting.
+“I am glad to see you.”
+
+“Whether tha 'rt glad to see me or not I'm glad I'm here,” said
+Hutchinson bluntly. “I've just been speaking a bit o' my mind.”
+
+“Now, Father love!” Little Ann put her hand on his arm.
+
+Lady Joan looked him over. Her hungry eyes were more hungry than ever.
+She looked like a creature in a fever and worn by it.
+
+“I think I am glad you are here too,” she answered.
+
+Palliser sauntered over to her. He had approved the duke's air of being
+at once detached and inquiring, and he did not intend to wear the
+aspect of the personage who plays the unpleasant part of the pursuer and
+avenger. What he said was:
+
+“It was good of you to come, Lady Joan.”
+
+“Did you think I would stay away?” was her answer. “But I will tell you
+that I don't believe it is true.”
+
+“You think that it is too good to be true?”
+
+Her hot eyes had records in them it would have been impossible for him
+to read or understand. She had been so torn; she had passed through such
+hours since she had been told this wild thing.
+
+“Pardon my not telling you what I think,” she said. “Nothing matters,
+after all, if he is alive!”
+
+“Except that we must find him,” said Palliser.
+
+“If he is in the same world with me I shall find him,” fiercely. Then
+she turned again to Ann. “You are the girl T. Tembarom loves?” she put
+it to her.
+
+“Yes, my lady.”
+
+“If he was lost, and you knew he was on the earth with you, don't you
+know that you would find him?”
+
+“I should know he'd come back to me,” Little Ann answered her. “That's
+what--” her small face looked very fine as in her second of hesitation
+a spirited flush ran over it, “that's what your man will do,” quite
+firmly.
+
+It was amazing to see how the bitter face changed, as if one word had
+brought back a passionate softening memory.
+
+“My man!” Her voice mellowed until it was deep and low. “Did you call T.
+Tembarom that, too? Oh, I understand you! Keep near me while I talk to
+these people.” She made her sit down by her.
+
+“I know every detail of your letters.” She addressed Palliser as well
+as Palford & Grimby, sweeping all details aside. “What is it you want to
+ask me?”
+
+“This is our position, your ladyship,” Mr. Palford fumbled a little with
+his papers in speaking. “Mr. Temple Temple Barholm and the person known
+as Mr. Strangeways have been searched for so far without result. In the
+meantime we realize that the more evidence we obtain that Mr. Temple
+Temple Barholm identified Strangeways and acted from motive, the more
+solid the foundation upon which Captain Palliser's conviction rests. Up
+to this point we have only his statement which he is prepared to make on
+oath. Fortunately, however, he on one occasion overheard something said
+to you which he believes will be corroborative evidence.”
+
+“What did you overhear?” she inquired of Palliser.
+
+Her tone was not pacific considering that, logically, she must be on
+the side of the investigators. But it was her habit, as Captain Palliser
+remembered, to seem to put most people on the defensive. He meant to
+look as uninvolved as the duke, but it was not quite within his power.
+His manner was sufficiently deliberate.
+
+“One evening, before you left for London, I was returning from the
+billiard-room, and heard you engaged in animated conversation with--our
+host. My attention was arrested, first because--” a sketch of a smile
+ill-concealed itself, “you usually scarcely deigned to speak to him, and
+secondly because I heard Jem Temple Barholm's name.”
+
+“And you--?” neither eyes nor manner omitted the word listened.
+
+But the slight lift of his shoulders was indifferent enough.
+
+“I listened deliberately. I was convinced that the fellow was a criminal
+impostor, and I wanted evidence.”
+
+“Ah! come now,” remarked the duke amiably. “Now we are getting on. Did
+you gain any?”
+
+“I thought so. Merely of the cumulative order, of course,” Palliser
+answered with moderation. “Those were early days. He asked you,” turning
+to Lady Joan again, “if you knew any one--any one--who had any sort of a
+photograph of Jem. You had one and you showed it to him!”
+
+She was quite silent for a moment. The hour came back to her--the
+extraordinary hour when he had stood in his lounging fashion before her,
+and through some odd, uncivilized but absolutely human force of his own
+had made her listen to him--and had gone on talking in his nasal voice
+until with one common, crude, grotesque phrase he had turned her hideous
+world upside down--changed the whole face of it--sent the stone wall
+rising before her crumbling into dust, and seemed somehow to set her
+free. For the moment he had lifted a load from her the nature of which
+she did not think he could understand--a load of hatred and silence. She
+had clutched his hand, she had passionately wept on it, she could have
+kissed it. He had told her she could come back and not be afraid. As the
+strange episode rose before her detail by detail, she literally stared
+at Palliser.
+
+“You did, didn't you?” he inquired.
+
+“Yes,” she answered.
+
+Her mind was in a riot, because in the midst of things which must
+be true, something was false. But with the memory of a myriad subtle
+duplicities in her brain, she had never seen anything which could have
+approached a thing like that. He had made her feel more human than any
+one in the world had ever made her feel--but Jem. He had been able to do
+it because he was human himself--human. “I'm friendly,” he had said with
+his boy's laugh--“just friendly.”
+
+“I saw him start, though you did not,” Palliser continued. “He stood and
+studied the locket intently.”
+
+She remembered perfectly. He had examined it so closely that he had
+unconsciously knit his brows.
+
+“He said something in a rather low voice,” Palliser took it up. “I could
+not quite catch it all. It was something about `knowing the face again.'
+I can see you remember, Lady Joan. Can you repeat the exact words?”
+
+He did not understand the struggle he saw in her face. It would have
+been impossible for him to understand it. What she felt was that if she
+lost hold on her strange belief in the honesty of this one decent
+thing she had seen and felt so close to her that it cleared the air
+she breathed, it would be as if she had fallen into a bottomless abyss.
+Without knowing why she did it, she got up from her chair as if she were
+a witness in a court.
+
+“Yes, I can,” she said. “Yes, I can; but I wish to make a statement for
+myself. Whether Jem Temple Barholm is alive or dead, Captain Palliser,
+T. Tembarom has done him no harm.”
+
+The duke sat up delicately alert. He had evidently found her worth
+looking at and listening to from the outset.
+
+“Hear! Hear!” he said pleasantly.
+
+“What were the exact words?” suggested Palliser.
+
+Miss Alicia who had been weeping on Little Ann's shoulder--almost on her
+lap--lifted her head to listen. Hutchinson set his jaw and grunted, and
+Mr. Palford cleared his throat mechanically.
+
+“He said,” and no one better than herself realized how ominously
+“cumulative” the words sounded, “that a man would know a face like that
+again--wherever he saw it.”
+
+“Wherever he saw it!” ejaculated Mr. Grimby.
+
+There ensued a moment of entire pause. It was inevitable. Having reached
+this point a taking of breath was necessary. Even the duke ceased to
+appear entirely detached. As Mr. Palford turned to his papers again
+there was perhaps a slight feeling of awkwardness in the air. Miss
+Alicia had dropped, terror smitten, into new tears.
+
+The slight awkwardness was, on the whole, rather added to by T.
+Tembarom--as if serenely introduced by the hand of drama itself--opening
+the door and walking into the room. He came in with a matter-of-fact,
+but rather obstinate, air, and stopped in their midst, looking round at
+them as if collectedly taking them all in.
+
+Hutchinson sprang to his feet with a kind of roar, his big hands
+plunging deep into his trousers pockets.
+
+“Here he is! Danged if he isn't!” he bellowed. “Now, lad, tha let 'em
+have it!”
+
+What he was to let them have did not ensue, because his attitude was not
+one of assault.
+
+“Say, you are all here, ain't you!” he remarked obviously. “Good
+business!”
+
+Miss Alicia got up from the sofa and came trembling toward him as one
+approaches one risen from the dead, and he made a big stride toward
+her and took her in his arms, patting her shoulder in reproachful
+consolation.
+
+“Say, you haven't done what I told you--have you?” he soothed. “You've
+let yourself get rattled.”
+
+“But I knew it wasn't true,” she sobbed. “I knew it wasn't.”
+
+“Of course you did, but you got rattled all the same.” And he patted her
+again.
+
+The duke came forward with a delightfully easy and--could it be almost
+jocose?--air of bearing himself. Palford and Grimby remarked it with
+pained dismay. He was so unswerving in his readiness as he shook hands.
+
+“How well done of you!” he said. “How well arranged! But I'm afraid you
+didn't arrange it at all. It has merely happened. Where did you come
+from?”
+
+“From America; got back yesterday.” T. Tembarom's hand-shake was a
+robust hearty greeting. “It's all right.”
+
+“From America!” The united voices of the solicitors exclaimed it.
+
+Joseph Hutchinson broke into a huge guffaw, and he stamped in
+exultation.
+
+“I'm danged if he has na' been to America!” he cried out. “To America!”
+
+“Oh!” Miss Alicia gasped hysterically, “they go backward and forward to
+America like--like lightning!”
+
+Little Ann had not risen at his entrance, but sat still with her hands
+clasped tightly on her lap. Her face had somehow the effect of a flower
+gradually breaking into extraordinary bloom. Their eyes had once met and
+then she remained, her soul in hers which were upon him, as she drank in
+every word he uttered. Her time had not yet come.
+
+Lady Joan had remained standing by the chair, which a few moments before
+her manner had seemed to transform into something like a witness stand
+in a court of justice. Her hungry eyes had grown hungrier each second,
+and her breath came and went quickly. The very face she had looked up at
+on her last talk with T. Tembarom--the oddly human face--turned on
+her as he came to her. It was just as it had been that night--just as
+commonly uncommon and believable.
+
+“Say, Lady Joan! You didn't believe all that guff, did you--You didn't?”
+ he said.
+
+“No--no--no! I couldn't!” she cried fiercely.
+
+He saw she was shaking with suspense, and he pushed her gently into a
+chair.
+
+“You'd better sit down a minute. You're about all in,” he said.
+
+She might have been a woman with an ague as she caught his arm, shaking
+it because her hands themselves so shook.
+
+“Is it true?” was her low cry. “Is he alive--is he alive?”
+
+“Yes, he's alive.” And as he answered he drew close and so placed
+himself before her that he shielded her from the others in the room. He
+seemed to manage to shut them out, so that when she dropped her face
+on her arms against the chair-back her shuddering, silent sobbing
+was hidden decently. It was not only his body which did it, but some
+protecting power which was almost physically visible. She felt it spread
+before her.
+
+“Yes, he's alive,” he said, “and he's all right--though it's been a long
+time coming, by gee!”
+
+“He's alive.” They all heard it. For a man of Palliser's make to stand
+silent in the midst of mysterious slowly accumulating convictions that
+some one--perilously of his own rarely inept type--was on the verge
+of feeling appallingly like a fool--was momentarily unendurable. And
+nothing had been explained, after all.
+
+“Is this what you call `bluff' in New York?” he demanded. “You've got
+a lot to explain. You admit that Jem Temple Barholm is alive?” and
+realized his asinine error before the words were fully spoken.
+
+The realization was the result of the square-shouldered swing with which
+T. Tembarom turned round, and the expression of his eyes as they ran
+over him.
+
+“Admit!” he said. “Admit hell! He's up-stairs,” with a slight jerk of
+his head in the direction of the ceiling.
+
+The duke alone did not gasp. He laughed slightly.
+
+“We've just got here. He came down from London with me, and Sir Ormsby
+Galloway.” And he said it not to Palliser but to Palford and Grimby.
+
+“The Sir Ormsby Galloway?” It was an ejaculation from Mr. Palford
+himself.
+
+T. Tembarom stood square and gave his explanation to the lot of them, so
+to speak, without distinction.
+
+“He's the big nerve specialist. I've had him looking after the case from
+the first--before I began to suspect anything. I took orders, and orders
+were to keep him quiet and not let any fool butt in and excite him.
+That's what I've been giving my mind to. The great stunt was to get him
+to go and stay at Sir Ormsby's place.” He stopped a moment and suddenly
+flared forth as if he had had about enough of it. He almost shouted at
+them in exasperation. “All I'm going to tell you is that for about six
+months I've been trying to prove that Jem Temple Barholm was Jem Temple
+Barholm, and the hardest thing I had to do was to get him so that he
+could prove it himself.” He strode over to the hearth and rang a
+bell. “It's not my place to give orders here now,” he said, “but Jem
+commissioned me to see this thing through. Sir Ormsby'll tell you all
+you want to hear.”
+
+He turned and spoke solely to the duke.
+
+“This is what happened,” he said. “I dare say you'll laugh when you hear
+it. I almost laughed myself. What does Jem do, when he thinks things
+over, but get some fool notion in his head about not coming back here
+and pushing me out. And he lights out and leaves the country--leaves
+it--to get time to think it over some more.”
+
+The duke did not laugh. He merely smiled--a smile which had a shade of
+curious self-questioning in it.
+
+“Romantic and emotional--and quite ridiculous,” he commented slowly.
+“He'd have awakened to that when he had thought it out `some more.' The
+thing couldn't be done.”
+
+Burrill had presented himself in answer to the bell, and awaited orders.
+His Grace called Tembarom's attention to him, and Tembarom included
+Palliser with Palford and Grimby when he gave his gesture of
+instruction.
+
+“Take these gentlemen to Sir Ormsby Galloway, and then ask Mr. Temple
+Barholm if he'll come down-stairs,” he said.
+
+It is possible that Captain Palliser felt himself more irritatingly
+infolded in the swathing realization that some one was in a ridiculous
+position, and it is certain that Mr. Palford felt it necessary to
+preserve an outwardly flawless dignity as the duke surprisingly left his
+chair and joined them.
+
+“Let me go, too,” he suggested; “I may be able to assist in throwing
+light.” His including movement in Miss Alicia's direction was
+delightfully gracious and friendly. It was inclusive of Mr. Hutchinson
+also.
+
+“Will you come with us, Miss Temple Barholm?” he said. “And you too, Mr.
+Hutchinson. We shall go over it all in its most interesting detail, and
+you must be eager about it. I am myself.”
+
+His happy and entirely correct idea was that the impending entrance
+of Mr. James Temple Barholm would “come off” better in the absence of
+audience.
+
+Hutchinson almost bounced from his chair in his readiness. Miss Alicia
+looked at Tembarom.
+
+“Yes, Miss Alicia,” he answered her inquiring glance. “You go, too.
+You'll get it all over quicker.”
+
+Rigid propriety forbade that Mr. Palford should express annoyance, but
+the effort to restrain the expression of it was in his countenance. Was
+it possible that the American habit of being jocular had actually held
+its own in a matter as serious as this? And could even the most cynical
+and light-minded of ducal personages have been involved in its unworthy
+frivolities? But no one looked jocular--Tembarom's jaw was set in its
+hard line, and the duke, taking up the broad ribbon of his rimless
+monocle to fix the glass in his eye, wore the expression of a man whose
+sense of humor was temporarily in abeyance.
+
+“Are we to understand that your Grace--?”
+
+“Yes,” said his Grace a trifle curtly, “I have known about it for some
+time.”
+
+“But why was nobody told?” put in Palliser.
+
+“Why should people be told? There was nothing sufficiently definite to
+tell. It was a waiting game.” His Grace wasted no words. “I was
+told. Mr. Temple Barholm did not know England or English methods. His
+idea--perhaps a mistaken one--was that an English duke ought to be able
+to advise him. He came to me and made a clean breast of it. He goes
+straight at things, that young fellow. Makes what he calls a `bee line.'
+Oh! I've been in it--I 've been in it, I assure you.”
+
+It was as they crossed the hall that his Grace slightly laughed.
+
+“It struck me as a sort of wild-goose chase at first. He had only a
+ghost of a clue--a mere resemblance to a portrait. But he believed in
+it, and he had an instinct.” He laughed again. “The dullest and most
+unmelodramatic neighborhood in England has been taking part in a
+melodrama--but there has been no villain in it--only a matter-of-fact
+young man, working out a queer thing in his own queer, matter-of-fact
+way.”
+
+When the door closed behind them, Tembarom went to Lady Joan. She had
+risen and was standing before the window, her back to the room. She
+looked tall and straight and tensely braced when she turned round, but
+there was endurance, not fierceness in her eyes.
+
+“Did he leave the country knowing I was here--waiting?” she asked. Her
+voice was low and fatigued. She had remembered that years had passed,
+and that it was perhaps after all only human that long anguish should
+blot things out, and dull a hopeless man's memory.
+
+“No,” answered Tembarom sharply. “He didn't. You weren't in it then. He
+believed you'd married that Duke of Merthshire fellow. This is the way
+it was: Let me tell it to you quick. A letter that had been wandering
+round came to him the night before the cave-in, when they thought he was
+killed. It told him old Temple Barholm was dead. He started out before
+daylight, and you can bet he was strung up till he was near crazy with
+excitement. He believed that if he was in England with plenty of money
+he could track down that cardsharp lie. He believed you'd help him.
+Somewhere, while he was traveling he came across an old paper with a lot
+of dope about your being engaged.”
+
+Joan remembered well how her mother had worked to set the story
+afloat--how they had gone through the most awful of their scenes--almost
+raving at each other, shut up together in the boudoir in Hill Street.
+
+“That's all he remembers, except that he thought some one had hit him
+a crack on the head. Nothing had hit him. He'd had too much to stand up
+under and something gave way in his brain. He doesn't know what happened
+after that. He'd wake up sometimes just enough to know he was wandering
+about trying to get home. It's been the limit to try to track him. If
+he'd not come to himself we could never have been quite sure. That's why
+I stuck at it. But he DID come to himself. All of a sudden. Sir Ormsby
+will tell you that's what nearly always happens. They wake up all of a
+sudden. It's all right; it's all right. I used to promise him it would
+be--when I wasn't sure that I wasn't lying.” And for the first time he
+broke into the friendly grin--but it was more valiant than spontaneous.
+He wanted her to know that it was “all right.”
+
+“Oh!” she cried, “oh! you--”
+
+She stopped because the door was opening.
+
+“It's Jem,” he said sharply. “Ann, let's go.” And that instant Little
+Ann was near him.
+
+“No! no! don't go,” cried Lady Joan.
+
+Jem Temple Barholm came in through the doorway. Life and sound and
+breath stopped for a second, and then the two whirled into each other's
+arms as if a storm had swept them there.
+
+“Jem!” she wailed. “Oh, Jem! My man! Where have you been?”
+
+“I've been in hell, Joan--in hell!” he answered, choking,--“and this
+wonderful fellow has dragged me out of it.”
+
+But Tembarom would have none of it. He could not stand it. This sort of
+thing filled up his throat and put him at an overwhelming disadvantage.
+He just laid a hand on Jem Temple Barholm's shoulder and gave him an
+awkwardly friendly push.
+
+“Say, cut me out of it!” he said. “You get busy,” his voice rather
+breaking. “You've got a lot to say to her. It was up to me before;--now,
+it's up to you.”
+
+Little Ann went with him into the next room.
+
+
+
+The room they went into was a smaller one, quiet, and its oriel windows
+much overshadowed by trees. By the time they stood together in the
+center of it Tembarom had swallowed something twice or thrice, and had
+recovered himself. Even his old smile had come back as he took one of
+her hands in each of his, and holding them wide apart stood and looked
+down at her.
+
+“God bless you, Little Ann,” he said. “I just knew I should find you
+here. I'd have bet my last dollar on it.”
+
+The hands he held were trembling just a little, and the dimples quivered
+in and out. But her eyes were steady, and a lovely increasing intensity
+glowed in them.
+
+“You went after him and brought him back. He was all wrought up, and he
+needed some one with good common sense to stop him in time to make him
+think straight before he did anything silly,” she said.
+
+“I says to him,” T. Tembarom made the matter clear; “`Say, you've left
+something behind that belongs to you! Comeback and get it.' I meant
+Lady Joan. And I says, `Good Lord, man, you're acting like a fellow in
+a play. That place doesn't belong to me. It belongs to you. If it was
+mine, fair and square, Little Willie'd hang on to it. There'd be no
+noble sacrifice in his. You get a brace on.'”
+
+“When they were talking in that silly way about you, and saying you'd
+run away,” said Little Ann, her face uplifted adoringly as she talked,
+“I said to father, `If he's gone, he's gone to get something. And he'll
+be likely to bring it back.'”
+
+He almost dropped her hands and caught her to him then. But he saved
+himself in time.
+
+“Now this great change has come,” he said, “everything will be
+different. The men you'll know will look like the pictures in the
+advertisements at the backs of magazines--those fellows with chins and
+smooth hair. I shall look like a chauffeur among them.”
+
+But she did not blench in the least, though she remembered whose words
+he was quoting. The intense and lovely femininity in her eyes only
+increased. She came closer to him, and so because of his height had to
+look up more.
+
+“You will always make jokes--but I don't care. I don't care for anything
+but you,” she said. “I love your jokes; I love everything about you:
+I love your eyes--and your voice--and your laugh. I love your very
+clothes.” Her voice quivered as her dimples did. “These last months I've
+sometimes felt as if I should die of loving you.”
+
+It was a wonderful thing--wonderful. His eyes--his whole young being had
+kindled as he looked down drinking in every word.
+
+“Is that the kind of quiet little thing you are?” he said.
+
+“Yes, it is,” she answered firmly.
+
+“And you're satisfied--you know, who it is I want?--You're ready to do
+what you said you would that last night at Mrs. Bowse's?”
+
+“What do you think?” she said in her clear little voice.
+
+He caught her then in a strong, hearty, young, joyous clutch.
+
+“You come to me, Little Ann. You come right to me,” he said.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XL
+
+
+Many an honest penny was turned, with the assistance of the romantic
+Temple Barholm case, by writers of paragraphs for newspapers published
+in the United States. It was not merely a romance which belonged to
+England but was excitingly linked to America by the fact that its
+hero regarded himself as an American, and had passed through all the
+picturesque episodes of a most desirably struggling youth in the very
+streets of New York itself, and had “worked his way up” to the proud
+position of society reporter “on” a huge Sunday paper. It was generally
+considered to redound largely to his credit that refusing “in spite
+of all temptations to belong to other nations,” he had been born in
+Brooklyn, that he had worn ragged clothes and shoes with holes in
+them, that he had blacked other people's shoes, run errands, and
+sold newspapers there. If he had been a mere English young man, one
+recounting of his romance would have disposed of him; but as he was
+presented to the newspaper public every characteristic lent itself to
+elaboration. He was, in fact, flaringly anecdotal. As a newly elected
+President who has made boots or driven a canal-boat in his unconsidered
+youth endears himself indescribably to both paragraph reader and
+paragraph purveyor, so did T. Tembarom endear himself. For weeks, he
+was a perennial fount. What quite credible story cannot be related of
+a hungry lad who is wildly flung by chance into immense fortune and the
+laps of dukes, so to speak? The feeblest imagination must be stirred
+by the high color of such an episode, and stimulated to superb effort.
+Until the public had become sated with reading anecdotes depicting the
+extent of his early privations, and dwelling on illustrations which
+presented lumber-yards in which he had slept, and the facades of
+tumble-down tenements in which he had first beheld the light of day,
+he was a modest source of income. Any lumber-yard or any tenement
+sufficiently dilapidated would serve as a model; and the fact that in
+the shifting architectural life of New York the actual original
+scenes of the incidents had been demolished and built upon by
+new apartment-houses, or new railroad stations, or new factories
+seventy-five stories high, was an unobstructing triviality. Accounts
+of his manner of conducting himself in European courts to which he had
+supposedly been bidden, of his immense popularity in glittering circles,
+of his finely democratic bearing when confronted by emperors surrounded
+by their guilty splendors, were the joy of remote villages and towns. A
+thrifty and young minor novelist hastily incorporated him in a serial,
+and syndicated it upon the spot under the title of “Living or Dead.”
+ Among its especial public it was a success of such a nature as betrayed
+its author into as hastily writing a second romance, which not being
+rendered stimulating by a foundation of fact failed to repeat his
+triumph.
+
+T. Tembarom, reading in the library at Temple Barholm the first
+newspapers sent from New York, smiled widely.
+
+“You see they've got to say something, Jem,” he explained. “It's too big
+a scoop to be passed over. Something's got to be turned in. And it means
+money to the fellows, too. It's good copy.”
+
+“Suppose,” suggested Jem, watching him with interest, “you were to write
+the facts yourself and pass them on to some decent chap who'd be glad to
+get them.”
+
+“Glad!” Tembarom flushed with delight. “Any chap would be'way up in the
+air at the chance. It's the best kind of stuff. Wouldn't you mind? Are
+you sure you wouldn't?” He was the warhorse snuffing battle from afar.
+
+Jem Temple Barholm laughed outright at the gleam in his eyes.
+
+“No, I shouldn't care a hang, dear fellow. And the fact that I objected
+would not stop the story.”
+
+“No, it wouldn't, by gee! Say, I'll get Ann to help me, and we'll send
+it to the man who took my place on the Earth. It'll mean board and boots
+to him for a month if he works it right. And it'll be doing a good turn
+to Galton, too. I shall be glad to see old Galton when I go back.”
+
+“You are quite sure you want to go back?” inquired Jem. A certain glow
+of feeling was always in his eyes when he turned them on T. Tembarom.
+
+“Go back! I should smile! Of course I shall go back. I've got to
+get busy for Hutchinson and I've got to get busy for myself. I guess
+there'll be work to do that'll take me half over the world; but I'm
+going back first. Ann's going with me.”
+
+But there was no reference to a return to New York when the Sunday
+Earth and other widely circulated weekly sheets gave prominence to the
+marriage of Mr. Temple Temple Barholm and Miss Hutchinson, only child
+and heiress of Mr. Joseph Hutchinson, the celebrated inventor. From a
+newspaper point of view, the wedding had been rather unfairly quiet,
+and it was necessary to fill space with a revival of the renowned story,
+with pictures of bride and bridegroom, and of Temple Barholm surrounded
+by ancestral oaks. A thriving business would have been done by the
+reporters if an ocean greyhound had landed the pair at the dock some
+morning, and snap-shots could have been taken as they crossed the
+gangway, and wearing apparel described. But hope of such fortune was
+swept away by the closing paragraph, which stated that Mr. and Mrs.
+Temple Barholm would “spend the next two months in motoring through
+Italy and Spain in their 90 h.p. Panhard.”
+
+It was T. Tembarom who sent this last item privately to Galton.
+
+“It's not true,” his letter added, “but what I'm going to do is nobody's
+business but mine and my wife's, and this will suit people just as
+well.” And then he confided to Galton the thing which was the truth.
+
+The St. Francesca apartment-house was a very new one, situated on a
+corner of an as yet sparsely built but rapidly spreading avenue above
+the “100th Streets”--many numbers above them. There was a frankly
+unfinished air about the neighborhood, but here and there a “store”
+ had broken forth and valiantly displayed necessities, and even articles
+verging upon the economically ornamental. It was plainly imperative
+that the idea should be suggested that there were on the spot sources
+of supply not requiring the immediate employment of the services of
+the elevated railroad in the achievement of purchase, and also that
+enterprise rightly encouraged might develop into being equal to all
+demands. Here and there an exceedingly fresh and clean “market store,”
+ brilliant with the highly colored labels adorning tinned soups and meats
+and edibles in glass jars, alluringly presented itself to the passer-by.
+The elevated railroad perched upon iron supports, and with iron
+stairways so tall that they looked almost perilous, was a prominent
+feature of the landscape. There were stretches of waste ground, and high
+backgrounds of bits of country and woodland to be seen. The rush of New
+York traffic had not yet reached the streets, and the avenue was of
+an agreeable suburban cleanliness and calm. People who lived in upper
+stories could pride themselves on having “views of the river.” These
+they laid stress upon when it was hinted that they “lived a long way
+uptown.”
+
+The St. Francesca was built of light-brown stone and decorated with
+much ornate molding. It was fourteen stories high, and was supplied with
+ornamental fire-escapes. It was “no slouch of a building.” Everything
+decorative which could be done for it had been done. The entrance was
+almost imposing, and a generous lavishness in the way of cement mosaic
+flooring and new and thick red carpet struck the eye at once. The
+grill-work of the elevator was of fresh, bright blackness, picked out
+with gold, and the colored elevator-boy wore a blue livery with brass
+buttons. Persons of limited means who were willing to discard the
+excitements of “downtown” got a good deal for their money, and
+frequently found themselves secretly surprised and uplifted by the
+atmosphere of luxury which greeted them when they entered their
+red-carpeted hall. It was wonderful, they said, congratulating one
+another privately, how much comfort and style you got in a New York
+apartment-house after you passed the “150ths.”
+
+On a certain afternoon T. Tembarom, with his hat on the back of his head
+and his arms full of parcels, having leaped off the “L” when it stopped
+at the nearest station, darted up and down the iron stairways until
+he reached the ground, and then hurried across the avenue to the St.
+Francesca. He made long strides, and two or three times grinned as if
+thinking of something highly amusing; and once or twice he began to
+whistle and checked himself. He looked approvingly at the tall building
+and its solidly balustraded entrance-steps as he approached it, and when
+he entered the red-carpeted hall he gave greeting to a small mulatto boy
+in livery.
+
+“Hello, Tom! How's everything?” he inquired, hilariously. “You taking
+good care of this building? Let any more eight-room apartments? You've
+got to keep right on the job, you know. Can't have you loafing because
+you've got those brass buttons.”
+
+The small page showed his teeth in gleeful appreciation of their
+friendly intimacy.
+
+“Yassir. That's so,” he answered. “Mis' Barom she's waitin' for you.
+Them carpets is come, sir. Tracy's wagon brought 'em 'bout an hour ago.
+I told her I'd help her lay 'em if she wanted me to, but she said you
+was comin' with the hammer an' tacks. 'Twarn't that she thought I was
+too little. It was jest that there wasn't no tacks. I tol' her jest call
+me in any time to do anythin' she want done, an' she said she would.”
+
+“She'll do it,” said T. Tembarom. “You just keep on tap. I'm just
+counting on you and Light here,” taking in the elevator-boy as he
+stepped into the elevator, “to look after her when I'm out.”
+
+The elevator-boy grinned also, and the elevator shot up the shaft, the
+numbers of the floors passing almost too rapidly to be distinguished.
+The elevator was new and so was the boy, and it was the pride of his
+soul to land each passenger at his own particular floor, as if he had
+been propelled upward from a catapult. But he did not go too rapidly for
+this passenger, at least, though a paper parcel or so was dropped in the
+transit and had to be picked up when he stopped at floor fourteen.
+
+The red carpets were on the corridor there also, and fresh paint and
+paper were on the walls. A few yards from the elevator he stopped at a
+door and opened it with a latch-key, beaming with inordinate delight.
+
+The door opened into a narrow corridor leading into a small apartment,
+the furniture of which was not yet set in order. A roll of carpet and
+some mats stood in a corner, chairs and tables with burlaps round their
+legs waited here and there, a cot with a mattress on it, evidently to be
+transformed into a “couch,” held packages of bafflingly irregular shapes
+and sizes. In the tiny kitchen new pots and pans and kettles, some still
+wrapped in paper, tilted themselves at various angles on the gleaming
+new range or on the closed lids of the doll-sized stationary wash-tubs.
+
+Little Ann had been very busy, and some of the things were unpacked. She
+had been sweeping and mopping floors and polishing up remote corners,
+and she had on a big white pinafore-apron with long sleeves, which
+transformed her into a sort of small female chorister. She came into the
+narrow corridor with a broom in her hand, her periwinkle-blue gaze as
+thrilled as an excited child's when it attacks the arrangement of its
+first doll's house. Her hair was a little ruffled where it showed below
+the white kerchief she had tied over her head. The warm, daisy pinkness
+of her cheeks was amazing.
+
+“Hello!” called out Tembarom at sight of her. “Are you there yet? I
+don't believe it.”
+
+“Yes, I'm here,” she answered, dimpling at him.
+
+“Not you!” he said. “You couldn't be! You've melted away. Let's see.”
+ And he slid his parcels down on the cot and lifted her up in the air as
+if she had been a baby. “How can I tell, anyhow?” he laughed out. “You
+don't weigh anything, and when a fellow squeezes you he's got to look
+out what he's doing.”
+
+He did not seem to “look out” particularly when he caught her to him in
+a hug into which she appeared charmingly to melt. She made herself part
+of it, with soft arms which went at once round his neck and held him.
+
+“Say!” he broke forth when he set her down. “Do you think I'm not glad
+to get back?”
+
+“No, I don't, Tem,” she answered, “I know how glad you are by the way
+I'm glad myself.”
+
+“You know just everything!” he ejaculated, looking her over, “just every
+darned thing--God bless you! But don't you melt away, will you? That's
+what I'm afraid of. I'll do any old thing on earth if you'll just stay.”
+
+That was his great joke,--though she knew it was not so great a joke as
+it seemed,--that he would not believe that she was real, and believed
+that she might disappear at any moment. They had been married three
+weeks, and she still knew when she saw him pause to look at her that he
+would suddenly seize and hold her fast, trying to laugh, sometimes not
+with entire success.
+
+“Do you know how long it was? Do you know how far away that big place
+was from everything in the world?” he had said once. “And me holding on
+and gritting my teeth? And not a soul to open my mouth to! The old duke
+was the only one who understood, anyhow. He'd been there.”
+
+“I'll stay,” she answered now, standing before him as he sat down on the
+end of the “couch.” She put a firm, warm-palmed little hand on each side
+of his face, and held it between them as she looked deep into his eyes.
+“You look at me, Tem--and see.”
+
+“I believe it now,” he said, “but I shan't in fifteen minutes.”
+
+“We're both right-down silly,” she said, her soft, cosy laugh breaking
+out. “Look round this room and see what we've got to do. Let's begin
+this minute. Did you get the groceries?”
+
+He sprang up and began to go over his packages triumphantly.
+
+“Tea, coffee, sugar, pepper, salt, beefsteak,” he called out.
+
+“We can't have beefsteak often,” she said, soberly, “if we're going to
+do it on fifteen a week.”
+
+“Good Lord, no!” he gave back to her, hilariously. “But this is a Fifth
+Avenue feed.”
+
+“Let's take them into the kitchen and put them into the cupboard,
+and untie the pots and pans.” She was suddenly quite absorbed and
+businesslike. “We must make the room tidy and tack down the carpet, and
+then cook the dinner.”
+
+He followed her and obeyed her like an enraptured boy. The wonder of her
+was that, despite its unarranged air, the tiny place was already cleared
+and set for action. She had done it all before she had swept out the
+undiscovered corners. Everything was near the spot to which it belonged.
+There was nothing to move or drag out of the way.
+
+“I got it all ready to put straight,” she said, “but I wanted you to
+finish it with me. It wouldn't have seemed right if I'd done it without
+you. It wouldn't have been as much OURS.”
+
+Then came active service. She was like a small general commanding an
+army of one. They put things on shelves; they hung things on hooks;
+they found places in which things belonged; they set chairs and tables
+straight; and then, after dusting and polishing them, set them at a more
+imposing angle; they unrolled the little green carpet and tacked down
+its corners; and transformed the cot into a “couch” by covering it
+with what Tracy's knew as a “throw” and adorning one end of it with
+cotton-stuffed cushions. They hung little photogravures on the walls and
+strung up some curtains before the good-sized window, which looked down
+from an enormous height at the top of four-storied houses, and took
+in beyond them the river and the shore beyond. Because there was no
+fireplace Tembarom knocked up a shelf, and, covering it with a scarf
+(from Tracy's), set up some inoffensive ornaments on it and flanked them
+with photographs of Jem Temple Barholm, Lady Joan in court dress, Miss
+Alicia in her prettiest cap, and the great house with its huge terrace
+and the griffins.
+
+“Ain't she a looker?” Tembarom said of Lady Joan. “And ain't Jem a
+looker, too? Gee! they're a pair. Jem thinks this honeymoon stunt of
+ours is the best thing he ever heard of--us fixing ourselves up here
+just like we would have done if nothing had ever happened, and we'd
+HAD to do it on fifteen per. Say,” throwing an arm about her, “are you
+getting as much fun out of it as if we HAD to, as if I might lose my job
+any minute, and we might get fired out of here because we couldn't pay
+the rent? I believe you'd rather like to think I might ring you into
+some sort of trouble, so that you could help me to get you out of it.”
+
+“That's nonsense,” she answered, with a sweet, untruthful little face. “I
+shouldn't be very sensible if I wasn't glad you COULDN'T lose your job.
+Father and I are your job now.”
+
+He laughed aloud. This was the innocent, fantastic truth of it. They had
+chosen to do this thing--to spend their honey-moon in this particular
+way, and there was no reason why they should not. The little dream which
+had been of such unattainable proportions in the days of Mrs. Bowse's
+boarding-house could be realized to its fullest. No one in the
+St. Francesca apartments knew that the young honey-mooners in the
+five-roomed apartment were other than Mr. and Mrs. T. Barholm, as
+recorded on the tablet of names in the entrance. Hutchinson knew, and
+Miss Alicia knew, and Jem Temple Barholm, and Lady Joan. The Duke of
+Stone knew, and thought the old-fashionedness of the idea quite the last
+touch of modernity.
+
+“Did you see any one who knew you when you were out?” Little Ann asked.
+
+“No, and if I had they wouldn't have believed they'd seen me, because
+the papers told them that Mr. and Mrs. Temple Barholm are spending their
+honeymoon motoring through Spain in their ninety-horse-power Panhard.”
+
+“Let's go and get dinner,” said Little Ann.
+
+They went into the doll's-house kitchen and cooked the dinner. Little
+Ann broiled steak and fried potato chips, and T. Tembarom produced a
+wonderful custard pie he had bought at a confectioner's. He set the
+table, and put a bunch of yellow daisies in the middle of it.
+
+“We couldn't do it every day on fifteen per week,” he said. “If we
+wanted flowers we should have to grow them in old tomato-cans.”
+
+Little Ann took off her chorister's-gown apron and her kerchief, and
+patted and touched up her hair. She was pink to her ears, and had
+several new dimples; and when she sat down opposite him, as she had sat
+that first night at Mrs. Bowse's boarding-house supper, Tembarom stared
+at her and caught his breath.
+
+“You ARE there?” he said, “ain't you?”
+
+“Yes, I am,” she answered.
+
+When they had cleared the table and washed the dishes, and had left
+the toy kitchen spick and span, the ten million lights in New York were
+lighted and casting their glow above the city. Tembarom sat down on the
+Adams chair before the window and took Little Ann on his knee. She was
+of the build which settles comfortably and with ease into soft curves
+whose nearness is a caress. Looked down at from the fourteenth story of
+the St. Francesca apartments, the lights strung themselves along lines
+of streets, crossing and recrossing one another; they glowed and blazed
+against masses of buildings, and they hung at enormous heights in
+mid-air here and there, apparently without any support. Everywhere was
+the glow and dazzle of their brilliancy of light, with the distant bee
+hum of a nearing elevated train, at intervals gradually deepening into a
+roar. The river looked miles below them, and craft with sparks or blaze
+of light went slowly or swiftly to and fro.
+
+“It's like a dream,” said Little Ann, after a long silence. “And we are
+up here like birds in a nest.”
+
+He gave her a closer grip.
+
+“Miss Alicia once said that when I was almost down and out,” he said.
+“It gave me a jolt. She said a place like this would be like a nest.
+Wherever we go,--and we'll have to go to lots of places and live in lots
+of different ways,--we'll keep this place, and some time we'll bring her
+here and let her try it. I've just got to show her New York.”
+
+“Yes, let us keep it,” said Little Ann, drowsily, “just for a nest.”
+
+There was another silence, and the lights on the river far below still
+twinkled or blazed as they drifted to and fro.
+
+“You are there, ain't you?” said Tembarom in a half-whisper.
+
+“Yes--I am,” murmured Little Ann.
+
+But she had had a busy day, and when he looked down at her, she hung
+softly against his shoulder, fast asleep.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of T. Tembarom, by Frances Hodgson Burnett
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diff --git a/2514-0.zip b/2514-0.zip
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+<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
+
+<!DOCTYPE html
+   PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
+   "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd" >
+
+<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en">
+  <head>
+    <title>
+      T. Tembarom, by Frances Hodgson Burnett
+    </title>
+    <style type="text/css" xml:space="preserve">
+
+    body { margin:5%; background:#faebd0; text-align:justify}
+    P { text-indent: 1em; margin-top: .25em; margin-bottom: .25em; }
+    H1,H2,H3,H4,H5,H6 { text-align: center; margin-left: 15%; margin-right: 15%; }
+    hr  { width: 50%; text-align: center;}
+    .foot { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; text-indent: -3em; font-size: 90%; }
+    blockquote {font-size: 97%; font-style: italic; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%;}
+    .mynote    {background-color: #DDE; color: #000; padding: .5em; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 95%;}
+    .toc       { margin-left: 10%; margin-bottom: .75em;}
+    .toc2      { margin-left: 20%;}
+    div.fig    { display:block; margin:0 auto; text-align:center; }
+    div.middle { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; }
+    .figleft   {float: left; margin-left: 0%; margin-right: 1%;}
+    .figright  {float: right; margin-right: 0%; margin-left: 1%;}
+    .pagenum   {display:inline; font-size: 70%; font-style:normal;
+               margin: 0; padding: 0; position: absolute; right: 1%;
+               text-align: right;}
+    pre        { font-style: italic; font-size: 90%; margin-left: 10%;}
+
+</style>
+  </head>
+  <body>
+
+
+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of T. Tembarom, by Frances Hodgson Burnett
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: T. Tembarom
+
+Author: Frances Hodgson Burnett
+
+
+Release Date: February, 2001  [Etext #2514]
+The actual date this file first posted: 03/10/01
+Last Updated: March 2, 2018
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK T. TEMBAROM ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
+
+This HTML file produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+    <div style="height: 8em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h1>
+      T. TEMBAROM
+    </h1>
+    <h2>
+      By Frances Hodgson Burnett
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <b>CONTENTS</b>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0001"> CHAPTER I: </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0002"> CHAPTER II </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0003"> CHAPTER III </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0004"> CHAPTER IV </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0005"> CHAPTER V </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0006"> CHAPTER VI </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0007"> CHAPTER VII </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0008"> CHAPTER VIII </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0009"> CHAPTER IX </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0010"> CHAPTER X </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0011"> CHAPTER XI </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0012"> CHAPTER XII </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0013"> CHAPTER XIII </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0014"> CHAPTER XIV </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0015"> CHAPTER XV </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0016"> CHAPTER XVI </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0017"> CHAPTER XVII </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0018"> CHAPTER XVIII </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0019"> CHAPTER XIX </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0020"> CHAPTER XX </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0021"> CHAPTER XXI </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0022"> CHAPTER XXII </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0023"> CHAPTER XXIII </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0024"> CHAPTER XXIV </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0025"> CHAPTER XXV </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0026"> CHAPTER XXVI </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0027"> CHAPTER XXVII </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0028"> CHAPTER XXVIII </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0029"> CHAPTER XXIX </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0030"> CHAPTER XXX </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0031"> CHAPTER XXXI </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0032"> CHAPTER XXXII </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0033"> CHAPTER XXXIII </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0034"> CHAPTER XXXIV </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0035"> CHAPTER XXXV </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0036"> CHAPTER XXXVI </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0037"> CHAPTER XXXVII </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0038"> CHAPTER XXXVIII </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0039"> CHAPTER XXXIX </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0040"> CHAPTER XL </a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0001" id="link2HCH0001">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER I:
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The boys at the Brooklyn public school which he attended did not know what
+      the &ldquo;T.&rdquo; stood for. He would never tell them. All he said in reply to
+      questions was: &ldquo;It don't stand for nothin'. You've gotter have a' 'nitial,
+      ain't you?&rdquo; His name was, in fact, an almost inevitable school-boy
+      modification of one felt to be absurd and pretentious. His Christian name
+      was Temple, which became &ldquo;Temp.&rdquo; His surname was Barom, so he was at once
+      &ldquo;Temp Barom.&rdquo; In the natural tendency to avoid waste of time it was
+      pronounced as one word, and the letter p being superfluous and cumbersome,
+      it easily settled itself into &ldquo;Tembarom,&rdquo; and there remained. By much less
+      inevitable processes have surnames evolved themselves as centuries rolled
+      by. Tembarom liked it, and soon almost forgot he had ever been called
+      anything else.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His education really began when he was ten years old. At that time his
+      mother died of pneumonia, contracted by going out to sew, at seventy-five
+      cents a day, in shoes almost entirely without soles, when the remains of a
+      blizzard were melting in the streets. As, after her funeral, there
+      remained only twenty-five cents in the shabby bureau which was one of the
+      few articles furnishing the room in the tenement in which they lived
+      together, Tembarom sleeping on a cot, the world spread itself before him
+      as a place to explore in search of at least one meal a day. There was
+      nothing to do but to explore it to the best of his ten-year-old ability.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His father had died two years before his mother, and Tembarom had vaguely
+      felt it a relief. He had been a resentful, domestically tyrannical
+      immigrant Englishman, who held in contempt every American trait and
+      institution. He had come over to better himself, detesting England and the
+      English because there was &ldquo;no chance for a man there,&rdquo; and, transferring
+      his dislikes and resentments from one country to another, had met with no
+      better luck than he had left behind him. This he felt to be the fault of
+      America, and his family, which was represented solely by Tembarom and his
+      mother, heard a good deal about it, and also, rather contradictorily, a
+      good deal about the advantages and superiority of England, to which in the
+      course of six months he became gloomily loyal. It was necessary, in fact,
+      for him to have something with which to compare the United States
+      unfavorably. The effect he produced on Tembarom was that of causing him,
+      when he entered the public school round the corner, to conceal with
+      determination verging on duplicity the humiliating fact that if he had not
+      been born in Brooklyn he might have been born in England. England was not
+      popular among the boys in the school. History had represented the country
+      to them in all its tyrannical rapacity and bloodthirsty oppression of the
+      humble free-born. The manly and admirable attitude was to say, &ldquo;Give me
+      liberty or give me death&rdquo;&mdash;and there was the Fourth of July.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Though Tembarom and his mother had been poor enough while his father
+      lived, when he died the returns from his irregular odd jobs no longer came
+      in to supplement his wife's sewing, and add an occasional day or two of
+      fuller meals, in consequence of which they were oftener than ever hungry
+      and cold, and in desperate trouble about the rent of their room. Tembarom,
+      who was a wiry, enterprising little fellow, sometimes found an odd job
+      himself. He carried notes and parcels when any one would trust him with
+      them, he split old boxes into kindling-wood, more than once he &ldquo;minded&rdquo; a
+      baby when its mother left its perambulator outside a store. But at eight
+      or nine years of age one's pay is in proportion to one's size. Tembarom,
+      however, had neither his father's bitter eye nor his mother's discouraged
+      one. Something different from either had been reincarnated in him from
+      some more cheerful past. He had an alluring grin instead&mdash;a grin
+      which curled up his mouth and showed his sound, healthy, young teeth,&mdash;a
+      lot of them,&mdash;and people liked to see them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the beginning of the world it is only recently reasonable to suppose
+      human beings were made with healthy bodies and healthy minds. That of
+      course was the original scheme of the race. It would not have been worth
+      while to create a lot of things aimlessly ill made. A journeyman carpenter
+      would not waste his time in doing it, if he knew any better. Given the
+      power to make a man, even an amateur would make him as straight as he
+      could, inside and out. Decent vanity would compel him to do it. He would
+      be ashamed to show the thing and admit he had done it, much less people a
+      world with millions of like proofs of incompetence. Logically considered,
+      the race was built straight and clean and healthy and happy. How, since
+      then, it has developed in multitudinous less sane directions, and lost its
+      normal straightness and proportions, I am, singularly enough, not entirely
+      competent to explain with any degree of satisfactory detail. But it cannot
+      be truthfully denied that this has rather generally happened. There are
+      human beings who are not beautiful, there are those who are not healthy,
+      there are those who hate people and things with much waste of physical and
+      mental energy, there are people who are not unwilling to do others an ill
+      turn by word or deed, and there are those who do not believe that the
+      original scheme of the race was ever a decent one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This is all abnormal and unintelligent, even the not being beautiful, and
+      sometimes one finds oneself called upon passionately to resist a
+      temptation to listen to an internal hint that the whole thing is aimless.
+      Upon this tendency one may as well put one's foot firmly, as it leads
+      nowhere. At such times it is supporting to call to mind a certain
+      undeniable fact which ought to loom up much larger in our philosophical
+      calculations. No one has ever made a collection of statistics regarding
+      the enormous number of perfectly sane, kind, friendly, decent creatures
+      who form a large proportion of any mass of human beings anywhere and
+      everywhere&mdash;people who are not vicious or cruel or depraved, not as a
+      result of continual self-control, but simply because they do not want to
+      be, because it is more natural and agreeable to be exactly the opposite
+      things; people who do not tell lies because they could not do it with any
+      pleasure, and would, on the contrary, find the exertion an annoyance and a
+      bore; people whose manners and morals are good because their natural
+      preference lies in that direction. There are millions of them who in most
+      essays on life and living are virtually ignored because they do none of
+      the things which call forth eloquent condemnation or brilliant cynicism.
+      It has not yet become the fashion to record them. When one reads a daily
+      newspaper filled with dramatic elaborations of crimes and unpleasantness,
+      one sometimes wishes attention might be called to them&mdash;to their
+      numbers, to their decencies, to their normal lack of any desire to do
+      violence and their equally normal disposition to lend a hand. One is
+      inclined to feel that the majority of persons do not believe in their
+      existence. But if an accident occurs in the street, there are always
+      several of them who appear to spring out of the earth to give human
+      sympathy and assistance; if a national calamity, physical or social, takes
+      place, the world suddenly seems full of them. They are the thousands of
+      Browns, Joneses, and Robinsons who, massed together, send food to
+      famine-stricken countries, sustenance to earthquake-devastated regions,
+      aid to wounded soldiers or miners or flood-swept homelessness. They are
+      the ones who have happened naturally to continue to grow straight and
+      carry out the First Intention. They really form the majority; if they did
+      not, the people of the earth would have eaten one another alive centuries
+      ago. But though this is surely true, a happy cynicism totally disbelieves
+      in their existence. When a combination of circumstances sufficiently
+      dramatic brings one of them into prominence, he is either called an angel
+      or a fool. He is neither. He is only a human creature who is normal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After this manner Tembarom was wholly normal. He liked work and rejoiced
+      in good cheer, when he found it, however attenuated its form. He was a
+      good companion, and even at ten years old a practical person. He took his
+      loose coppers from the old bureau drawer, and remembering that he had
+      several times helped Jake Hutchins to sell his newspapers, he went forth
+      into the world to find and consult him as to the investment of his
+      capital.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where are you goin', Tem?&rdquo; a woman who lived in the next room said when
+      she met him on the stairs. &ldquo;What you goin' to do?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm goin' to sell newspapers if I can get some with this,&rdquo; he replied,
+      opening his hand to show her the extent of his resources.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was almost as poor as he was, but not quite. She looked him over
+      curiously for a moment, and then fumbled in her pocket. She drew out two
+      ten-cent pieces and considered them, hesitating. Then she looked again at
+      him. That normal expression in his nice ten-year-old eyes had its
+      suggestive effect.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You take this,&rdquo; she said, handing him the two pieces. &ldquo;It'll help you to
+      start.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll bring it back, ma'am,&rdquo; said Tem. &ldquo;Thank you, Mis' Hullingworth.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In about two weeks' time he did bring it back. That was the beginning. He
+      lived through all the experiences a small boy waif and stray would be
+      likely to come in contact with. The abnormal class treated him ill, and
+      the normal class treated him well. He managed to get enough food to eat to
+      keep him from starvation. Sometimes he slept under a roof and much oftener
+      out-of-doors. He preferred to sleep out-of-doors more than half of the
+      year, and the rest of the time he did what he could. He saw and learned
+      many strange things, but was not undermined by vice because he
+      unconsciously preferred decency. He sold newspapers and annexed any old
+      job which appeared on the horizon. The education the New York streets gave
+      him was a liberal one. He became accustomed to heat and cold and wet
+      weather, but having sound lungs and a tough little body combined with the
+      normal tendencies already mentioned, he suffered no more physical
+      deterioration than a young Indian would suffer. After selling newspapers
+      for two years he got a place as &ldquo;boy&rdquo; in a small store. The advance
+      signified by steady employment was inspiring to his energies. He forged
+      ahead, and got a better job and better pay as he grew older. By the time
+      he was fifteen he shared a small bedroom with another boy. In whatsoever
+      quarter he lived, friends seemed sporadic. Other boy's congregated about
+      him. He did not know he had any effect at all, but his effect, in fact,
+      was rather like that of a fire in winter or a cool breeze in summer. It
+      was natural to gather where it prevailed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There came a time when he went to a night class to learn stenography.
+      Great excitement had been aroused among the boys he knew best by a rumor
+      that there were &ldquo;fellows&rdquo; who could earn a hundred dollars a week &ldquo;writing
+      short.&rdquo; Boyhood could not resist the florid splendor of the idea. Four of
+      them entered the class confidently looking forward to becoming the
+      recipients of four hundred a month in the course of six weeks. One by one
+      they dropped off, until only Tembarom remained, slowly forging ahead. He
+      had never meant anything else but to get on in the world&mdash;to get as
+      far as he could. He kept at his &ldquo;short,&rdquo; and by the time he was nineteen
+      it helped him to a place in a newspaper office. He took dictation from a
+      nervous and harried editor, who, when he was driven to frenzy by overwork
+      and incompetencies, found that the long-legged, clean youth with the grin
+      never added fuel to the flame of his wrath. He was a common young man, who
+      was not marked by special brilliancy of intelligence, but he had a clear
+      head and a good temper, and a queer aptitude for being able to see himself
+      in the other man's shoes&mdash;his difficulties and moods. This ended in
+      his being tried with bits of new work now and then. In an emergency he was
+      once sent out to report the details of a fire. What he brought back was
+      usable, and his elation when he found he had actually &ldquo;made good&rdquo; was
+      ingenuous enough to spur Galton, the editor, into trying him again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To Tembarom this was a magnificent experience. The literary suggestion
+      implied by being &ldquo;on a newspaper&rdquo; was more than he had hoped for. If you
+      have sold newspapers, and slept in a barrel or behind a pile of lumber in
+      a wood-yard, to report a fire in a street-car shed seems a flight of
+      literature. He applied himself to the careful study of newspapers&mdash;their
+      points of view, their style of phrasing. He believed them to be perfect.
+      To attain ease in expressing himself in their elevated language he felt to
+      be the summit of lofty ambition. He had no doubts of the exaltation of his
+      ideal. His respect and confidence almost made Galton cry at times, because
+      they recalled to him days when he had been nineteen and had regarded New
+      York journalists with reverence. He liked Tembarom more and more. It
+      actually soothed him to have him about, and he fell into giving him one
+      absurd little chance after another. When he brought in &ldquo;stuff&rdquo; which bore
+      too evident marks of utter ignorance, he actually touched it up and used
+      it, giving him an enlightening, ironical hint or so. Tembarom always took
+      the hints with gratitude. He had no mistaken ideas of his own powers.
+      Galton loomed up before him a sort of god, and though the editor was a man
+      with a keen, though wearied, brain and a sense of humor, the situation was
+      one naturally productive of harmonious relations. He was of the many who
+      unknowingly came in out of the cold and stood in the glow of Tembarom's
+      warm fire, or took refuge from the heat in his cool breeze. He did not
+      know of the private, arduous study of journalistic style, and it was not
+      unpleasing to see that the nice young cub was gradually improving. Through
+      pure modest fear or ridicule, Tembarom kept to himself his vaulting
+      ambition. He practised reports of fires, weddings, and accidents in his
+      hall bedroom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A hall bedroom in a third-rate boarding-house is not a cheerful place, but
+      when Tembarom vaguely felt this, he recalled the nights spent in empty
+      trucks and behind lumber-piles, and thought he was getting spoiled by
+      luxury. He told himself that he was a fellow who always had luck. He did
+      not know, neither did any one else, that his luck would have followed him
+      if he had lived in a coal-hole. It was the concomitant of his normal build
+      and outlook on life. Mrs. Bowse, his hard-worked landlady, began by being
+      calmed down by his mere bearing when he came to apply for his room and
+      board. She had a touch of grippe, and had just emerged from a heated
+      affray with a dirty cook, and was inclined to battle when he presented
+      himself. In a few minutes she was inclined to battle no longer. She let
+      him have the room. Cantankerous restrictions did not ruffle him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course what you say GOES,&rdquo; he said, giving her his friendly grin. &ldquo;Any
+      one that takes boarders has GOT to be careful. You're in for a bad cold,
+      ain't you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've got grippe again, that's what I've got,&rdquo; she almost snapped.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did you ever try Payson's 'G. Destroyer'? G stands for grippe, you know.
+      Catchy name, ain't it? They say the man that invented it got ten thousand
+      dollars for it. 'G. Destroyer.' You feel like you have to find out what it
+      means when you see it up on a boarding. I'm just over grippe myself, and
+      I've got half a bottle in my pocket. You carry it about with you, and
+      swallow one every half-hour. You just try it. It set me right in no time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He took the bottle out of his waistcoat pocket and handed it to her. She
+      took it and turned it over.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You're awful good-natured,&rdquo;&mdash;She hesitated,&mdash;&ldquo;but I ain't going
+      to take your medicine. I ought to go and get some for myself. How much
+      does it cost?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's on the bottle; but it's having to get it for yourself that's the
+      matter. You won't have time, and you'll forget it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's true enough,&rdquo; said Mrs. Bowse, looking at him sharply. &ldquo;I guess
+      you know something about boarding-houses.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I guess I know something about trying to earn three meals a day&mdash;or
+      two of them. It's no merry jest, whichever way you do it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0002" id="link2HCH0002">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER II
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      When he took possession of his hall bedroom the next day and came down to
+      his first meal, all the boarders looked at him interestedly. They had
+      heard of the G. Destroyer from Mrs. Bowse, whose grippe had disappeared.
+      Jim Bowles and Julius Steinberger looked at him because they were about
+      his own age, and shared a hall bedroom on his floor; the young woman from
+      the notion counter in a down-town department store looked at him because
+      she was a young woman; the rest of the company looked at him because a
+      young man in a hall bedroom might or might not be noisy or objectionable,
+      and the incident of the G. Destroyer sounded good-natured. Mr. Joseph
+      Hutchinson, the stout and discontented Englishman from Manchester, looked
+      him over because the mere fact that he was a new-comer had placed him by
+      his own rash act in the position of a target for criticism. Mr. Hutchinson
+      had come to New York because he had been told that he could find backers
+      among profuse and innumerable multi-millionaires for the invention which
+      had been the haunting vision of his uninspiring life. He had not been met
+      with the careless rapture which had been described to him, and he was
+      becoming violently antagonistic to American capital and pessimistic in his
+      views of American institutions. Like Tembarom's father, he was the
+      resentful Englishman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't think much o' that chap,&rdquo; he said in what he considered an
+      undertone to his daughter, who sat beside him and tried to manage that he
+      should not be infuriated by waiting for butter and bread and second
+      helpings. A fine, healthy old feudal feeling that servants should be
+      roared at if they did not &ldquo;look sharp&rdquo; when he wanted anything was one of
+      his salient characteristics.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wait a bit, Father; we don't know anything about him yet,&rdquo; Ann Hutchinson
+      murmured quietly, hoping that his words had been lost in the clatter of
+      knives and forks and dishes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As Tembarom had taken his seat, he had found that, when he looked across
+      the table, he looked directly at Miss Hutchinson; and before the meal
+      ended he felt that he was in great good luck to be placed opposite an
+      object of such singular interest. He knew nothing about &ldquo;types,&rdquo; but if he
+      had been of those who do, he would probably have said to himself that she
+      was of a type apart. As it was, he merely felt that she was of a kind one
+      kept looking at whether one ought to or not. She was a little thing of
+      that exceedingly light slimness of build which makes a girl a childish
+      feather-weight. Few girls retain it after fourteen or fifteen. A wind
+      might supposably have blown her away, but one knew it would not, because
+      she was firm and steady on her small feet. Ordinary strength could have
+      lifted her with one hand, and would have been tempted to do it. She had a
+      slim, round throat, and the English daisy face it upheld caused it to
+      suggest to the mind the stem of a flower. The roundness of her cheek, in
+      and out of which totally unexpected dimples flickered, and the
+      forget-me-not blueness of her eyes, which were large and rather round
+      also, made her look like a nice baby of singularly serious and observing
+      mind. She looked at one as certain awe-inspiring things in perambulators
+      look at one&mdash;with a far and clear silence of gaze which passes beyond
+      earthly obstacles and reserves a benign patience with follies. Tembarom
+      felt interestedly that one really might quail before it, if one had
+      anything of an inferior quality to hide. And yet it was not a critical
+      gaze at all. She wore a black dress with a bit of white collar, and she
+      had so much soft, red hair that he could not help recalling one or two
+      women who owned the same quantity and seemed able to carry it only as a
+      sort of untidy bundle. Hers looked entirely under control, and yet was
+      such a wonder of burnished fullness that it tempted the hand to reach out
+      and touch it. It became Tembarom's task during the meal to keep his eyes
+      from turning too often toward it and its owner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If she had been a girl who took things hard, she might have taken her
+      father very hard indeed. But opinions and feelings being solely a matter
+      of points of view, she was very fond of him, and, regarding him as a
+      sacred charge and duty, took care of him as though she had been a
+      reverentially inclined mother taking care of a boisterous son. When his
+      roar was heard, her calm little voice always fell quietly on indignant
+      ears the moment it ceased. It was her part in life to act as a palliative:
+      her mother, whose well-trained attitude toward the ruling domestic male
+      was of the early Victorian order, had lived and died one. A nicer, warmer
+      little woman had never existed. Joseph Hutchinson had adored and depended
+      on her as much as he had harried her. When he had charged about like a mad
+      bull because he could not button his collar, or find the pipe he had
+      mislaid in his own pocket, she had never said more than &ldquo;Now, Mr.
+      Hutchinson,&rdquo; or done more than leave her sewing to button the collar with
+      soothing fingers, and suggest quietly that sometimes he DID chance to
+      carry his pipe about with him. She was of the class which used to call its
+      husband by a respectful surname. When she died she left him as a sort of
+      legacy to her daughter, spending the last weeks of her life in explaining
+      affectionately all that &ldquo;Father&rdquo; needed to keep him quiet and make him
+      comfortable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Little Ann had never forgotten a detail, and had even improved upon some
+      of them, as she happened to be cleverer than her mother, and had, indeed,
+      a far-seeing and clear young mind of her own. She had been called &ldquo;Little
+      Ann&rdquo; all her life. This had held in the first place because her mother's
+      name had been Ann also, and after her mother's death the diminutive had
+      not fallen away from her. People felt it belonged to her not because she
+      was especially little, though she was a small, light person, but because
+      there was an affectionate humor in the sound of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Despite her hard needs, Mrs. Bowse would have faced the chance of losing
+      two boarders rather than have kept Mr. Joseph Hutchinson but for Little
+      Ann. As it was, she kept them both, and in the course of three months the
+      girl was Little Ann to almost every one in the house. Her normalness took
+      the form of an instinct which amounted to genius for seeing what people
+      ought to have, and in some occult way filling in bare or trying places.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She's just a wonder, that girl,&rdquo; Mrs. Bowse said to one boarder after
+      another.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She's just a wonder,&rdquo; Jim Bowles and Julius Steinberger murmured to each
+      other in rueful confidence, as they tilted their chairs against the wall
+      of their hall bedroom and smoked. Each of the shabby and poverty-stricken
+      young men had of course fallen hopelessly in love with her at once. This
+      was merely human and inevitable, but realizing in the course of a few
+      weeks that she was too busy taking care of her irritable, boisterous old
+      Manchester father, and everybody else, to have time to be made love to
+      even by young men who could buy new boots when the old ones had ceased to
+      be water-tight, they were obliged to resign themselves to the, after all,
+      comforting fact that she became a mother to them, not a sister. She mended
+      their socks and sewed buttons on for them with a firm frankness which
+      could not be persuaded into meaning anything more sentimental than a fixed
+      habit of repairing anything which needed it, and which, while at first
+      bewildering in its serenity, ended by reducing the two youths to a dust of
+      devotion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She's a wonder, she is,&rdquo; they sighed when at every weekend they found
+      their forlorn and scanty washing resting tidily on their bed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the course of a week, more or less, Tembarom's feeling for her would
+      have been exactly that of his two hall-bedroom neighbors, but that his
+      nature, though a practical one, was not inclined to any supine degree of
+      resignation. He was a sensible youth, however, and gave no trouble. Even
+      Joseph Hutchinson, who of course resented furiously any &ldquo;nonsense&rdquo; of
+      which his daughter and possession was the object, became sufficiently
+      mollified by his good spirits and ready good nature to refrain from open
+      conversational assault.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't mind that chap as much as I did at first,&rdquo; he admitted
+      reluctantly to Little Ann one evening after a good dinner and a
+      comfortable pipe. &ldquo;He's not such a fool as he looks.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Tembarom was given, as Little Ann was, to seeing what people wanted. He
+      knew when to pass the mustard and other straying condiments. He picked up
+      things which dropped inconveniently, he did not interrupt the remarks of
+      his elders and betters, and several times when he chanced to be in the
+      hall, and saw Mr. Hutchinson, in irritable, stout Englishman fashion,
+      struggling into his overcoat, he sprang forward with a light, friendly air
+      and helped him. 'He did not do it with ostentatious politeness or with the
+      manner of active youth giving generous aid to elderly avoirdupois. He did
+      it as though it occurred to him as a natural result of being on the spot.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It took Mrs. Bowse and her boarding-house less than a week definitely to
+      like him. Every night when he sat down to dinner he brought news with
+      him-news and jokes and new slang. Newspaper-office anecdote and talk gave
+      a journalistic air to the gathering when he was present, and there was
+      novelty in it. Soon every one was intimate with him, and interested in
+      what he was doing. Galton's good-natured patronage of him was a thing to
+      which no one was indifferent. It was felt to be the right thing in the
+      right place. When he came home at night it became the custom to ask him
+      questions as to the bits of luck which befell him. He became &ldquo;T. T.&rdquo;
+       instead of Mr. Tembarom, except to Joseph Hutchinson and his 'daughter.
+      Hutchinson called him Tembarom, but Little Ann said &ldquo;Mr. Tembarom&rdquo; with
+      quaint frequency when she spoke to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Landed anything to-day, T. T.?&rdquo; some one would ask almost every evening,
+      and the interest in his relation of the day's adventures increased from
+      week to week. Little Ann never asked questions and seldom made comments,
+      but she always listened attentively. She had gathered, and guessed from
+      what she had gathered, a rather definite idea of what his hard young life
+      had been. He did not tell pathetic stories about himself, but he and Jim
+      Bowles and Julius Steinberger had become fast friends, and the genial
+      smoking of cheap tobacco in hall bedrooms tends to frankness of relation,
+      and the various ways in which each had found himself &ldquo;up against it&rdquo; in
+      the course of their brief years supplied material for anecdotal talk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But it's bound to be easier from now on,&rdquo; he would say. &ldquo;I've got the
+      'short' down pretty fine&mdash;not fine enough to make big money, but
+      enough to hold down a job with Galton. He's mighty good to me. If I knew
+      more, I believe he'd give me a column to take care of&mdash;Up-town
+      Society column perhaps. A fellow named Biker's got it. Twenty per. Goes on
+      a bust twice a month, the fool. Gee! I wish I had his job!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Bowse's house was provided with a parlor in which her boarders could
+      sit in the evening when so inclined. It was a fearsome room, which, when
+      the dark, high-ceilinged hall was entered, revealed depths of dingy gloom
+      which appeared splashed in spots with incongruous brilliancy of color.
+      This effect was produced by richly framed department-store chromo
+      lithographs on the walls, aided by lurid cushion-covers, or &ldquo;tidies&rdquo;
+       representing Indian maidens or chieftains in full war paint, or clusters
+      of poppies of great boldness of hue. They had either been Christmas gifts
+      bestowed upon Mrs. Bowse or department-store bargains of her own
+      selection, purchased with thrifty intent. The red-and-green plush
+      upholstered walnut chairs arid sofa had been acquired by her when the
+      bankruptcy of a neighboring boarding-house brought them within her means.
+      They were no longer very red or very green, and the cheerfully hopeful
+      design of the tidies and cushions had been to conceal worn places and
+      stains. The mantelpiece was adorned by a black-walnut-and-gold-framed
+      mirror, and innumerable vases of the ornate ninety-eight-cents order. The
+      centerpiece held a large and extremely soiled spray of artificial
+      wistaria. The end of the room was rendered attractive by a tent-like
+      cozy-corner built of savage weapons and Oriental cotton stuffs long ago
+      become stringy and almost leprous in hue. The proprietor of the bankrupt
+      boarding-house had been &ldquo;artistic.&rdquo; But Mrs. Bowse was a good-enough soul
+      whose boarders liked her and her house, and when the gas was lighted and
+      some one played &ldquo;rag-time&rdquo; on the second-hand pianola, they liked the
+      parlor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Little Ann did not often appear in it, but now and then she came down with
+      her bit of sewing,&mdash;she always had a &ldquo;bit of sewing,&rdquo;&mdash;and she
+      sat in the cozy-corner listening to the talk or letting some one confide
+      troubles to her. Sometimes it was the New England widow, Mrs. Peck, who
+      looked like a spinster school-ma'am, but who had a married son with a nice
+      wife who lived in Harlem and drank heavily. She used to consult with
+      Little Ann as to the possible wisdom of putting a drink deterrent
+      privately in his tea. Sometimes it was Mr. Jakes, a depressed little man
+      whose wife had left him, for no special reason he could discover. Oftenest
+      perhaps it was Julius Steinberger or Jim Bowles who did their ingenuous
+      best to present themselves to her as energetic, if not successful, young
+      business men, not wholly unworthy of attention and always breathing daily
+      increasing devotion. Sometimes it was Tembarom, of whom her opinion had
+      never been expressed, but who seemed to have made friends with her. She
+      liked to hear about the newspaper office and Mr. Galton, and never was
+      uninterested in his hopes of &ldquo;making good.&rdquo; She seemed to him the wisest
+      and most direct and composed person he had ever known. She spoke with the
+      broad, flat, friendly Manchester accent, and when she let drop a
+      suggestion, it carried a delightfully sober conviction with it, because
+      what she said was generally a revelation of logical mental argument
+      concerning details she had gathered through her little way of listening
+      and saying nothing whatever.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If Mr. Biker drinks, he won't keep his place,&rdquo; she said to Tembarom one
+      night. &ldquo;Perhaps you might get it yourself, if you persevere.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Tembarom reddened a little. He really reddened through joyous excitement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Say, I didn't know you knew a thing about that,&rdquo; he answered. &ldquo;You're a
+      regular wonder. You scarcely ever say anything, but the way you get on to
+      things gets me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps if I talked more I shouldn't notice as much,&rdquo; she said, turning
+      her bit of sewing round and examining it. &ldquo;I never was much of a talker.
+      Father's a good talker, and Mother and me got into the way of listening.
+      You do if you live with a good talker.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Tembarom looked at the girl with a male gentleness, endeavoring to subdue
+      open expression of the fact that he was convinced that she was as
+      thoroughly aware of her father's salient characteristics as she was of
+      other things.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You do,&rdquo; said Tembarom. Then picking up her scissors, which had dropped
+      from her lap, and politely returning them, he added anxiously: &ldquo;To think
+      of you remembering Biker! I wonder, if I ever did get his job, if I could
+      hold it down?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; decided Little Ann; &ldquo;you could. I've noticed you're that kind of
+      person, Mr. Tembarom.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have you?&rdquo; he said elatedly. &ldquo;Say, honest Injun?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shall be getting stuck on myself if you encourage me like that,&rdquo; he
+      said, and then, his face falling, he added, &ldquo;Biker graduated at
+      Princeton.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't know much about society,&rdquo; Little Ann remarked,&mdash;&ldquo;I never saw
+      any either up-town or down-town or in the country,&mdash;but I shouldn't
+      think you'd have to have a college education to write the things you see
+      about it in the newspaper paragraphs.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Tembarom grinned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They're not real high-brow stuff, are they,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;'There was a
+      brilliant gathering on Tuesday evening at the house of Mr. Jacob
+      Sturtburger at 79 Two Hundredth Street on the occasion of the marriage of
+      his daughter Miss Rachel Sturtburger to Mr. Eichenstein. The bride was
+      attired in white peau de cygne trimmed with duchess lace.'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Little Ann took him up. &ldquo;I don't know what peau de cygne is, and I daresay
+      the bride doesn't. I've never been to anything but a village school, but I
+      could make up paragraphs like that myself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's the up-town kind,&rdquo; said Tembarom. &ldquo;The down-town ones wear their
+      mothers' point-lace wedding-veils some-times, but they're not much
+      different. Say, I believe I could do it if I had luck.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So do I,&rdquo; returned Little Ann.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tembarom looked down at the carpet, thinking the thing over. Ann went on
+      sewing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's the way with you,&rdquo; he said presently: &ldquo;you put things into a
+      fellow's head. You've given me a regular boost, Little Ann.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It is not unlikely that but for the sensible conviction in her voice he
+      would have felt less bold when, two weeks later, Biker, having gone upon a
+      &ldquo;bust&rdquo; too prolonged, was dismissed with-out benefit of clergy, and Galton
+      desperately turned to Tembarom with anxious question in his eye.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you think you could take this job?&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tembarom's heart, as he believed at the time, jumped into his throat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you think, Mr. Galton?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It isn't a thing to think about,&rdquo; was Galton's answer. &ldquo;It's a thing I
+      must be sure of.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said Tembarom, &ldquo;if you give it to me, I'll put up a mighty hard
+      fight before I fall down.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Galton considered him, scrutinizing keenly his tough, long-built body, his
+      sharp, eager, boyish face, and especially his companionable grin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We'll let it go at that,&rdquo; he decided. &ldquo;You'll make friends up in Harlem,
+      and you won't find it hard to pick up news. We can at least try it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Tembarom's heart jumped into his throat again, and he swallowed it once
+      more. He was glad he was not holding his hat in his hand because he knew
+      he would have forgotten himself and thrown it up into the air.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you, Mr. Galton,&rdquo; he said, flushing tremendously. &ldquo;I'd like to tell
+      you how I appreciate your trusting me, but I don't know how. Thank you,
+      sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      When he appeared in Mrs. Bowse's dining-room that evening there was a glow
+      of elation about him and a swing in his entry which attracted all eyes at
+      once. For some unknown reason everybody looked at him, and, meeting his
+      eyes, detected the presence of some new exultation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Landed anything, T. T.?&rdquo; Jim Bowles cried out. &ldquo;You look it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sure I look it,&rdquo; Tembarom answered, taking his napkin out of its ring
+      with an unconscious flourish. &ldquo;I've landed the up-town society page&mdash;landed
+      it, by gee!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A good-humored chorus of ejaculatory congratulation broke forth all round
+      the table.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good business!&rdquo; &ldquo;Three cheers for T. T.!&rdquo; &ldquo;Glad of it!&rdquo; &ldquo;Here's luck!&rdquo;
+       said one after another.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They were all pleased, and it was generally felt that Galton had shown
+      sense and done the right thing again. Even Mr. Hutchinson rolled about in
+      his chair and grunted his approval.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After dinner Tembarom, Jim Bowles, and Julius Steinberger went upstairs
+      stairs together and filled the hall bedroom with clouds of tobacco-smoke,
+      tilting their chairs against the wall, smoking their pipes furiously,
+      flushed and talkative, working themselves up with the exhilarated
+      plannings of youth. Jim Bowles and Julius had been down on their luck for
+      several weeks, and that &ldquo;good old T. T.&rdquo; should come in with this
+      fairy-story was an actual stimulus. If you have never in your life been
+      able to earn more than will pay for your food and lodging, twenty dollars
+      looms up large. It might be the beginning of anything.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;First thing is to get on to the way to do it,&rdquo; argued Tembarom. &ldquo;I don't
+      know the first thing. I've got to think it out. I couldn't ask Biker. He
+      wouldn't tell me, anyhow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's pretty mad, I guess,&rdquo; said Steinberger.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mad as hops,&rdquo; Tembarom answered. &ldquo;As I was coming down-stairs from
+      Galton's room he was standing in the hall talking to Miss Dooley, and he
+      said: `That Tembarom fellow's going to do it! He doesn't know how to
+      spell. I should like to see his stuff come in.' He said it loud, because
+      he wanted me to hear it, and he sort of laughed through his nose.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Say, T. T., can you spell?&rdquo; Jim inquired thoughtfully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Spell? Me? No,&rdquo; Tembarom owned with unshaken good cheer. &ldquo;What I've got
+      to do is to get a tame dictionary and keep it chained to the leg of my
+      table. Those words with two m's or two l's in them get me right down on
+      the mat. But the thing that looks biggest to me is how to find out where
+      the news is, and the name of the fellow that'll put me on to it. You can't
+      go up a man's front steps and ring the bell and ask him if he's going to
+      be married or buried or have a pink tea.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wasn't that a knock at the door?&rdquo; said Steinberger.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a knock, and Tembarom jumped up and threw the door open, thinking
+      Mrs. Bowse might have come on some household errand. But it was Little Ann
+      Hutchinson instead of Mrs. Bowse, and there was a threaded needle stuck
+      into the front of her dress, and she had on a thimble.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I want Mr. Bowles's new socks,&rdquo; she said maternally. &ldquo;I promised I'd mark
+      them for him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Bowles and Steinberger sprang from their chairs, and came forward in the
+      usual comfortable glow of pleasure at sight of her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you think of that for all the comforts of a home?&rdquo; said Tembarom.
+      &ldquo;As if it wasn't enough for a man to have new socks without having marks
+      put on them! What are your old socks made of anyhow&mdash;solid gold?
+      Burglars ain't going to break in and steal them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They won't when I've marked them, Mr. Tembarom,&rdquo; answered Little Ann,
+      looking up at him with sober, round, for-get-me-not blue eyes, but with a
+      deep dimple breaking out near her lip; &ldquo;but all three pairs would not come
+      home from the wash if I didn't.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Three pairs!&rdquo; ejaculated Tembarom. &ldquo;He's got three pairs of socks! New?
+      That's what's been the matter with him for the last week. Don't you mark
+      them for him, Little Ann. 'Tain't good for a man to have everything.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here they are,&rdquo; said Jim, bringing them forward. &ldquo;Twenty-five marked down
+      to ten at Tracy's. Are they pretty good?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Little Ann looked them over with the practised eye of a connoisseur of
+      bargains.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They'd be about a shilling in Manchester shops,&rdquo; she decided, &ldquo;and they
+      might be put down to sixpence. They're good enough to take care of.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She was not the young woman who is ready for prolonged lively conversation
+      in halls and at bedroom doors, and she had turned away with the new socks
+      in her hand when Tembarom, suddenly inspired, darted after her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Say, I've just thought of something,&rdquo; he exclaimed eagerly. &ldquo;It's
+      something I want to ask you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's about the society-page lay-out.&rdquo; He hesitated. &ldquo;I wonder if it'd be
+      rushing you too much if&mdash;say,&rdquo; he suddenly broke off, and standing
+      with his hands in his pockets, looked down at her with anxious admiration,
+      &ldquo;I believe you just know about everything.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I don't, Mr. Tembarom; but I'm very glad about the page. Everybody's
+      glad.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      One of the chief difficulties Tembarom found facing him when he talked to
+      Little Ann was the difficulty of resisting an awful temptation to take
+      hold of her&mdash;to clutch her to his healthy, tumultuous young breast
+      and hold her there firmly. He was half ashamed of himself when he realized
+      it, but he knew that his venial weakness was shared by Jim Bowles and
+      Steinberger and probably others. She was so slim and light and soft, and
+      the serious frankness of her eyes and the quaint air of being a sort of
+      grown-up child of astonishing intelligence produced an effect it was
+      necessary to combat with.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What I wanted to say,&rdquo; he put it to her, &ldquo;was that I believe if you'd
+      just let me talk this thing out to you it'd do me good. I believe you'd
+      help me to get somewhere. I've got to fix up a scheme for getting next the
+      people who have things happening to them that I can make society stuff out
+      of, you know. Biker didn't make a hit of it, but, gee! I've just got to.
+      I've got to.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; answered Little Ann, her eyes fixed on him thoughtfully; &ldquo;you've
+      got to, Mr. Tembarom.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There's not a soul in the parlor. Would you mind coming down and sitting
+      there while I talk at you and try to work things out? You could go on with
+      your marking.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She thought it over a minute.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll do it if Father can spare me,&rdquo; she made up her mind. &ldquo;I'll go and
+      ask him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She went to ask him, and returned in two or three minutes with her small
+      sewing-basket in her hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He can spare me,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;He's reading his paper, and doesn't want to
+      talk.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They went down-stairs together and found the room empty. Tembarom turned
+      up the lowered gas, and Little Ann sat down in the cozy-corner with her
+      work-basket on her knee. Tembarom drew up a chair and sat down opposite to
+      her. She threaded a needle and took up one of Jim's new socks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now,&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's like this,&rdquo; he explained. &ldquo;The page is a new deal, anyhow. There
+      didn't used to be an up-town society column at all. It was all Fifth
+      Avenue and the four hundred; but ours isn't a fashionable paper, and their
+      four hundred ain't going to buy it to read their names in it. They'd
+      rather pay to keep out of it. Uptown's growing like smoke, and there's
+      lots of people up that way that'd like their friends to read about their
+      weddings and receptions, and would buy a dozen copies to send away when
+      their names were in. There's no end of women and girls that'd like to see
+      their clothes described and let their friends read the descriptions.
+      They'd buy the paper, too, you bet. It'll be a big circulation-increaser.
+      It's Galton's idea, and he gave the job to Biker because he thought an
+      educated fellow could get hold of people. But somehow he couldn't. Seems
+      as if they didn't like him. He kept getting turned down. The page has been
+      mighty poor&mdash;no pictures of brides or anything. Galton's been sick
+      over it. He'd been sure it'd make a hit. Then Biker's always drinking more
+      or less, and he's got the swell head, anyhow. I believe that's the reason
+      he couldn't make good with the up-towners.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps he was too well educated, Mr. Tembarom,&rdquo; said Little Ann. She was
+      marking a letter J in red cotton, and her outward attention was apparently
+      wholly fixed on her work.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Say, now,&rdquo; Tembarom broke out, &ldquo;there's where you come in. You go on
+      working as if there was nothing but that sock in New York, but I guess
+      you've just hit the dot. Perhaps that was it. He wanted to do Fifth Avenue
+      work anyway, and he didn't go at Harlem right. He put on Princeton airs
+      when he asked questions. Gee! a fellow can't put on any kind of airs when
+      he's the one that's got to ask.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You'll get on better,&rdquo; remarked Little Ann. &ldquo;You've got a friendly way
+      and you've a lot of sense. I've noticed it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her head was bent over the red J and she still looked at it and not at
+      Tembarom. This was not coyness, but simple, calm absorption. If she had
+      not been making the J, she would have sat with her hands folded in her
+      lap, and gazed at the young man with undisturbed attention.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have you?&rdquo; said Tembarom, gratefully. &ldquo;That gives me another boost,
+      Little Ann. What a man seems to need most is just plain
+      twenty-cents-a-yard sense. Not that I ever thought I had the dollar kind.
+      I'm not putting on airs.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. Galton knows the kind you have. I suppose that's why he gave you the
+      page.&rdquo; The words, spoken in the shrewd-sounding Manchester accent, were
+      neither flattering nor unflattering; they were merely impartial.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, now I've got it, I can't fall down,&rdquo; said Tembarom. &ldquo;I've got to
+      find out for myself how to get next to the people I want to talk to. I've
+      got to find out who to get next to.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Little Ann put in the final red stitch of the letter J and laid the sock
+      neatly folded on the basket.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've just been thinking something, Mr. Tembarom,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Who makes
+      the wedding-cakes?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He gave a delighted start.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Gee!&rdquo; he broke out, &ldquo;the wedding-cakes!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; Little Ann proceeded, &ldquo;they'd have to have wedding-cakes, and
+      perhaps if you went to the shops where they're sold and could make friends
+      with the people, they'd tell you whom they were selling them to, and you
+      could get the addresses and go and find out things.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Tembarom, glowing with admiring enthusiasm, thrust out his hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Little Ann, shake!&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;You've given me the whole show, just like I
+      thought you would. You're just the limit.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, a wedding-cake's the next thing after the bride,&rdquo; she answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her practical little head had given him the practical lead. The mere
+      wedding-cake opened up vistas. Confectioners supplied not only weddings,
+      but refreshments for receptions and dances. Dances suggested the &ldquo;halls&rdquo;
+       in which they were held. You could get information at such places. Then
+      there were the churches, and the florists who decorated festal scenes.
+      Tembarom's excitement grew as he talked. One plan led to another; vistas
+      opened on all sides. It all began to look so easy that he could not
+      understand how Biker could possibly have gone into such a land of promise,
+      and returned embittered and empty-handed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He thought too much of himself and too little of other people,&rdquo; Little
+      Ann summed him up in her unsevere, reasonable voice. &ldquo;That's so silly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Tembarom tried not to look at her affectionately, but his voice was
+      affectionate as well as admiring, despite him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The way you get on to a thing just in three words!&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Daniel
+      Webster ain't in it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I dare say if you let the people in the shops know that you come from a
+      newspaper, it'll be a help,&rdquo; she went on with ingenuous worldly wisdom.
+      &ldquo;They'll think it'll be a kind of advertisement. And so it will. You get
+      some neat cards printed with your name and Sunday Earth on them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Gee!&rdquo; Tembarom ejaculated, slapping his knee, &ldquo;there's another! You think
+      of every darned thing, don't you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She stopped a moment to look at him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You'd have thought of it all yourself after a bit,&rdquo; she said. She was not
+      of those unseemly women whose intention it is manifestly to instruct the
+      superior man. She had been born in a small Manchester street and trained
+      by her mother, whose own training had evolved through affectionately
+      discreet conjugal management of Mr. Hutchinson.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Never you let a man feel set down when you want him to see a thing
+      reasonable, Ann,&rdquo; she had said. &ldquo;You never get on with them if you do.
+      They can't stand it. The Almighty seemed to make 'em that way. They've
+      always been masters, and it don't hurt any woman to let 'em be, if she can
+      help 'em to think reasonable. Just you make a man feel comfortable in his
+      mind and push him the reasonable way. But never you shove him, Ann. If you
+      do, he'll just get all upset-like. Me and your father have been right-down
+      happy together, but we never should have been if I hadn't thought that out
+      before we was married two weeks. Perhaps it's the Almighty's will, though
+      I never was as sure of the Almighty's way of thinking as some are.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Of course Tembarom felt soothed and encouraged, though he belonged to the
+      male development which is not automatically infuriated at a suspicion of
+      female readiness of logic.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I might have got on to it in time,&rdquo; he answered, still trying not
+      to look affectionate, &ldquo;but I've no time to spare. Gee! but I'm glad you're
+      here!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I sha'n't be here very long.&rdquo; There was a shade of patient regret in her
+      voice. &ldquo;Father's got tired of trying America. He's been disappointed too
+      often. He's going back to England.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Back to England!&rdquo; Tembarom cried out forlornly, &ldquo;Oh Lord! What shall we
+      all do without you, Ann?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You'll do as you did before we came,&rdquo; said Little Ann.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, we sha'n't. We can't. I can't anyhow.&rdquo; He actually got up from his
+      chair and began to walk about, with his hands thrust deep in his pockets.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Little Ann began to put her first stitches into a red B. No human being
+      could have told what she thought.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We mustn't waste time talking about that,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Let us talk about
+      the page. There are dressmakers, you know. If you could make friends with
+      a dressmaker or two they'd tell you what the wedding things were really
+      made of. Women do like their clothes to be described right.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0003" id="link2HCH0003">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER III
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      His work upon the page began the following week. When the first morning of
+      his campaign opened with a tumultuous blizzard, Jim Bowles and Julius
+      Steinberger privately sympathized with him as they dressed in company, but
+      they heard him whistling in his own hall bedroom as he put on his clothes,
+      and to none of the three did it occur that time could be lost because the
+      weather was inhuman. Blinding snow was being whirled through the air by a
+      wind which had bellowed across the bay, and torn its way howling through
+      the streets, maltreating people as it went, snatching their breath out of
+      them, and leaving them gaspingly clutching at hats and bending their
+      bodies before it. Street-cars went by loaded from front to back platform,
+      and were forced from want of room to whizz heartlessly by groups waiting
+      anxiously at street corners.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tembarom saw two or three of them pass in this way, leaving the waiting
+      ones desperately huddled together behind them. He braced himself and
+      whistled louder as he buttoned his celluloid collar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm going to get up to Harlem all the same,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;The 'L' will be
+      just as jammed, but there'll be a place somewhere, and I'll get it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His clothes were the outwardly decent ones of a young man who must
+      perforce seek cheap clothing-stores, and to whom a ten-dollar
+      &ldquo;hand-me-down&rdquo; is a source of exultant rejoicing. With the aid of great
+      care and a straight, well-formed young body, he managed to make the best
+      of them; but they were not to be counted upon for warmth even in
+      ordinarily cold weather. His overcoat was a specious covering, and was not
+      infrequently odorous of naphtha.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You've got to know something about first aid to the wounded if you live
+      on ten per,&rdquo; he had said once to Little Ann. &ldquo;A suit of clothes gets to be
+      an emergency-case mighty often if it lasts three years.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Going up to Harlem to-day, T. T.?&rdquo; his neighbor at table asked him as he
+      sat down to breakfast.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Right there,&rdquo; he answered. &ldquo;I've ordered the limousine round, with the
+      foot-warmer and fur rugs.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I guess a day wouldn't really matter much,&rdquo; said Mrs. Bowse,
+      good-naturedly. &ldquo;Perhaps it might be better to-morrow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And perhaps it mightn't,&rdquo; said Tembarom, eating &ldquo;break-fast-food&rdquo; with a
+      cheerful appetite. &ldquo;What you can't be stone-cold sure of to-morrow you
+      drive a nail in to-day.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He ate a tremendous breakfast as a discreet precautionary measure. The
+      dark dining-room was warm, and the food was substantial. It was
+      comfortable in its way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You'd better hold the hall door pretty tight when you go out, and don't
+      open it far,&rdquo; said Mrs. Bowse as he got up to go. &ldquo;There's wind enough to
+      upset things.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Tembarom went out in the hall, and put on his insufficient overcoat. He
+      buttoned it across his chest, and turned its collar up to his ears. Then
+      he bent down to turn up the bottoms of his trousers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A pair of arctics would be all to the merry right here,&rdquo; he said, and
+      then he stood upright and saw Little Ann coming down the staircase holding
+      in her hand a particularly ugly tar-tan-plaid woolen neck-scarf of the
+      kind known in England as a &ldquo;comforter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you are going out in this kind of weather,&rdquo; she said in her serene,
+      decided little voice, &ldquo;you'd better wrap this comforter right round your
+      neck, Mr. Tembarom. It's one of Father's, and he can spare it because he's
+      got another, and, besides, he's not going out.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Tembarom took it with a sudden emotional perception of the fact that he
+      was being taken care of in an abnormally luxurious manner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, I appreciate that,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;The thing about you. Little Ann, is
+      that you never make a wrong guess about what a fellow needs, do you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm too used to taking care of Father not to see things,&rdquo; she answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What you get on to is how to take care of the whole world&mdash;initials
+      on a fellow's socks and mufflers round his neck.&rdquo; His eyes looked
+      remarkably bright.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If a person were taking care of the whole world, he'd have a lot to do,&rdquo;
+       was her sedate reception of the remark. &ldquo;You'd better put that twice round
+      your neck, Mr. Tembarom.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She put up her hand to draw the end of the scarf over his shoulder, and
+      Tembarom stood still at once, as though he were a little boy being dressed
+      for school. He looked down at her round cheek, and watched one of the
+      unexpected dimples reveal itself in a place where dimples are not usually
+      anticipated. It was coming out because she was smiling a small, observing
+      smile. It was an almost exciting thing to look at, and he stood very still
+      indeed. A fellow who did not own two pairs of boots would be a fool not to
+      keep quiet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You haven't told me I oughtn't to go out till the blizzard lets up,&rdquo; he
+      said presently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I haven't, Mr. Tembarom,&rdquo; she answered. &ldquo;You're one of the kind that
+      mean to do a thing when they've made up their minds. It'll be a nice bit
+      of money if you can keep the page.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Galton said he'd give me a chance to try to make good,&rdquo; said Tembarom.
+      &ldquo;And if it's the hit he thinks it ought to be, he'll raise me ten. Thirty
+      per. Vanastorbilts won't be in it. I think I'll get married,&rdquo; he added,
+      showing all his attractive teeth at once.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wouldn't do that,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;It wouldn't be enough to depend on. New
+      York's an expensive place.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She drew back and looked him over. &ldquo;That'll keep you much warmer,&rdquo; she
+      decided. &ldquo;Now you can go. I've been looking in the telephone-book for
+      confectioners, and I've written down these addresses.&rdquo; She handed him a
+      slip of paper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tembarom caught his breath.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hully gee!&rdquo; he exclaimed, &ldquo;there never were TWO of you made! One used up
+      all there was of it. How am I going to thank you, anyhow!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do hope you'll be able to keep the page,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I do that, Mr.
+      Tembarom.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      If there had been a touch of coquetry in her earnest, sober, round, little
+      face she would have been less distractingly alluring, but there was no
+      shade of anything but a sort of softly motherly anxiety in the dropped
+      note of her voice, and it was almost more than flesh and blood at
+      twenty-five could stand. Tembarom made a hasty, involuntary move toward
+      her, but it was only a slight one, and it was scarcely perceptible before
+      he had himself in hand and hurriedly twisted his muffler tighter, showing
+      his teeth again cheerily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You keep on hoping it all day without a let-up,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;And tell Mr.
+      Hutchinson I'm obliged to him, please. Get out of the way, Little Ann,
+      while I go out. The wind might blow you and the hat-stand upstairs.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He opened the door and dashed down the high steps into the full blast of
+      the blizzard. He waited at the street corner while three overcrowded cars
+      whizzed past him, ignoring his signals because there was not an inch of
+      space left in them for another passenger. Then he fought his way across
+      two or three blocks to the nearest &ldquo;L&rdquo; station. He managed to wedge
+      himself into a train there, and then at least he was on his way. He was
+      thinking hard and fast, but through all his planning the warm hug of the
+      tartan comforter round his neck kept Little Ann near him. He had been very
+      thankful for the additional warmth as the whirling snow and wind had
+      wrought their will with him while he waited for the cars at the street
+      corner. On the &ldquo;L&rdquo; train he saw her serious eyes and heard the motherly
+      drop in her voice as she said, &ldquo;I do hope you'll be able to keep the page.
+      I do that, Mr. Tembarom.&rdquo; It made him shut his hands hard as they hung in
+      his overcoat pockets for warmth, and it made him shut his sound teeth
+      strongly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Gee! I've got to!&rdquo; his thoughts said for him. &ldquo;If I make it, perhaps my
+      luck will have started. When a man's luck gets started, every darned
+      thing's to the good.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The &ldquo;L&rdquo; had dropped most of its crowd when it reached the up-town station
+      among the hundredth streets which was his destination. He tightened his
+      comforter, tucked the ends firmly into the front of his overcoat, and
+      started out along the platform past the office, and down the steep, iron
+      steps, already perilous with freezing snow. He had to stop to get his
+      breath when he reached the street, but he did not stop long. He charged
+      forth again along the pavement, looking closely at the shop-windows. There
+      were naturally but few passers-by, and the shops were not
+      important-looking; but they were open, and he could see that the insides
+      of them looked comfortable in contrast with the blizzard-ruled street. He
+      could not see both sides of the street as he walked up one side of the
+      block without coming upon a confectioner's. He crossed at the corner and
+      turned back on the other side. Presently he saw that a light van was
+      standing before one place, backed up against the sidewalk to receive
+      parcels, its shuddering horse holding its head down and bracing itself
+      with its forelegs against the wind. At any rate, something was going on
+      there, and he hurried forward to find out what it was. The air was so
+      thick with myriads of madly flying bits of snow, which seemed whirled in
+      all directions in the air, that he could not see anything definite even a
+      few yards away. When he reached the van he found that he had also reached
+      his confectioner. The sign over the window read &ldquo;M. Munsberg,
+      Confectionery. Cakes. Ice-Cream. Weddings, Balls and Receptions.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Made a start, anyhow,&rdquo; said Tembarom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He turned into the store, opening the door carefully, and thereby barely
+      escaping being blown violently against a stout, excited, middle-aged
+      little Jew who was bending over a box he was packing. This was evidently
+      Mr. Munsberg, who was extremely busy, and even the modified shock upset
+      his temper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Vhere you goin'?&rdquo; he cried out. &ldquo;Can't you look vhere you're goin'?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Tembarom knew this was not a good beginning, but his natural mental habit
+      of vividly seeing the other man's point of view helped him after its usual
+      custom. His nice grin showed itself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wasn't going; I was coming,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Beg pardon. The wind's blowing a
+      hundred miles an hour.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A good-looking young woman, who was probably Mrs. Munsberg, was packing a
+      smaller box behind the counter. Tembarom lifted his hat, and she liked it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He didn't do it a bit fresh,&rdquo; she said later. &ldquo;Kind o' nice.&rdquo; She spoke
+      to him with professional politeness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is there anything you want?&rdquo; she asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tembarom glanced at the boxes and packages standing about and at Munsberg,
+      who had bent over his packing again. Here was an occasion for practical
+      tact.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've blown in at the wrong time,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;You're busy getting things
+      out on time. I'll just wait.. Gee! I'm glad to be inside. I want to speak
+      to Mr. Munsberg.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Munsberg jerked himself upright irascibly, and broke forth in the
+      accent of the New York German Jew.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you comin' in here to try to sell somedings, young man, joost you let
+      that same vind vat blew you in blow you right out pretty quick. I'm not
+      buyin' nodings. I'm busy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm not selling a darned thing,&rdquo; answered Tembarom, with undismayed
+      cheer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You vant someding?&rdquo; jerked out Munsberg.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I want something,&rdquo; Tembarom answered, &ldquo;but it's nothing any one has
+      to pay for. I'm only a newspaper man.&rdquo; He felt a glow of pride as he said
+      the words. He was a newspaper man even now. &ldquo;Don't let me stop you a
+      minute. I'm in luck to get inside anywhere and sit down. Let me wait.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Munsberg read the Sunday papers and revered them. She also knew the
+      value of advertisement. She caught her husband's eye and hurriedly winked
+      at him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's awful outside. 'T won't do harm if he waits&mdash;if he ain't no
+      agent,&rdquo; she put in.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;See,&rdquo; said Tembarom, handing over one of the cards which had been Little
+      Ann's businesslike inspiration.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;T. Tembarom. New York Sunday Earth,&rdquo; read Munsberg, rather grudgingly. He
+      looked at T. Tembarom, and T. Tembarom looked back at him. The normal
+      human friendliness in the sharp boyish face did it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Vell,&rdquo; he said, making another jerk toward a chair, &ldquo;if you ain't no
+      agent, you can vait.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you,&rdquo; said Tembarom, and sat down. He had made another start,
+      anyhow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After this the packing went on fast and furious. A youth appeared from the
+      back of the store, and ran here and there as he was ordered. Munsberg and
+      his wife filled wooden and cardboard boxes with small cakes and larger
+      ones, with sandwiches and salads, candies and crystallized fruits. Into
+      the larger box was placed a huge cake with an icing temple on the top of
+      it, with silver doves adorning it outside and in. There was no mistaking
+      the poetic significance of that cake. Outside the blizzard whirled clouds
+      of snow-particles through the air, and the van horse kept his head down
+      and his forelegs braced. His driver had long since tried to cover him with
+      a blanket which the wind continually tore loose from its fastenings, and
+      flapped about the creature's sides. Inside the store grew hot. There was
+      hurried moving about, banging of doors, excited voices, irascible orders
+      given and countermanded. Tembarom found out in five minutes that the
+      refreshments were for a wedding reception to be held at a place known as
+      &ldquo;The Hall,&rdquo; and the goods must be sent out in time to be ready for the
+      preparations for the wedding supper that night.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I knew how to handle it, I could get stuff for a column just sitting
+      here,&rdquo; he thought. He kept both eyes and ears open. He was sharp enough to
+      realize that the mere sense of familiarity with detail which he was
+      gaining was material in itself. Once or twice he got up and lent a hand
+      with a box in his casual way, and once or twice he saw that he could lift
+      some-thing down or up for Mrs. Munsberg, who was a little woman. The
+      natural casualness of his way of jumping up to do the things prevented any
+      suspicion of officiousness, and also prevented his waiting figure from
+      beginning to wear the air of a superfluous object in the way. He waited a
+      long time, and circumstances so favored him as to give him a chance or so.
+      More than once exactly the right moment presented itself when he could
+      interject an apposite remark. Twice he made Munsberg laugh, and twice Mrs.
+      Munsberg voluntarily addressed him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At last the boxes and parcels ware all carried out and stored in the van,
+      after strugglings with the opening and shutting of doors, and battlings
+      with outside weather.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When this was all over, Munsberg came back into the store, knocking his
+      hands together and out of breath.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dot's all right,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;It'll all be there plenty time. Vouldn't have
+      fell down on that order for tventy-vive dollars. Dot temple on the cake
+      was splendid. Joseph he done it fine.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He never done nothin' no finer,&rdquo; Mrs. Munsberg said. &ldquo;It looked as good
+      as anything on Fift' Avenoo.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Both were relieved and pleased with themselves, their store, and their
+      cake-decorator. Munsberg spoke to Tembarom in the manner of a man who,
+      having done a good thing, does not mind talking about it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dot was a big order,&rdquo; he remarked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should smile,&rdquo; answered Tembarom. &ldquo;I'd like to know whose going to get
+      outside all that good stuff. That wedding-cake took the tart away from
+      anything I've ever seen. Which of the four hundred's going to eat it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;De man vot ordered dot cake,&rdquo; Munsberg swaggered, &ldquo;he's not got to vorry
+      along on vun million nor two. He owns de biggest brewery in New York, I
+      guess in America. He's Schwartz of Schwartz &amp; Kapfer.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, he 's got it to burn!&rdquo; said Tembarom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's a mighty good man,&rdquo; went on Munsberg. &ldquo;He's mighty fond of his own
+      people. He made his first money in Harlem, and he had a big fight to get
+      it; but his own people vas good to him, an' he's never forgot it. He's
+      built a fine house here, an' his girls is fine girls. De vun's goin' to be
+      married to-night her name's Rachel, an' she's goin' to marry a nice
+      feller, Louis Levy. Levy built the big entertainment-hall vhere the
+      reception's goin' to be. It's decorated vith two thousand dollars' worth
+      of bride roses an' lilies of de valley an' smilax. All de up-town places
+      vas bought out, an' den Schwartz vent down Fift' Avenoo.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The right moment had plainly arrived.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Say, Mr. Munsberg,&rdquo; Tembarom broke forth, &ldquo;you're giving me just what I
+      wanted to ask you for. I'm the new up-town society reporter for the Sunday
+      Earth, and I came in here to see if you wouldn't help me to get a show at
+      finding out who was going to have weddings and society doings. I didn't
+      know just how to start.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Munsberg gave a sort of grunt. He looked less amiable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I s'pose you're used to nothin' but Fift' Avenoo,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tembarom grinned exactly at the right time again. Not only his good teeth
+      grinned, but his eyes grinned also, if the figure may be used.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Fifth Avenue!&rdquo; he laughed. &ldquo;There's been no Fifth Avenue in mine. I'm not
+      used to anything, but you may bet your life I'm going to get used to
+      Harlem, if you people'll let me. I've just got this job, and I'm dead
+      stuck on it. I want to make it go.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's mighty different from Biker,&rdquo; said Mrs. Munsberg in an undertone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Vhere's dod oder feller?&rdquo; inquired Munsberg. &ldquo;He vas a dam fool, dot oder
+      feller, half corned most de time, an' puttin' on Clarence airs. No one was
+      goin' to give him nothin'. He made folks mad at de start.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've got his job,&rdquo; said Tembarom, &ldquo;and if I can't make it go, the page
+      will be given up. It'll be my fault if that happens, not Harlem's. There's
+      society enough up-town to make a first-class page, and I shall be sick if
+      I can't get on to it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He had begun to know his people. Munsberg was a good-natured, swaggering
+      little Hebrew.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That the young fellow should make a clean breast of it and claim no
+      down-town superiority, and that he should also have the business insight
+      to realize that he might obtain valuable society items from such a
+      representative confectioner as M. Munsberg, was a situation to incite
+      amiable sentiments.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Vell, you didn't come to de wrong place,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;All de biggest things
+      comes to me, an' I don't mind tellin' you about 'em. 'T ain't goin' to do
+      no harm. Weddings an' things dey ought to be wrote up, anyhow, if dey're
+      done right. It's good for business. Vy don't dey have no pictures of de
+      supper-tables? Dot'd be good.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There's lots of receptions and weddings this month,&rdquo; said Mrs. Munsberg,
+      becoming agreeably excited. &ldquo;And there's plenty handsome young girls
+      that'd like their pictures published.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;None of them have been in Sunday papers before, and they'd like it. The
+      four Schwartz girls would make grand pictures. They dress splendid, and
+      their bridesmaids dresses came from the biggest place in Fift' Avenoo.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Say,&rdquo; exclaimed Tembarom, rising from his chair, &ldquo;I'm in luck. Luck
+      struck me the minute I turned in here. If you'll tell me where Schwartz
+      lives, and where the hall is, and the church, and just anything else I can
+      use, I'll go out and whoop up a page to beat the band.&rdquo; He was glowing
+      with exultation. &ldquo;I know I can do it. You've started me off.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Munsberg and his wife began to warm. It was almost as though they had
+      charge of the society page themselves. There was something stimulating in
+      the idea. There was a suggestion of social importance in it. They knew a
+      number of people who would be pleased with the prospect of being in the
+      Sunday Earth. They were of a race which holds together, and they gave not
+      only the names and addresses of prospective entertainers, but those of
+      florists and owners of halls where parties were given.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Munsberg gave the name of a dressmaker of whom she shrewdly guessed
+      that she would be amiably ready to talk to a society-page reporter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That Biker feller,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;got things down all wrong. He called fine
+      white satin 'white nun's-veiling,' and he left out things. Never said
+      nothing about Miss Lewishon's diamond ring what her grandpa gave her for a
+      wedding-present. An' it cost two hundred and fifty.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I'm a pretty big fool myself,&rdquo; said Tembarom, &ldquo;but I should have
+      known better than that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      When he opened the door to go, Mrs. Munsberg called after him:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When you get through, you come back here and tell us what you done. I'll
+      give you a cup of hot coffee.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He returned to Mrs. Bowse's boarding-house so late that night that even
+      Steinberger and Bowles had ended their day. The gas in the hall was turned
+      down to a glimmering point, and the house was silent for the night. Even a
+      cat who stole to him and rubbed herself against his leg miauwed in a sort
+      of abortive whisper, opening her mouth wide, but emitting no sound. When
+      he went cautiously up the staircase he carried his damp overcoat with him,
+      and hung it in company with the tartan muffler close to the heater in the
+      upper hall. Then he laid on his bedside table a package of papers and
+      photographs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After he had undressed, he dropped heavily into bed, exhausted, but elate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm dog-tired,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;but I guess I've got it going.&rdquo; And almost
+      before the last word had uttered itself he fell into the deep sleep of
+      worn-out youth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0004" id="link2HCH0004">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER IV
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Bowse's boarding-house began to be even better pleased with him than
+      before. He had stories to tell, festivities to describe, and cheerful
+      incidents to recount. The boarders assisted vicariously at weddings and
+      wedding receptions, afternoon teas and dances, given in halls. &ldquo;Up-town&rdquo;
+       seemed to them largely given to entertainment and hilarity of an enviably
+      prodigal sort. Mrs. Bowse's guests were not of the class which entertains
+      or is entertained, and the details of banquets and ball-dresses and
+      money-spending were not uncheering material for conversation. Such topics
+      suggested the presence and dispensing of a good deal of desirable specie,
+      which in floating about might somehow reach those who needed it most. The
+      impression was that T. Tembarom was having &ldquo;a good time.&rdquo; It was not his
+      way to relate any incidents which were not of a cheering or
+      laughter-inspiring nature. He said nothing of the times when his luck was
+      bad, when he made blunders, and, approaching the wrong people, was met
+      roughly or grudgingly, and found no resource left but to beat a retreat.
+      He made no mention of his experiences in the blizzard, which continued,
+      and at times nearly beat breath and life out of him as he fought his way
+      through it. Especially he told no story of the morning when, after having
+      labored furiously over the writing of his &ldquo;stuff&rdquo; until long after
+      midnight, he had taken it to Galton, and seen his face fall as he looked
+      over it. To battle all day with a blizzard and occasional brutal
+      discouragements, and to sit up half the night tensely absorbed in
+      concentrating one's whole mental equipment upon the doing of unaccustomed
+      work has its effect. As he waited, Tembarom unconsciously shifted from one
+      foot to another, and had actually to swallow a sort of lump in his throat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I guess it won't do,&rdquo; he said rather uncertainly as Galton laid a sheet
+      down.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Galton was worn out himself and harried by his nerves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, it won't,&rdquo; he said; and then as he saw Tembarom move to the other
+      foot he added, &ldquo;Not as it is.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Tembarom braced himself and cleared his throat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If,&rdquo; he ventured&mdash;&ldquo;well, you've been mighty easy on me, Mr Galton&mdash;and
+      this is a big chance for a fellow like me. If it's too big a chance&mdash;why&mdash;that's
+      all. But if it's anything I could change and it wouldn't be too much
+      trouble to tell me&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There's no time to rewrite it,&rdquo; answered Galton. &ldquo;It must be handed in
+      to-morrow. It's too flowery. Too many adjectives. I've no time to give you&mdash;&rdquo;
+       He snatched up a blue pencil and began to slash at the paper with it.
+      &ldquo;Look here&mdash;and here&mdash;cut out that balderdash&mdash;cut this&mdash;and
+      this&mdash;oh,&mdash;&rdquo; throwing the pencil down,&mdash;&ldquo;you'd have to cut
+      it all out. There's no time.&rdquo; He fell back in his chair with a hopeless
+      movement, and rubbed his forehead nervously with the back of his hand. Ten
+      people more or less were waiting to speak to him; he was worn out with the
+      rush of work. He believed in the page, and did not want to give up his
+      idea; but he didn't know a man to hand it to other than this untrained,
+      eager ignoramus whom he had a queer personal liking for. He was no
+      business of his, a mere stenographer in his office with whom he could be
+      expected to have no relations, and yet a curious sort of friendliness
+      verging on intimacy had developed between them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There'd be time if you thought it wouldn't do any harm to give me another
+      chance,&rdquo; said Tembarom. &ldquo;I can sit up all night. I guess I've caught on to
+      what you DON'T want. I've put in too many fool words. I got them out of
+      other papers, but I don't know how to use them. I guess I've caught on.
+      Would it do any harm if you gave me till to-morrow?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, it wouldn't,&rdquo; said Galton, desperately. &ldquo;If you can't do it, there's
+      no time to find another man, and the page must be cut out. It's been no
+      good so far. It won't be missed. Take it along.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As he pushed back the papers, he saw the photographs, and picked one up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That bride's a good-looking girl. Who are these others? Bridesmaids?
+      You've got a lot of stuff here. Biker couldn't get anything.&rdquo; He glanced
+      up at the young fellow's rather pale face. &ldquo;I thought you'd make friends.
+      How did you get all this?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I beat the streets till I found it,&rdquo; said Tembarom. &ldquo;I had luck right
+      away. I went into a confectionery store where they make wedding-cakes. A
+      good-natured little Dutchman and his wife kept it, and I talked to them&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Got next?&rdquo; said Galton, grinning a little.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They gave me addresses, and told me a whole lot of things. I got into the
+      Schwartz wedding reception, and they treated me mighty well. A good many
+      of them were willing to talk. I told them what a big thing the page was
+      going to be, and I&mdash;well, I said the more they helped me the finer it
+      would turn out. I said it seemed a shame there shouldn't be an up-town
+      page when such swell entertainments were given. I've got a lot of stuff
+      there.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Galton laughed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You'd get it,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;If you knew how to handle it, you'd make it a
+      hit. Well, take it along. If it isn't right tomorrow, it's done for.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Tembarom didn't tell stories or laugh at dinner that evening. He said he
+      had a headache. After dinner he bolted upstairs after Little Ann, and
+      caught her before she mounted to her upper floor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will you come and save my life again?&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I'm in the tightest
+      place I ever was in in my life.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll do anything I can, Mr. Tembarom,&rdquo; she answered, and as his face had
+      grown flushed by this time she looked anxious. &ldquo;You look downright
+      feverish.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've got chills as well as fever,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;It's the page. It seems like
+      I was going to fall down on it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She turned back at once.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No you won't, Mr. Tembarom,&rdquo; she said &ldquo;I'm just right-down sure you
+      won't.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They went down to the parlor again, and though there were people in it,
+      they found a corner apart, and in less than ten minutes he had told her
+      what had happened.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She took the manuscript he handed to her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I was well educated, I should know how to help you,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;but
+      I've only been to a common Manchester school. I don't know anything about
+      elegant language. What are these?&rdquo; pointing to the blue-pencil marks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tembarom explained, and she studied the blue slashes with serious
+      attention.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; she said in a few minutes, laying the manuscript down, &ldquo;I should
+      have cut those words out myself if&mdash;if you'd asked me which to take
+      away. They're too showy, Mr. Tembarom.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Tembarom whipped a pencil out of his pocket and held it out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Say,&rdquo; he put it to her, &ldquo;would you take this and draw it through a few of
+      the other showy ones?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should feel as if I was taking too much upon myself,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I
+      don't know anything about it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You know a darned sight more than I do,&rdquo; Tembarom argued. &ldquo;I didn't know
+      they were showy. I thought they were the kind you had to put in newspaper
+      stuff.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She held the sheets of paper on her knee, and bent her head over them.
+      Tembarom watched her dimples flash in and out as she worked away like a
+      child correcting an exercise. Presently he saw she was quite absorbed.
+      Sometimes she stopped and thought, pressing her lips together; sometimes
+      she changed a letter. There was no lightness in her manner. A badly
+      mutilated stocking would have claimed her attention in the same way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think I'd put 'house' there instead of 'mansion' if I were you,&rdquo; she
+      suggested once.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Put in a whole block of houses if you like,&rdquo; he answered gratefully.
+      &ldquo;Whatever you say goes. I believe Galton would say the same thing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She went over sheet after sheet, and though she knew nothing about it, she
+      cut out just what Galton would have cut out. She put the papers together
+      at last and gave them back to Tembarom, getting up from her seat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I must go back to father now,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I promised to make him a good
+      cup of coffee over the little oil-stove. If you'll come and knock at the
+      door I'll give you one. It will help you to keep fresh while you work.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Tembarom did not go to bed at all that night, and he looked rather fagged
+      the next morning when he handed back the &ldquo;stuff&rdquo; entirely rewritten. He
+      swallowed several times quite hard as he waited for the final verdict.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You did catch on to what I didn't want,&rdquo; Galton said at last. &ldquo;You will
+      catch on still more as you get used to the work. And you did get the
+      'stuff'.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&mdash;you mean&mdash;that goes?&rdquo; Tembarom stammered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, it goes,&rdquo; answered Galton. &ldquo;You can turn it in. We'll try the page
+      for a month.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Gee! Thank the Lord!&rdquo; said Tembarom, and then he laughed an excited
+      boyish laugh, and the blood came back to his face. He had a whole month
+      before him, and if he had caught on as soon as this, a month would teach
+      him a lot.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He'd work like a dog.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He worked like a healthy young man impelled by a huge enthusiasm, and
+      seeing ahead of him something he had had no practical reason for aspiring
+      to. He went out in all weathers and stayed out to all hours. Whatsoever
+      rebuffs or difficulties he met with he never was even on the verge of
+      losing his nerve. He actually enjoyed himself tremendously at times. He
+      made friends; people began to like to see him. The Munsbergs regarded him
+      as an inspiration of their own.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He seen my name over de store and come in here first time he vas sent up
+      dis vay to look for t'ings to write,&rdquo; Mr. Munsberg always explained. &ldquo;Ve
+      vas awful busy&mdash;time of the Schwartz vedding, an' dere vas dat
+      blizzard. He owned up he vas new, an' vanted some vun vhat knew to tell
+      him vhat vas goin' on. 'Course I could do it. Me an' my vife give him
+      addresses an' a lot of items. He vorked 'em up good. Dot up-town page is
+      gettin' first-rate. He says he don' know vhat he'd have done if he hadn't
+      turned up here dot day.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Tembarom, having &ldquo;caught on&rdquo; to his fault of style, applied himself with
+      vigor to elimination. He kept his tame dictionary chained to the leg of
+      his table&mdash;an old kitchen table which Mrs. Bowse scrubbed and put
+      into his hall bedroom, overcrowding it greatly. He turned to Little Ann at
+      moments of desperate uncertainty, but he was man enough to do his work
+      himself. In glorious moments when he was rather sure that Galton was far
+      from unsatisfied with his progress, and Ann had looked more than usually
+      distracting in her aloof and sober alluringness,&mdash;it was her entire
+      aloofness which so stirred his blood,&mdash;he sometimes stopped
+      scribbling and lost his head for a minute or so, wondering if a fellow
+      ever COULD &ldquo;get away with it&rdquo; to the extent of making enough to&mdash;but
+      he always pulled himself up in time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nice fool I look, thinking that way!&rdquo; he would say to himself. &ldquo;She'd
+      throw me down hard if she knew. But, my Lord! ain't she just a peach!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was in the last week of the month of trial which was to decide the
+      permanency of the page that he came upon the man Mrs. Bowse's boarders
+      called his &ldquo;Freak.&rdquo; He never called him a &ldquo;freak&rdquo; himself even at the
+      first. Even his somewhat undeveloped mind felt itself confronted at the
+      outset with something too abnormal and serious, something with a
+      suggestion of the weird and tragic in it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In this wise it came about:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The week had begun with another blizzard, which after the second day had
+      suddenly changed its mind, and turned into sleet and rain which filled the
+      streets with melted snow, and made walking a fearsome thing. Tembarom had
+      plenty of walking to do. This week's page was his great effort, and was to
+      be a &ldquo;dandy.&rdquo; Galton must be shown what pertinacity could do.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm going to get into it up to my neck, and then strike out,&rdquo; he said at
+      breakfast on Monday morning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thursday was his most strenuous day. The weather had decided to change
+      again, and gusts of sleet were being driven about, which added cold to
+      sloppiness. He had found it difficult to get hold of some details he
+      specially wanted. Two important and extremely good-looking brides had
+      refused to see him because Biker had enraged them in his day. He had
+      slighted the description of their dresses at a dance where they had been
+      the observed of all observers, and had worn things brought from Paris.
+      Tembarom had gone from house to house. He had even searched out aunts
+      whose favor he had won professionally. He had appealed to his dressmaker,
+      whose affection he had by that time fully gained. She was doing work in
+      the brides' houses, and could make it clear that he would not call peau de
+      cygne &ldquo;Surah silk,&rdquo; nor duchess lace &ldquo;Baby Irish.&rdquo; But the young ladies
+      enjoyed being besought by a society page. It was something to discuss with
+      one's bridesmaids and friends, to protest that &ldquo;those interviewers&rdquo; give a
+      person no peace. &ldquo;If you don't want to be in the papers, they'll put you
+      in whether you like it or not, however often you refuse them.&rdquo; They kept
+      Tembarom running about, they raised faint hopes, and then went out when he
+      called, leaving no messages, but allowing the servant to hint that if he
+      went up to Two Hundred and Seventy-fifth Street he might chance to find
+      them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right,&rdquo; said Tembarom to the girl, delighting her by lifting his hat
+      genially as he turned to go down the steps. &ldquo;I'll just keep going. The
+      Sunday Earth can't come out without those photographs in it. I should lose
+      my job.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      When at last he ran the brides to cover it was not at Two Hundred and
+      Seventy-fifth Street, but in their own home, to which they had finally
+      returned. They had heard from the servant-girl about what the young
+      gentleman from the Sunday Earth had said, and they were mollified by his
+      proper appreciation of values. Tembarom's dressmaker friend also proffered
+      information.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know him myself,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;and he's a real nice gentle-manlike young
+      man. He's not a bit like Biker. He doesn't think he knows everything. He
+      came to me from Mrs. Munsberg, just to ask me the names of fashionable
+      materials. He said it was more important than a man knew till he found
+      out&rdquo; Miss Stuntz chuckled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He asked me to lend him some bits of samples so he could learn them off
+      by heart, and know them when he saw them. He's got a pleasant laugh; shows
+      his teeth, and they're real pretty and white; and he just laughed like a
+      boy and said: 'These samples are my alphabet, Miss Stuntz. I'm going to
+      learn to read words of three syllables in them.'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      When late in the evening Tembarom, being let out of the house after his
+      interview, turned down the steps again, he carried with him all he had
+      wanted&mdash;information and photographs, even added picturesque details.
+      He was prepared to hand in a fuller and better page than he had ever
+      handed in before. He was in as elated a frame of mind as a young man can
+      be when he is used up with tramping the streets, and running after
+      street-cars, to stand up in them and hang by a strap. He had been wearing
+      a new pair of boots, one of which rubbed his heel and had ended by raising
+      a blister worthy of attention. To reach the nearest &ldquo;L&rdquo; station he must
+      walk across town, through several deserted streets in the first stages of
+      being built up, their vacant lots surrounded by high board fencing covered
+      with huge advertising posters. The hall bedroom, with the gas turned up
+      and the cheap, red-cotton comfort on the bed, made an alluring picture as
+      he faced the sleety wind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I cut across to the avenue and catch the 'L,' I'm bound to get there
+      sometime, anyhow,&rdquo; he said as he braced himself and set out on his way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The blister on his heel had given him a good deal of trouble, and he was
+      obliged to stop a moment to ease it, and he limped when he began to walk
+      again. But he limped as fast as he could, while the sleety rain beat in
+      his face, across one street, down another for a block or so, across
+      another, the melting snow soaking even the new boots as he splashed
+      through it. He bent his head, however, and limped steadily. At this end of
+      the city many of the streets were only scantily built up, and he was
+      passing through one at the corner of which was a big vacant lot. At the
+      other corner a row of cheap houses which had only reached their second
+      story waited among piles of bricks and frozen mortar for the return of the
+      workmen the blizzard had dispersed. It was a desolate-enough thoroughfare,
+      and not a soul was in sight. The vacant lot was fenced in with high
+      boarding plastered over with flaring sheets advertising whiskies, sauces,
+      and theatrical ventures. A huge picture of a dramatically interrupted
+      wedding ceremony done in reds and yellows, and announcing in large letters
+      that Mr. Isaac Simonson presented Miss Evangeline St. Clair in &ldquo;Rent
+      Asunder,&rdquo; occupied several yards of the boarding. As he reached it, the
+      heel of Tembarom's boot pressed, as it seemed to him, a red-hot coal on
+      the flesh. He had rubbed off the blister. He was obliged to stop a moment
+      again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Gee whizz!&rdquo; he exclaimed through his teeth, &ldquo;I shall have to take my boot
+      off and try to fix it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      To accomplish this he leaned against the boarding and Miss Evangeline St.
+      Clair being &ldquo;Rent Asunder&rdquo; in the midst of the wedding service. He
+      cautiously removed his boot, and finding a hole in his sock in the place
+      where the blister had rubbed off, he managed to protect the raw spot by
+      pulling the sock over it. Then he drew on his boot again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That'll be better,&rdquo; he said, with a long breath.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As he stood on his feet again he started involuntarily. This was not
+      because the blister had hurt him, but because he had heard behind him a
+      startling sound.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What's that?&rdquo; broke from him. &ldquo;What's that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He turned and listened, feeling his heart give a quick thump. In the
+      darkness of the utterly empty street the thing was unnatural enough to
+      make any man jump. He had heard it between two gusts of wind, and through
+      another he heard it again&mdash;an uncanny, awful sobbing, broken by a
+      hopeless wail of words.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can't remember! I can't&mdash;remember! O my God!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And it was not a woman's voice or a child's; it was a man's, and there was
+      an eerie sort of misery in it which made Tembarom feel rather sick. He had
+      never heard a man sobbing before. He belonged to a class which had no time
+      for sobs. This sounded ghastly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good Lord!&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;the fellow's crying! A man!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The sound came directly behind him. There was not a human being in sight.
+      Even policemen do not loiter in empty streets.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hello!&rdquo; he cried. &ldquo;Where are you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But the low, horrible sound went on, and no answer came. His physical
+      sense of the presence of the blister was blotted out by the abnormal
+      thrill of the moment. One had to find out about a thing like that one just
+      had to. One could not go on and leave it behind uninvestigated in the dark
+      and emptiness of a street no one was likely to pass through. He listened
+      more intently. Yes, it was just behind him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's in the lot behind the fence,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;How did he get there?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He began to walk along the boarding to find a gap. A few yards farther on
+      he came upon a broken place in the inclosure&mdash;a place where boards
+      had sagged until they fell down, or had perhaps been pulled down by boys
+      who wanted to get inside. He went through it, and found lie was in the
+      usual vacant lot long given up to rubbish. When he stood still a moment he
+      heard the sobbing again, and followed the sound to the place behind the
+      boarding against which he had supported himself when he took off his boot.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A man was lying on the ground with his arms flung out. The street lamp
+      outside the boarding cast light enough to reveal him. Tembarom felt as
+      though he had suddenly found himself taking part in a melodrama,&mdash;&ldquo;The
+      Streets of New York,&rdquo; for choice,&mdash;though no melodrama had ever given
+      him this slightly shaky feeling. But when a fellow looked up against it as
+      hard as this, what you had to do was to hold your nerve and make him feel
+      he was going to be helped. The normal human thing spoke loud in him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hello, old man!&rdquo; he said with cheerful awkwardness. &ldquo;What's hit you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The man started and scrambled to his feet as though he were frightened. He
+      was wet, unshaven, white and shuddering, piteous to look at. He stared
+      with wild eyes, his chest heaving.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What's up?&rdquo; said Tembarom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The man's breath caught itself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't remember.&rdquo; There was a touch of horror in his voice, though he
+      was evidently making an effort to control him-self. &ldquo;I can't&mdash;I can't
+      remember.&rdquo; &ldquo;What's your name? You remember that?&rdquo; Tembarom put it to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;N-n-no!&rdquo; agonizingly. &ldquo;If I could! If I could!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How did you get in here?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I came in because I saw a policeman. He wouldn't understand. He would
+      have stopped me. I must not be stopped. I MUST not.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where were you going?&rdquo; asked Tembarom, not knowing what else to say.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Home! My God! man, home!&rdquo; and he fell to shuddering again. He put his arm
+      against the boarding and dropped his head against it. The low, hideous
+      sobbing tore him again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      T. Tembarom could not stand it. In his newsboy days he had never been able
+      to stand starved dogs and homeless cats. Mrs. Bowse was taking care of a
+      wretched dog for him at the present moment. He had not wanted the poor
+      brute,&mdash;he was not particularly fond of dogs,&mdash;but it had
+      followed him home, and after he had given it a bone or so, it had licked
+      its chops and turned up its eyes at him with such abject appeal that he
+      had not been able to turn it into the streets again. He was unsentimental,
+      but ruled by primitive emotions. Also he had a sudden recollection of a
+      night when as a little fellow he had gone into a vacant lot and cried as
+      like this as a child could. It was a bad night when some &ldquo;tough&rdquo; big boys
+      had turned him out of a warm corner in a shed, and he had had nowhere to
+      go, and being a friendly little fellow, the unfriendliness had hit him
+      hard. The boys had not seen him crying, but he remembered it. He drew
+      near, and put his hand on the shaking shoulder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Say, don't do that,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I'll help you to remember.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He scarcely knew why he said it. There was something in the situation and
+      in the man himself which was compelling. He was not of the tramp order.
+      His wet clothes had been decent, and his broken, terrified voice was
+      neither coarse nor nasal. He lifted his head and caught Tembarom's arm,
+      clutching it with desperate fingers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Could you?&rdquo; he poured forth the words. &ldquo;Could you? I'm not quite mad.
+      Something happened. If I could be quiet! Don't let them stop me! My God!
+      my God! my God! I can't say it. It's not far away, but it won't come back.
+      You're a good fellow; if you're human, help me! help me! help me!&rdquo; He
+      clung to Tembarom with hands which shook; his eyes were more abject than
+      the starved dog's; he choked, and awful tears rolled down his cheeks.
+      &ldquo;Only help me,&rdquo; he cried&mdash;&ldquo;just help, help, help&mdash;for a while.
+      Perhaps not long. It would come back.&rdquo; He made a horrible effort. &ldquo;Listen!
+      My name&mdash;I am&mdash;I am&mdash;it's&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He was down on the ground again, groveling. His efforts had failed.
+      Tembarom, overwrought himself, caught at him and dragged him up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Make a fight,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;You can't lie down like that. You've got to put
+      up a fight. It'll come back. I tell you it will. You've had a clip on the
+      head or something. Let me call an ambulance and take you to the hospital.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The next moment he was sorry he had said the words, the man's terror was
+      so ill to behold. He grew livid with it, and uttered a low animal cry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't drop dead over it,&rdquo; said Tembarom, rather losing his head. &ldquo;I won't
+      do it, though what in thunder I'm going to do with you I don't know. You
+      can't stay here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For God's sake!&rdquo; said the man. &ldquo;For God's sake!&rdquo; He put his shaking hand
+      on Tembarom again, and looked at him with a bewildered scrutiny. &ldquo;I'm not
+      afraid of you,&rdquo; he said; &ldquo;I don't know why. There's something all right
+      about you. If you'll stand by me&mdash;you'd stand by a man, I'd swear.
+      Take me somewhere quiet. Let me get warm and think.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The less you think now the better,&rdquo; answered Tembarom. &ldquo;You want a bed
+      and a bath and a night's rest. I guess I've let myself in for it. You
+      brush off and brace yourself and come with me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was the hall bedroom and the red-cotton comfort for one night at
+      least, and Mrs. Bowse was a soft-hearted woman. If she'd heard the fellow
+      sobbing behind the fence, she'd have been in a worse fix than he was.
+      Women were kinder-hearted than men, anyhow. The way the fellow's voice
+      sounded when he said, &ldquo;Help me, help me, help me!&rdquo; sounded as though he
+      was in hell. &ldquo;Made me feel as if I was bracing up a chap that was going to
+      be electrocuted,&rdquo; he thought, feeling sickish again. &ldquo;I've not got
+      backbone enough to face that sort of thing. Got to take him somewhere.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They were walking toward the &ldquo;L&rdquo; together, and he was wondering what he
+      should say to Mrs. Bowse when he saw his companion fumbling under his coat
+      at the back as though he was in search of something. His hands being
+      unsteady, it took him some moments to get at what he wanted. He evidently
+      had a belt or a hidden pocket. He got something out and stopped under a
+      street light to show it to Tembarom. His hands still shook when he held
+      them out, and his look was a curious, puzzled, questioning one. What he
+      passed over to Tembarom was a roll of money. Tembarom rather lost his
+      breath as he saw the number on two five-hundred-dollar bills, and of
+      several hundreds, besides twenties, tens, and fives.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Take it&mdash;keep it,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;It will pay.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hully gee!&rdquo; cried Tembarom, aghast. &ldquo;Don't go giving away your whole pile
+      to the first fellow you meet. I don't want it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Take it.&rdquo; The stranger put his hand on his shoulder, the abject look in
+      his eyes harrowingly like the starved dog's again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There's something all right about you. You'll help me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I don't take it for you, some one will knock you upon the head for
+      it.&rdquo; Tembarom hesitated, but the next instant he stuffed it all in his
+      pocket, incited thereto by the sound of a whizzing roar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There's the 'L' coming,&rdquo; he cried; &ldquo;run for all you're worth.&rdquo; And they
+      fled up the street and up the steps, and caught it without a second to
+      spare.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0005" id="link2HCH0005">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER V
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      At about the time Tembarom made his rush to catch the &ldquo;L&rdquo; Joseph
+      Hutchinson was passing through one of his periodical fits of infuriated
+      discouragement. Little Ann knew they would occur every two or three days,
+      and she did not wonder at them. Also she knew that if she merely sat still
+      and listened as she sewed, she would be doing exactly what her mother
+      would have done and what her father would find a sort of irritated comfort
+      in. There was no use in citing people's villainies and calling them names
+      unless you had an audience who would seem to agree to the justice of your
+      accusations.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So Mr. Hutchinson charged up and down the room, his face red, and his
+      hands thrust in his coat pockets. He was giving his opinions of America
+      and Americans, and he spoke with his broadest Manchester accent, and threw
+      in now and then a word or so of Lancashire dialect to add roughness and
+      strength, the angrier a Manchester man being, the broader and therefore
+      the more forcible his accent. &ldquo;Tha&rdquo; is somehow a great deal more bitter or
+      humorous or affectionate than the mere ordinary &ldquo;You&rdquo; or &ldquo;Yours.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Merica,&rdquo; he bellowed&mdash;&ldquo;dang 'Merica! I says&mdash;an' dang
+      'Mericans. Goin' about th' world braggin' an' boastin' about their
+      sharpness an' their open-'andedness. 'Go to 'Merica,' folks'll tell you,
+      'with an invention, and there's dozens of millionaires ready to put money
+      in it.' Fools!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, Father,&rdquo;&mdash;Little Ann's voice was as maternal as her mother's
+      had been,&mdash;&ldquo;now, Father, love, don't work yourself up into a passion.
+      You know it's not good for you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't need to work myself up into one. I'm in one. A man sells
+      everything he owns to get to 'Merica, an' when he gets there what does he
+      find? He canna' get near a millionaire. He's pushed here an scuffled
+      there, an' told this chap can't see him, an' that chap isn't interested,
+      an' he must wait his chance to catch this one. An' he waits an' waits, an'
+      goes up in elevators an' stands on one leg in lobbies, till he's broke'
+      down an' sick of it, an' has to go home to England steerage.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Little Ann looked up from her sewing. He had been walking furiously for
+      half an hour, and had been tired to begin with. She had heard his voice
+      break roughly as he said the last words. He threw himself astride a chair
+      and, crossing his arms on the back of it, dropped his head on them. Her
+      mother never allowed this. Her idea was that women were made to tide over
+      such moments for the weaker sex. Far had it been from the mind of Mrs.
+      Hutchinson to call it weaker. &ldquo;But there's times, Ann, when just for a bit
+      they're just like children. They need comforting without being let to know
+      they are being comforted. You know how it is when your back aches, and
+      some one just slips a pillow under it in the right place without saying
+      anything. That's what women can do if they've got heads. It needs a head.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Little Ann got up and went to the chair. She began to run her fingers
+      caressingly through the thick, grizzled hair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There, Father, love, there!&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;We are going back to England, at
+      any rate, aren't we? And grandmother will be so glad to have us with her
+      in her cottage. And America's only one place.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I tried it first, dang it!&rdquo; jerked out Hutchinson. &ldquo;Every one told me to
+      do it.&rdquo; He quoted again with derisive scorn: &ldquo;'You go to 'Merica.
+      'Merica's the place for a chap like you. 'Merica's the place for
+      inventions.' Liars!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Little Ann went on rubbing the grizzled head lovingly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, now we're going back to try England. You never did really try
+      England. And you know how beautiful it'll be in the country, with the
+      primroses in bloom and the young lambs in the fields.&rdquo; The caressing hand
+      grew even softer. &ldquo;And you're not going to forget how mother believed in
+      the invention; you can't do that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Hutchinson lifted his head and looked at her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Eh, Ann,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;you are a comfortable little body. You've got a way
+      with you just like your poor mother had. You always say the right thing to
+      help a chap pull himself together. Your mother did believe in it, didn't
+      she?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She had, indeed, believed in it, though her faith was founded more upon
+      confidence in &ldquo;Mr. Hutchinson&rdquo; than in any profound knowledge of the
+      mechanical appliance his inspiration would supply. She knew it had
+      something important to do with locomotive engines, and she knew that if
+      railroad magnates would condescend to consider it, her husband was sure
+      that fortune would flow in. She had lived with the &ldquo;invention,&rdquo; as it was
+      respectfully called, for years.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That she did,&rdquo; answered Little Ann. &ldquo;And before she died she said to me:
+      'Little Ann,' she said, 'there's one thing you must never let your father
+      do. You must never let him begin not to believe in his invention. Your
+      father's a clever man, and it's a clever invention, and it'll make his
+      fortune yet. You must remind him how I believed in it and how sure I
+      was.'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Hutchinson rubbed his hands thoughtfully. He had heard this before, but it
+      did him good to hear it again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She said that, did she?&rdquo; he found vague comfort in saying. &ldquo;She said
+      that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, she did, Father. It was the very day before she died.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, she never said anything she hadn't thought out,&rdquo; he said in slow
+      retrospection. &ldquo;And she had a good head of her own. Eh, she was a
+      wonderful woman, she was, for sticking to things. That was th' Lancashire
+      in her. Lancashire folks knows their own minds.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mother knew hers,&rdquo; said Ann. &ldquo;And she always said you knew yours. Come
+      and sit in your own chair, Father, and have your paper.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She had tided him past the worst currents without letting him slip into
+      them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I like folks that knows their own minds,&rdquo; he said as he sat down and took
+      his paper from her. &ldquo;You know yours, Ann; and there's that Tembarom chap.
+      He knows his. I've been noticing that chap.&rdquo; There was a certain pleasure
+      in using a tone of amiable patronage. &ldquo;He's got a way with him that's
+      worth money to him in business, if he only knew it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't think he knows he's got a way,&rdquo; Little Ann said. &ldquo;His way is just
+      him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He just gets over people with it, like he got over me. I was ready to
+      knock his head off first time he spoke to me. I was ready to knock
+      anybody's head off that day. I'd just had that letter from Hadman. He made
+      me sick wi' the way he pottered an' played the fool about the invention.
+      He believed in it right enough, but he hadn't the courage of a mouse. He
+      wasn't goin' to be the first one to risk his money. Him, with all he has!
+      He's the very chap to be able to set it goin'. If I could have got some
+      one else to put up brass, it'd have started him. It's want o' backbone,
+      that's the matter wi' Hadman an' his lot.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Some of these days some of them 're going to get their eyes open,&rdquo; said
+      Little Ann, &ldquo;and then the others will be sorry. Mr. Tembarom says they'll
+      fall over themselves to get in on the ground floor.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Hutchinson chuckled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's New York,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;He's a rum chap. But he thinks a good bit of
+      the invention. I've talked it over with him, because I've wanted to talk,
+      and the one thing I've noticed about Tembarom is that he can keep his
+      mouth shut.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But he talks a good deal,&rdquo; said Ann.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's the best of it. You'd think he was telling all he knows, and he's
+      not by a fat lot. He tells you what you'll like to hear, and he's not sly;
+      but he can keep a shut mouth. That's Lancashire. Some folks can't do it
+      even when they want to.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;His father came from England.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's where the lad's sense comes from. Perhaps he's Lancashire. He had
+      a lot of good ideas about the way to get at Hadman.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A knock at the door broke in upon them. Mrs. Bowse presented herself,
+      wearing a novel expression on her face. It was at once puzzled and not
+      altogether disagreeably excited.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wish you would come down into the dining-room, Little Ann.&rdquo; She
+      hesitated. &ldquo;Mr. Tembaron's brought home such a queer man. He picked him up
+      ill in the street. He wants me to let him stay with him for the night,
+      anyhow. I don't think he's crazy, but I guess he's lost his memory.
+      Queerest thing I ever saw. He doesn't know his name or anything.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;See here,&rdquo; broke out Hutchinson, dropping his hands and his paper on his
+      knee, &ldquo;I'm not going to have Ann goin' down stairs to quiet lunatics.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's as quiet as a child,&rdquo; Mrs. Bowse protested. &ldquo;There's something
+      pitiful about him, he seems so frightened. He's drenched to the skin.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Call an ambulance and send him to the hospital,&rdquo; advised Hutchinson.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's what Mr. Tembarom says he can't do. It frightens him to death to
+      speak of it. He just clings to Mr. Tembarom sort of awful, as if he thinks
+      he'll save his life. But that isn't all,&rdquo; she added in an amazed tone;
+      &ldquo;he's given Mr. Tembarom more than two thousand dollars.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What!&rdquo; shouted Hutchinson, bounding to his feet quite unconsciously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What!&rdquo; exclaimed Little Ann.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just you come and look at it,&rdquo; answered Mrs. Bowse, nodding her head.
+      &ldquo;There's over two thousand dollars in bills spread out on the table in the
+      dining-room this minute. He had it in a belt pocket, and he dragged it out
+      in the street and would make Mr. Tembarom take it. Do come and tell us
+      what to do.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'd get him to take off his wet clothes and get into bed, and drink some
+      hot spirits and water first,&rdquo; said Little Ann. &ldquo;Wouldn't you, Mrs. Bowse?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Hutchinson got up, newspaper in hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I say, I'd like to go down and have a look at that chap myself,&rdquo; he
+      announced.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If he's so frightened, perhaps&mdash;&rdquo; Little Ann hesitated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's it,&rdquo; put in Mrs. Bowse. &ldquo;He's so nervous it'd make him worse to
+      see another man. You'd better wait, Mr. Hutchinson.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Hutchinson sat down rather grumpily, and Mrs. Bowse and Little Ann went
+      down the stairs together.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I feel real nervous myself,&rdquo; said Mrs. Bowse, &ldquo;it's so queer. But he's
+      not crazy. He's quiet enough.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As they neared the bottom of the staircase Little Ann could see over the
+      balustrade into the dining-room. The strange man was sitting by the table,
+      his disordered, black-haired head on his arm. He looked like an exhausted
+      thing. Tembarom was sitting by him, and was talking in an encouraging
+      voice. He had laid a hand on one of the stranger's. On the table beside
+      them was spread a number of bills which had evidently just been counted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here's the ladies,&rdquo; said Tembarom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The stranger lifted his head and, having looked, rose and stood upright,
+      waiting. It was the involuntary, mechanical action of a man who had been
+      trained among gentlemen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's Mrs. Bowse again, and she's brought Miss Hutchinson down with her.
+      Miss Hutchinson always knows what to do,&rdquo; explained Tembarom in his
+      friendly voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The man bowed, and his bewildered eyes fixed themselves on Little Ann.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;It's very kind of you. I&mdash;I am&mdash;in great
+      trouble.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Little Ann went to him and smiled her motherly smile at him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You're very wet,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;You'll take a bad cold if you're not
+      careful. Mrs. Bowse thinks you ought to go right to bed and have something
+      hot to drink.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It seems a long time since I was in bed,&rdquo; he answered her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm very tired. Thank you.&rdquo; He drew a weary, sighing breath, but he
+      didn't move his eyes from the girl's face. Perhaps the cessation of action
+      in certain cells of his brain had increased action in others. He looked as
+      though he were seeing something in Little Ann's face which might not have
+      revealed itself so clearly to the more normal gaze.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He moved slightly nearer to her. He was a tall man, and had to look down
+      at her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is your name?&rdquo; he asked anxiously. &ldquo;Names trouble me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was Ann who drew a little nearer to him now. She had to look up, and
+      the soft, absorbed kindness in her eyes might, Tembarom thought, have
+      soothed a raging lion, it was so intent on its purpose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My name is Ann Hutchinson; but never you mind about it now,&rdquo; she said.
+      &ldquo;I'll tell it to you again. Let Mr. Tembarom take you up-stairs to bed.
+      You'll be better in the morning.&rdquo; And because his hollow eyes rested on
+      her so fixedly she put her hand on his wet sleeve.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You're wet through,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;That won't do.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He looked down at her hand and then at her face again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Help me,&rdquo; he pleaded, &ldquo;just help me. I don't know what's happened. Have I
+      gone mad?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; she answered; &ldquo;not a bit. It'll all come right after a while; you'll
+      see.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will it, will it?&rdquo; he begged, and then suddenly his eyes were full of
+      tears. It was a strange thing to see him in his bewildered misery try to
+      pull himself together, and bite his shaking lips as though he vaguely
+      remembered that he was a man. &ldquo;I beg pardon,&rdquo; he faltered: &ldquo;I suppose I'm
+      ill.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't know where to put him,&rdquo; Mrs. Bowse was saying half aside; &ldquo;I've
+      not got a room empty.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Put him in my bed and give me a shake-down on the floor,&rdquo; said Tembarom.
+      &ldquo;That'll be all right. He doesn't want me to leave him, anyhow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He turned to the money on the table.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Say,&rdquo; he said to his guest, &ldquo;there's two thousand five hundred dollars
+      here. We've counted it to make sure. That's quite some money. And it's
+      yours&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The stranger looked disturbed and made a nervous gesture.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't, don't!&rdquo; he broke in. &ldquo;Keep it. Some one took the rest. This was
+      hidden. It will pay.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You see he isn't real' out of his mind,&rdquo; Mrs. Bowse murmured feelingly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, not real' out of it,&rdquo; said Tembarom. &ldquo;Say,&rdquo;&mdash;as an inspiration
+      occurred to him,&mdash;&ldquo;I guess maybe Miss Hutchinson will keep it. Will
+      you, Little Ann? You can give it to him when he wants it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's a good bit of money,&rdquo; said Little Ann, soberly; &ldquo;but I can put it in
+      a bank and pay Mrs. Bowse his board every week. Yes, I'll take it. Now he
+      must go to bed. It's a comfortable little room,&rdquo; she said to the stranger,
+      &ldquo;and Mrs. Bowse will make you a hot milk-punch. That'll be nourishing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you,&rdquo; murmured the man, still keeping his yearning eyes on her.
+      &ldquo;Thank you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So he was taken up to the fourth floor and put into Tembarom's bed. The
+      hot milk-punch seemed to take the chill out of him, and when, by lying on
+      his pillow and gazing at the shakedown on the floor as long as he could
+      keep his eyes open, he had convinced himself that Tembarom was going to
+      stay with him, he fell asleep.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Little Ann went back to her father carrying a roll of bills in her hands.
+      It was a roll of such size that Hutchinson started up in his chair and
+      stared at the sight of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is that the money?&rdquo; he exclaimed. &ldquo;What are you going to do with it? What
+      have you found out, lass?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, this is it,&rdquo; she answered. &ldquo;Mr. Tembarom asked me to take care of
+      it. I'm going to put it in the bank. But we haven't found out anything.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0006" id="link2HCH0006">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VI
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      His was the opening incident of the series of extraordinary and altogether
+      incongruous events which took place afterwards, as it appeared to T.
+      Tembarom, like scenes in a play in which he had become involved in a
+      manner which one might be inclined to regard humorously and make jokes
+      about, because it was a thousand miles away from anything like real life.
+      That was the way it struck him. The events referred to, it was true, were
+      things one now and then read about in newspapers, but while the world
+      realized that they were actual occurrences, one rather regarded them, when
+      their parallels were reproduced in books and plays, as belonging alone to
+      the world of pure and highly romantic fiction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I guess the reason why it seems that way,&rdquo; he summed it up to Hutchinson
+      and Little Ann, after the worst had come to the worst, &ldquo;is because we've
+      not only never known any one it's happened to, but we've never known any
+      one that's known any one it's happened to. I've got to own up that it
+      makes me feel as if the fellows'd just yell right out laughing when they
+      heard it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The stranger's money had been safely deposited in a bank, and the stranger
+      himself still occupied Tembarom's bedroom. He slept a great deal and was
+      very quiet. With great difficulty Little Ann had persuaded him to let a
+      doctor see him, and the doctor had been much interested in his case. He
+      had expected to find some signs of his having received accidentally or
+      otherwise a blow upon the head, but on examination he found no scar or
+      wound. The condition he was in was frequently the result of concussion of
+      the brain, sometimes of prolonged nervous strain or harrowing mental
+      shock. Such cases occurred not infrequently. Quiet and entire freedom from
+      excitement would do more for such a condition than anything else. If he
+      was afraid of strangers, by all means keep them from him. Tembarom had
+      been quite right in letting him think he would help him to remember, and
+      that somehow he would in the end reach the place he had evidently set out
+      to go to. Nothing must be allowed to excite him. It was well he had had
+      money on his person and that he had fallen into friendly hands. A city
+      hospital would not have been likely to help him greatly. The restraint of
+      its necessary discipline might have alarmed him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So long as he was persuaded that Tembarom was not going to desert him, he
+      was comparatively calm, though sunk in a piteous and tormented melancholy.
+      His worst hours were when he sat alone in the hall bedroom, with his face
+      buried in his hands. He would so sit without moving or speaking, and
+      Little Ann discovered that at these times he was trying to remember.
+      Sometimes he would suddenly rise and walk about the little room,
+      muttering, with woe in his eyes. Ann, who saw how hard this was for him,
+      found also that to attempt to check or distract him was even worse. When,
+      sitting in her father's room, which was on the other side of the wall, she
+      heard his fretted, hurried pacing feet, her face lost its dimpled
+      cheerfulness. She wondered if her mother would not have discovered some
+      way of clearing the black cloud distracting his brain. Nothing would
+      induce him to go down to the boarders' dining-room for his meals, and the
+      sight of a servant alarmed him so that it was Ann who took him the scant
+      food he would eat. As the time of her return to England with her father
+      drew near, she wondered what Mr. Tembarom would do without her services.
+      It was she who suggested that they must have a name for him, and the name
+      of a part of Manchester had provided one. There was a place called
+      Strangeways, and one night when, in talking to her father, she referred to
+      it in Tembarom's presence, he suddenly seized upon it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Strangeways,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;That'd make a good-enough name for him. Let's
+      call him Mr. Strangeways. I don't like the way the fellows have of calling
+      him 'the Freak.'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So the name had been adopted, and soon became an established fact.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The way I feel about him,&rdquo; Tembarom said, &ldquo;is that the fellow's not a bit
+      of a joke. What I see is that he's up against about the toughest
+      proposition I've ever known. Gee! that fellow's not crazy. He's worse. If
+      he was out-and-out dippy and didn't know it, he'd be all right. Likely as
+      not he'd be thinking he was the Pope of Rome or Anna Held. What knocks him
+      out is that he's just right enough to know he's wrong, and to be trying to
+      get back. He reminds me of one of those chaps the papers tell about
+      sometimes&mdash;fellows that go to work in livery-stables for ten years
+      and call themselves Bill Jones, and then wake up some morning and remember
+      they're some high-browed minister of the gospel named the Rev. James
+      Cadwallader.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      When the curtain drew up on Tembarom's amazing drama, Strangeways had been
+      occupying his bed nearly three weeks, and he himself had been sleeping on
+      a cot Mrs. Bowse had put up for him in his room. The Hutchinsons were on
+      the point of sailing for England&mdash;steerage&mdash;on the steamship
+      Transatlantic, and Tembarom was secretly torn into fragments, though he
+      had done well with the page and he was daring to believe that at the end
+      of the month Galton would tell him he had &ldquo;made good&rdquo; and the work would
+      continue indefinitely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If that happened, he would be raised to &ldquo;twenty-five per&rdquo; and would be a
+      man of means. If the Hutchinsons had not been going away, he would have
+      been floating in clouds of rose color. If he could persuade Little Ann to
+      take him in hand when she'd had time to &ldquo;try him out,&rdquo; even Hutchinson
+      could not utterly flout a fellow who was making his steady twenty-five per
+      on a big paper, and was on such terms with his boss that he might get
+      other chances. Gee! but he was a fellow that luck just seemed to chase,
+      anyhow! Look at the other chaps, lots of 'em, who knew twice as much as he
+      did, and had lived in decent homes and gone to school and done their
+      darned best, too, and then hadn't been able to get there! It didn't seem
+      fair somehow that he should run into such pure luck.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The day arrived when Galton was to give his decision. Tembarom was going
+      to hand in his page, and while he was naturally a trifle nervous, his
+      nervousness would have been a hopeful and not unpleasant thing but that
+      the Transatlantic sailed in two days, and in the Hutchinson's rooms Little
+      Ann was packing her small trunk and her father's bigger one, which held
+      more models and drawings than clothing. Hutchinson was redder in the face
+      than usual, and indignant condemnation of America and American
+      millionaires possessed his soul. Everybody was rather depressed. One
+      boarder after another had wakened to a realization that, with the passing
+      of Little Ann, Mrs. Bowse's establishment, even with the parlor, the
+      cozy-corner, and the second-hand pianola to support it, would be a
+      deserted-seeming thing. Mrs. Bowse felt the tone of low spirits about the
+      table, and even had a horrible secret fear that certain of her best
+      boarders might decide to go elsewhere, merely to change surroundings from
+      which they missed something. Her eyes were a little red, and she made
+      great efforts to keep things going.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can only keep the place up when I've no empty rooms,&rdquo; she had said to
+      Mrs. Peck, &ldquo;but I'd have boarded her free if her father would have let her
+      stay. But he wouldn't, and, anyway, she'd no more let him go off alone
+      than she'd jump off Brooklyn Bridge.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It had been arranged that partly as a farewell banquet and partly to
+      celebrate Galton's decision about the page, there was to be an oyster stew
+      that night in Mr. Hutchinson's room, which was distinguished as a
+      bed-sitting-room. Tembarom had diplomatically suggested it to Mr.
+      Hutchinson. It was to be Tembarom's oyster supper, and somehow he managed
+      to convey that it was only a proper and modest tribute to Mr. Hutchinson
+      himself. First-class oyster stew and pale ale were not so bad when
+      properly suggested, therefore Mr. Hutchinson consented. Jim Bowles and
+      Julius Steinberger were to come in to share the feast, and Mrs. Bowse had
+      promised to prepare.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was not an inspiring day for Little Ann. New York had seemed a
+      bewildering and far too noisy place for her when she had come to it
+      directly from her grandmother's cottage in the English village, where she
+      had spent her last three months before leaving England. The dark rooms of
+      the five-storied boarding-house had seemed gloomy enough to her, and she
+      had found it much more difficult to adjust herself to her surroundings
+      than she could have been induced to admit to her father. At first his
+      temper and the open contempt for American habits and institutions which he
+      called &ldquo;speaking his mind&rdquo; had given her a great deal of careful steering
+      through shoals to do. At the outset the boarders had resented him, and
+      sometimes had snapped back their own views of England and courts. Violent
+      and disparaging argument had occasionally been imminent, and Mrs. Bowse
+      had worn an ominous look. Their rooms had in fact been &ldquo;wanted&rdquo; before
+      their first week had come to an end, and Little Ann herself scarcely knew
+      how she had tided over that situation. But tide it over she did, and by
+      supernatural effort and watchfulness she contrived to soothe Mrs. Bowse
+      until she had been in the house long enough to make friends with people
+      and aid her father to realize that, if they went elsewhere, they might
+      find only the same class of boarders, and there would be the cost of
+      moving to consider. She had beguiled an armchair from Mrs. Bowse, and had
+      recovered it herself with a remnant of crimson stuff secured from a
+      miscellaneous heap at a marked-down sale at a department store. She had
+      arranged his books and papers adroitly and had kept them in their places
+      so that he never felt himself obliged to search for any one of them. With
+      many little contrivances she had given his bed-sitting-room a look of
+      comfort and established homeliness, and he had even begun to like it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tha't just like tha mother, Ann,&rdquo; he had said. &ldquo;She'd make a railway
+      station look as if it had been lived in.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Tembarom had appeared, heralded by Mrs. Bowse and the G. Destroyer,
+      and the first time their eyes had met across the table she had liked him.
+      The liking had increased. There was that in his boyish cheer and his
+      not-too-well-fed-looking face which called forth maternal interest. As she
+      gradually learned what his life had been, she felt a thrilled anxiety to
+      hear day by day how he was getting on. She listened for details, and felt
+      it necessary to gather herself together in the face of a slight depression
+      when hopes of Galton were less high than usual. His mending was
+      mysteriously done, and in time he knew with amazed gratitude that he was
+      being &ldquo;looked after.&rdquo; His first thanks were so awkward, but so full of
+      appreciation of unaccustomed luxury, that they almost brought tears to her
+      eyes, since they so clearly illuminated the entire novelty of any
+      attention whatever.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I just don't know what to say,&rdquo; he said, shuffling from one foot to
+      another, though his nice grin was at its best. &ldquo;I've never had a woman do
+      anything for me since I was ten. I guess women do lots of things for most
+      fellows; but, then, they're mothers and sisters and aunts. I appreciate it
+      like&mdash;like thunder. I feel as if I was Rockefeller, Miss Ann.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In a short time she had become &ldquo;Little Ann&rdquo; to him, as to the rest, and
+      they began to know each other very well. Jim Bowles and Julius Steinberger
+      had not been able to restrain themselves at first from making slangy,
+      yearning love to her, but Tembarom had been different. He had kept himself
+      well in hand. Yes, she had liked T. Tembarom, and as she packed the trunks
+      she realized that the Atlantic Ocean was three thousand miles across, and
+      when two people who had no money were separated by it, they were likely to
+      remain so. Rich people could travel, poor people couldn't. You just stayed
+      where things took you, and you mustn't be silly enough to expect things to
+      happen in your class of life&mdash;things like seeing people again. Your
+      life just went on. She kept herself very busy, and did not allow her
+      thoughts any latitude. It would vex her father very much if he thought she
+      had really grown fond of America and was rather sorry to go away. She had
+      finished her packing before evening, and the trunks were labeled and set
+      aside, some in the outside hall and some in the corner of the room. She
+      had sat down with some mending on her lap, and Hutchinson was walking
+      about the room with the restlessness of the traveler whose approaching
+      journey will not let him settle himself anywhere.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll lay a shilling you've got everything packed and ready, and put just
+      where a chap can lay his hands on it,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, Father. Your tweed cap's in the big pocket of your thick topcoat,
+      and there's an extra pair of spectacles and your pipe and tobacco in the
+      small one.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And off we go back to England same as we came!&rdquo; He rubbed his head, and
+      drew a big, worried sigh. &ldquo;Where's them going?&rdquo; he asked, pointing to some
+      newly laundered clothing on a side table. &ldquo;You haven't forgotten 'em, have
+      you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, Father. It's just some of the young men's washing. I thought I'd take
+      time to mend them up a bit before I went to bed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's like tha mother, too&mdash;taking care of everybody. What did
+      these chaps do before you came?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sometimes they tried to sew on a button or so themselves, but oftener
+      they went without. Men make poor work of sewing. It oughtn't to be
+      expected of them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Hutchinson stopped and looked her and her mending over with a touch of
+      curiosity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Some of them's Tembarom's?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Little Ann held up a pair of socks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;These are. He does wear them out, poor fellow. It's tramping up and down
+      the streets to save car-fare does it. He's never got a heel to his name.
+      But he's going to be able to buy some new ones next week.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Hutchinson began his tramp again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He'll miss thee, Little Ann; but so'll the other lads, for that matter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He'll know to-night whether Mr. Galton's going to let him keep his work.
+      I do hope he will. I believe he'd begin to get on.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo;&mdash;Hutchinson was just a little grudging even at this
+      comparatively lenient moment,&mdash;&ldquo;I believe the chap'll get on myself.
+      He's got pluck and he's sharp. I never saw him make a poor mouth yet.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Neither did I,&rdquo; answered Ann.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A door leading into Tembarom's hall bedroom opened on to Hutchinson's.
+      They both heard some one inside the room knock at it. Hutchinson turned
+      and listened, jerking his head toward the sound.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There's that poor chap again,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;He's wakened and got restless.
+      What's Tembarom going to do with him, I'd like to know? The money won't
+      last forever.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Shall I let him in, Father? I dare say he's got restless because Mr.
+      Tembarom's not come in.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Aye, we'll let him in. He won't have thee long. He can't do no harm so
+      long as I'm here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Little Ann went to the door and opened it. She spoke quietly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you want to come in here, Mr. Strangeways?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The man came in. He was clean, but still unshaven, and his clothes looked
+      as though he had been lying down. He looked round the room anxiously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where has he gone?&rdquo; he demanded in an overstrung voice. &ldquo;Where is he?&rdquo; He
+      caught at Ann's sleeve in a sudden access of nervous fear. &ldquo;What shall I
+      do if he's gone?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Hutchinson moved toward him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Ere, 'ere,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;don't you go catchin' hold of ladies. What do you
+      want?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've forgotten his name now. What shall I do if I can't remember?&rdquo;
+       faltered Strangeways.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Little Ann patted his arm comfortingly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There, there, now! You've not really forgotten it. It's just slipped your
+      memory. You want Mr. Tembarom&mdash;Mr. T. Tembarom.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, thank you, thank you. That's it. Yes, Tembarom. He said T. Tembarom.
+      He said he wouldn't throw me over.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Little Ann led him to a seat and made him sit down. She answered him with
+      quiet decision.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, if he said he wouldn't, he won't. Will he, Father?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, he won't.&rdquo; There was rough good nature in Hutchinson's admission. He
+      paused after it to glance at Ann. &ldquo;You think a lot of that lad, don't you,
+      Ann?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I do, Father,&rdquo; she replied undisturbedly. &ldquo;He's one you can trust,
+      too. He's up-town at his work,&rdquo; she explained to Strangeways. &ldquo;He'll be
+      back before long. He's giving us a bit of a supper in here because we're
+      going away.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Strangeways grew nervous again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But he won't go with you? T. Tembarom won't go?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no; he's not going. He'll stay here,&rdquo; she said soothingly. He had
+      evidently not observed the packed and labeled trunks when he came in. He
+      seemed suddenly to see them now, and rose in distress.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Whose are these? You said he wasn't going?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Ann took hold of his arm and led him to the corner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They are not Mr. Tembarom's trunks,&rdquo; she explained. &ldquo;They are father's
+      and mine. Look on the labels. Joseph Hutchinson, Liverpool. Ann
+      Hutchinson, Liverpool.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He looked at them closely in a puzzled way. He read a label aloud in a
+      dragging voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ann Hutchinson, Liverpool. What's&mdash;what's Liverpool?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, come,&rdquo; encouraged Little Ann, &ldquo;you know that. It's a place in
+      England. We're going back to England.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He stood and gazed fixedly before him. Then he began to rub his fingers
+      across his forehead. Ann knew the straining look in his eyes. He was
+      making that horrible struggle to get back somewhere through the darkness
+      which shut him in. It was so painful a thing to see that even Hutchinson
+      turned slightly away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't!&rdquo; said Little Ann, softly, and tried to draw him away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He caught his breath convulsively once or twice, and his voice dragged out
+      words again, as though he were dragging them from bottomless depths.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Going&mdash;back&mdash;to&mdash;England&mdash;back to England&mdash;to
+      England.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He dropped into a chair near by, his arms thrown over its back, and broke,
+      as his face fell upon them, into heavy, deadly sobbing&mdash;the kind of
+      sobbing Tembarom had found it impossible to stand up against. Hutchinson
+      whirled about testily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dang it!&rdquo; he broke out, &ldquo;I wish Tembarom'd turn up. What are we to do?&rdquo;
+       He didn't like it himself. It struck him as unseemly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Ann went to the chair, and put her hands on the shuddering shoulder,
+      bending over the soul-wrung creature, the wisdom of centuries in the soft,
+      expostulatory voice which seemed to reach the very darkness he was lost
+      in. It was a wisdom of which she was wholly unaware, but it had been born
+      with her, and was the building of her being.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Sh! 'S-h-h!&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;You mustn't do that. Mr. Tembarom wouldn't like
+      you to do it. He'll be in directly. 'Sh! 'Sh, now!&rdquo; And simple as the
+      words were, their soothing reached him. The wildness of his sobs grew
+      less.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;See here,&rdquo; Hutchinson protested, &ldquo;this won't do, my man. I won't have it,
+      Ann. I'm upset myself, what with this going back and everything. I can't
+      have a chap coming and crying like that there. It upsets me worse than
+      ever. And you hangin' over him! It won't do.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Strangeways lifted his head from his arms and looked at him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Aye, I mean what I say,&rdquo; Hutchinson added fretfully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Strangeways got up from the chair. When he was not bowed or slouching it
+      was to be seen that he was a tall man with square shoulders. Despite his
+      unshaven, haggard face, he had a sort of presence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll go back to my room,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I forgot. I ought not to be here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Neither Hutchinson nor Little Ann had ever seen any one do the thing he
+      did next. When Ann went with him to the door of the hall bedroom, he took
+      her hand, and bowing low before her, lifted it gently to his lips.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hutchinson stared at him as he turned into the room and closed the door
+      behind him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I've read of lords and ladies doin' that in books,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;but I
+      never thought I should see a chap do it myself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Little Ann went back to her mending, looking very thoughtful.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Father,&rdquo; she said, after a few moments, &ldquo;England made him come near to
+      remembering something.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;New York'll come near making me remember a lot of things when I'm out of
+      it,&rdquo; said Mr. Hutchinson, sitting down heavily in his chair and rubbing
+      his head. &ldquo;Eh, dang it! dang it!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't you let it, Father,&rdquo; advised Little Ann. &ldquo;There's never any good in
+      thinking things over.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You're not as cheerful yourself as you let on,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;You've not got
+      much color to-day, my lass.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She rubbed one cheek a little, trying to laugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shall get it back when we go and stay with grandmother. It's just
+      staying indoors so much. Mr. Tembarom won't be long now; I'll get up and
+      set the table. The things are on a tray outside.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As she was going out of the room, Jim Bowles and Julius Steinberger
+      appeared at the door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;May we come in?&rdquo; Jim asked eagerly. &ldquo;We're invited to the oyster stew,
+      and it's time old T. T. was here. Julius and me are just getting dippy
+      waiting up-stairs to hear if he's made good with Galton.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, now, you sit down and be quiet a bit, or you'll be losing your
+      appetites,&rdquo; advised Ann.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You can't lose a thing the size of mine,&rdquo; answered Jim, &ldquo;any more than
+      you could lose the Metropolitan Opera-house.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Ann turned her head and paused as though she were listening. She heard
+      footsteps in the lower hall.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's coming now,&rdquo; she announced. &ldquo;I know his step. He's tired. Don't go
+      yet, you two,&rdquo; she added as the pair prepared to rush to meet him. &ldquo;When
+      any one's that tired he wants to wash his face, and talk when he's ready.
+      If you'll just go back to your room I'll call you when I've set the
+      table.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She felt that she wanted a little more quiet during the next few minutes
+      than she could have if they remained and talked at the top of elated
+      voices. She had not quite realized how anxiously she had been waiting all
+      day for the hour when she would hear exactly what had happened. If he was
+      all right, it would be a nice thing to remember when she was in England.
+      In this moderate form she expressed herself mentally. &ldquo;It would be a nice
+      thing to remember.&rdquo; She spread the cloth on the table and began to lay out
+      the plates. Involuntarily she found herself stopping to glance at the hall
+      bedroom door and listen rather intently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I hope he's got it. I do that. I'm sure he has. He ought to.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Hutchinson looked over at her. She was that like her mother, that lass!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You're excited, Ann,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, Father, I am&mdash;a bit. He's&mdash;he's washing his face now.&rdquo;
+       Sounds of splashing water could be heard through the intervening door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hutchinson watched her with some uneasiness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You care a lot for that lad,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She did not look fluttered. Her answer was quite candid.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I said I did, Father. He's taking off his boots.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You know every sound he makes, and you're going away Saturday, and you'll
+      never see him again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That needn't stop me caring. It never did any one any harm to care for
+      one of his sort.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But it can't come to anything,&rdquo; Hutchinson began to bluster. &ldquo;It won't do&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's coming to the door, he's turning the handle,&rdquo; said Little Ann.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tembarom came in. He was fresh with recent face-washing, and his hair was
+      damp, so that a short lock curled and stood up. He had been uptown making
+      frantic efforts for hours, but he had been making them in a spirit of
+      victorious relief, and he did not look tired at all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've got it!&rdquo; he cried out the moment he entered. &ldquo;I've got it, by jingo!
+      The job's mine for keeps.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Galton's give it to you out and out?&rdquo; Hutchinson was slightly excited
+      himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's in the bulliest humor you ever saw. He says I've done first-rate,
+      and if I go on, he'll run me up to thirty.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I'm danged glad of it, lad, that I am!&rdquo; Hutchinson gave in
+      handsomely. &ldquo;You put backbone into it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Little Ann stood near, smiling. Her smile met Tembarom's.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know you're glad, Little Ann,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I'd never have got there but
+      for you. It was up to me, after the way you started me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You know I'm glad without me telling you,&rdquo; she answered. &ldquo;I'm RIGHTDOWN
+      glad.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And it was at this moment that Mrs. Bowse came into the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's too bad it's happened just now,&rdquo; she said, much flustered. &ldquo;That's
+      the way with things. The stew'll spoil, but he says it's real important.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Tembarom caught at both her hands and shook them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've got it, Mrs. Bowse. Here's your society reporter! The best-looking
+      boarder you've got is going to be able to pay his board steady.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm as glad as can be, and so will everybody be. I knew you'd get it. But
+      this gentleman's been here twice to-day. He says he really must see you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let him wait,&rdquo; Hutchinson ordered. &ldquo;What's the chap want? The stew won't
+      be fit to eat.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, it won't,&rdquo; answered Mrs. Bowse; &ldquo;but he seems to think he's not the
+      kind to be put off. He says it's more Mr. Tembarom's business than his. He
+      looked real mad when I showed him into the parlor, where they were playing
+      the pianola. He asked wasn't there a private room where you could talk.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A certain flurried interest in the manner of Mrs. Bowse, a something not
+      usually awakened by inopportune callers, an actual suggestion of the
+      possible fact that she was not as indifferent as she was nervous, somewhat
+      awakened Mr. Hutchinson's curiosity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Look here,&rdquo; he volunteered, &ldquo;if he's got any real business, he can't talk
+      over to the tune of the pianola you can bring him up here, Tembarom. I'll
+      see he don't stay long if his business isn't worth talkin' about. He'll
+      see the table set for supper, and that'll hurry him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, gee I wish he hadn't come!&rdquo; said Tembarom. &ldquo;I'll just go down and see
+      what he wants. No one's got any swell private business with me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You bring him up if he has,&rdquo; said Hutchinson. &ldquo;We'd like to hear about
+      it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Tembarom ran down the stairs quickly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No one had ever wanted to see him on business before. There was something
+      important-sounding about it; perhaps things were starting up for him in
+      real earnest. It might be a message from Galton, though he could not
+      believe that he had at this early stage reached such a distinction. A
+      ghastly thought shot a bolt at him, but he shook himself free of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's not a fellow to go back on his word, anyhow,&rdquo; he insisted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There were more boarders than usual in the parlor. The young woman from
+      the notion counter had company; and one of her guests was playing &ldquo;He
+      sut'nly was Good to Me&rdquo; on the pianola with loud and steady tread of
+      pedal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The new arrival had evidently not thought it worth his while to commit
+      himself to permanency by taking a seat. He was standing not far from the
+      door with a businesslike-looking envelop in one hand and a pince-nez in
+      the other, with which Tembarom saw he was rather fretfully tapping the
+      envelop as he looked about him. He was plainly taking in the
+      characteristics of the room, and was not leniently disposed toward them.
+      His tailor was clearly an excellent one, with entirely correct ideas as to
+      the cut and material which exactly befitted an elderly gentleman of some
+      impressiveness in the position, whatsoever it happened to be, which he
+      held. His face was not of a friendly type, and his eyes held cold
+      irritation discreetly restrained by businesslike civility. Tembarom
+      vaguely felt the genialities of the oyster supper assume a rather
+      fourth-rate air.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The caller advanced and spoke first.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. Tembarom?&rdquo; he inquired.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; Tembarom answered, &ldquo;I'm T. Tembarom.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;T.,&rdquo; repeated the stranger, with a slightly puzzled expression. &ldquo;Ah, yes;
+      I see. I beg pardon.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In that moment Tembarom felt that he was looked over, taken in, summed up,
+      and without favor. The sharp, steady eye, however, did not seem to have
+      moved from his face. At the same time it had aided him to realize that he
+      was, to this well-dressed person at least, a too exhilarated young man
+      wearing a ten-dollar &ldquo;hand-me-down.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My name is Palford,&rdquo; he said concisely. &ldquo;That will convey nothing to you.
+      I am of the firm of Palford &amp; Grimby of Lincoln's Inn. This is my
+      card.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Tembarom took the card and read that Palford &amp; Grimby were
+      &ldquo;solicitors,&rdquo; and he was not sure that he knew exactly what &ldquo;solicitors&rdquo;
+       were.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lincoln's Inn?&rdquo; he hesitated. &ldquo;That's not in New York, is it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, Mr. Tembarom; in London. I come from England.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You must have had bad weather crossing,&rdquo; said Tembarom, with amiable
+      intent. Somehow Mr. Palford presented a more unyielding surface than he
+      was accustomed to. And yet his hard courtesy was quite perfect.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have been here some weeks.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I hope you like New York. Won't you have a seat?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The young lady from the notion counter and her friends began to sing the
+      chorus of &ldquo;He sut'nly was Good to Me&rdquo; with quite professional negro
+      accent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's just the way May Irwin done it,&rdquo; one of them laughed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Palford glanced at the performers. He did not say whether he liked New
+      York or not.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I asked your landlady if we could not see each other in a private room,&rdquo;
+       he said. &ldquo;It would not be possible to talk quietly here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We shouldn't have much of a show,&rdquo; answered Tembarom, inwardly wishing he
+      knew what was going to happen. &ldquo;But there are no private rooms in the
+      house. We can be quieter than this, though, if we go up stairs to Mr.
+      Hutchinson's room. He said I could bring you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That would be much better,&rdquo; replied Mr. Palford.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tembarom led him out of the room, up the first steep and narrow flight of
+      stairs, along the narrow hall to the second, up that, down another hall to
+      the third, up the third, and on to the fourth. As he led the way he
+      realized again that the worn carpets, the steep narrowness, and the pieces
+      of paper unfortunately stripped off the wall at intervals, were being
+      rather counted against him. This man had probably never been in a place
+      like this before in his life, and he didn't take to it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the Hutchinsons' door he stopped and explained:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We were going to have an oyster stew here because the Hutchinsons are
+      going away; but Mr. Hutchinson said we could come up.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very kind of Mr. Hutchinson, I'm sure.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Despite his stiffly collected bearing, Mr. Palford looked perhaps slightly
+      nervous when he was handed into the bed-sitting-room, and found himself
+      confronting Hutchinson and Little Ann and the table set for the oyster
+      stew. It is true that he had never been in such a place in his life, that
+      for many reasons he was appalled, and that he was beset by a fear that he
+      might be grotesquely compelled by existing circumstances to accept these
+      people's invitation, if they insisted upon his sitting down with them and
+      sharing their oyster stew. One could not calculate on what would happen
+      among these unknown quantities. It might be their idea of boarding-house
+      politeness. And how could one offend them? God forbid that the situation
+      should intensify itself in such an absurdly trying manner! What a bounder
+      the unfortunate young man was! His own experience had not been such as to
+      assist him to any realistic enlightenment regarding him, even when he had
+      seen the society page and had learned that he had charge of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let me make you acquainted with Mr. and Miss Hutchinson,&rdquo; Tembarom
+      introduced. &ldquo;This is Mr. Palford, Mr. Hutchinson.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Hutchinson, half hidden behind his newspaper, jerked his head and grunted:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Glad to see you, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Palford bowed, and took the chair Tembarom presented.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am much obliged to you, Mr. Hutchinson, for allowing me to come to your
+      room. I have business to discuss with Mr. Tembarom, and the pianola was
+      being played down-stairs&mdash;rather loudly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They do it every night, dang 'em! Right under my bed,&rdquo; growled
+      Hutchinson. &ldquo;You're an Englishman, aren't you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So am I, thank God!&rdquo; Hutchinson devoutly gave forth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Little Ann rose from her chair, sewing in hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Father'll come and sit with me in my room,&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hutchinson looked grumpy. He did not intend to leave the field clear and
+      the stew to its fate if he could help it. He gave Ann a protesting frown.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I dare say Mr. Palford doesn't mind us,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;We're not strangers.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not in the least,&rdquo; Palford protested. &ldquo;Certainly not. If you are old
+      friends, you may be able to assist us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I don't know about that,&rdquo; Hutchinson answered, &ldquo;We've not known him
+      long, but we know him pretty well. You come from London, don't you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. From Lincoln's Inn Fields.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Law?&rdquo; grunted Hutchinson.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. Of the firm of Palford &amp; Grimby.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Hutchinson moved in his chair involuntarily. There was stimulation to
+      curiosity in this. This chap was a regular top sawyer&mdash;clothes, way
+      of pronouncing his words, manners, everything. No mistaking him&mdash;old
+      family solicitor sort of chap. What on earth could he have to say to
+      Tembarom? Tembarom himself had sat down and could not be said to look at
+      his ease.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not intrude without the excuse of serious business,&rdquo; Palford
+      explained to him. &ldquo;A great deal of careful research and inquiry has
+      finally led me here. I am compelled to believe I have followed the right
+      clue, but I must ask you a few questions. Your name is not really
+      Tembarom, is it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Hutchinson looked at Tembarom sharply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not Tembarom? What does he mean, lad?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Tembarom's grin was at once boyish and ashamed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, it is in one way,&rdquo; he answered, &ldquo;and it isn't in another. The
+      fellows at school got into the way of calling me that way,&mdash;to save
+      time, I guess,&mdash;and I got to like it. They'd have guyed my real name.
+      Most of them never knew it. I can't see why any one ever called a child by
+      such a fool name, anyhow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What was it exactly?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Tembarom looked almost sheepish.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It sounds like a thing in a novel. It was Temple Temple Barholm. Two
+      Temples, by gee! As if one wasn't enough!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Joseph Hutchinson dropped his paper and almost started from his chair. His
+      red face suddenly became so much redder that he looked a trifle
+      apoplectic.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Temple Barholm does tha say?&rdquo; he cried out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Palford raised his hand and checked him, but with a suggestion of
+      stiff apology.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you will kindly allow me. Did you ever hear your father refer to a
+      place called Temple Barholm?&rdquo; he inquired.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tembarom reflected as though sending his thoughts backward into a pretty
+      thoroughly forgotten and ignored past. There had been no reason connected
+      with filial affection which should have caused him to recall memories of
+      his father. They had not liked each other. He had known that he had been
+      resented and looked down upon as a characteristically American product.
+      His father had more than once said he was a &ldquo;common American lad,&rdquo; and he
+      had known he was.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Seems to me,&rdquo; he said at last, &ldquo;that once when he was pretty mad at his
+      luck I heard him grumbling about English laws, and he said some of his
+      distant relations were swell people who would never think of speaking to
+      him,&mdash;perhaps didn't know he was alive,&mdash;and they lived in a big
+      way in a place that was named after the family. He never saw it or them,
+      and he said that was the way in England&mdash;one fellow got everything
+      and the rest were paupers like himself. He'd always been poor.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, the relation was a distant one. Until this investigation began the
+      family knew nothing of him. The inquiry has been a tiresome one. I trust I
+      am reaching the end of it. We have given nearly two years to following
+      this clue.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What for?&rdquo; burst forth Tembarom, sitting upright.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because it was necessary to find either George Temple Barholm or his son,
+      if he had one.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm his son, all right, but he died when I was eight years old,&rdquo; Tembarom
+      volunteered. &ldquo;I don't remember much about him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You remember that he was not an American?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He was English. Hated it; but he wasn't fond of America.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have you any papers belonging to him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Tembarom hesitated again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There's a few old letters&mdash;oh, and one of those glass photographs in
+      a case. I believe it's my grandfather and grandmother, taken when they
+      were married. Him on a chair, you know, and her standing with her hand on
+      his shoulder.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Can you show them to me?&rdquo; Palford suggested.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sure,&rdquo; Tembarom answered, getting up from his seat &ldquo;They're in my room. I
+      turned them up yesterday among some other things.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      When he left them, Mr. Palford sat gently rubbing his chin. Hutchinson
+      wanted to burst forth with questions, but he looked so remote and acidly
+      dignified that there was a suggestion of boldness in the idea of intruding
+      on his reflections. Hutchinson stared at him and breathed hard and short
+      in his suspense. The stiff old chap was thinking things over and putting
+      things together in his lawyer's way. He was entirely oblivious to his
+      surroundings. Little Ann went on with her mending, but she wore her
+      absorbed look, and it was not a result of her work.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tembarom came back with some papers in his hand. They were yellowed old
+      letters, and on the top of the package there was a worn daguerreotype-case
+      with broken clasp.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here they are,&rdquo; he said, giving them to Palford. &ldquo;I guess they'd just
+      been married,&rdquo; opening the case. &ldquo;Get on to her embroidered collar and big
+      breast-pin with his picture in it. That's English enough, isn't it? He'd
+      given it to her for a wedding-present. There's something in one of the
+      letters about it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was the letters to which Mr. Palford gave the most attention. He read
+      them and examined post-marks and dates. When he had finished, he rose from
+      his chair with a slightly portentous touch of professional ceremony.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, those are sufficiently convincing. You are a very fortunate young
+      man. Allow me to congratulate you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He did not look particularly pleased, though he extended his hand and
+      shook Tembarom's politely. He was rigorously endeavoring to conceal that
+      he found himself called upon to make the best of an extremely bad job.
+      Hutchinson started forward, resting his hands on his knees and glaring
+      with ill-suppressed excitement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What's that for?&rdquo; Tembarom said. He felt rather like a fool. He laughed
+      half nervously. It seemed to be up to him to understand, and he didn't
+      understand in the least.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have, through your father's distant relationship, inherited a very
+      magnificent property&mdash;the estate of Temple Barholm in Lancashire,&rdquo;
+       Palford began to explain, but Mr. Hutchinson sprang from his chair
+      outright, crushing his paper in his hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Temple Barholm!&rdquo; he almost shouted, &ldquo;I dunnot believe thee! Why, it's one
+      of th' oldest places in England and one of th' biggest. Th' Temple
+      Barholms as didn't come over with th' Conqueror was there before him. Some
+      of them was Saxon kings! And him&mdash;&rdquo; pointing a stumpy, red finger
+      disparagingly at Tembarom, aghast and incredulous&mdash;&ldquo;that New York lad
+      that's sold newspapers in the streets&mdash;you say he's come into it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Precisely.&rdquo; Mr. Palford spoke with some crispness of diction. Noise and
+      bluster annoyed him. &ldquo;That is my business here. Mr. Tembarom is, in fact,
+      Mr. Temple Temple Barholm of Temple Barholm, which you seem to have heard
+      of.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Heard of it! My mother was born in the village an' lives there yet. Art
+      tha struck dumb, lad!&rdquo; he said almost fiercely to Tembarom. &ldquo;By Judd! Tha
+      well may be!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Tembarom was standing holding the back of a chair. He was pale, and had
+      once opened his mouth, and then gulped and shut it. Little Ann had dropped
+      her sewing. His first look had leaped to her, and she had looked back
+      straight into his eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm struck something,&rdquo; he said, his half-laugh slightly unsteady. &ldquo;Who'd
+      blame me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You'd better sit down,&rdquo; said Little Ann. &ldquo;Sudden things are upsetting.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He did sit down. He felt rather shaky. He touched himself on his chest and
+      laughed again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Me!&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;T. T.! Hully gee! It's like a turn at a vaudeville.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The sentiment prevailing in Hutchinson's mind seemed to verge on
+      indignation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thee th' master of Temple Barholm!&rdquo; he ejaculated. &ldquo;Why, it stood for
+      seventy thousand pound' a year!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It did and it does,&rdquo; said Mr. Palford, curtly. He had less and less taste
+      for the situation. There was neither dignity nor proper sentiment in it.
+      The young man was utterly incapable of comprehending the meaning and
+      proportions of the extraordinary event which had befallen him. It appeared
+      to present to him the aspect of a somewhat slangy New York joke.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You do not seem much impressed, Mr. Temple Barholm,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I'm impressed, all right,&rdquo; answered Tembarom, &ldquo;but, say, this thing
+      can't be true! You couldn't make it true if you sat up all night to do
+      it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When I go into the business details of the matter tomorrow morning you
+      will realize the truth of it,&rdquo; said Mr. Palford. &ldquo;Seventy thousand pounds
+      a year&mdash;and Temple Barholm&mdash;are not unsubstantial facts.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Three hundred and fifty thousand dollars, my lad&mdash;that's what it
+      stands for!&rdquo; put in Mr. Hutchinson.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said Tembarom, &ldquo;I guess I can worry along on that if I try hard
+      enough. I mayn't be able to keep myself in the way I've been used to, but
+      I've got to make it do.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Palford stiffened. He did not know that the garish, flippant-sounding
+      joking was the kind of defense the streets of New York had provided Mr.
+      Temple Barholm with in many an hour when he had been a half-clad newsboy
+      with an empty stomach, and a bundle of unsold newspapers under his arm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are jocular,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I find the New Yorkers are given to being
+      jocular&mdash;continuously.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Tembarom looked at him rather searchingly. Palford wouldn't have found it
+      possible to believe that the young man knew all about his distaste and its
+      near approach to disgust, that he knew quite well what he thought of his
+      ten-dollar suit, his ex-newsboy's diction, and his entire incongruousness
+      as a factor in any circumstances connected with dignity and splendor. He
+      would certainly not have credited the fact that though he had not the
+      remotest idea what sort of a place Temple Barholm was, and what sort of
+      men its long line of possessors had been, he had gained a curious
+      knowledge of their significance through the mental attitude of their legal
+      representative when he for a moment failed to conceal his sense of actual
+      revolt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It seems sort of like a joke till you get on to it,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;But I
+      guess it ain't such a merry jest as it seems.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And then Mr. Palford did begin to observe that he had lost his color
+      entirely; also that he had a rather decent, sharp-cut face, and extremely
+      white and good young teeth, which he showed not unattractively when he
+      smiled. And he smiled frequently, but he was not smiling now.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0007" id="link2HCH0007">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VII
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      In the course of the interview given to the explaining of business and
+      legal detail which took place between Mr. Palford and his client the
+      following morning, Tembarom's knowledge of his situation extended itself
+      largely, and at the same time added in a proportionate degree to his sense
+      of his own incongruity as connected with it. He sat at a table in
+      Palford's private sitting-room at the respectable, old-fashioned hotel the
+      solicitor had chosen&mdash;sat and listened, and answered questions and
+      asked them, until his head began to feel as though it were crammed to
+      bursting with extraordinary detail.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was all extraordinary to him. He had had no time for reading and no
+      books to read, and therefore knew little of fiction. He was entirely
+      ignorant of all romance but such as the New York papers provided. This was
+      highly colored, but it did not deal with events connected with the
+      possessors of vast English estates and the details of their habits and
+      customs. His geographical knowledge of Great Britain was simple and
+      largely incorrect. Information concerning its usual conditions and aspects
+      had come to him through talk of international marriages and cup races, and
+      had made but little impression upon him. He liked New York&mdash;its
+      noise, its streets, its glare, its Sunday newspapers, with their
+      ever-increasing number of sheets, and pictures of everything on earth
+      which could be photographed. His choice, when he could allow himself a
+      fifty-cent seat at the theater, naturally ran to productions which were
+      farcical or cheerfully musical. He had never reached serious drama,
+      perhaps because he had never had money enough to pay for entrance to
+      anything like half of the &ldquo;shows&rdquo; the other fellows recommended. He was
+      totally unprepared for the facing of any kind of drama as connected with
+      himself. The worst of it was that it struck him as being of the nature of
+      farce when regarded from the normal New York point of view. If he had
+      somehow had the luck to come into the possession of money in ways which
+      were familiar to him,&mdash;to &ldquo;strike it rich&rdquo; in the way of a &ldquo;big job&rdquo;
+       or &ldquo;deal,&rdquo;&mdash;he would have been better able to adjust himself to
+      circumstances. He might not have known how to spend his money, but he
+      would have spent it in New York on New York joys. There would have been no
+      foreign remoteness about the thing, howsoever fantastically unexpected
+      such fortune might have been. At any rate, in New York he would have known
+      the names of places and things.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Through a large part of his interview with Palford his elbow rested on the
+      table, and he held his chin with his hand and rubbed it thoughtfully. The
+      last Temple Temple Barholm had been an eccentric and uncompanionable
+      person. He had lived alone and had not married. He had cherished a
+      prejudice against the man who would have succeeded him as next of kin if
+      he had not died young. People had been of the opinion that he had disliked
+      him merely because he did not wish to be reminded that some one else must
+      some day inevitably stand in his shoes, and own the possessions of which
+      he himself was arrogantly fond. There were always more female Temple
+      Barholms than male ones, and the families were small. The relative who had
+      emigrated to Brooklyn had been a comparatively unknown person. His only
+      intercourse with the head of the house had been confined to a begging
+      letter, written from America when his circumstances were at their worst.
+      It was an ill-mannered and ill-expressed letter, which had been considered
+      presuming, and had been answered chillingly with a mere five-pound note,
+      clearly explained as a final charity. This begging letter, which bitterly
+      contrasted the writer's poverty with his indifferent relative's luxuries,
+      had, by a curious trick of chance which preserved it, quite
+      extraordinarily turned up during an examination of apparently unimportant,
+      forgotten papers, and had furnished a clue in the search for next of kin.
+      The writer had greatly annoyed old Mr. Temple Barholm by telling him that
+      he had called his son by his name&mdash;&ldquo;not that there was ever likely to
+      be anything in it for him.&rdquo; But a waif of the New York streets who was
+      known as &ldquo;Tem&rdquo; or &ldquo;Tembarom&rdquo; was not a link easily attached to any chain,
+      and the search had been long and rather hopeless. It had, however, at last
+      reached Mrs. Bowse's boarding-house and before Mr. Palford sat Mr. Temple
+      Temple Barholm, a cheap young man in cheap clothes, and speaking New York
+      slang with a nasal accent. Mr. Palford, feeling him appalling and
+      absolutely without the pale, was still aware that he stood in the position
+      of an important client of the firm of Palford &amp; Grimby. There was a
+      section of the offices at Lincoln's Inn devoted to documents representing
+      a lifetime of attention to the affairs of the Temple Barholm estates. It
+      was greatly to be hoped that the crass ignorance and commonness of this
+      young outsider would not cause impossible complications.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He knows nothing! He knows nothing!&rdquo; Palford found himself forced to
+      exclaim mentally not once, but a hundred times, in the course of their
+      talk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was&mdash;this revealed itself as the interview proceeded&mdash;just
+      one slight palliation of his impossible benightedness: he was not the kind
+      of young man who, knowing nothing, huffily protects himself by pretending
+      to know everything. He was of an unreserve concerning his ignorance which
+      his solicitor felt sometimes almost struck one in the face. Now and then
+      it quite made one jump. He was singularly free from any vestige of
+      personal vanity. He was also singularly unready to take offense. To the
+      head of the firm of Palford &amp; Grimby, who was not accustomed to
+      lightness of manner, and inclined to the view that a person who made a
+      joke took rather a liberty with him, his tendency to be jocular, even
+      about himself and the estate of Temple Barholm, was irritating and
+      somewhat disrespectful. Mr. Palford did not easily comprehend jokes of any
+      sort; especially was he annoyed by cryptic phraseology and mammoth
+      exaggeration. For instance, he could not in the least compass Mr. Temple
+      Barholm's meaning when he casually remarked that something or other was
+      &ldquo;all to the merry&rdquo;; or again, quite as though he believed that he was
+      using reasonable English figures of speech, &ldquo;The old fellow thought he was
+      the only pebble on the beach.&rdquo; In using the latter expression he had been
+      referring to the late Mr. Temple Barholm; but what on earth was his
+      connection with the sea-shore and pebbles? When confronted with these
+      baffling absurdities, Mr. Palford either said, &ldquo;I beg pardon,&rdquo; or
+      stiffened and remained silent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When Tembarom learned that he was the head of one of the oldest families
+      in England, no aspect of the desirable dignity of his position reached him
+      in the least.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; he remarked, &ldquo;there's quite a lot of us can go back to Adam and
+      Eve.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      When he was told that he was lord of the manor of Temple Barholm, he did
+      not know what a manor was.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What's a manor, and what happens if you're lord of it?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had not heard of William the Conqueror, and did not appear moved to
+      admiration of him, though he owned that he seemed to have &ldquo;put it over.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why didn't he make a republic of it while he was about it?&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;But
+      I guess that wasn't his kind. He didn't do all that fighting for his
+      health.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His interest was not alone totally dissevered from the events of past
+      centuries; it was as dissevered from those of mere past years. The habits,
+      customs, and points of view of five years before seemed to have been cast
+      into a vast waste-paper basket as wholly unpractical in connection with
+      present experiences.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A man that's going to keep up with the procession can't waste time
+      thinking about yesterday. What he's got to do is to keep his eye on what's
+      going to happen the week after next,&rdquo; he summed it up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rather to Mr. Palford's surprise, he did not speak lightly, but with a
+      sort of inner seriousness. It suggested that he had not arrived at this
+      conclusion without the aid of sharp experience. Now and then one saw a
+      touch of this profound practical perception in him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was not to be denied that he was clear-headed enough where purely
+      practical business detail was concerned. He was at first plainly rather
+      stunned by the proportions presented to him, but his questions were direct
+      and of a common-sense order not to be despised.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't know anything about it yet,&rdquo; he said once. &ldquo;It's all Dutch to me.
+      I can't calculate in half-crowns and pounds and half pounds, but I'm going
+      to find out. I've got to.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was extraordinary and annoying to feel that one must explain
+      everything; but this impossible fellow was not an actual fool on all
+      points, and he did not seem to be a weakling. He might learn certain
+      things in time, and at all events one was no further personally
+      responsible for him and his impossibilities than the business concerns of
+      his estate would oblige any legal firm to be. Clients, whether highly
+      desirable or otherwise, were no more than clients. They were not relatives
+      whom one must introduce to one's friends. Thus Mr. Palford, who was not a
+      specially humane or sympathetic person, mentally decided. He saw no pathos
+      in this raw young man, who would presently find himself floundering
+      unaided in waters utterly unknown to him. There was even a touch of bitter
+      amusement in the solicitor's mind as he glanced toward the future.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He explained with detail the necessity for their immediate departure for
+      the other side of the Atlantic. Certain legal formalities which must at
+      once be attended to demanded their presence in England. Foreseeing this,
+      on the day when he had finally felt himself secure as to the identity of
+      his client he had taken the liberty of engaging optionally certain
+      state-rooms on the Adriana, sailing the following Wednesday.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Subject of course to your approval,&rdquo; he added politely. &ldquo;But it is
+      imperative that we should be on the spot as early as possible.&rdquo; He did not
+      mention that he himself was abominably tired of his sojourn on alien
+      shores, and wanted to be back in London in his own chambers, with his own
+      club within easy reach.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tembarom's face changed its expression. He had been looking rather
+      weighted down and fatigued, and he lighted up to eagerness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Say,&rdquo; he exclaimed, &ldquo;why couldn't we go on the Transatlantic on
+      Saturday?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is one of the small, cheap boats,&rdquo; objected Palford.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The accommodation would be most inferior.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Tembarom leaned forward and touched his sleeve in hasty, boyish appeal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I want to go on it,&rdquo; he said; &ldquo;I want to go steerage.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Palford stared at him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You want to go on the Transatlantic! Steerage!&rdquo; he ejaculated, quite
+      aghast. This was a novel order of madness to reveal itself in the recent
+      inheritor of a great fortune.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tembarom's appeal grew franker; it took on the note of a too crude young
+      fellow's misplaced confidence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You do this for me,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I'd give a farm to go on that boat. The
+      Hutchinsons are sailing on it&mdash;Mr. and Miss Hutchinson, the ones you
+      saw at the house last night.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&mdash;it is really impossible.&rdquo; Mr. Palford hesitated. &ldquo;As to steerage,
+      my dear Mr. Temple Barholm, you&mdash;you can't.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Tembarom got up and stood with his hands thrust deep in his pockets. It
+      seemed to be a sort of expression of his sudden hopeful excitement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why not&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;If I own about half of England and have money to burn,
+      I guess I can buy a steerage passage on a nine-day steamer.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You can buy anything you like,&rdquo; Palford answered stiffly. &ldquo;It is not a
+      matter of buying. But I should not be conducting myself properly toward
+      you if I allowed it. It would not be&mdash;becoming.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Becoming!&rdquo; cried Tembarom, &ldquo;Thunder! It's not a spring bat. I tell you I
+      want to go just that way.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Palford saw abnormal breakers ahead. He felt that he would be glad when he
+      had landed his charge safely at Temple Barholm. Once there, his family
+      solicitor was not called upon to live with him and hobnob with his
+      extraordinary intimates.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As to buying,&rdquo; he said, still with marked lack of enthusiasm, &ldquo;instead of
+      taking a steerage passage on the Transatlantic yourself, you might no
+      doubt secure first-class state-rooms for Mr. and Miss Hutchinson on the
+      Adriana, though I seriously advise against it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Tembarom shook his head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You don't know them,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;They wouldn't let me. Hutchinson's a
+      queer old fellow and he's had the hardest kind of luck, but he's as proud
+      as they make 'em. Me butt in and offer to pay their passage back, as if
+      they were paupers, just because I've suddenly struck it rich! Hully gee! I
+      guess not. A fellow that's been boosted up in the air all in a minute, as
+      I have, has got to lie pretty low to keep folks from wanting to kick him,
+      anyhow. Hutchinson's a darned sight smarter fellow than I am, and he knows
+      it&mdash;and he's Lancashire, you bet.&rdquo; He stopped a minute and flushed.
+      &ldquo;As to Little Ann,&rdquo; he said&mdash;&ldquo;me make that sort of a break with HER!
+      Well, I should be a fool.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Palford was a cold-blooded and unimaginative person, but a long legal
+      experience had built up within him a certain shrewdness of perception. He
+      had naturally glanced once or twice at the girl sitting still at her
+      mending, and he had observed that she said very little and had a
+      singularly quiet, firm little voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I beg pardon. You are probably right. I had very little conversation with
+      either of them. Miss Hutchinson struck me as having an intelligent face.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She's a wonder,&rdquo; said Tembarom, devoutly. &ldquo;She's just a wonder.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Under the circumstances,&rdquo; suggested Mr. Palford, &ldquo;it might not be a bad
+      idea to explain to her your idea of the steerage passage. An intelligent
+      girl can often give excellent advice. You will probably have an
+      opportunity of speaking to her tonight. Did you say they were sailing
+      to-morrow?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      To-morrow! That brought it so near that it gave Tembarom a shock. He had
+      known that they sailed on Saturday, and now Saturday had become to-morrow.
+      Things began to surge through his mind&mdash;all sorts of things he had no
+      time to think of clearly, though it was true they had darted vaguely about
+      in the delirious excitement of the night, during which he had scarcely
+      slept at all. His face changed again, and the appeal died out of it. He
+      began to look anxious and restless.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, they're going to-morrow,&rdquo; he answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You see,&rdquo; argued Mr. Palford, with conviction, &ldquo;how impossible it would
+      be for us to make any arrangements in so few hours. You will excuse my
+      saying,&rdquo; he added punctiliously, &ldquo;that I could not make the voyage in the
+      steerage.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Tembarom laughed. He thought he saw him doing it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's so,&rdquo; he said. Then, with renewed hope, he added, &ldquo;Say, I 'm going
+      to try and get them to wait till Wednesday.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not think&mdash;&rdquo; Mr. Palford began, and then felt it wiser to leave
+      things as they were. &ldquo;But I'm not qualified to give an opinion. I do not
+      know Miss Hutchinson at all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But the statement was by no means frank. He had a private conviction that
+      he did know her to a certain degree. And he did.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0008" id="link2HCH0008">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VIII
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      There was a slight awkwardness even to Tembarom in entering the
+      dining-room that evening. He had not seen his fellow boarders, as his
+      restless night had made him sleep later than usual. But Mrs. Bowse had
+      told him of the excitement he had caused.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They just couldn't eat,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;They could do nothing but talk and
+      talk and ask questions; and I had waffles, too, and they got stone-cold.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The babel of friendly outcry which broke out on his entry was made up of
+      jokes, ejaculations, questions, and congratulatory outbursts from all
+      sides.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good old T. T.!&rdquo; &ldquo;Give him a Harvard yell! Rah! Rah! Rah!&rdquo; &ldquo;Lend me
+      fifty-five cents?&rdquo; &ldquo;Where's your tiara?&rdquo; &ldquo;Darned glad of it!&rdquo; &ldquo;Make us a
+      speech!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Say, people,&rdquo; said Tembarom, &ldquo;don't you get me rattled or I can't tell
+      you anything. I'm rattled enough already.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, is it true?&rdquo; called out Mr. Striper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; Tembarom answered back, sitting down. &ldquo;It couldn't be; that's what I
+      told Palford. I shall wake up in a minute or two and find myself in a
+      hospital with a peacherino of a trained nurse smoothing 'me piller.' You
+      can't fool ME with a pipe-dream like this. Palford's easier; he's not a
+      New Yorker. He says it IS true, and I can't get out of it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Whew! Great Jakes!&rdquo; A long breath was exhaled all round the table.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What are you, anyhow?&rdquo; cried Jim Bowles across the dishes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tembarom rested his elbow on the edge of the table and began to check off
+      his points on his fingers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm this,&rdquo; he said: &ldquo;I'm Temple Temple Barholm, Esquire, of Temple
+      Barholm, Lancashire, England. At the time of the flood my folks knocked up
+      a house just about where the ark landed, and I guess they've held on to it
+      ever since. I don't know what business they went into, but they made
+      money. Palford swears I've got three hundred and fifty thousand dollars a
+      year. I wasn't going to call the man a liar; but I just missed it, by
+      jings!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He was trying to &ldquo;bluff it out.&rdquo; Somehow he felt he had to. He felt it
+      more than ever when a momentary silence fell upon those who sat about the
+      table. It fell when he said &ldquo;three hundred and fifty thousand dollars a
+      year.&rdquo; No one could find voice to make any remark for a few seconds after
+      that.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you a lord&mdash;or a duke?&rdquo; some one asked after breath had
+      recovered itself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I'm not,&rdquo; he replied with relief. &ldquo;I just got out from under that;
+      but the Lord knows how I did it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What are you going to do first?&rdquo; said Jim Bowles.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've got to go and 'take possession.' That's what Palford calls it. I've
+      been a lost heir for nearly two years, and I've got to show myself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Hutchinson had not joined the clamor of greeting, but had grunted
+      disapproval more than once. He felt that, as an Englishman, he had a
+      certain dignity to maintain. He knew something about big estates and their
+      owners. He was not like these common New York chaps, who regarded them as
+      Arabian Nights tales to make jokes about. He had grown up as a village boy
+      in proper awe of Temple Barholm. They were ignorant fools, this lot. He
+      had no patience with them. He had left the village and gone to work in
+      Manchester when he was a boy of twelve, but as long as he had remained in
+      his mother's cottage it had been only decent good manners for him to touch
+      his forehead respectfully when a Temple Barholm, or a Temple Barholm guest
+      or carriage or pony phaeton, passed him by. And this chap was Mr. Temple
+      Temple Barholm himself! Lord save us!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Little Ann said nothing at all; but, then, she seldom said anything during
+      meal-times. When the rest of the boarders laughed, she ate her dinner and
+      smiled. Several times, despite her caution, Tembarom caught her eye, and
+      somehow held it a second with his. She smiled at him when this happened;
+      but there was something restless and eager in his look which made her wish
+      to evade it. She knew what he felt, and she knew why he kept up his jokes
+      and never once spoke seriously. She knew he was not comfortable, and did
+      not enjoy talking about hundreds of thousands a year to people who worked
+      hard for ten or twenty &ldquo;per.&rdquo; To-morrow morning was very near, she kept
+      thinking. To-morrow night she would be lying in her berth in the steerage,
+      or more probably taking care of her father, who would be very
+      uncomfortable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What will Galton do?&rdquo; Mr. Striper asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't know,&rdquo; Tembarom answered, and he looked troubled. Three hundred
+      and fifty thousand dollars a year might not be able to give aid to a
+      wounded society page.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What are you going to do with your Freak?&rdquo; called out Julius Steinberger.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tembarom actually started. As things had surged over him, he had had too
+      much to think over. He had not had time to give to his strange
+      responsibility; it had become one nevertheless.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you going to leave him behind when you go to England?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He leaned forward and put his chin on his hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, say,&rdquo; he said, as though he were thinking it out, &ldquo;he's spoken about
+      England two or three times. He's said he must go there. By jings! I'll
+      take him with me, and see what'll happen.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      When Little Ann got up to leave the room he followed her and her father
+      into the hall.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;May I come up and talk it over with you?&rdquo; he appealed. &ldquo;I've got to talk
+      to some one who knows something about it. I shall go dotty if I don't.
+      It's too much like a dream.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come on up when you're ready,&rdquo; answered Hutchinson. &ldquo;Ann and me can give
+      you a tip or two.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm going to be putting the last things in the trunks,&rdquo; said Ann, &ldquo;but I
+      dare say you won't mind that. The express'll be here by eight in the
+      morning.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O Lord!&rdquo; groaned Tembarom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When he went up to the fourth floor a little later, Hutchinson had fallen
+      into a doze in his chair over his newspaper, and Ann was kneeling by a
+      trunk in the hall, folding small articles tightly, and fitting them into
+      corners. To Tembarom she looked even more than usual like a slight child
+      thing one could snatch up in one's arms and carry about or set on one's
+      knee without feeling her weight at all. An inferior gas-jet on the wall
+      just above her was doing its best with the lot of soft, red hair, which
+      would have been an untidy bundle if it had not been hers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tembarom sat down on the trunk next to her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O Little Ann!&rdquo; he broke out under his breath, lest the sound of his voice
+      might check Hutchinson's steady snoring. &ldquo;O Little Ann!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Ann leaned back, sitting upon her small heels, and looked up at him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You're all upset, and it's not to be wondered at, Mr. Temple Barholm,&rdquo;
+       she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Upset! You're going away to-morrow morning! And, for the Lord's sake,
+      don't call me that!&rdquo; he protested.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You're going away yourself next Wednesday. And you ARE Mr. Temple
+      Barholm. You'll never be called anything else in England.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How am I going to stand it?&rdquo; he protested again. &ldquo;How could a fellow like
+      me stand it! To be yanked out of good old New York, and set down in a
+      place like a museum, with Central Park round it, and called Mr. Temple
+      Temple Barholm instead of just 'Tem' or 'T. T.'! It's not natural.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What you must do, Mr. Temple Barholm, is to keep your head clear, that's
+      all,&rdquo; she replied maturely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lord! if I'd got a head like yours!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She seemed to take him in, with a benign appreciativeness, in his
+      entirety.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, you haven't,&rdquo; she admitted, though quite without disparagement,
+      merely with slight reservation. &ldquo;But you've got one like your own. And
+      it's a good head&mdash;when you try to think steady. Yours is a man's
+      head, and mine's only a woman's.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's Little Ann Hutchinson's, by gee!&rdquo; said Tembarom, with feeling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Listen here, Mr. Tem&mdash;Temple Barholm,&rdquo; she went on, as nearly
+      disturbed as he had ever seen her outwardly. &ldquo;It's a wonderful thing
+      that's happened to you. It's like a novel. That splendid place, that
+      splendid name! It seems so queer to think I should ever have talked to a
+      Mr. Temple Barholm as I've talked to you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He leaned forward a little as though something drew him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But&rdquo;&mdash;there was unsteady appeal in his voice&mdash;&ldquo;you have liked
+      me, haven't you, Little Ann?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her own voice seemed to drop into an extra quietness that made it remote.
+      She looked down at her hands on her lap.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I have liked you. I have told Father I liked you,&rdquo; she answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He got up, and made an impetuous rush at his goal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then&mdash;say, I'm going in there to wake up Mr. Hutchinson and ask him
+      not to sail to-morrow morning.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You'd better not wake him up,&rdquo; she answered, smiling; but he saw that her
+      face changed and flushed. &ldquo;It's not a good time to ask Father anything
+      when he's just been waked up. And we HAVE to go. The express is coming at
+      eight.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Send it away again; tell 'em you're not going. Tell 'em any old thing.
+      Little Ann, what's the matter with you? Something's the matter. Have I
+      made a break?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He had felt the remoteness in her even before he had heard it in her
+      dropped voice. It had been vaguely there even when he sat down on the
+      trunk. Actually there was a touch of reserve about her, as though she was
+      keeping her little place with the self-respecting propriety of a girl
+      speaking to a man not of her own world.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I dare say I've done some fool thing without knowing it. I don't know
+      where I'm at, anyhow,&rdquo; he said woefully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't look at me like that, Mr. Temple Barholm,&rdquo; she said&mdash;&ldquo;as if I
+      was unkind. I&mdash;I'm NOT.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you're different,&rdquo; he implored. &ldquo;I saw it the minute I came up. I ran
+      up-stairs just crazy to talk to you,&mdash;yes, crazy to talk to you&mdash;and
+      you&mdash;well, you were different. Why are you, if you're not mad?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then she rose and stood holding one of her neatly rolled packages in her
+      hand. Her eyes were soft and clear, and appealed maternally to his reason.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because everything's different. You just think a bit,&rdquo; she answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He stared at her a few seconds, and then understanding of her dawned upon
+      him. He made a human young dash at her, and caught her arm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What!&rdquo; he cried out. &ldquo;You mean this Temple Barholm song and dance makes
+      things different? Not on your life! You're not the girl to work that on
+      me, as if it was my fault. You've got to hear me speak my piece. Ann&mdash;you've
+      just got to!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He had begun to tremble a little, and she herself was not steady; but she
+      put a hand on his arm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't say anything you've not had time to think about,&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've been thinking of pretty near nothing else ever since I came here.
+      Just as soon as I looked at you across the table that first day I saw my
+      finish, and every day made me surer. I'd never had any comfort or taking
+      care of,&mdash;I didn't know the first thing about it,&mdash;and it seemed
+      as if all there was of it in the world was just in YOU.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did you think that?&rdquo; she asked falteringly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did I? That's how you looked to me, and it's how you look now. The way
+      you go about taking care of everybody and just handing out solid little
+      chunks of good sense to every darned fool that needs them, why&mdash;&rdquo;
+       There was a break in his voice&mdash;&ldquo;why, it just knocked me out the
+      first round.&rdquo; He held her a little away from him, so that he could yearn
+      over her, though he did not know he was yearning. &ldquo;See, I'd sworn I'd
+      never ask a girl to marry me until I could keep her. Well, you know how it
+      was, Ann. I couldn't have kept a goat, and I wasn't such a fool that I
+      didn't know it. I've been pretty sick when I thought how it was; but I
+      never worried you, did I?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, you didn't.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I just got busy. I worked like&mdash;well, I got busier than I ever was
+      in my life. When I got the page SURE, I let myself go a bit, sort of
+      hoping. And then this Temple Barholm thing hits me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's the thing you've got to think of now,&rdquo; said Little Ann. &ldquo;I'm going
+      to talk sensible to you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't, Ann! Good Lord! DON'T!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I MUST.&rdquo; She put her last tight roll into the trunk and tried to shut the
+      lid. &ldquo;Please lock this for me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He locked it, and then she seated herself on the top of it, though it was
+      rather high for her, and her small feet dangled. Her eyes looked large and
+      moist like a baby's, and she took out a handkerchief and lightly touched
+      them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You've made me want to cry a bit,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;but I'm not going to.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you going to tell me you don't want me?&rdquo; he asked, with anxious eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I'm not.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;God bless you!&rdquo; He was going to make a dash at her again, but pulled
+      himself up because he must. &ldquo;No, by jings!&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I'm not going to
+      till you let me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You see, it's true your head's not like mine,&rdquo; she said reasonably.
+      &ldquo;Men's heads are mostly not like women's. They're men, of course, and
+      they're superior to women, but they're what I'd call more fluttery-like.
+      Women must remind them of things.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What&mdash;what kind of things?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This kind. You see, Grandmother lives near Temple Barholm, and I know
+      what it's like, and you don't. And I've seen what seventy thousand pounds
+      a year means, and you haven't. And you've got to go and find out for
+      yourself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What's the matter with you coming along to help me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shouldn't help you; that's it. I should hold you back. I'm nothing but
+      Ann Hutchinson, and I talk Manchester&mdash;and I drop my h's.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I love to hear you drop your little h's all over the place,&rdquo; he burst
+      forth impetuously. &ldquo;I love it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She shook her head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The girls that go to garden-parties at Temple Barholm look like those in
+      the `Ladies' Pictorial', and they've got names and titles same as those in
+      novels.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He answered her in genuine anguish. He had never made any mistake about
+      her character, and she was beginning to make him feel afraid of her in the
+      midst of his adoration.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do I want with a girl out of a magazine?&rdquo; he cried. &ldquo;Where should I
+      hang her up?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She was not unfeeling, but unshaken and she went on:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should look like a housemaid among them. How would you feel with a wife
+      of that sort, when the other sort was about?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should feel like a king, that's what I should feel like,&rdquo; he replied
+      indignantly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shouldn't feel like a queen. I should feel MISERABLE.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She sat with her little feet dangling, and her hands folded in her lap.
+      Her infantile blue eyes held him as the Ancient Mariner had been held. He
+      could not get away from the clear directness of them. He did not want to
+      exactly, but she frightened him more and more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should be ashamed,&rdquo; she proceeded. &ldquo;I should feel as if I had taken an
+      advantage. What you've got to do is to find out something no one else can
+      find out for you, Mr. Temple Barholm.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How can I find it out without you? It was you who put me on to the
+      wedding-cake; you can put me on to other things.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because I've lived in the place,&rdquo; she answered unswervingly. &ldquo;I know how
+      funny it is for any one to think of me being Mrs. Temple Barholm. You
+      don't.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You bet I don't,&rdquo; he answered; &ldquo;but I'll tell you what I do know, and
+      that's how funny it is that I should be Mr. Temple Barholm. I've got on to
+      that all right, all right. Have you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She looked at him with a reflection that said much. She took him in with a
+      judicial summing up of which it must be owned an added respect was part.
+      She had always believed he had more sense than most young men, and now she
+      knew it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When a person's clever enough to see things for himself, he's generally
+      clever enough to manage them,&rdquo; she replied.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He knelt down beside the trunk and took both her hands in his. He held
+      them fast and rather hard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you throwing me down for good, Little Ann?&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;If you are, I
+      can't stand it, I won't stand it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you care about me like that, you'll do what I tell you,&rdquo; she
+      interrupted, and she slipped down from the top of her trunk. &ldquo;I know what
+      Mother would say. She'd say, 'Ann, you give that young man a chance.' And
+      I'm going to give you one. I've said all I'm going to, Mr. Temple
+      Barholm.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He took both her elbows and looked at her closely, feeling a somewhat awed
+      conviction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&mdash;believe&mdash;you have,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And here the sound of Mr. Hutchinson's loud and stertorous breathing
+      ceased, and he waked up, and came to the door to find out what Ann was
+      doing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What are you two talking about?&rdquo; he asked. &ldquo;People think when they
+      whisper it's not going to disturb anybody, but it's worse than shouting in
+      a man's ear.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Tembarom walked into the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've been asking Little Ann to marry me,&rdquo; he announced, &ldquo;and she won't.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He sat down in a chair helplessly, and let his head fall into his hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Eh!&rdquo; exclaimed Hutchinson. He turned and looked at Ann disturbedly. &ldquo;I
+      thought a bit ago tha didn't deny but what tha'd took to him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I didn't, Father,&rdquo; she answered. &ldquo;I don't change my mind that quick. I&mdash;would
+      have been willing to say 'Yes' when you wouldn't have been willing to let
+      me. I didn't know he was Mr. Temple Barholm then.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Hutchinson rubbed the back of his head, reddening and rather bristling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dost tha think th' Temple Barholms would look down on thee?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should look down on myself if I took him up at his first words, when
+      he's all upset with excitement, and hasn't had time to find out what
+      things mean. I'm&mdash;well, I 'm too fond of him, Father.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Hutchinson gave her a long, steady look.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are?&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I am.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Tembarom lifted his head, and looked at her, too.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She put her hands behind her back, and returned his look with the calm of
+      ages.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm not going to argue about it,&rdquo; she answered. &ldquo;Arguing's silly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His involuntary rising and standing before her was a sort of unconscious
+      tribute of respect.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know that,&rdquo; he owned. &ldquo;I know you. That's why I take it like this. But
+      I want you to tell me one thing. If this hadn't happened, if I'd only had
+      twenty dollars a week, would you have taken me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you'd had fifteen, and Father could have spared me, I'd have taken
+      you. Fifteen dollars a week is three pounds two and sixpence, and I've
+      known curates' wives that had to bring up families on less. It wouldn't go
+      as far in New York as it would in the country in England, but we could
+      have made it do&mdash;until you got more. I know you, too, Mr. Temple
+      Barholm.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He turned to her father, and saw in his florid countenance that which
+      spurred him to bold disclosure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Say,&rdquo; he put it to him, as man to man, &ldquo;she stands there and says a thing
+      like that, and she expects a fellow not to jerk her into his arms and
+      squeeze the life out of her! I daren't do it, and I'm not going to try;
+      but&mdash;well, you said her mother was like her, and I guess you know
+      what I'm up against.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Hutchinson's grunting chuckle contained implications of exultant
+      tenderness and gratified paternal pride.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She's th' very spit and image of her mother,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;and she had th'
+      sense of ten women rolled into one, and th' love of twenty. You let her
+      be, and you're as safe as th' Rock of Ages.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you think I don't know that?&rdquo; answered Tembarom, his eyes shining
+      almost to moisture. &ldquo;But what hits me, by thunder! is that I've lost the
+      chance of seeing her work out that fifteen-dollar-a-week proposition, and
+      it drives me crazy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should have downright liked to try it,&rdquo; said Little Ann, with
+      speculative reflection, and while she knitted her brows in lovely
+      consideration of the attractive problem, several previously unknown
+      dimples declared themselves about her mouth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ann,&rdquo; Tembarom ventured, &ldquo;if I go to Temple Barholm and try it a year and
+      learn all about it&mdash;-&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It would take more than a year,&rdquo; said Ann.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't make it two,&rdquo; Tembarom pleaded. &ldquo;I'll sit up at night with wet
+      towels round my head to learn; I'll spend fourteen hours a day with girls
+      that look like the pictures in the `Ladies' Pictorial', or whatever it is
+      in England; I'll give them every chance in life, if you'll let me off
+      afterward. There must be another lost heir somewhere; let's dig him up and
+      then come back to little old New York and be happy. Gee! Ann,&rdquo;&mdash;letting
+      himself go and drawing nearer to her,&mdash;&ldquo;how happy we could be in one
+      of those little flats in Harlem!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She was a warm little human thing, and a tender one, and when he came
+      close to her, glowing with tempestuous boyish eagerness, her eyes grew
+      bluer because they were suddenly wet, and she was obliged to move softly
+      back.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; she said; &ldquo;I know those little flats. Any one could&mdash;-&rdquo; She
+      stopped herself, because she had been going to reveal what a home a woman
+      could make in rooms like the compartments in a workbox. She knew and saw
+      it all. She drew back a little again, but she put out a hand and laid it
+      on his sleeve.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When you've had quite time enough to find out, and know what the other
+      thing means, I'll do whatever you want me to do,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;It won't
+      matter what it is. I'll do it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She means that,&rdquo; Hutchinson mumbled unsteadily, turning aside. &ldquo;Same as
+      her mother would have meant it. And she means it in more ways than one.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And so she did. The promise included quite firmly the possibility of not
+      unnatural changes in himself such as young ardor could not foresee, even
+      the possibility of his new life withdrawing him entirely from the plane on
+      which rapture could materialize on twenty dollars a week in a flat in
+      Harlem.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0009" id="link2HCH0009">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER IX
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Type as exotic as Tembarom's was to his solicitor naturally suggested
+      problems. Mr. Palford found his charge baffling because, according to
+      ordinary rules, a young man so rudimentary should have presented no
+      problems not perfectly easy to explain. It was herein that he was exotic.
+      Mr. Palford, who was not given to subtle analysis of differences in
+      character and temperament, argued privately that an English youth who had
+      been brought up in the streets would have been one of two or three things.
+      He would have been secretly terrified and resentful, roughly awkward and
+      resentful, or boastfully delighted and given to a common youth's excitedly
+      common swagger at finding himself suddenly a &ldquo;swell.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This special kind of youth would most assuredly have constantly thought of
+      himself as a &ldquo;swell&rdquo; and would have lost his head altogether, possibly
+      with results in the matter of conduct in public which would have been
+      either maddening or crushing to the spirit of a well-bred, mature-minded
+      legal gentleman temporarily thrust into the position of bear-leader.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Tembarom was none of these things. If he was terrified, he did not
+      reveal his anguish. He was without doubt not resentful, but on the
+      contrary interested and curious, though he could not be said to bear
+      himself as one elated. He indulged in no frolics or extravagances. He saw
+      the Hutchinsons off on their steamer, and supplied them with fruit and
+      flowers and books with respectful moderation. He did not conduct himself
+      as a benefactor bestowing unknown luxuries, but as a young man on whom
+      unexpected luck had bestowed decent opportunities to express his
+      friendship. In fact, Palford's taste approved of his attitude. He was
+      evidently much under the spell of the slight girl with the Manchester
+      accent and sober blue eyes, but she was neither flighty nor meretricious,
+      and would have sense enough to give no trouble even when he naturally
+      forgot her in the revelations of his new life. Her father also was plainly
+      a respectable working-man, with a blunt Lancashire pride which would keep
+      him from intruding.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You can't butt in and get fresh with a man like that,&rdquo; Tembarom said.
+      &ldquo;Money wouldn't help you. He's too independent.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      After the steamer had sailed away it was observable to his solicitor that
+      Mr. Temple Barholm was apparently occupied every hour. He did not explain
+      why he seemed to rush from one part of New York to another and why he
+      seemed to be seeking interviews with persons it was plainly difficult to
+      get at. He was evidently working hard to accomplish something or other
+      before he left the United States, perhaps. He asked some astutely
+      practical business questions; his intention seeming to be to gain a
+      definite knowledge of what his future resources would be and of his
+      freedom to use them as he chose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Once or twice Mr. Palford was rather alarmed by the tendency of his
+      questions. Had he actually some prodigious American scheme in view? He
+      seemed too young and inexperienced in the handling of large sums for such
+      a possibility. But youth and inexperience and suddenly inherited wealth
+      not infrequently led to rash adventures. Something which Palford called
+      &ldquo;very handsome&rdquo; was done for Mrs. Bowse and the boarding-house. Mrs. Bowse
+      was evidently not proud enough to resent being made secure for a few
+      years' rent. The extraordinary page was provided for after a large amount
+      of effort and expenditure of energy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I couldn't leave Galton high and dry,&rdquo; Tembarom explained when he came in
+      after rushing about. &ldquo;I think I know a man he might try, but I've got to
+      find him and put him on to things. Good Lord! nobody rushed about to find
+      me and offer me the job. I hope this fellow wants it as bad as I did.
+      He'll be up in the air.&rdquo; He discovered the whereabouts of the young man in
+      question, and finding him, as the youngster almost tearfully declared,
+      &ldquo;about down and out,&rdquo; his proposition was met with the gratitude the
+      relief from a prospect of something extremely like starvation would
+      mentally produce. Tembarom took him to Galton after having talked him over
+      in detail.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's had an education, and you know how much I'd had when I butted into
+      the page,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;No one but you would have let me try it. You did it
+      only because you saw&mdash;you saw&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I saw,&rdquo; answered Galton, who knew exactly what he had seen and who
+      found his up-town social representative and his new situation as
+      interesting as amusing and just touched with the pathetic element. Galton
+      was a traveled man and knew England and several other countries well.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You saw that a fellow wanted the job as much as I did would be likely to
+      put up a good fight to hold it down. I was scared out of my life when I
+      started out that morning of the blizzard, but I couldn't afford to be
+      scared. I guess soldiers who are scared fight like that when they see
+      bayonets coming at them. You have to.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wonder how often a man finds out that he does pretty big things when
+      bayonets are coming at him,&rdquo; answered Galton, who was actually neglecting
+      his work for a few minutes so that he might look at and talk to him, this
+      New York descendant of Norman lords and Saxon kings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Joe Bennett had been trying to live off free-lunch counters for a week
+      when I found him,&rdquo; Tembarom explained. &ldquo;You don't know what that is. He'll
+      go at the page all right. I'm going to take him up-town and introduce him
+      to my friends there and get them to boost him along.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You made friends,&rdquo; said Galton. &ldquo;I knew you would.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Some of the best ever. Good-natured and open-handed. Well, you bet! Only
+      trouble was they wanted you to eat and drink everything in sight, and they
+      didn't quite like it when you couldn't get outside all the champagne
+      they'd offer you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He broke into a big, pleased laugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When I went in and told Munsberg he pretty near threw a fit. Of course he
+      thought I was kidding. But when I made him believe it, he was as glad as
+      if he'd had luck himself. It was just fine the way people took it. Tell
+      you what, it takes good luck, or bad luck, to show you how good-natured a
+      lot of folks are. They'll treat Bennett and the page all right; you'll
+      see.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They'll miss you,&rdquo; said Galton.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shall miss them,&rdquo; Tembarom answered in a voice with a rather depressed
+      drop in it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shall miss you,&rdquo; said Galton.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tembarom's face reddened a little.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I guess it'd seem rather fresh for me to tell you how I shall miss you,&rdquo;
+       he said. &ldquo;I said that first day that I didn't know how to tell you how I&mdash;well,
+      how I felt about you giving a mutt like me that big chance. You never
+      thought I didn't know how little I did know, did you?&rdquo; he inquired almost
+      anxiously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That was it&mdash;that you did know and that you had the backbone and the
+      good spirits to go in and win,&rdquo; Galton replied. &ldquo;I'm a tired man, and good
+      spirits and good temper seem to me about the biggest assets a man can
+      bring into a thing. I shouldn't have dared do it when I was your age. You
+      deserved the Victoria Cross,&rdquo; he added, chuckling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What's the Victoria Cross?&rdquo; asked Tembarom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You'll find out when you go to England.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I'm not supposing that you don't know about how many billion things
+      I'll have to find out when I go to England.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There will be several thousand,&rdquo; replied Galton moderately; &ldquo;but you'll
+      learn about them as you go on.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Say,&rdquo; said Tembarom, reflectively, &ldquo;doesn't it seem queer to think of a
+      fellow having to keep up his spirits because he's fallen into three
+      hundred and fifty thousand a year? You wouldn't think he'd have to, would
+      you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you find he has?&rdquo; queried Galton, interestedly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tembarom's lifted eyes were so honest that they were touching.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't know where I'm at,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I'm going to wake up in a new place&mdash;like
+      people that die. If you knew what it was like, you wouldn't mind it so
+      much; but you don't know a blamed thing. It's not having seen a sample
+      that rattles you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You're fond of New York?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good Lord! it's all the place I know on earth, and it's just about good
+      enough for me, by gee! It's kept me alive when it might have starved me to
+      death. My! I've had good times here,&rdquo; he added, flushing with emotion.
+      &ldquo;Good times&mdash;when I hadn't a whole meal a day!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You'd have good times anywhere,&rdquo; commented Galton, also with feeling.
+      &ldquo;You carry them over your shoulder, and you share them with a lot of other
+      people.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He certainly shared some with Joe Bennett, whom he took up-town and
+      introduced right and left to his friendly patrons, who, excited by the
+      atmosphere of adventure and prosperity, received him with open arms. To
+      have been the choice of T. Tembarom as a mere representative of the EARTH
+      would have been a great thing for Bennett, but to be the choice of the
+      hero of a romance of wildest opulence was a tremendous send-off. He was
+      accepted at once, and when Tembarom actually &ldquo;stood for&rdquo; a big farewell
+      supper of his own in &ldquo;The Hall,&rdquo; and nearly had his hand shaken off by
+      congratulating acquaintances, the fact that he kept the new aspirant by
+      his side, so that the waves of high popularity flowed over him until he
+      sometimes lost his joyful breath, established him as a sort of hero
+      himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Palford did not know of this festivity, as he also found he was not
+      told of several other things. This he counted as a feature of his client's
+      exoticism. His extraordinary lack of concealment of things vanity forbids
+      many from confessing combined itself with a quite cheerful power to keep
+      his own counsel when he was, for reasons of his own, so inclined.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He can keep his mouth shut, that chap,&rdquo; Hutchinson had said once, and Mr.
+      Palford remembered it. &ldquo;Most of us can't. I've got a notion I can; but I
+      don't many's the time when I should. There's a lot more in him than you'd
+      think for. He's naught but a lad, but he is na half such a fool as he
+      looks.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He was neither hesitant nor timid, Mr. Palford observed. In an entirely
+      unostentatious way he soon realized that his money gave things into his
+      hands. He knew he could do most things he chose to do, and that the power
+      to do them rested in these days with himself without the necessity of
+      detailed explanation or appeal to others, as in the case, for instance, of
+      this mysterious friend or protege whose name was Strangeways. Of the
+      history of his acquaintance with him Palford knew nothing, and that he
+      should choose to burden himself with a half-witted invalid&mdash;in these
+      terms the solicitor described him&mdash;was simply in-explainable. If he
+      had asked for advice or by his manner left an opening for the offering of
+      it, he would have been most strongly counseled to take him to a public
+      asylum and leave him there; but advice on the subject seemed the last
+      thing he desired or anticipated, and talk about his friend was what he
+      seemed least likely to indulge in. He made no secret of his intentions,
+      but he frankly took charge of them as his own special business, and left
+      the rest alone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Say nothing and saw wood,&rdquo; Palford had once been a trifle puzzled by
+      hearing him remark casually, and he remembered it later, as he remembered
+      the comments of Joseph Hutchinson. Tembarom had explained himself to
+      Little Ann.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You'll understand,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;It is like this. I guess I feel like you do
+      when a dog or a cat in big trouble just looks at you as if you were all
+      they had, and they know if you don't stick by them they'll be killed, and
+      it just drives them crazy. It's the way they look at you that you can't
+      stand. I believe something would burst in that fellow's brain if I left
+      him. When he found out I was going to do it he'd just let out some awful
+      kind of a yell I'd remember till I died. I dried right up almost as soon
+      as I spoke of him to Palford. He couldn't see anything but that he was
+      crazy and ought to be put in an asylum. Well, he's not. There're times
+      when he talks to me almost sensible; only he's always so awful low down in
+      his mind you're afraid to let him go on. And he's a little bit better than
+      he was. It seems queer to get to like a man that's sort of dotty, but I
+      tell you, Ann, because you'll understand&mdash;I've got to sort of like
+      him, and want to see if I can work it out for him somehow. England seems
+      to sort of stick in his mind. If I can't spend my money in living the way
+      I want to live,&mdash;buying jewelry and clothes for the girl I'd like to
+      see dressed like a queen&mdash;I'm going to do this just to please myself.
+      I'm going to take him to England and keep him quiet and see what'll
+      happen. Those big doctors ought to know about all there is to know, and I
+      can pay them any old thing they want. By jings! isn't it the limit&mdash;to
+      sit here and say that and know it's true!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Beyond the explaining of necessary detail to him and piloting him to
+      England, Mr. Palford did not hold himself many degrees responsible. His
+      theory of correct conduct assumed no form of altruism. He had formulated
+      it even before he reached middle age. One of his fixed rules was to avoid
+      the error of allowing sympathy or sentiment to hamper him with any
+      unnecessary burden. Natural tendency of temperament had placed no
+      obstacles in the way of his keeping this rule. To burden himself with the
+      instruction or modification of this unfortunately hopeless young New
+      Yorker would be unnecessary. Palford's summing up of him was that he was
+      of a type with which nothing palliative could be done. There he was. As
+      unavoidable circumstances forced one to take him,&mdash;commonness,
+      slanginess, appalling ignorance, and all,&mdash;one could not leave him.
+      Fortunately, no respectable legal firm need hold itself sponsor for a
+      &ldquo;next of kin&rdquo; provided by fate and the wilds of America.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Temple Barholm estate had never, in Mr. Palford's generation, been
+      specially agreeable to deal with. The late Mr. Temple Temple Barholm had
+      been a client of eccentric and abominable temper. Interviews with him had
+      been avoided as much as possible. His domineering insolence of bearing had
+      at times been on the verge of precipitating unheard-of actions, because it
+      was almost more than gentlemanly legal flesh and blood could bear. And now
+      appeared this young man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He rushed about New York strenuously attending to business concerning
+      himself and his extraordinary acquaintances, and on the day of the
+      steamer's sailing he presented himself at the last moment in an obviously
+      just purchased suit of horribly cut clothes. At all events, their cut was
+      horrible in the eyes of Mr. Palford, who accepted no cut but that of a
+      West End tailor. They were badly made things enough, because they were
+      unconsidered garments that Tembarom had barely found time to snatch from a
+      &ldquo;ready-made&rdquo; counter at the last moment. He had been too much &ldquo;rushed&rdquo; by
+      other things to remember that he must have them until almost too late to
+      get them at all. He bought them merely because they were clothes, and warm
+      enough to make a voyage in. He possessed a monster ulster, in which, to
+      Mr. Palford's mind, he looked like a flashy black-leg. He did not know it
+      was flashy. His opportunities for cultivating a refined taste in the
+      matter of wardrobe had been limited, and he had wasted no time in
+      fastidious consideration or regrets. Palford did him some injustice in
+      taking it for granted that his choice of costume was the result of
+      deliberate bad taste. It was really not choice at all. He neither liked
+      his clothes nor disliked them. He had been told he needed warm garments,
+      and he had accepted the advice of the first salesman who took charge of
+      him when he dropped into the big department store he was most familiar
+      with because it was the cheapest in town. Even when it was no longer
+      necessary to be cheap, it was time-saving and easy to go into a place one
+      knew.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The fact that he was as he was, and that they were the subjects of comment
+      and objects of unabated interest through-out the voyage, that it was
+      proper that they should be companions at table and on deck, filled Mr.
+      Palford with annoyed unease.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Of course every one on board was familiar with the story of the discovery
+      of the lost heir. The newspapers had reveled in it, and had woven romances
+      about it which might well have caused the deceased Mr. Temple Barholm to
+      turn in his grave. After the first day Tembarom had been picked out from
+      among the less-exciting passengers, and when he walked the deck, books
+      were lowered into laps or eyes followed him over their edges. His
+      steamer-chair being placed in a prominent position next to that of a
+      pretty, effusive Southern woman, the mother of three daughters whose eyes
+      and eyelashes attracted attention at the distance of a deck's length, he
+      was without undue delay provided with acquaintances who were prepared to
+      fill his every moment with entertainment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The three Gazelles,&rdquo; as their mother playfully confided to Tembarom her
+      daughters were called in Charleston, were destructively lovely. They were
+      swaying reeds of grace, and being in radiant spirits at the prospect of
+      &ldquo;going to Europe,&rdquo; were companions to lure a man to any desperate lengths.
+      They laughed incessantly, as though they were chimes of silver bells; they
+      had magnolia-petal skins which neither wind nor sun blemished; they had
+      nice young manners, and soft moods in which their gazelle eyes melted and
+      glowed and their long lashes drooped. They could dance, they played on
+      guitars, and they sang. They were as adorable as they were lovely and gay.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If a fellow was going to fall in love,&rdquo; Tembarom said to Palford,
+      &ldquo;there'd be no way out of this for him unless he climbed the rigging and
+      dragged his food up in a basket till he got to Liverpool. If he didn't go
+      crazy about Irene, he'd wake up raving about Honora; and if he got away
+      from Honora, Adelia Louise would have him `down on the mat.'&rdquo; From which
+      Mr. Palford argued that the impression made by the little Miss Hutchinson
+      with the Manchester accent had not yet had time to obliterate itself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Gazelles were of generous Southern spirit, and did not surround their
+      prize with any barrier of precautions against other young persons of
+      charm. They introduced him to one girl after another, and in a day or two
+      he was the center of animated circles whenever he appeard. The singular
+      thing, however, was that he did not appear as often as the other men who
+      were on board. He seemed to stay a great deal with Strangeways, who shared
+      his suite of rooms and never came on deck. Sometimes the Gazelles prettily
+      reproached him. Adelia Louise suggested to the others that his lack of
+      advantages in the past had made him feel rather awkward and embarrassed;
+      but Palford knew he was not embarrassed. He accepted his own limitations
+      too simply to be disturbed by them. Palford would have been extremely
+      bored by him if he had been of the type of young outsider who is anxiouus
+      about himself and expansive in self-revelation and appeals for advice; but
+      sometimes Tembarom's air of frankness, which was really the least
+      expansive thing in the world and revealed nothing whatever, besides
+      concealing everything it chose, made him feel himself almost irritatingly
+      baffled. It would have been more natural if he had not been able to keep
+      anything to himself and had really talked too much.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0010" id="link2HCH0010">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER X
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The necessary business in London having been transacted, Tembarom went
+      north to take possession of the home of his forefathers. It had rained for
+      two days before he left London, and it rained steadily all the way to
+      Lancashire, and was raining steadily when he reached Temple Barholm. He
+      had never seen such rain before. It was the quiet, unmoved persistence of
+      it which amazed him. As he sat in the railroad carriage and watched the
+      slanting lines of its unabating downpour, he felt that Mr. Palford must
+      inevitably make some remark upon it. But Mr. Palford continued to read his
+      newspapers undisturbedly, as though the condition of atmosphere
+      surrounding him were entirely accustomed and natural. It was of course
+      necessary and proper that he should accompany his client to his
+      destination, but the circumstances of the case made the whole situation
+      quite abnormal. Throughout the centuries each Temple Barholm had succeeded
+      to his estate in a natural and conventional manner. He had either been
+      welcomed or resented by his neighbors, his tenants, and his family, and
+      proper and fitting ceremonies had been observed. But here was an heir whom
+      nobody knew, whose very existence nobody had even suspected, a young man
+      who had been an outcast in the streets of the huge American city of which
+      lurid descriptions are given. Even in New York he could have produced no
+      circle other than Mrs. Bowse's boarding-house and the objects of interest
+      to the up-town page, so he brought no one with him; for Strangeways seemed
+      to have been mysteriously disposed of after their arrival in London.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Never had Palford &amp; Grimby on their hands a client who seemed so
+      entirely alone. What, Mr. Palford asked himself, would he do in the
+      enormity of Temple Barholm, which always struck one as being a place
+      almost without limit. But that, after all, was neither here nor there.
+      There he was. You cannot undertake to provide a man with relatives if he
+      has none, or with acquaintances if people do not want to know him. His
+      past having been so extraordinary, the neighborhood would naturally be
+      rather shy of him. At first, through mere force of custom and respect for
+      an old name, punctilious, if somewhat alarmed, politeness would be shown
+      by most people; but after the first calls all would depend upon how much
+      people could stand of the man himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The aspect of the country on a wet winter's day was not enlivening. The
+      leafless and dripping hedges looked like bundles of sticks; the huge
+      trees, which in June would be majestic bowers of greenery, now held out
+      great skeleton arms, which seemed to menace both earth and sky.
+      Heavy-faced laborers tramped along muddy lanes; cottages with soaked bits
+      of dead gardens looked like hovels; big, melancholy cart-horses, dragging
+      jolting carts along the country roads, hung their heads as they splashed
+      through the mire.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As Tembarom had known few persons who had ever been out of America, he had
+      not heard that England was beautiful, and he saw nothing which led him to
+      suspect its charms. London had impressed him as gloomy, dirty, and behind
+      the times despite its pretensions; the country struck him as &ldquo;the limit.&rdquo;
+       Hully gee! was he going to be expected to spend his life in this! Should
+      he be obliged to spend his life in it. He'd find that out pretty quick,
+      and then, if there was no hard-and-fast law against it, him for little old
+      New York again, if he had to give up the whole thing and live on ten per.
+      If he had been a certain kind of youth, his discontent would have got the
+      better of him, and he might have talked a good deal to Mr. Palford and
+      said many disparaging things.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But the man was born here,&rdquo; he reflected. &ldquo;I guess he doesn't know
+      anything else, and thinks it's all right. I've heard of English fellows
+      who didn't like New York. He looks like that kind.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He had supplied himself with newspapers and tried to read them. Their
+      contents were as unexciting as the rain-sodden landscape. There were no
+      head-lines likely to arrest any man's attention. There was a lot about
+      Parliament and the Court, and one of them had a column or two about what
+      lords and ladies were doing, a sort of English up-town or down-town page.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He knew the stuff, but there was no snap in it, and there were no
+      photographs or descriptions of dresses. Galton would have turned it down.
+      He could never have made good if he had done no better than that. He
+      grinned to himself when he read that the king had taken a drive and that a
+      baby prince had the measles.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wonder what they'd think of the Sunday Earth,&rdquo; he mentally inquired.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He would have been much at sea if he had discovered what they really would
+      have thought of it. They passed through smoke-vomiting manufacturing
+      towns, where he saw many legs seemingly bearing about umbrellas, but few
+      entire people; they whizzed smoothly past drenched suburbs, wet woodlands,
+      and endless-looking brown moors, covered with dead bracken and bare and
+      prickly gorse. He thought these last great desolate stretches worse than
+      all the rest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the railroad carriage was luxuriously upholstered and comfortable,
+      though one could not walk about and stretch his legs. In the afternoon,
+      Mr. Palford ordered in tea, and plainly expected him to drink two cups and
+      eat thin bread and butter. He felt inclined to laugh, though the tea was
+      all right, and so was the bread and butter, and he did not fail his
+      companion in any respect. The inclination to laugh was aroused by the
+      thought of what Jim Bowles and Julius would say if they could see old T.
+      T. with nothing to do at 4:30 but put in cream and sugar, as though he
+      were at a tea-party on Fifth Avenue.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But, gee! this rain did give him the Willies. If he was going to be sorry
+      for himself, he might begin right now. But he wasn't. He was going to see
+      this thing through.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The train had been continuing its smooth whir through fields, wooded
+      lands, and queer, dead-and-alive little villages for some time before it
+      drew up at last at a small station. Bereft by the season of its garden
+      bloom and green creepers, it looked a bare and uninviting little place. On
+      the two benches against the wall of the platform a number of women sat
+      huddled together in the dampness. Several of them held children in their
+      laps and all stared very hard, nudging one another as he descended from
+      the train. A number of rustics stood about the platform, giving it a
+      somewhat crowded air. It struck Tembarom that, for an out-of-the-way
+      place, there seemed to be a good many travelers, and he wondered if they
+      could all be going away. He did not know that they were the curious
+      element among such as lived in the immediate neighborhood of the station
+      and had come out merely to see him on his first appearance. Several of
+      them touched their hats as he went by, and he supposed they knew Palford
+      and were saluting him. Each of them was curious, but no one was in a
+      particularly welcoming mood. There was, indeed, no reason for anticipating
+      enthusiasm. It was, however, but human nature that the bucolic mind should
+      bestir itself a little in the desire to obtain a view of a Temple Barholm
+      who had earned his living by blacking boots and selling newspapers,
+      unknowing that he was &ldquo;one o' th' gentry.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      When he stepped from his first-class carriage, Tembarom found himself
+      confronted by a very straight, clean-faced, and well-built young man, who
+      wore a long, fawn-colored livery coat with claret facings and silver
+      buttons. He touched his cockaded hat, and at once took up the Gladstone
+      bags. Tembarom knew that he was a footman because he had seen something
+      like him outside restaurants, theaters, and shops in New York, but he was
+      not sure whether he ought to touch his own hat or not. He slightly lifted
+      it from his head to show there was no ill feeling, and then followed him
+      and Mr. Palford to the carriage waiting for them. It was a severe but
+      sumptuous equipage, and the coachman was as well dressed and well built as
+      the footman. Tembarom took his place in it with many mental reservations.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What are the illustrations on the doors?&rdquo; he inquired.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Temple Barholm coat of arms,&rdquo; Mr. Palford answered. &ldquo;The people at
+      the station are your tenants. Members of the family of the stout man with
+      the broad hat have lived as yeoman farmers on your land for three hundred
+      years.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They went on their way, with more rain, more rain, more dripping hedges,
+      more soaked fields, and more bare, huge-armed trees. CLOP, CLOP, CLOP,
+      sounded the horses' hoofs along the road, and from his corner of the
+      carriage Mr. Palford tried to make polite conversation. Faces peered out
+      of the windows of the cottages, sometimes a whole family group of faces,
+      all crowded together, eager to look, from the mother with a baby in her
+      arms to the old man or woman, plainly grandfather or grandmother&mdash;sharp,
+      childishly round, or bleared old eyes, all excited and anxious to catch
+      glimpses.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They are very curious to see you,&rdquo; said Mr. Palford. &ldquo;Those two laborers
+      are touching their hats to you. It will be as well to recognize their
+      salute.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At a number of the cottage doors the group stood upon the threshold and
+      touched foreheads or curtsied. Tembarom saluted again and again, and more
+      than once his friendly grin showed itself. It made him feel queer to drive
+      along, turning from side to side to acknowledge obeisances, as he had seen
+      a well-known military hero acknowledge them as he drove down Broadway.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The chief street of the village of Temple Barholm wandered almost within
+      hailing distance of the great entrance to the park. The gates were
+      supported by massive pillars, on which crouched huge stone griffins.
+      Tembarom felt that they stared savagely over his head as he was driven
+      toward them as for inspection, and in disdainful silence allowed to pass
+      between them as they stood on guard, apparently with the haughtiest mental
+      reservations.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The park through which the long avenue rolled concealed its beauty to the
+      unaccustomed eye, showing only more bare trees and sodden stretches of
+      brown grass. The house itself, as it loomed up out of the thickening
+      rain-mist, appalled Tembarom by its size and gloomily gray massiveness.
+      Before it was spread a broad terrace of stone, guarded by more griffins of
+      even more disdainful aspect than those watching over the gates. The stone
+      noses held themselves rigidly in the air as the reporter of the up-town
+      society page passed with Mr. Palford up a flight of steps broad enough to
+      make him feel as though he were going to church. Footmen with powdered
+      heads received him at the carriage door, seemed to assist him to move, to
+      put one foot before the other for him, to stand in rows as though they
+      were a military guard ready to take him into custody.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then he was inside, standing in an enormous hall filled with furnishings
+      such as he had never seen or heard of before. Carved oak, suits of armor,
+      stone urns, portraits, another flight of church steps mounting upward to
+      surrounding galleries, stained-glass windows, tigers' and lions' heads,
+      horns of tremendous size, strange and beautiful weapons, suggested to him
+      that the dream he had been living in for weeks had never before been so
+      much a dream. He had walked about as in a vision, but among familiar
+      surroundings. Mrs. Bowse's boarders and his hall bedroom had helped him to
+      retain some hold over actual existence. But here the reverently saluting
+      villagers staring at him through windows as though he were General Grant,
+      the huge, stone entrance, the drive of what seemed to be ten miles through
+      the park, the gloomy mass of architecture looming up, the regiment of
+      liveried men-servants, with respectfully lowered but excitedly curious
+      eyes, the dark and solemn richness inclosing and claiming him&mdash;all
+      this created an atmosphere wholly unreal. As he had not known books, its
+      parallel had not been suggested to him by literature. He had literally not
+      heard that such things existed. Selling newspapers and giving every moment
+      to the struggle for life or living, one did not come within the range of
+      splendors. He had indeed awakened in that other world of which he had
+      spoken. And though he had heard that there was another world, he had had
+      neither time nor opportunity to make mental pictures of it. His life so
+      far had expressed itself in another language of figures. The fact that he
+      had in his veins the blood of the Norman lords and Saxon kings may or may
+      not have had something to do with the fact that he was not abashed, but
+      bewildered. The same factor may or may not have aided him to preserve a
+      certain stoic, outward composure. Who knows what remote influences express
+      themselves in common acts of modern common life? As Cassivellaunus
+      observed his surroundings as he followed in captive chains his conqueror's
+      triumphal car through the streets of Rome, so the keen-eyed product of New
+      York pavement life &ldquo;took in&rdquo; all about him. Existence had forced upon him
+      the habit of sharp observance. The fundamental working law of things had
+      expressed itself in the simple colloquialism, &ldquo;Keep your eye skinned, and
+      don't give yourself away.&rdquo; In what phrases the parallel of this concise
+      advice formulated itself in 55 B.C. no classic has yet exactly informed
+      us, but doubtless something like it was said in ancient Rome. Tembarom did
+      not give himself away, and he took rapid, if uncertain, inventory of
+      people and things. He remarked, for instance, that Palford's manner of
+      speaking to a servant was totally different from the manner he used in
+      addressing himself. It was courteous, but remote, as though he spoke
+      across an accepted chasm to beings of another race. There was no hint of
+      incivility in it, but also no hint of any possibility that it could occur
+      to the person addressed to hesitate or resent. It was a subtle thing, and
+      Tembarom wondered how he did it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They were shown into a room the walls of which seemed built of books; the
+      furniture was rich and grave and luxuriously comfortable. A fire blazed as
+      well as glowed in a fine chimney, and a table near it was set with a
+      glitter of splendid silver urn and equipage for tea.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mrs. Butterworth was afraid you might not have been able to get tea,
+      sir,&rdquo; said the man-servant, who did not wear livery, but whose butler's
+      air of established authority was more impressive than any fawn color and
+      claret enriched with silver could have encompassed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tea again? Perhaps one was obliged to drink it at regular intervals.
+      Tembarom for a moment did not awaken to the fact that the man was speaking
+      to him, as the master from whom orders came. He glanced at Mr. Palford.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. Temple Barholm had tea after we left Crowly,&rdquo; Mr. Palford said. &ldquo;He
+      will no doubt wish to go to his room at once, Burrill.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, sir,&rdquo; said Burrill, with that note of entire absence of comment with
+      which Tembarom later became familiar. &ldquo;Pearson is waiting.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was not unnatural to wonder who Pearson was and why he was waiting, but
+      Tembarom knew he would find out. There was a slight relief on realizing
+      that tea was not imperative. He and Mr. Palford were led through the hall
+      again. The carriage had rolled away, and two footmen, who were talking
+      confidentially together, at once stood at attention. The staircase was
+      more imposing as one mounted it than it appeared as one looked at it from
+      below. Its breadth made Tembarom wish to lay a hand on a balustrade, which
+      seemed a mile away. He had never particularly wished to touch balustrades
+      before. At the head of the first flight hung an enormous piece of
+      tapestry, its forest and hunters and falconers awakening Tembarom's
+      curiosity, as it looked wholly unlike any picture he had ever seen in a
+      shop-window. There were pictures everywhere, and none of them looked like
+      chromos. Most of the people in the portraits were in fancy dress. Rumors
+      of a New York millionaire ball had given him some vague idea of fancy
+      dress. A lot of them looked like freaks. He caught glimpses of corridors
+      lighted by curious, high, deep windows with leaded panes. It struck him
+      that there was no end to the place, and that there must be rooms enough in
+      it for a hotel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The tapestry chamber, of course, Burrill,&rdquo; he heard Mr. Palford say in a
+      low tone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, sir. Mr. Temple Barholm always used it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A few yards farther on a door stood open, revealing an immense room, rich
+      and gloomy with tapestry-covered walls and dark oak furniture. A bed which
+      looked to Tembarom incredibly big, with its carved oak canopy and massive
+      posts, had a presiding personality of its own. It was mounted by steps,
+      and its hangings and coverlid were of embossed velvet, time-softened to
+      the perfection of purples and blues. A fire enriched the color of
+      everything, and did its best to drive the shadows away. Deep windows
+      opened either into the leafless boughs of close-growing trees or upon
+      outspread spaces of heavily timbered park, where gaunt, though
+      magnificent, bare branches menaced and defied. A slim, neat young man,
+      with a rather pale face and a touch of anxiety in his expression, came
+      forward at once.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This is Pearson, who will valet you,&rdquo; exclaimed Mr. Palford.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you, sir,&rdquo; said Pearson in a low, respectful voice. His manner was
+      correctness itself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There seemed to Mr. Palford to be really nothing else to say. He wanted,
+      in fact, to get to his own apartment and have a hot bath and a rest before
+      dinner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where am I, Burrill?&rdquo; he inquired as he turned to go down the corridor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The crimson room, sir,&rdquo; answered Burrill, and he closed the door of the
+      tapestry chamber and shut Tembarom in alone with Pearson.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0011" id="link2HCH0011">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XI
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      For a few moments the two young men looked at each other, Pearson's gaze
+      being one of respectfulness which hoped to propitiate, if propitiation was
+      necessary, though Pearson greatly trusted it was not. Tembarom's was the
+      gaze of hasty investigation and inquiry. He suddenly thought that it would
+      have been &ldquo;all to the merry&rdquo; if somebody had &ldquo;put him on to&rdquo; a sort of
+      idea of what was done to a fellow when he was &ldquo;valeted.&rdquo; A valet, he had
+      of course gathered, waited on one somehow and looked after one's clothes.
+      But were there by chance other things he expected to do,&mdash;manicure
+      one's nails or cut one's hair,&mdash;and how often did he do it, and was
+      this the day? He was evidently there to do something, or he wouldn't have
+      been waiting behind the door to pounce out the minute he appeared, and
+      when the other two went away, Burrill wouldn't have closed the door as
+      solemnly as though he shut the pair of them in together to get through
+      some sort of performance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here's where T. T. begins to feel like a fool,&rdquo; he thought. &ldquo;And here's
+      where there's no way out of looking like one. I don't know a thing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But personal vanity was not so strong in him as healthy and normal good
+      temper. Despite the fact that the neat correctness of Pearson's style and
+      the finished expression of his neat face suggested that he was of a class
+      which knew with the most finished exactness all that custom and propriety
+      demanded on any occasion on which &ldquo;valeting&rdquo; in its most occult branches
+      might be done, he was only &ldquo;another fellow,&rdquo; after all, and must be human.
+      So Tembarom smiled at him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hello, Pearson,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;How are you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Pearson slightly started. It was the tiniest possible start, quite
+      involuntary, from which he recovered instantly, to reply in a tone of
+      respectful gratefulness:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you, sir, very well; thank you, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's all right,&rdquo; answered Tembarom, a sense of relief because he'd &ldquo;got
+      started&rdquo; increasing the friendliness of his smile. &ldquo;I see you got my trunk
+      open,&rdquo; he said, glancing at some articles of clothing neatly arranged upon
+      the bed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pearson was slightly alarmed. It occurred to him suddenly that perhaps it
+      was not the custom in America to open a gentleman's box and lay out his
+      clothes for him. For special reasons he was desperately anxious to keep
+      his place, and above all things he felt he must avoid giving offense by
+      doing things which, by being too English, might seem to cast shades of
+      doubt on the entire correctness of the customs of America. He had known
+      ill feeling to arise between &ldquo;gentlemen's gentlemen&rdquo; in the servants' hall
+      in the case of slight differences in customs, contested with a bitterness
+      of feeling which had made them almost an international question. There had
+      naturally been a great deal of talk about the new Mr. Temple Barholm and
+      what might be expected of him. When a gentleman was not a gentleman,&mdash;this
+      was the form of expression in &ldquo;the hall,&rdquo;&mdash;the Lord only knew what
+      would happen. And this one, who had, for all one knew, been born in a
+      workhouse, and had been a boot-black kicked about in American streets,&mdash;they
+      did not know Tembarom,&mdash;and nearly starved to death, and found at
+      last in a low lodging-house, what could he know about decent living? And
+      ten to one he'd be American enough to swagger and bluster and pretend he
+      knew everything better than any one else, and lose his temper frightfully
+      when he made mistakes, and try to make other people seem to blame. Set a
+      beggar on horseback, and who didn't know what he was? There were chances
+      enough and to spare that not one of them would be able to stand it, and
+      that in a month's time they would all be looking for new places.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So while Tembarom was rather afraid of Pearson and moved about in an awful
+      state of uncertainty, Pearson was horribly afraid of Tembarom, and was, in
+      fact, in such a condition of nervous anxiety that he was obliged more than
+      once furtively to apply to his damp, pale young forehead his exceedingly
+      fresh and spotless pocket-handkerchief.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the first place, there was the wardrobe. What COULD he do? How could he
+      approach the subject with sufficient delicacy? Mr. Temple Barholm had
+      brought with him only a steamer trunk and a Gladstone bag, the latter
+      evidently bought in London, to be stuffed with hastily purchased
+      handkerchiefs and shirts, worn as they came out of the shop, and as
+      evidently bought without the slightest idea of the kind of linen a
+      gentleman should own. What most terrified Pearson, who was of a timid and
+      most delicate-minded nature, was that having the workhouse and the
+      boot-blacking as a background, the new Mr. Temple Barholm COULDN'T know,
+      as all this had come upon him so suddenly. And was it to be Pearson's
+      calamitous duty to explain to him that he had NOTHING, that he apparently
+      KNEW nothing, and that as he had no friends who knew, a mere common
+      servant must educate him, if he did not wish to see him derided and looked
+      down upon and actually &ldquo;cut&rdquo; by gentlemen that WERE gentlemen? All this to
+      say nothing of Pearson's own well-earned reputation for knowledge of
+      custom, intelligence, and deftness in turning out the objects of his care
+      in such form as to be a reference in themselves when a new place was
+      wanted. Of course sometimes there were even real gentlemen who were most
+      careless and indifferent to appearance, and who, if left to themselves,
+      would buy garments which made the blood run cold when one realized that
+      his own character and hopes for the future often depended upon his latest
+      employer's outward aspect. But the ulster in which Mr. Temple Barholm had
+      presented himself was of a cut and material such as Pearson's most
+      discouraged moments had never forced him to contemplate. The limited
+      wardrobe in the steamer trunk was all new and all equally bad. There was
+      no evening dress, no proper linen,&mdash;not what Pearson called &ldquo;proper,&rdquo;&mdash;no
+      proper toilet appurtenances. What was Pearson called upon by duty to do?
+      If he had only had the initiative to anticipate this, he might have asked
+      permission to consult in darkest secrecy with Mr. Palford. But he had
+      never dreamed of such a situation, and apparently he would be obliged to
+      send his new charge down to his first dinner in the majestically decorous
+      dining-room, &ldquo;before all the servants,&rdquo; in a sort of speckled tweed
+      cutaway, with a brown necktie.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tembarom, realizing without delay that Pearson did not expect to be talked
+      to and being cheered by the sight of the fire, sat down before it in an
+      easy-chair the like of which for luxurious comfort he had never known. He
+      was, in fact, waiting for developments. Pearson would say or do something
+      shortly which would give him a chance to &ldquo;catch on,&rdquo; or perhaps he'd go
+      out of the room and leave him to himself, which would be a thing to thank
+      God for. Then he could wash his face and hands, brush his hair, and wait
+      till the dinner-bell rang. They'd be likely to have one. They'd have to in
+      a place like this.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Pearson did not go out of the room. He moved about behind him for a
+      short time with footfall so almost entirely soundless that Tembarom became
+      aware that, if it went on long, he should be nervous; in fact, he was
+      nervous already. He wanted to know what he was doing. He could scarcely
+      resist the temptation to turn his head and look; but he did not want to
+      give himself away more entirely than was unavoidable, and, besides,
+      instinct told him that he might frighten Pearson, who looked frightened
+      enough, in a neat and well-mannered way, already. Hully gee! how he wished
+      he would go out of the room!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But he did not. There were gently gliding footsteps of Pearson behind him,
+      quiet movements which would have seemed stealthy if they had been a
+      burglar's, soft removals of articles from one part of the room to another,
+      delicate brushings, and almost noiseless foldings. Now Pearson was near
+      the bed, now he had opened a wardrobe, now he was looking into the steamer
+      trunk, now he had stopped somewhere behind him, within a few yards of his
+      chair. Why had he ceased moving? What was he looking at? What kept him
+      quiet?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tembarom expected him to begin stirring mysteriously again; but he did
+      not. Why did he not? There reigned in the room entire silence; no soft
+      footfalls, no brushing, no folding. Was he doing nothing? Had he got hold
+      of something which had given him a fit? There had been no sound of a fall;
+      but perhaps even if an English valet had a fit, he'd have it so quietly
+      and respectfully that one wouldn't hear it. Tembarom felt that he must be
+      looking at the back of his head, and he wondered what was the matter with
+      it. Was his hair cut in a way so un-English that it had paralyzed him? The
+      back of his head began to creep under an investigation so prolonged. No
+      sound at all, no movement. Tembarom stealthily took out his watch&mdash;good
+      old Waterbury he wasn't going to part with&mdash;and began to watch the
+      minute-hand. If nothing happened in three minutes he was going to turn
+      round. One&mdash;two&mdash;three&mdash;and the silence made it seem
+      fifteen. He returned his Waterbury to his pocket and turned round.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pearson was not dead. He was standing quite still and resigned, waiting.
+      It was his business to wait, not to intrude or disturb, and having put
+      everything in order and done all he could do, he was waiting for further
+      commands&mdash;in some suspense, it must be admitted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hello!&rdquo; exclaimed Tembarom, involuntarily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Shall I get your bath ready, sir?&rdquo; inquired Pearson. &ldquo;Do you like it hot
+      or cold, sir?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Tembarom drew a relieved breath. He hadn't dropped dead and he hadn't had
+      a fit, and here was one of the things a man did when he valeted you&mdash;he
+      got your bath ready. A hasty recollection of the much-used, paint-smeared
+      tin bath on the fourth floor of Mrs. Bowse's boarding-house sprang up
+      before him. Everybody had to use it in turn, and you waited hours for the
+      chance to make a dash into it. No one stood still and waited fifteen
+      minutes until you got good and ready to tell him he could go and turn on
+      the water. Gee whizz!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Being relieved himself, he relieved Pearson by telling him he might &ldquo;fix
+      it&rdquo; for him, and that he would have hot water.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very good, sir. Thank you, sir,&rdquo; said Pearson, and silently left the
+      room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Tembarom got up from his chair and began to walk about rather
+      restlessly. A new alarm seized him. Did Pearson expect to WASH him or to
+      stand round and hand him soap and towels and things while he washed
+      himself?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If it was supposed that you hadn't the strength to turn the faucets
+      yourself, it might be supposed you didn't have the energy to use a
+      flesh-brush and towels. Did valeting include a kind of shampoo all over?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I couldn't stand for that,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I'd have to tell him there'd been
+      no Turkish baths in mine, and I'm not trained up to them. When I've got on
+      to this kind of thing a bit more, I'll make him understand what I'm NOT in
+      for; but I don't want to scare the life out of him right off. He looks
+      like a good little fellow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Pearson's duties as valet did not apparently include giving him his
+      bath by sheer physical force. He was deft, calm, amenable. He led Tembarom
+      down the corridor to the bath-room, revealed to him stores of sumptuous
+      bath-robes and towels, hot-and cold-water faucets, sprays, and tonic
+      essences. He forgot nothing and, having prepared all, mutely vanished, and
+      returned to the bedroom to wait&mdash;and gaze in troubled wonder at the
+      speckled tweed cutaway. There was an appalling possibility&mdash;he was
+      aware that he was entirely ignorant of American customs&mdash;that tweed
+      was the fashionable home evening wear in the States. Tembarom, returning
+      from his bath much refreshed after a warm plunge and a cold shower,
+      evidently felt that as a costume it was all that could be desired.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will you wear&mdash;these, sir,&mdash;this evening?&rdquo; Pearson suggested.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was suggestive of more than actual inquiry. If he had dared to hope
+      that his manner might suggest a number of things! For instance, that in
+      England gentlemen really didn't wear tweed in the evening even in private.
+      That through some unforeseen circumstances his employer's evening-dress
+      suit had been delayed, but would of course arrive to-morrow!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Tembarom, physically stimulated by hot and cold water, and relief at
+      being left alone, was beginning to recover his natural buoyancy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I'll wear 'em,&rdquo; he answered, snatching at his hairbrush and
+      beginning to brush his damp hair. It was a wooden-backed brush that
+      Pearson had found in his Gladstone bag and shudderingly laid in readiness
+      on the dressing-table. &ldquo;I guess they're all right, ain't they?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, quite right, sir, quite,&rdquo; Pearson ventured&mdash;&ldquo;for morning wear.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Morning?&rdquo; said Tembarom, brushing vigorously. &ldquo;Not night?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Black, sir,&rdquo; most delicately hinted Pearson, &ldquo;is&mdash;more usual&mdash;in
+      the evening&mdash;in England.&rdquo; After which he added, &ldquo;So to speak,&rdquo; with a
+      vague hope that the mollifying phrase might counteract the effect of any
+      apparently implied aspersion on colors preferred in America.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tembarom ceased brushing his hair, and looked at him in good-natured
+      desire for information.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Frock-coats or claw-hammer?&rdquo; he asked. Despite his natural anxiety, and
+      in the midst of it, Pearson could not but admit that he had an
+      uncondemnatory voice and a sort of young way with him which gave one
+      courage. But he was not quite sure of &ldquo;claw-hammer.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Frock-coats for morning dress and afternoon wear, sir,&rdquo; he ventured. &ldquo;The
+      evening cut, as you know, is&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Claw-hammer. Swallow-tail, I guess you say here,&rdquo; Tembarom ended for him,
+      quite without hint of rancor, he was rejoiced to see.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, sir,&rdquo; said Pearson.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The ceremony of dressing proved a fearsome thing as it went on. Pearson
+      moved about deftly and essayed to do things for the new Mr. Temple Barholm
+      which the new Mr. Temple Barholm had never heard of a man not doing for
+      himself. He reached for things Pearson was about to hand to him or hold
+      for him. He unceremoniously achieved services for himself which it was
+      part of Pearson's manifest duty to perform. They got into each other's
+      way; there was even danger sometimes of their seeming to snatch things
+      from each other, to Pearson's unbounded horror. Mr. Temple Barholm did not
+      express any irritation whatsoever misunderstandings took place, but he
+      held his mouth rather close-shut, and Pearson, not aware that he did this
+      as a precaution against open grinning or shouts of laughter as he found
+      himself unable to adjust himself to his attendant's movements, thought it
+      possible that he was secretly annoyed and regarded the whole matter with
+      disfavor. But when the dressing was at an end and he stood ready to go
+      down in all his innocent ignoring of speckled tweed and brown necktie, he
+      looked neither flurried nor out of humor, and he asked a question in a
+      voice which was actually friendly. It was a question dealing with an
+      incident which had aroused much interest in the servants' hall as
+      suggesting a touch of mystery.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. Strangeways came yesterday all right, didn't he?&rdquo; he inquired.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, sir,&rdquo; Pearson answered. &ldquo;Mr. Hutchinson and his daughter came with
+      him. They call her `Little Ann Hutchinson.' She's a sensible little thing,
+      sir, and she seemed to know exactly what you'd want done to make him
+      comfortable. Mrs. Butterworth put him in the west room, sir, and I valeted
+      him. He was not very well when he came, but he seems better to-day, sir,
+      only he's very anxious to see you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's all right,&rdquo; said Tembarom. &ldquo;You show me his room. I'll go and see
+      him now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And being led by Pearson, he went without delay.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0012" id="link2HCH0012">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XII
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The chief objection to Temple Barholm in Tembarom's mind was that it was
+      too big for any human use. That at least was how it struck him. The
+      entrance was too big, the stairs were too wide, the rooms too broad and
+      too long and too high to allow of eyes accustomed to hall bedrooms
+      adjusting their vision without discomfort. The dining-room in which the
+      new owner took his first meal in company with Mr. Palford, and attended by
+      the large, serious man who wore no livery and three tall footmen who did,
+      was of a size and stateliness which made him feel homesick for Mrs.
+      Bowse's dining-room, with its two hurried, incompetent, and often-changed
+      waitresses and its prevailing friendly custom of pushing things across the
+      table to save time. Meals were quickly disposed of at Mrs. Bowse's.
+      Everybody was due up-town or down-town, and regarded food as an
+      unavoidable, because necessary, interference with more urgent business. At
+      Temple Barholm one sat half the night&mdash;this was the impression made
+      upon Tembarom&mdash;watching things being brought in and taken out of the
+      room, carved on a huge buffet, and passed from one man to another; and
+      when they were brought solemnly to you, if you turned them down, it seemed
+      that the whole ceremony had to be gone through with again. All sorts of
+      silver knives, forks, and spoons were given to one and taken away, and
+      half a dozen sorts of glasses stood by your plate; and if you made a move
+      to do anything for yourself, the man out of livery stopped you as though
+      you were too big a fool to be trusted. The food was all right, but when
+      you knew what anything was, and were inclined to welcome it as an old
+      friend, it was given to you in some way that made you get rattled. With
+      all the swell dishes, you had no butter-plate, and ice seemed scarce, and
+      the dead, still way the servants moved about gave you a sort of feeling
+      that you were at a funeral and that it wasn't decent to talk so long as
+      the remains were in the room. The head-man and the foot-men seemed to get
+      on by signs, though Tembarom never saw them making any; and their faces
+      never changed for a moment. Once or twice he tried a joke, addressing it
+      to Mr. Palford, to see what would happen. But as Mr. Palford did not seem
+      to see the humor of it, and gave him the &ldquo;glassy eye,&rdquo; and neither the
+      head-man nor the footmen seemed to hear it, he thought that perhaps they
+      didn't know it was a joke; and if they didn't, and they thought anything
+      at all, they must think he was dippy. The dinner was a deadly, though
+      sumptuous, meal, and long drawn out, when measured by meals at Mrs.
+      Bowse's. He did not know, as Mr. Palford did, that it was perfect, and
+      served with a finished dexterity that was also perfection.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Palford, however, was himself relieved when it was at an end. He had
+      sat at dinner with the late Mr. Temple Barholm in his day, and had seen
+      him also served by the owners of impassive countenances; but he had been
+      aware that whatsoever of secret dislike and resentment was concealed by
+      them, there lay behind their immovability an acceptance of the fact that
+      he represented, even in his most objectionable humors, centuries of
+      accustomedness to respectful service and of knowledge of his right and
+      power to claim it. The solicitor was keenly aware of the silent comments
+      being made upon the tweed suit and brown necktie and on the manner in
+      which their wearer boldly chose the wrong fork or erroneously made use of
+      a knife or spoon. Later in the evening, in the servants' hall, the comment
+      would not be silent, and there could be no doubt of what its character
+      would be. There would be laughter and the relating of incidents.
+      Housemaids and still-room maids would giggle, and kitchen-maids and
+      boot-boys would grin and whisper in servile tribute to the witticisms of
+      the superior servants.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After dinner the rest of the evening could at least be spent in talk about
+      business matters. There still remained details to be enlarged upon before
+      Palford himself returned to Lincoln's Inn and left Mr. Temple Barholm to
+      the care of the steward of his estate. It was not difficult to talk to him
+      when the sole subject of conversation was of a business nature.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Before they parted for the night the mystery of the arrangements made for
+      Strangeways had been cleared. In fact, Mr. Temple Barholm made no mystery
+      of them. He did not seem ignorant of the fact that what he had chosen to
+      do was unusual, but he did not appear hampered or embarrassed by the
+      knowledge. His remarks on the subject were entirely civil and were far
+      from actually suggesting that his singular conduct was purely his own
+      business and none of his solicitor's; but for a moment or so Mr. Palford
+      was privately just a trifle annoyed. The Hutchinsons had traveled from
+      London with Strangeways in their care the day before. He would have been
+      unhappy and disturbed if he had been obliged to travel with Mr. Palford,
+      who was a stranger to him, and Miss Hutchinson had a soothing effect on
+      him. Strangeways was for the present comfortably installed as a guest of
+      the house, Miss Hutchinson having talked to the housekeeper, Mrs.
+      Butterworth, and to Pearson. What the future held for him Mr. Temple
+      Barholm did not seem to feel the necessity of going into. He left him
+      behind as a subject, and went on talking cheerfully of other things almost
+      as if he had forgotten him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They had their coffee in the library, and afterward sat at the
+      writing-table and looked over documents and talked until Mr. Palford felt
+      that he could quite decorously retire to his bedroom. He was glad to be
+      relieved of his duties, and Tembarom was amiably resigned to parting with
+      him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tembarom did not go up-stairs at once himself. He sat by the fire and
+      smoked several pipes of tobacco and thought things over. There were a lot
+      of things to think over, and several decisions to make, and he thought it
+      would be a good idea to pass them in review. The quiet of the dead
+      surrounded him. In a house the size of this the servants were probably
+      half a mile away. They'd need trolleys to get to one, he thought, if you
+      rang for them in a hurry. If an armed burglar made a quiet entry without
+      your knowing it, he could get in some pretty rough work before any of the
+      seventy-five footmen could come to lend a hand. He was not aware that
+      there were two of them standing in waiting in the hall, their powdered
+      heads close together, so that their whispers and chuckles could be heard.
+      A sound of movement in the library would have brought them up standing to
+      a decorous attitude of attention conveying to the uninitiated the
+      impression that they had not moved for hours.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sometimes as he sat in the big morocco chair, T. Tembarom looked grave
+      enough; sometimes he looked as though he was confronting problems which
+      needed puzzling out and with which he was not making much headway;
+      sometimes he looked as though he was thinking of little Ann Hutchinson,
+      and not infrequently he grinned. Here he was up to the neck in it, and he
+      was darned if he knew what he was going to do. He didn't know a soul, and
+      nobody knew him. He didn't know a thing he ought to know, and he didn't
+      know any one who could tell him. Even the Hutchinsons had never been
+      inside a place like Temple Barholm, and they were going back to Manchester
+      after a few weeks' stay at the grandmother's cottage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Before he had left New York he had seen Hadman and some other fellows and
+      got things started, so that there was an even chance that the invention
+      would be put on its feet. He had worked hard and used his own power to
+      control money in the future as a lever which had proved to be exactly what
+      was needed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hadman had been spurred and a little startled when he realized the
+      magnitude of what really could be done, and saw also that this slangy,
+      moneyed youth was not merely an enthusiastic fool, but saw into business
+      schemes pretty sharply and was of a most determined readiness. With this
+      power ranging itself on the side of Hutchinson and his invention, it was
+      good business to begin to move, if one did not want to run a chance of
+      being left out in the cold.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hutchinson had gone to Manchester, and there had been barely time for a
+      brief but characteristic interview between him and Tembarom, when he
+      rushed back to London. Tembarom felt rather excited when he remembered it,
+      recalling what he had felt in confronting the struggles against emotion in
+      the blunt-featured, red face, the breaks in the rough voice, the charging
+      up and down the room like a curiously elated bull in a china shop, and the
+      big effort to restrain relief and gratitude the degree of which might seem
+      to under-value the merits of the invention itself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Once or twice when he looked serious, Tembarom was thinking this over, and
+      also once or twice when he grinned. Relief and gratitude notwithstanding,
+      Hutchinson had kept him in his place, and had not made unbounded efforts
+      to conceal his sense of the incongruity of his position as the controller
+      of fortunes and the lord of Temple Barholm, which was still vaguely
+      flavored with indignation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When he had finished his last pipe, Tembarom rose and knocked the ashes
+      out of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now for Pearson,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had made up his mind to have a talk with Pearson, and there was no use
+      wasting time. If things didn't suit you, the best thing was to see what
+      you could do to fix them right away&mdash;if it wasn't against the law. He
+      went out into the hall, and seeing the two footmen standing waiting, he
+      spoke to them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Say, I didn't know you fellows were there,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Are you waiting up
+      for me? Well, you can go to bed, the sooner the quicker. Good night.&rdquo; And
+      he went up-stairs whistling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The glow and richness and ceremonial order of preparation in his bedroom
+      struck him as soon as he opened the door. Everything which could possibly
+      have been made ready for his most luxurious comfort had been made ready.
+      He did not, it is true, care much for the huge bed with its carved oak
+      canopy and massive pillars.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But the lying-down part looks about all right,&rdquo; he said to himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The fine linen, the soft pillows, the downy blankets, would have allured
+      even a man who was not tired. The covering had been neatly turned back and
+      the snowy whiteness opened. That was English, he supposed. They hadn't got
+      on to that at Mrs. Bowse's.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I guess a plain little old New York sleep will do,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Temple
+      Barholm or no Temple Barholm, I guess they can't change that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then there sounded a quiet knock at the door. He knew who it would turn
+      out to be, and he was not mistaken. Pearson stood in the corridor, wearing
+      his slightly anxious expression, but ready for orders.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Temple Barholm looked down at him with a friendly, if unusual, air.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Say, Pearson,&rdquo; he announced, &ldquo;if you've come to wash my face and put my
+      hair up in crimping-pins, you needn't do it, because I'm not used to it.
+      But come on in.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      If he had told Pearson to enter and climb the chimney, it cannot be said
+      that the order would have been obeyed upon the spot, but Pearson would
+      certainly have hesitated and explained with respectful delicacy the fact
+      that the task was not &ldquo;his place.&rdquo; He came into the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I came to see, if I could do anything further and&mdash;&rdquo; making a
+      courageous onslaught upon the situation for which he had been preparing
+      himself for hours&mdash;&ldquo;and also&mdash;if it is not too late&mdash;to
+      venture to trouble you with regard to your wardrobe.&rdquo; He coughed a low,
+      embarrassed cough. &ldquo;In unpacking, sir, I found&mdash;I did not find&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You didn't find much, did you?&rdquo; Tembarom assisted him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course, sir,&rdquo; Pearson apologized, &ldquo;leaving New York so hurriedly, your&mdash;your
+      man evidently had not time to&mdash;er&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Tembarom looked at him a few seconds longer, as if making up his mind to
+      something. Then he threw himself easily into the big chair by the fire,
+      and leaned back in it with the frankest and best-natured smile possible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I hadn't any man,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Say, Pearson,&rdquo; waving his hand to another
+      chair near by, &ldquo;suppose you take a seat.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Long and careful training came to Pearson's aid and supported him, but he
+      was afraid that he looked nervous, and certainly there was a lack of
+      entire calm in his voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&mdash;thank you, sir,&mdash;I think I'd better stand, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why?&rdquo; inquired Tembarom, taking his tobacco-pouch out of his pocket and
+      preparing to fill another pipe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You're most kind, sir, but&mdash;but&mdash;&rdquo; in impassioned embarrassment&mdash;&ldquo;I
+      should really PREFER to stand, sir, if you don't mind. I should feel more&mdash;more
+      at 'ome, sir,&rdquo; he added, dropping an h in his agitation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, if you'd like it better, that's all right,&rdquo; yielded Mr. Temple
+      Barholm, stuffing tobacco into the pipe. Pearson darted to a table,
+      produced a match, struck it, and gave it to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you,&rdquo; said Tembarom, still good-naturedly. &ldquo;But there are a few
+      things I've GOT to say to you RIGHT now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Pearson had really done his best, his very best, but he was terrified
+      because of the certain circumstances once before referred to.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I beg pardon, sir,&rdquo; he appealed, &ldquo;but I am most anxious to give
+      satisfaction in every respect.&rdquo; He WAS, poor young man, horribly anxious.
+      &ldquo;To-day being only the first day, I dare say I have not been all I should
+      have been. I have never valeted an American gentleman before, but I'm sure
+      I shall become accustomed to everything QUITE soon&mdash;almost
+      immediately.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Say,&rdquo; broke in Tembarom, &ldquo;you're 'way off. I'm not complaining. You're
+      all right.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The easy good temper of his manner was so singularly assuring that
+      Pearson, unexplainable as he found him in every other respect, knew that
+      this at least was to be depended upon, and he drew an almost palpable
+      breath of relief. Something actually allured him into approaching what he
+      had never felt it safe to approach before under like circumstances&mdash;a
+      confidential disclosure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you, sir: I am most grateful. The&mdash;fact is, I hoped especially
+      to be able to settle in place just now. I&mdash;I'm hoping to save up
+      enough to get married, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are?&rdquo; Tembarom exclaimed. &ldquo;Good business! So was I before all this&rdquo;&mdash;he
+      glanced about him&mdash;&ldquo;fell on top of me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've been saving for three years, sir, and if I can know I'm a permanency&mdash;if
+      I can keep this place&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You're going to keep it all right,&rdquo; Tembarom cheered him up with. &ldquo;If
+      you've got an idea you're going to be fired, just you forget it. Cut it
+      right out.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is&mdash;I beg your pardon, sir,&rdquo; Pearson asked with timorous joy, &ldquo;but
+      is that the American for saying you'll be good enough to keep me on?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Temple Barholm thought a second.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is 'keep me on' the English for 'let me stay'?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then we're all right. Let's start from there. I'm going to have a
+      heart-to-heart talk with you, Pearson.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you, sir,&rdquo; said Pearson in a deferential murmur. But if he was not
+      dissatisfied, what was going to happen?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It'll save us both trouble, and me most. I'm not one of those clever
+      Clarences that can keep up a bluff, making out I know things I don't know.
+      I couldn't deceive a setting hen or a Berlin wool antimacassar.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Pearson swallowed something with effort.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You see, I fell into this thing KERCHUNK, and I'm just RATTLED&mdash;I'm
+      rattled.&rdquo; As Pearson slightly coughed again, he translated for him,
+      &ldquo;That's American for 'I don't know where I'm at'.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Those American jokes, sir, are very funny indeed,&rdquo; answered Pearson,
+      appreciatively.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Funny!&rdquo; the new Mr. Temple Barholm exclaimed even aggrievedly. &ldquo;If you
+      think this lay-out is an American joke to me, Pearson, there's where
+      you're 'way off. Do you think it a merry jest for a fellow like me to sit
+      up in a high chair in a dining-room like a cathedral and not know whether
+      he ought to bite his own bread or not? And not dare to stir till things
+      are handed to him by five husky footmen? I thought that plain-clothes man
+      was going to cut up my meat, and slap me on the back if I choked.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Pearson's sense of humor was perhaps not inordinate, but unseemly mirth,
+      which he had swallowed at the reference to the setting hen and the Berlin
+      wool antimacassar, momentarily got the better of him, despite his efforts
+      to cough it down, and broke forth in a hoarse, ill-repressed sound.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I beg pardon, sir,&rdquo; he said with a laudable endeavor to recover his
+      professional bearing. &ldquo;It's your&mdash;American way of expressing it which
+      makes me forget myself. I beg pardon.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Tembarom laughed outright boyishly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, cut that out,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Say, how old are you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Twenty-five, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So am I. If you'd met me three months ago, beating the streets of New
+      York for a living, with holes in my shoes and a celluloid collar on, you'd
+      have looked down on me. I know you would.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, no, sir,&rdquo; most falsely insisted Pearson.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, yes, you would,&rdquo; protested Tembarom, cheerfully. &ldquo;You'd have said I
+      talked through my nose, and I should have laughed at you for dropping your
+      h's. Now you're rattled because I'm Mr. Temple Temple Barholm; but you're
+      not half as rattled as I am.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You'll get over it, sir, almost immediately,&rdquo; Pearson assured him,
+      hopefully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course I shall,&rdquo; said Tembarom, with much courage. &ldquo;But to start right
+      I've got to get over YOU.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Me, sir?&rdquo; Pearson breathed anxiously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. That's what I want to get off my chest. Now, first off, you came in
+      here to try to explain to me that, owing to my New York valet having left
+      my New York wardrobe behind, I've not got anything to wear, and so I shall
+      have to buy some clothes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I failed to find any dress-shirts, sir,&rdquo; began Pearson, hesitatingly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Temple Barholm grinned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I always failed to find them myself. I never had a dress-shirt. I never
+      owned a suit of glad rags in my life.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Gl&mdash;glad rags, sir?&rdquo; stammered Pearson, uncertainly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I knew you didn't catch on when I said that to you before dinner. I mean
+      claw-hammer and dress-suit things. Don't you be frightened, Pearson. I
+      never had six good shirts at once, or two pair of shoes, or more than four
+      ten-cent handkerchiefs at a time since I was born. And when Mr. Palford
+      yanked me away from New York, he didn't suspect a fellow could be in such
+      a state. And I didn't know I was in a state, anyhow. I was too busy to
+      hunt up people to tell me, because I was rushing something important right
+      through, and I couldn't stop. I just bought the first things I set eyes on
+      and crammed them into my trunk. There, I guess you know the most of this,
+      but you didn't know I knew you knew it. Now you do, and you needn't be
+      afraid to hurt my feelings by telling me I haven't a darned thing I ought
+      to have. You can go straight ahead.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As he leaned back, puffing away at his pipe, he had thrown a leg over the
+      arm of his chair for greater comfort, and it really struck his valet that
+      he had never seen a gentleman more at his ease, even one who WAS one. His
+      casual candidness produced such a relief from the sense of strain and
+      uncertainty that Pearson felt the color returning to his face. An opening
+      had been given him, and it was possible for him to do his duty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you wish, sir, I will make a list,&rdquo; he ventured further, &ldquo;and the
+      proper firms will send persons to bring things down from London on appro.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What's 'appro' the English for?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Approval, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good business! Good old Pearson!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you, sir. Shall I attend to it to-night, to be ready for the
+      morning post?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In five minutes you shall. But you threw me off the track a bit. The
+      thing I was really going to say was more important than the clothes
+      business.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was something else, then, thought Pearson, some other unexpected
+      point of view.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What have you to do for me, anyhow?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Valet you, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's English for washing my face and combing my hair and putting my
+      socks on, ain't it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, sir, it means doing all you require, and being always in attendance
+      when you change.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How much do you get for it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thirty shillings a week, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Say, Pearson,&rdquo; said Tembarom, with honest feeling, &ldquo;I'll give you sixty
+      shillings a week NOT to do it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Calmed though he had felt a few moments ago, it cannot be denied that
+      Pearson was aghast. How could one be prepared for developments of such an
+      order?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not to do it, sir!&rdquo; he faltered. &ldquo;But what would the servants think if
+      you had no one to valet you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's so. What would they think?&rdquo; But he evidently was not dismayed, for
+      he smiled widely. &ldquo;I guess the plainclothes man would throw a fit.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Pearson's view was more serious and involved a knowledge of not
+      improbable complications. He knew &ldquo;the hall&rdquo; and its points of view.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I couldn't draw my wages, sir,&rdquo; he protested. &ldquo;There'd be the greatest
+      dissatisfaction among the other servants, sir, if I didn't do my duties.
+      There's always a&mdash;a slight jealousy of valets and ladies'-maids. The
+      general idea is that they do very little to earn their salaries. I've seen
+      them fairly hated.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is that so? Well, I'll be darned!&rdquo; remarked Mr. Temple Barholm. He gave a
+      moment to reflection, and then cheered up immensely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll tell you how we'll fix it. You come up into my room and bring your
+      tatting or read a newspaper while I dress.&rdquo; He openly chuckled. &ldquo;Holy
+      smoke! I've GOT to put on my shirt and swear at my collar-buttons myself.
+      If I'm in for having a trained nurse do it for me, it'll give me the
+      Willies. When you danced around me before dinner&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Pearson's horror forced him to commit the indiscretion of interrupting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I hope I didn't DANCE, sir,&rdquo; he implored. &ldquo;I tried to be extremely
+      quiet.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That was it,&rdquo; said Tembarom. &ldquo;I shouldn't have said danced; I meant
+      crept. I kept thinking I should tread on you, and I got so nervous toward
+      the end I thought I should just break down and sob on your bosom and beg
+      to be taken back to home and mother.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm extremely sorry, sir, I am, indeed,&rdquo; apologized Pearson, doing his
+      best not to give way to hysterical giggling. How was a man to keep a
+      decently straight face, and if one didn't, where would it end? One thing
+      after another.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was not your fault. It was mine. I haven't a thing against you. You're
+      a first-rate little chap.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will try to be more satisfactory to-morrow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There must be no laughing aloud, even if one burst a blood-vessel. It
+      would not do. Pearson hastily confronted a vision of a young footman or
+      Mr. Burrill himself passing through the corridors on some errand and
+      hearing master and valet shouting together in unseemly and wholly
+      incomprehensible mirth. And the next remark was worse than ever.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, you won't, Pearson,&rdquo; Mr. Temple Barholm asserted. &ldquo;There's where
+      you're wrong. I've got no more use for a valet than I have for a pair of
+      straight-front corsets.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This contained a sobering suggestion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you said, sir, that&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I'm not going to fire you,&rdquo; said Tembarom, genially. &ldquo;I'll 'keep you
+      on', but little Willie is going to put on his own socks. If the servants
+      have to be pacified, you come up to my room and do anything you like. Lie
+      on the bed if you want to; get a jew's-harp and play on it&mdash;any old
+      thing to pass the time. And I'll raise your wages. What do you say? Is it
+      fixed?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm here, sir, to do anything you require,&rdquo; Pearson answered
+      distressedly; &ldquo;but I'm afraid&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Tembarom's face changed. A sudden thought had struck him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll tell you one thing you can do,&rdquo; he said; &ldquo;you can valet that friend
+      of mine.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. Strangeways, sir?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. I've got a notion he wouldn't mind it.&rdquo; He was not joking now. He
+      was in fact rather suddenly thoughtful.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Say, Pearson, what do you think of him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, sir, I've not seen much of him, and he says very little, but I
+      should think he was a GENTLEMAN, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Temple Barholm seemed to think it over.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's queer,&rdquo; he said as though to himself. &ldquo;That's what Ann said.&rdquo; Then
+      aloud, &ldquo;Would you say he was an American?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In his unavoidable interest in a matter much talked over below stairs and
+      productive of great curiosity Pearson was betrayed. He could not explain
+      to himself, after he had spoken, how he could have been such a fool as to
+      forget; but forget himself and the birthplace of the new Mr. Temple
+      Barholm he did.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, no, sir,&rdquo; he exclaimed hastily; &ldquo;he's QUITE the gentleman, sir, even
+      though he is queer in his mind.&rdquo; The next instant he caught himself and
+      turned cold. An American or a Frenchman or an Italian, in fact, a native
+      of any country on earth so slighted with an unconsciousness so natural, if
+      he had been a man of hot temper, might have thrown something at him or
+      kicked him out of the room; but Mr. Temple Barholm took his pipe out of
+      his mouth and looked at him with a slow, broadening smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Would you call me a gentleman, Pearson?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Of course there was no retrieving such a blunder, Pearson felt, but&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Certainly, sir,&rdquo; he stammered. &ldquo;Most&mdash;most CERTAINLY, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pearson,&rdquo; said Tembarom, shaking his head slowly, with a grin so
+      good-natured that even the frankness of his words was friendly humor
+      itself&mdash;&ldquo;Pearson, you're a liar. But that doesn't jolt me a bit. I
+      dare say I'm not one, anyhow. We might put an 'ad' in one of your papers
+      and find out.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&mdash;I beg your pardon, sir,&rdquo; murmured Pearson in actual anguish of
+      mind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Temple Barholm laughed outright.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I've not got it in for you. How could you help it?&rdquo; he said. Then he
+      stopped joking again. &ldquo;If you want to please ME,&rdquo; he added with
+      deliberation, &ldquo;you look after Mr. Strangeways, and don't let anything
+      disturb him. Don't bother him, but just find out what he wants. When he
+      gets restless, come and tell me. If I'm out, tell him I'm coming back.
+      Don't let him worry. You understand&mdash;don't let him worry.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll do my best&mdash;my very best, sir,&rdquo; Pearson answered devoutly.
+      &ldquo;I've been nervous and excited this first day because I am so anxious to
+      please&mdash;everything seems to depend on it just now,&rdquo; he added, daring
+      another confidential outburst. &ldquo;But you'll see I do know how to keep my
+      wits about me in general, and I've got a good memory, and I have learned
+      my duties, sir. I'll attend to Mr. Strangeways most particular.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As Tembarom listened, and watched his neat, blond countenance, and noted
+      the undertone of quite desperate appeal in his low voice, he was thinking
+      of a number of things. Chiefly he was thinking of little Ann Hutchinson
+      and the Harlem flat which might have been &ldquo;run&rdquo; on fifteen dollars a week.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I want to know I have some one in this museum of a place who'll
+      UNDERSTAND,&rdquo; he said&mdash;&ldquo;some one who'll do just exactly what I say and
+      ask no fool questions and keep his mouth shut. I believe you could do it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll swear I could, sir. Trust me,&rdquo; was Pearson's astonishingly emotional
+      and hasty answer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm going to,&rdquo; returned Mr. Temple Barholm. &ldquo;I've set my mind on putting
+      something through in my own way. It's a queer thing, and most people would
+      say I was a fool for trying it. Mr. Hutchinson does, but Miss Hutchinson
+      doesn't.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a note in his tone of saying &ldquo;Miss Hutchinson doesn't&rdquo; which
+      opened up vistas to Pearson&mdash;strange vistas when one thought of old
+      Mrs. Hutchinson's cottage and the estate of Temple Barholm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We're just about the same age,&rdquo; his employer continued, &ldquo;and in a sort of
+      way we're in just about the same fix.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Their eyes looked into each other's a second; but it was not for Pearson
+      to presume to make any comment whatsoever upon the possible nature of &ldquo;the
+      fix.&rdquo; Two or three more puffs, and Mr. Temple Barholm spoke again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Say, Pearson, I don't want to butt in, but what about that little bunch
+      of calico of yours&mdash;the one you're saving up for?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Calico, sir?&rdquo; said Pearson, at sea, but hopeful. Whatsoever the new Mr.
+      Temple Barholm meant, one began to realize that it was not likely to be
+      unfriendly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's American for HER, Pearson. 'Her' stands for the same thing both in
+      English and American, I guess. What's her name and where is she? Don't you
+      say a word if you don't want to.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Pearson drew a step nearer. There was an extraordinary human atmosphere in
+      the room which caused things to begin to go on in his breast. He had had a
+      harder life than Tembarom because he had been more timid and less buoyant
+      and less unselfconscious. He had been beaten by a drunken mother and
+      kicked by a drunken father. He had gone hungry and faint to the board
+      school and had been punished as a dull boy. After he had struggled into a
+      place as page, he had been bullied by footmen and had had his ears boxed
+      by cooks and butlers. Ladies'-maids and smart housemaids had sneered at
+      him, and made him feel himself a hopeless, vulgar little worm who never
+      would &ldquo;get on.&rdquo; But he had got on, in a measure, because he had worked
+      like a slave and openly resented nothing. A place like this had been his
+      fevered hope and dream from his page days, though of course his
+      imagination had not encompassed attendance on a gentleman who had never
+      owned a dress-shirt in his life. Yet gentleman or no gentleman, he was a
+      Temple Barholm, and there was something about him, something human in his
+      young voice and grin and queer, unheard-of New York jokes, which Pearson
+      had never encountered, and which had the effect of making him feel somehow
+      more of a man than his timorous nature had ever allowed of his feeling
+      before. It suggested that they were both, valet and master, merely
+      masculine human creatures of like kind. The way he had said &ldquo;Miss
+      Hutchinson&rdquo; and the twinkle in his eye when he'd made that American joke
+      about the &ldquo;little bunch of calico&rdquo;! The curious fact was that thin, neat,
+      white-blooded-looking Pearson was passionately in love. So he took the
+      step nearer and grew hot and spoke low.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Her name is Rose Merrick, sir, and she's in place in London. She's
+      lady's-maid to a lady of title, and it isn't an easy place. Her lady has a
+      high temper, and she's economical with her servants. Her maid has to sew
+      early and late, and turn out as much as if she was a whole dressmaking
+      establishment. She's clever with her needle, and it would be easier if she
+      felt it was appreciated. But she's treated haughty and severe, though she
+      tries her very best. She has to wait up half the night after balls, and
+      I'm afraid it's breaking her spirit and her health. That's why,&mdash;I
+      beg your pardon, sir,&rdquo; he added, his voice shaking&mdash;&ldquo;that's why I'd
+      bear anything on earth if I could give her a little home of her own.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Gee whizz!&rdquo; ejaculated Mr. Temple Barholm, with feeling. &ldquo;I guess you
+      would!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And that's not all, sir,&rdquo; said Pearson. &ldquo;She's a beautiful girl, sir,
+      with a figure, and service is sometimes not easy for a young woman like
+      that. His lordship&mdash;the master of the house, sir,&mdash;is much too
+      attentive. He's a man with bad habits; the last lady's-maid was sent away
+      in disgrace. Her ladyship wouldn't believe she hadn't been forward when
+      she saw things she didn't like, though every one in the hall knew the girl
+      hated his bold ways with her, and her mother nearly broke her heart. He's
+      begun with Rose, and it just drives me mad, sir, it does!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He choked, and wiped his forehead with his clean handkerchief. It was
+      damp, and his young eyes had fire in them, as Mr. Temple Barholm did not
+      fail to observe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm taking a liberty talking to you like this, sir,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I'm
+      behaving as if I didn't know my place, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your place is behind that fellow, kicking him till he'll never sit down
+      again except on eider-down cushions three deep,&rdquo; remarked Mr. Temple
+      Barholm, with fire in his eyes also. &ldquo;That's where your place is. It's
+      where mine would be if I was in the same house with him and caught him
+      making a goat of himself. I bet nine Englishmen out of ten would break his
+      darned neck for him if they got on to his little ways, even if they were
+      lordships themselves.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The decent ones won't know,&rdquo; Pearson said. &ldquo;That's not what happens, sir.
+      He can laugh and chaff it off with her ladyship and coax her round. But a
+      girl that's discharged like that, Rose says, that's the worst of it: she
+      says she's got a character fastened on to her for life that no respectable
+      man ought to marry her with.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Temple Barholm removed his leg from the arm of his chair and got up.
+      Long-legged, sinewy, but somewhat slouchy in his badly made tweed suit,
+      sharp New York face and awful American style notwithstanding, he still
+      looked rather nice as he laid his hand on his valet's shoulder and gave
+      him a friendly push.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;See here,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;What you've got to say to Rose is that she's just
+      got to cut that sort of thing out&mdash;cut it right out. Talking to a man
+      that's in love with her as if he was likely to throw her down because lies
+      were told. Tell her to forget it&mdash;forget it quick. Why, what does she
+      suppose a man's FOR, by jinks? What's he FOR?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've told her that, sir, though of course not in American. I just swore
+      it on my knees in Hyde Park one night when she got out for an hour. But
+      she laid her poor head on the back of the bench and cried and wouldn't
+      listen. She says she cares for me too much to&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Tembarom's hand clutched his shoulder. His face lighted and glowed
+      suddenly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Care for you too much,&rdquo; he asked. &ldquo;Did she say that? God bless her!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's what I said,&rdquo; broke in Pearson.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I heard another girl say that&mdash;just before I left New York&mdash;a
+      girl that's just a wonder,&rdquo; said his master. &ldquo;A girl can be a wonder,
+      can't she?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Rose is, sir,&rdquo; protested Pearson. &ldquo;She is, indeed, sir. And her eyes are
+      that blue&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Blue, are they?&rdquo; interrupted Tembarom. &ldquo;I know the kind. I'm on to the
+      whole thing. And what's more, I'm going to fix it. You tell Rose&mdash;and
+      tell her from me&mdash;that she's going to leave that place, and you're
+      going to stay in this one, and&mdash;well, presently things'll begin to
+      happen. They're going to be all right&mdash;ALL RIGHT,&rdquo; he went on, with
+      immensely convincing emphasis. &ldquo;She's going to have that little home of
+      her own.&rdquo; He paused a moment for reflection, and then a sudden thought
+      presented itself to him. &ldquo;Why, darn it!&rdquo; he exclaimed, &ldquo;there must be a
+      whole raft of little homes that belong to me in one place or another. Why
+      couldn't I fix you both up in one of them?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, sir!&rdquo; Pearson broke forth in some slight alarm. He went so fast and
+      so far all in a moment. And Pearson really possessed a neat, well-ordered
+      conscience, and, moreover, &ldquo;knew his place.&rdquo; &ldquo;I hope I didn't seem to be
+      expecting you to trouble yourself about me, sir. I mustn't presume on your
+      kindness.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's not kindness; it's&mdash;well, it's just human. I'm going to think
+      this thing over. You just keep your hair on, and let me do my own
+      valeting, and you'll see I'll fix it for you somehow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      What he thought of doing, how he thought of doing it, and what Pearson was
+      to expect, the agitated young man did not know. The situation was of
+      course abnormal, judged by all respectable, long-established custom. A
+      man's valet and his valet's &ldquo;young woman&rdquo; were not usually of intimate
+      interest. Gentlemen were sometimes &ldquo;kind&rdquo; to you&mdash;gave you half a
+      sovereign or even a sovereign, and perhaps asked after your mother if you
+      were supporting one; but&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I never dreamed of going so far, sir,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I forgot myself, I'm
+      afraid.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good thing you did. It's made me feel as if we were brothers.&rdquo; He laughed
+      again, enjoying the thought of the little thing who cared for Pearson &ldquo;too
+      much&rdquo; and had eyes that were &ldquo;that blue.&rdquo; &ldquo;Say, I've just thought of
+      something else. Have you bought her an engagement-ring yet?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, sir. In our class of life jewelry is beyond the means.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I just wondered,&rdquo; Mr. Temple Barholm said. He seemed to be thinking of
+      something that pleased him as he fumbled for his pocket-book and took a
+      clean banknote out of it. &ldquo;I'm not on to what the value of this thing is
+      in real money, but you go and buy her a ring with it, and I bet she'll be
+      so pleased you'll have the time of your life.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Pearson taking it; and recognizing its value in UNreal money, was
+      embarrassed by feeling the necessity of explanation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This is a five-pound note, sir. It's too much, sir, it is indeed. This
+      would FURNISH THE FRONT PARLOR.&rdquo; He said it almost solemnly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Temple Barholm looked at the note interestedly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Would it? By jinks!&rdquo; and his laugh had a certain softness of
+      recollection. &ldquo;I guess that's just what Ann would say. She'd know what it
+      would furnish, you bet your life!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm most grateful, sir,&rdquo; protested Pearson, &ldquo;but I oughtn't to take it.
+      Being an American gentleman and not accustomed to English money, you don't
+      realize that&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm not accustomed to any kind of money,&rdquo; said his master. &ldquo;I'm scared to
+      be left alone in the room with it. That's what's the matter. If I don't
+      give some away, I shall never know I've got it. Cheer up, Pearson. You
+      take that and buy the ring, and when you start furnishing, I'll see you
+      don't get left.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't know what to say, sir,&rdquo; Pearson faltered emotionally. &ldquo;I don't,
+      indeed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't say a darned thing,&rdquo; replied Mr. Temple Barholm. And just here his
+      face changed as Mr. Palford had seen it change before, and as Pearson
+      often saw it change later. His New York jocular irreverence dropped from
+      him, and he looked mature and oddly serious.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've tried to sort of put you wise to the way I've lived and the things I
+      HAVEN'T had ever since I was born,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;but I guess you don't really
+      know a thing about it. I've got more money coming in every year than a
+      thousand of me would ever expect to see in their lives, according to my
+      calculation. And I don't know how to do any of the things a fellow who is
+      what you call `a gentleman' would know how to do. I mean in the way of
+      spending it. Now, I've got to get some fun out of it. I should be a mutt
+      if I didn't, so I'm going to spend it my own way. I may make about
+      seventy-five different kinds of a fool of myself, but I guess I sha'n't do
+      any particular harm.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You'll do good, sir,&mdash;to every one.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Shall I?&rdquo;&mdash;said Tembarom, speculatively. &ldquo;Well, I'm not exactly
+      setting out with that in my mind. I'm no Young Men's Christian
+      Association, but I'm not in for doing harm, anyway. You take your
+      five-pound note&mdash;come to think of it, Palford said it came to about
+      twenty-five dollars, real money. Hully gee! I never thought I'd have
+      twenty-five dollars to GIVE AWAY! It makes me feel like I was Morgan.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you, sir; thank you,&rdquo; said Pearson, putting the note into his
+      pocket with rapt gratitude in his neat face. &ldquo;You&mdash;you do not wish me
+      to remain&mdash;to do anything for you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not a thing. But just go and find out if Mr. Strangeways is asleep. If he
+      isn't and seems restless, I'll come and have a talk with him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, sir,&rdquo; said Pearson, and went at once.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0013" id="link2HCH0013">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XIII
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      In the course of two days Mr. Palford, having given his client the benefit
+      of his own exact professional knowledge of the estate of Temple Barholm
+      and its workings and privileges as far as he found them transferable and
+      likely to be understood, returned to London, breathing perhaps something
+      like a sigh of relief when the train steamed out of the little station.
+      Whatsoever happened in days to come, Palford &amp; Grimby had done their
+      most trying and awkward duty by the latest Temple Barholm. Bradford, who
+      was the steward of the estate, would now take him over, and could be
+      trusted to furnish practical information of any ordinary order.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It did not appear to Mr. Palford that the new inheritor was particularly
+      interested in his possessions or exhilarated by the extraordinary turn in
+      his fortunes. The enormity of Temple Barholm itself, regarded as a house
+      to live in in an everyday manner, seemed somewhat to depress him. When he
+      was taken over its hundred and fifty rooms, he wore a detached air as he
+      looked about him, and such remarks as he made were of an extraordinary
+      nature and expressed in terms peculiar to America. Neither Mr. Palford nor
+      Burrill understood them, but a young footman who was said to have once
+      paid a visit to New York, and who chanced to be in the picture-gallery
+      when his new master was looking at the portraits of his ancestors,
+      over-hearing one observation, was guilty of a convulsive snort, and
+      immediately made his way into the corridor, coughing violently. From this
+      Mr. Palford gathered that one of the transatlantic jokes had been made.
+      That was the New York idea&mdash;to be jocular. Yet he had not looked
+      jocular when he had made the remark which had upset the equilibrium of the
+      young footman. He had, in fact, looked reflective before speaking as he
+      stood and studied a portrait of one of his ancestors. But, then, he had a
+      trick of saying things incomprehensibly ridiculous with an unmoved
+      expression of gravity, which led Palford to feel that he was ridiculous
+      through utter ignorance and was not aware that he was exposing the fact.
+      Persons who thought that an air of seriousness added to a humorous remark
+      were especially annoying to the solicitor, because they frequently
+      betrayed one into the position of seeming to be dull in the matter of
+      seeing a point. That, he had observed, was often part of the New York
+      manner&mdash;to make a totally absurdly exaggerated or seemingly
+      ignorance-revealing observation, and then leave one's hearer to decide for
+      himself whether the speaker was an absolute ignoramus and fool or a
+      humorist.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      More than once he had somewhat suspected his client of meaning to &ldquo;get a
+      rise out of him,&rdquo; after the odious manner of the tourists described in
+      &ldquo;The Innocents Abroad,&rdquo; though at the same time he felt rather
+      supportingly sure of the fact that generally, when he displayed ignorance,
+      he displayed it because he was a positive encyclopedia of lack of
+      knowledge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He knew no more of social customs, literature, and art than any other
+      street lad. He had not belonged to the aspiring self-taught, who
+      meritoriously haunt the night schools and free libraries with a view to
+      improving their minds. If this had been his method, he might in one sense
+      have been more difficult to handle, as Palford had seen the thing result
+      in a bumptiousness most objectionable. He was markedly not bumptious, at
+      all events.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A certain degree of interest in or curiosity concerning his ancestors as
+      represented in the picture-gallery Mr. Palford had observed. He had stared
+      at them and had said queer things&mdash;sometimes things which perhaps
+      indicated a kind of uneducated thought. The fact that some of them looked
+      so thoroughly alive, and yet had lived centuries ago, seemed to set him
+      reflecting oddly. His curiosity, however, seemed to connect itself with
+      them more as human creatures than as historical figures.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What did that one do?&rdquo; he inquired more than once. &ldquo;What did he start, or
+      didn't he start anything?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      When he disturbed the young footman he had stopped before a dark man in
+      armor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who's this fellow in the tin overcoat?&rdquo; he asked seriously, and Palford
+      felt it was quite possible that he had no actual intent of being humorous.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is Miles Gaspard Nevil John, who fought in the Crusades with Richard
+      Coeur de Lion,&rdquo; he explained. &ldquo;He is wearing a suit of armor.&rdquo; By this
+      time the footman was coughing in the corridor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's English history, I guess,&rdquo; Tembarom replied. &ldquo;I'll have to get a
+      history-book and read up about the Crusades.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He went on farther, and paused with a slightly puzzled expression before a
+      boy in a costume of the period of Charles II.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who's this Fauntleroy in the lace collar?&rdquo; he inquired. &ldquo;Queer!&rdquo; he
+      added, as though to himself. &ldquo;I can't ever have seen him in New York.&rdquo; And
+      he took a step backward to look again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is Miles Hugo Charles James, who was a page at the court of Charles
+      II. He died at nineteen, and was succeeded by his brother Denzel Maurice
+      John.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I feel as if I'd had a dream about him sometime or other,&rdquo; said Tembarom,
+      and he stood still a few seconds before he passed on. &ldquo;Perhaps I saw
+      something like him getting out of a carriage to go into the Van Twillers'
+      fancy-dress ball. Seems as if I'd got the whole show shut up in here. And
+      you say they're all my own relations?&rdquo; Then he laughed. &ldquo;If they were
+      alive now!&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;By jinks!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His laughter suggested that he was entertained by mental visions. But he
+      did not explain to his companion. His legal adviser was not in the least
+      able to form any opinion of what he would do, how he would be likely to
+      comport himself, when he was left entirely to his own devices. He would
+      not know also, one might be sure, that the county would wait with
+      repressed anxiety to find out. If he had been a minor, he might have been
+      taken in hand, and trained and educated to some extent. But he was not a
+      minor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the day of Mr. Palford's departure a thick fog had descended and seemed
+      to enwrap the world in the white wool. Tembarom found it close to his
+      windows when he got up, and he had dressed by the light of tall wax
+      candles, the previous Mr. Temple Barholm having objected to more modern
+      and vulgar methods of illumination.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I guess this is what you call a London fog,&rdquo; he said to Pearson.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, not exactly the London sort, sir,&rdquo; Pearson answered. &ldquo;A London fog is
+      yellow&mdash;when it isn't brown or black. It settles on the hands and
+      face. A fog in the country isn't dirty with smoke. It's much less trying,
+      sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      When Palford had departed and he was entirely alone, Tembarom found a
+      country fog trying enough for a man without a companion. A degree of
+      relief permeated his being with the knowledge that he need no longer
+      endeavor to make suitable reply to his solicitor's efforts at
+      conversation. He had made conversational efforts himself. You couldn't let
+      a man feel that you wouldn't talk to him if you could when he was doing
+      business for you, but what in thunder did you have to talk about that a
+      man like that wouldn't be bored stiff by? He didn't like New York, he
+      didn't know anything about it, and he didn't want to know, and Tembarom
+      knew nothing about anything else, and was homesick for the very stones of
+      the roaring city's streets. When he said anything, Palford either didn't
+      understand what he was getting at or he didn't like it. And he always
+      looked as if he was watching to see if you were trying to get a joke on
+      him. Tembarom was frequently not nearly so much inclined to be humorous as
+      Mr. Palford had irritably suspected him of being. His modes of expression
+      might on numerous occasions have roused to mirth when his underlying idea
+      was almost entirely serious. The mode of expression was merely a result of
+      habit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Palford left by an extremely early train, and after he was gone,
+      Tembarom sat over his breakfast as long as possible, and then, going to
+      the library, smoked long. The library was certainly comfortable, though
+      the fire and the big wax candles were called upon to do their best to defy
+      the chill, mysterious dimness produced by the heavy, white wool curtain
+      folding itself more and more thickly outside the windows.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But one cannot smoke in solitary idleness for much more than an hour, and
+      when he stood up and knocked the ashes out of his last pipe, Tembarom drew
+      a long breath.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There's a hundred and thirty-six hours in each of these days,&rdquo; he said.
+      &ldquo;That's nine hundred and fifty-two in a week, and four thousand and eighty
+      in a month&mdash;when it's got only thirty days in it. I'm not going to
+      calculate how many there'd be in a year. I'll have a look at the papers.
+      There's Punch. That's their comic one.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He looked out the American news in the London papers, and sighed hugely.
+      He took up Punch and read every joke two or three times over. He did not
+      know that the number was a specially good one and that there were some
+      extremely witty things in it. The jokes were about bishops in gaiters,
+      about garden-parties, about curates or lovely young ladies or rectors'
+      wives and rustics, about Royal Academicians or esthetic poets. Their humor
+      appealed to him as little and seemed as obscure as his had seemed to Mr.
+      Palford.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm not laughing my head off much over these,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I guess I'm not
+      on to the point.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He got up and walked about. The &ldquo;L&rdquo; in New York was roaring to and fro
+      loaded with men and women going to work or to do shopping. Some of them
+      were devouring morning papers bearing no resemblance to those of London,
+      some of them carried parcels, and all of them looked as though they were
+      intent on something or other and hadn't a moment to waste. They were all
+      going somewhere in a hurry and had to get back in time for something. When
+      the train whizzed and slackened at a station, some started up, hastily
+      caught their papers or bundles closer, and pushed or were pushed out on
+      the platform, which was crowded with other people who rushed to get in,
+      and if they found seats, dropped into them hastily with an air of relief.
+      The street-cars were loaded and rang their bells loudly, trucks and
+      carriages and motors filled the middle of the thoroughfares, and people
+      crowded the pavements. The store windows were dressed up for Christmas,
+      and most of the people crowded before them were calculating as to what
+      they could get for the inadequate sums they had on hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The breakfast at Mrs. Bowse's boarding-house was over, and the boarders
+      had gone on cars or elevated trains to their day's work. Mrs. Bowse was
+      getting ready to go out and do some marketing. Julius and Jim were
+      down-town deep in the work pertaining to their separate &ldquo;jobs.&rdquo; They'd go
+      home at night, and perhaps, if they were in luck, would go to a &ldquo;show&rdquo;
+       somewhere, and afterward come and sit in their tilted chairs in the hall
+      bedroom and smoke and talk it over. And he wouldn't be there, and the
+      Hutchinsons' rooms would be empty, unless some new people were in them.
+      Galton would be sitting among his papers, working like mad. And Bennett&mdash;well,
+      Bennett would be either &ldquo;getting out his page,&rdquo; or would be rushing about
+      in the hundredth streets to find items and follow up weddings or
+      receptions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Gee!&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;every one of them trying their best to put something
+      over, and with so much to think of they've not got time to breathe! It'd
+      be no trouble for THEM to put in a hundred and thirty-six hours. They'd be
+      darned glad of them. And, believe me, they'd put something over, too,
+      before they got through. And I'm here, with three hundred and fifty
+      thousand dollars a year round my neck and not a thing to spend it on,
+      unless I pay some one part of it to give me lessons in tatting. What is
+      tatting, anyhow?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He didn't really know. It was vaguely supposed to imply some intensely
+      feminine fancy-work done by old ladies, and used as a figure of speech in
+      jokes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you could ride or shoot, you could amuse yourself in the country,&rdquo;
+       Palford had said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can ride in a street-car when I've got five cents,&rdquo; Tembarom had
+      answered. &ldquo;That's as far as I've gone in riding&mdash;and what in thunder
+      should I shoot?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Game,&rdquo; replied Mr. Palford, with chill inward disgust. &ldquo;Pheasants,
+      partridges, woodcock, grouse&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shouldn't shoot anything like that if I went at it,&rdquo; he responded
+      shamelessly. &ldquo;I should shoot my own head off, or the fellow's that stood
+      next to me, unless he got the drop on me first.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He did not know that he was ignominious. Nobody could have made it clear
+      to him. He did not know that there were men who had gained distinction,
+      popularity, and fame by doing nothing in particular but hitting things
+      animate and inanimate with magnificent precision of aim.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He stood still now and listened to the silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There's not a sound within a thousand miles of the place. What do fellows
+      with money DO to keep themselves alive?&rdquo; he said piteously. &ldquo;They've got
+      to do SOMETHING. Shall I have to go out and take a walk, as Palford called
+      it? Take a walk, by gee!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He couldn't conceive it, a man &ldquo;taking a walk&rdquo; as though it were medicine&mdash;a
+      walk nowhere, to reach nothing, just to go and turn back again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll begin and take in sewing,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;or I'll open a store in the
+      village&mdash;a department store. I could spend something on that. I'll
+      ask Pearson what he thinks of it&mdash;or Burrill. I'd like to see Burrill
+      if I said that to him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He decided at last that he would practise his &ldquo;short&rdquo; awhile; that would
+      be doing something, at any rate. He sat down at the big writing-table and
+      began to dash off mystic signs at furious speed. But the speed did not
+      keep up. The silence of the great room, of the immense house, of all the
+      scores of rooms and galleries and corridors, closed in about him. He had
+      practised his &ldquo;short&rdquo; in the night school, with the &ldquo;L&rdquo; thundering past at
+      intervals of five minutes; in the newspaper office, with all the babel of
+      New York about him and the bang of steam-drills going on below in the next
+      lot, where the foundation of a new building was being excavated; he had
+      practised it in his hall bedroom at Mrs. Bowse's, to the tumultuous
+      accompaniment of street sounds and the whizz and TING-A-LING of
+      street-cars dashing past, and he had not been disturbed. He had never
+      practised it in any place which was silent, and it was the silence which
+      became more than he could stand. He actually jumped out of his chair when
+      he heard mysterious footsteps outside the door, and a footman appeared and
+      spoke in a low voice which startled him as though it had been a
+      thunderclap.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A young person with her father wants to see you, sir,&rdquo; he announced. &ldquo;I
+      don't think they are villagers, but of the working-class, I should say.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where are they?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I didn't know exactly what to do, sir, so I left them in the hall. The
+      young person has a sort of quiet, determined way&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Little Ann, by gee!&rdquo; exclaimed Tembarom with mad joy, and shot out of the
+      room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The footman&mdash;he had not seen Little Ann when she had brought
+      Strangeways&mdash;looked after him and rubbed his chin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wouldn't you call that a rummy sort for Temple Barholm?&rdquo; he said to one
+      of his fellows who had appeared in the hall near him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's not my sort,&rdquo; was the answer. &ldquo;I'm going to give notice to old
+      Butterworth.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Hutchinson and Little Ann were waiting in the hall. Hutchinson was looking
+      at the rich, shadowy spaces about him with a sort of proud satisfaction.
+      Fine, dark corners with armored figures lurking in them, ancient
+      portraits, carved oak settles, and massive chairs and cabinets&mdash;these
+      were English, and he was an Englishman, and somehow felt them the outcome
+      of certain sterling qualities of his own. He looked robustly well, and
+      wore a new rough tweed suit such as one of the gentry might tramp about
+      muddy roads and fields in. Little Ann was dressed in something warm and
+      rough also, a brown thing, with a little close, cap-like, brown hat, from
+      under which her red hair glowed. The walk in the cold, white fog had made
+      her bloom fresh, soft-red and white-daisy color. She was smiling, and
+      showing three distinct dimples, which deepened when Tembarom dashed out of
+      the library.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hully gee!&rdquo; he cried out, &ldquo;but I'm glad to see you!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He shook hands with both of them furiously, and two footmen stood and
+      looked at the group with image-like calm of feature, but with curiously
+      interested eyes. Hutchinson was aware of them, and endeavored to present
+      to them a back which by its stolid composure should reveal that he knew
+      more about such things than this chap did and wasn't a bit upset by
+      grandeur.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hully gee!&rdquo; cried Tembarom again, &ldquo;how glad I am! Come on in and sit down
+      and let's talk it over.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Burrill made a stately step forward, properly intent on his duty, and his
+      master waved him back.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Say,&rdquo; he said hastily, &ldquo;don't bring in any tea. They don't want it.
+      They're Americans.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Hutchinson snorted. He could not stand being consigned to ignominy before
+      the footmen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nowt o' th' sort,&rdquo; he broke forth. &ldquo;We're noan American. Tha'rt losing
+      tha head, lad.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's forgetting because he met us first in New York,&rdquo; said Little Ann,
+      smiling still more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Shall I take your hat and cane, sir?&rdquo; inquired Burrill, unmovedly, at
+      Hutchinson's side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He wasn't going to say anything about tea,&rdquo; explained Little Ann as they
+      went into the library. &ldquo;They don't expect to serve tea in the middle of
+      the morning, Mr. Temple Barholm.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't they?&rdquo; said Tembarom, reckless with relieved delight. &ldquo;I thought
+      they served it every time the clock struck. When we were in London it
+      seemed like Palford had it when he was hot and when he was cold and when
+      he was glad and when he was sorry and when he was going out and when he
+      was coming in. It's brought up to me, by jinks! as soon as I wake, to
+      brace me up to put on my clothes&mdash;and Pearson wants to put those on.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He stopped short when they reached the middle of the room and looked her
+      over.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O Little Ann!&rdquo; he breathed tumultuously. &ldquo;O Little Ann!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Hutchinson was looking about the library as he had looked about the
+      hall.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I never thought I'd get inside Temple Barlholm in my day,&rdquo; he
+      exclaimed. &ldquo;Eh, lad, tha must feel like bull in a china shop.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I feel like a whole herd of 'em,&rdquo; answered Tembarom. Hutchinson nodded.
+      He understood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, perhaps tha'll get over it in time,&rdquo; he conceded, &ldquo;but it'll take
+      thee a good bit.&rdquo; Then he gave him a warmly friendly look. &ldquo;I'll lay you
+      know what Ann came with me for to-day.&rdquo; The way Little Ann looked at him&mdash;the
+      way she looked at him!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I came to thank you, Mr. Temple Barholm,&rdquo; she said&mdash;&ldquo;to thank you.&rdquo;
+       And there was an odd, tender sound in her voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't you do it, Ann,&rdquo; Tembarom answered. &ldquo;Don't you do it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't know much about business, but the way you must have worked, the
+      way you must have had to run after people, and find them, and make then
+      listen, and use all your New York cleverness&mdash;because you ARE clever.
+      The way you've forgotten all about yourself and thought of nothing but
+      father and the invention! I do know enough to understand that, and it
+      seems as if I can't think of enough to say. I just wish I could tell you
+      what it means to me.&rdquo; Two round pearls of tears brimmed over and fell down
+      her cheeks. &ldquo;I promised mother FAITHFUL I'd take care of him and see he
+      never lost hope about it,&rdquo; she added, &ldquo;and sometimes I didn't know
+      whatever I was going to do.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was perilous when she looked at one like that, and she was so little
+      and light that one could have snatched her up in his arms and carried her
+      to the big arm-chair and sat down with her and rocked her backward and
+      forward and poured forth the whole thing that was making him feel as
+      though he might explode.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hutchinson provided salvation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tha pulled me out o' the water just when I was going under, lad. God
+      bless thee!&rdquo; he broke out, and shook his hand with rough vigor. &ldquo;I signed
+      with the North Electric yesterday.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good business!&rdquo; said Tembarom. &ldquo;Now I'm in on the ground floor with
+      what's going to be the biggest money-maker in sight.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The way tha talked New York to them chaps took my fancy,&rdquo; chuckled
+      Hutchinson. &ldquo;None o' them chaps wants to be the first to jump over the
+      hedge.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We've got 'em started now,&rdquo; exulted Tembarom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tha started 'em,&rdquo; said Hutchinson, &ldquo;and it's thee I've got to thank.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Say, Little Ann,&rdquo; said Tembarom, with sudden thought, &ldquo;who's come into
+      money now? You'll have it to burn.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We've not got it yet, Mr. Temple Barholm,&rdquo; she replied, shaking her head.
+      &ldquo;Even when inventions get started, they don't go off like sky-rockets.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She knows everything, doesn't she?&rdquo; Tembarom said to Hutchinson. &ldquo;Here,
+      come and sit down. I've not seen you for 'steen years.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She took her seat in the big arm-chair and looked at him with softly
+      examining eyes, as though she wanted to understand him sufficiently to be
+      able to find out something she ought to do if he needed help.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He saw it and half laughed, not quite unwaveringly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You'll make me cry in a minute,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;You don't know what it's like
+      to have some one from home and mother come and be kind to you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How is Mr. Strangeways?&rdquo; she inquired.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's well taken care of, at any rate. That's where he's got to thank you.
+      Those rooms you and the housekeeper chose were the very things for him.
+      They're big and comfortable, and 'way off in a place where no one's likely
+      to come near. The fellow that's been hired to valet me valets him instead,
+      and I believe he likes it. It seems to come quite natural to him, any how.
+      I go in and see him every now and then and try to get him to talk. I sort
+      of invent things to see if I can start him thinking straight. He's quieted
+      down some and he looks better. After a while I'm going to look up some big
+      doctors in London and find out which of 'em's got the most plain horse
+      sense. If a real big one would just get interested and come and see him on
+      the quiet and not get him excited, he might do him good. I'm dead stuck on
+      this stunt I've set myself&mdash;getting him right. It's something to work
+      on.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You'll have plenty to work on soon,&rdquo; said Little Ann. &ldquo;There's a lot of
+      everyday things you've got to think about. They may seem of no consequence
+      to you, but they ARE, Mr. Temple Barholm.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you say they are, I guess they are,&rdquo; he answered. &ldquo;I'll do anything
+      you say, Ann.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I came partly to tell you about some of them to-day,&rdquo; she went on,
+      keeping the yearningly thoughtful eyes on him. It was rather hard for her,
+      too, to be firm enough when there was so much she wanted to say and do.
+      And he did not look half as twinkling and light-heartedly grinning as he
+      had looked in New York.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He couldn't help dropping his voice a little coaxingly, though Mr.
+      Hutchinson was quite sufficiently absorbed in examination of his
+      surroundings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Didn't you come to save my life by letting me have a look at you, Little
+      Ann&mdash;didn't you?&rdquo; he pleaded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She shook her wonderful, red head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I didn't, Mr. Temple Barholm,&rdquo; she answered with Manchester
+      downrightness. &ldquo;When I said what I did in New York, I meant it. I didn't
+      intend to hang about here and let you&mdash;say things to me. You mustn't
+      say them. Father and me are going back to Manchester in a few days, and
+      very soon we have to go to America again because of the business.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;America!&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Oh, Lord!&rdquo; he groaned. &ldquo;Do you want me to drop down
+      dead here with a dull, sickening thud, Ann?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You're not going to drop down dead,&rdquo; she replied convincedly. &ldquo;You're
+      going to stay here and do whatever it's your duty to do, now you've come
+      into Temple Barholm.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Am I?&rdquo; he answered. &ldquo;Well, we'll see what I'm going to do when I've had
+      time to make up my mind. It may be something different from what you'd
+      think, and it mayn't. Just now I'm going to do what you tell me. Go ahead,
+      Little Ann.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She thought the matter over with her most destructive little air of
+      sensible intentness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, it may seem like meddling, but it isn't,&rdquo; she began rather
+      concernedly. &ldquo;It's just that I'm used to looking after people. I wanted to
+      talk to you about your clothes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My clothes?&rdquo; he replied, bewildered a moment; but the next he understood
+      and grinned. &ldquo;I haven't got any. My valet&mdash;think of T. T. with a
+      valet!&mdash;told me so last night.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's what I thought,&rdquo; she said maternally. &ldquo;I got Mrs. Bowse to write
+      to me, and she told me you were so hurried and excited you hadn't time for
+      anything.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I just rushed into Cohen's the last day and yanked a few things off the
+      ready-made counter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She looked him over with impersonal criticism.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I thought so. Those you've got on won't do at all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Tembarom glanced at them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's what Pearson says.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They're not the right shape,&rdquo; she explained. &ldquo;I know what a gentleman's
+      clothes mean in England, and&mdash;&rdquo; her face flushed, and sudden, warm
+      spirit made her speak rather fast&mdash;&ldquo;I couldn't ABIDE to think of you
+      coming here and&mdash;being made fun of&mdash;just because you hadn't the
+      right clothes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She said it, the little thing, as though he were hers&mdash;her very own,
+      and defend him against disrespect she WOULD. Tembarom, being but young
+      flesh and blood, made an impetuous dart toward her, and checked himself,
+      catching his breath.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ann,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;has your grandmother got a dog?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Y-e-s,&rdquo; she said, faltering because she was puzzled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How big is he?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's a big one. He's a brindled bulldog. Why?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; he said, half pathetic, half defiant, &ldquo;if you're going to come and
+      talk to me like that, and look like that, you've got to bring that bull
+      along and set him on me when I make a break; for there's nothing but a dog
+      can keep me where you want me to stay&mdash;and a big one at that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He sat down on an ottoman near her and dropped his head on his hands. It
+      was not half such a joke as it sounded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Little Ann saw it wasn't and she watched him tenderly, catching her breath
+      once quickly. Men had ways of taking some things hard and feeling them a
+      good bit more than one would think. It made trouble many a time if one
+      couldn't help them to think reasonable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Father,&rdquo; she said to Hutchinson.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Aye,&rdquo; he answered, turning round.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will you tell Mr. Temple Barholm that you think I'm right about giving
+      him his chance?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course I think she's right,&rdquo; Hutchinson blustered, &ldquo;and it isn't the
+      first time either. I'm not going to have my lass married into any family
+      where she'd be looked down upon.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But that was not what Little Ann wanted; it was not, in fact, her
+      argument. She was not thinking of that side of the situation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's not me that matters so much, Father,&rdquo; she said; &ldquo;it's him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, is it?&rdquo; disagreed Hutchinson, dictatorially. &ldquo;That's not th' road I
+      look at it. I'm looking after you, not him. Let him take care of himself.
+      No chap shall put you where you won't be looked up to, even if I AM
+      grateful to him. So there you have it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He can't take care of himself when he feels like this,&rdquo; she answered.
+      &ldquo;That's WHY I'm taking care of him. He'll think steadier when he's himself
+      again.&rdquo; She put out her hand and softly touched his shoulder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't do that,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;You make me want to be silly.&rdquo; There was a
+      quiver in her voice, but she tried to change it. &ldquo;If you don't lift your
+      head,&rdquo; she added with a great effort at disciplinarian firmness, &ldquo;I shall
+      have to go away without telling you the other things.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He lifted his head, but his attempt at a smile was not hilarious.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, Ann,&rdquo; he submitted, &ldquo;I've warned you. Bring along your dog.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She took a sheet of paper out of one of the neat pockets in her rough,
+      brown coat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I just wrote down some of the very best tailors' addresses&mdash;the very
+      best,&rdquo; she explained. &ldquo;Don't you go to any but the very best, and be a bit
+      sharp with them if they're not attentive. They'll think all the better of
+      you. If your valet's a smart one, take him with you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, Ann,&rdquo; he said rather weakly. &ldquo;He's going to make a list of things
+      himself, anyhow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That sounds as if he'd got some sense.&rdquo; She handed him the list of
+      addresses. &ldquo;You give him this, and tell him he must go to the very best
+      ones.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do I want to put on style for?&rdquo; he asked desperately. &ldquo;I don't know
+      a soul on this side of the Atlantic Ocean.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You soon will,&rdquo; she replied, with calm perspicacity. &ldquo;You've got too much
+      money not to.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A gruff chuckle made itself heard from Hutchinson's side of the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Aye, seventy thousand a year'll bring th' vultures about thee, lad.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We needn't call them vultures exactly,&rdquo; was Little Ann's tolerant
+      comment; &ldquo;but a lot of people will come here to see you. That was one of
+      the things I thought I might tell you about.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Say, you're a wonder!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm nothing of the sort. I'm just a girl with a bit of common sense&mdash;and
+      grandmother's one that's looked on a long time, and she sees things. The
+      country gentlemen will begin to call on you soon, and then you'll be
+      invited to their houses to meet their wives and daughters, and then you'll
+      be kept pretty busy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Hutchinson's bluff chuckle broke out again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You will that, my lad, when th' match-making mothers get after you.
+      There's plenty on 'em.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Father's joking,&rdquo; she said. Her tone was judicially unprejudiced. &ldquo;There
+      are young ladies that&mdash;that'd be very suitable. Pretty ones and
+      clever ones. You'll see them all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't want to see them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You can't help it,&rdquo; she said, with mild decision. &ldquo;When there are
+      daughters and a new gentleman comes into a big property in the
+      neighborhood, it's nothing but natural that the mothers should be a bit
+      anxious.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Aye, they'll be anxious enough. Mak' sure o' that,&rdquo; laughed Hutchinson.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is that what you want me to put on style for, Little Ann?&rdquo; Tembarom asked
+      reproachfully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I want you to put it on for yourself. I don't want you to look different
+      from other men. Everybody's curious about you. They're ready to LAUGH
+      because you came from America and once sold newspapers.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's the men he'll have to look out for,&rdquo; Hutchinson put in, with an
+      experienced air. &ldquo;There's them that'll want to borrow money, and them
+      that'll want to drink and play cards and bet high. A green American lad'll
+      be a fine pigeon for them to pluck. You may as well tell him, Ann; you
+      know you came here to do it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I did,&rdquo; she admitted. &ldquo;I don't want you to seem not to know what
+      people are up to and what they expect.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      That little note of involuntary defense was a dangerous thing for
+      Tembarom. He drew nearer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You don't want them to take me for a fool, Little Ann. You're standing up
+      for me; that's it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You can stand up for yourself, Mr. Temple Barholm, if you're not taken by
+      surprise,&rdquo; she said confidently. &ldquo;If you understand things a bit, you
+      won't be.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His feelings almost overpowered him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;God bless your dear little soul!&rdquo; he broke out. &ldquo;Say, if this goes on,
+      that dog of your grandmother's wouldn't have a show, Ann. I should bite
+      him before he could bite me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I won't go on if you can't be sensible, Mr. Temple Barholm. I shall just
+      go away and not come back again. That's what I shall do.&rdquo; Her tone was
+      that of a young mother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He gave in incontinently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good Lord! no!&rdquo; he exclaimed. &ldquo;I'll do anything if you'll stay. I'll lie
+      down on the mat and not open my mouth. Just sit here and tell me things. I
+      know you won't let me hold your hand, but just let me hold a bit of your
+      dress and look at you while you talk.&rdquo; He took a bit of her brown frock
+      between his fingers and held it, gazing at her with all his crude young
+      soul in his eyes. &ldquo;Now tell me,&rdquo; he added.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There's only one or two things about the people who'll come to Temple
+      Barholm. Grandmother's talked it over with me. She knew all about those
+      that came in the late Mr. Temple Barholm's time. He used to hate most of
+      them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then why in thunder did he ask them to come?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He didn't. They've got clever, polite ways of asking themselves
+      sometimes. He couldn't bear the Countess of Mallowe. She'll come.
+      Grandmother says you may be sure of that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What'll she come for?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Little Ann's pause and contemplation of him were fraught with
+      thoughtfulness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She'll come for you,&rdquo; at last she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She's got a daughter she thinks ought to have been married eight years
+      ago,&rdquo; announced Hutchinson.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tembarom pulled at the bit of brown tweed he held as though it were a
+      drowning man's straw.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't you drive me to drink, Ann,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I'm frightened. Your
+      grandmother will have to lend ME the dog.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This was a flightiness which Little Ann did not encourage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lady Joan&mdash;that's her daughter&mdash;is very grand and haughty.
+      She's a great beauty. You'll look at her, but perhaps she won't look at
+      you. But it's not her I'm troubled about. I'm thinking of Captain Palliser
+      and men like him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who's he?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's one of those smooth, clever ones that's always getting up some
+      company or other and selling the stock. He'll want you to know his friends
+      and he'll try to lead you his way.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As Tembarom held to his bit of her dress, his eyes were adoring ones,
+      which was really not to be wondered at. She WAS adorable as her soft,
+      kind, wonderfully maternal girl face tried to control itself so that it
+      should express only just enough to help and nothing to disturb.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't want him to spoil you. I don't want anything to make you&mdash;different.
+      I couldn't bear it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He pulled the bit of dress pleadingly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, Little Ann?&rdquo; he implored quite low.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because,&rdquo; she said, feeling that perhaps she was rash&mdash;&ldquo;because if
+      you were different, you wouldn't be T. Tembarom; and it was T. Tembarom
+      that&mdash;that was T. Tembarom,&rdquo; she finished hastily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He bent his head down to the bit of tweed and kissed it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You just keep looking after me like that,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;and there's not one
+      of them can get away with me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She got up, and he rose with her. There was a touch of fire in the
+      forget-me-not blue of her eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just you let them see&mdash;just you let them see that you're not one
+      they can hold light and make use of.&rdquo; But there she stopped short, looking
+      up at him. He was looking down at her with a kind of matureness in his
+      expression. &ldquo;I needn't be afraid,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;You can take care of
+      yourself; I ought to have known that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You did,&rdquo; he said, smiling; &ldquo;but you wanted to sort of help me. And
+      you've done it, by gee! just by saying that thing about T. Tembarom. You
+      set me right on my feet. That's YOU.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Before they went away they paid a visit to Strangeways in his remote,
+      undisturbed, and beautiful rooms. They were in a wing of the house
+      untouched by any ordinary passing to and fro, and the deep windows looked
+      out upon gardens which spring and summer would crowd with loveliness from
+      which clouds of perfume would float up to him on days when the sun warmed
+      and the soft airs stirred the flowers, shaking the fragrance from their
+      full incense-cups. But the white fog shut out to-day even their winter
+      bareness. There were light and warmth inside, and every added charm of
+      rich harmony of deep color and comfort made beautiful. There were books
+      and papers waiting to be looked over, but they lay untouched on the
+      writing-table, and Strangeways was sitting close to the biggest window,
+      staring into the fog. His eyes looked hungry and hollow and dark. Ann knew
+      he was &ldquo;trying to remember&rdquo; something.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the sound of footsteps reached his ear, he turned to look at them,
+      and rose mechanically at sight of Ann. But his expression was that of a
+      man aroused from a dream of far-off places.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I remember you,&rdquo; he said, but hesitated as though making an effort to
+      recall something.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course you do,&rdquo; said Little Ann. &ldquo;You know me quite well. I brought
+      you here. Think a bit. Little&mdash;Little&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; he broke forth. &ldquo;Of course, Little Ann! Thank God I've not
+      forgotten.&rdquo; He took her hand in both his and held it tenderly. &ldquo;You have a
+      sweet little face. It's such a wise little face!&rdquo; His voice sounded
+      dreamy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ann drew him to his chair with a coaxing laugh and sat down by him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You're flattering me. You make me feel quite shy,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;You know
+      HIM, too,&rdquo; nodding toward Tembarom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, yes,&rdquo; he replied, and he looked up with a smile. &ldquo;He is the one who
+      remembers. You said you did.&rdquo; He had turned to Tembarom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You bet your life I do,&rdquo; Tembarom answered. &ldquo;And you will, too, before
+      long.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I did not try so hard,&rdquo; said Strangeways, thoughtfully. &ldquo;It seems as
+      if I were shut up in a room, and so many things were knocking at the doors&mdash;hundreds
+      of them&mdash;knocking because they want to be let in. I am damnably
+      unhappy&mdash;damnably.&rdquo; He hung his head and stared at the floor.
+      Tembarom put a hand on his shoulder and gave him a friendly shake.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't you worry a bit,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;You take my word for it. It'll all come
+      back. I'm working at it myself.&rdquo; Strangeways lifted his head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are the one I know best. I trust you.&rdquo; But there was the beginning of
+      a slight drag in his voice. &ldquo;I don't always&mdash;quite recollect&mdash;your
+      name. Not quite. Good heavens! I mustn't forget that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Little Ann was quite ready.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You won't,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;because it's different from other names. It begins
+      with a letter&mdash;just a letter, and then there is the name. Think.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, yes,&rdquo; he said anxiously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Little Ann bent forward and fixed her eyes on his with concentrated
+      suggestion. They had never risked confusing him by any mention of the new
+      name. She began to repeat letters of the alphabet slowly and distinctly
+      until she reached the letter T.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;T,&rdquo; she ended with much emphasis&mdash;&ldquo;R. S. <i>T</i>.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His expression cleared itself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;T,&rdquo; he repeated. &ldquo;T&mdash;Tembarom. R, S, T. How clever you are!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Little Ann's gaze concentrated itself still more intently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now you'll never forget it again,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;because of the T. You'll
+      say the other letters until you come to it. R, S, T.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;T. Tembarom,&rdquo; he ended relievedly. &ldquo;How you help me!&rdquo; He took her hand
+      and kissed it very gently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We are all going to help you,&rdquo; Ann soothed him, &ldquo;T. Tembarom most of
+      all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Say,&rdquo; Tembarom broke out in an aside to her, &ldquo;I'm going to come here and
+      try things on him every day. When it seems like he gets on to something,
+      however little a thing it is, I'm going to follow it up and see if it
+      won't get somewhere.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Ann nodded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There'll be something some day,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Are you quite comfortable
+      here?&rdquo; she asked aloud to Strangeways.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very comfortable, thank you,&rdquo; he answered courteously. &ldquo;They are
+      beautiful rooms. They are furnished with such fine old things. This is
+      entirely Jacobean. It's quite perfect.&rdquo; He glanced about him. &ldquo;And so
+      quiet. No one comes in here but my man, and he is a very nice chap. I
+      never had a man who knew his duties better.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Little Ann and Tembarom looked at each other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shouldn't be a bit surprised,&rdquo; she said after they had left the room,
+      &ldquo;if it wouldn't be a good thing to get Pearson to try to talk to him now
+      and then. He's been used to a man-servant.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; answered Tembarom. &ldquo;Pearson didn't rattle HIM, you bet your life.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0014" id="link2HCH0014">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XIV
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      He could not persuade them to remain to take lunch with him. The firmness
+      of Hutchinson's declination was not unconnected with a private feeling
+      that &ldquo;them footmen chaps 'u'd be on the lookout to see the way you handled
+      every bite you put in your mouth.&rdquo; He couldn't have stood it, dang their
+      impudence! Little Ann, on her part, frankly and calmly said, &ldquo;It wouldn't
+      DO.&rdquo; That was all, and evidently covered everything.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After they had gone, the fog lifted somewhat, but though it withdrew from
+      the windows, it remained floating about in masses, like huge ghosts, among
+      the trees of the park. When Tembarom sat down alone to prolong his lunch
+      with the aid of Burrill and the footmen, he was confronted by these
+      unearthly shapes every time he lifted his eyes to the window he faced from
+      his place at the table. It was an outlook which did not inspire to
+      cheerfulness, and the fact that Ann and her father were going back to
+      Manchester and later to America left him without even the simple
+      consolation of a healthy appetite. Things were bound to get better after a
+      while; they were BOUND to. A fellow would be a fool if he couldn't fix it
+      somehow so that he could enjoy himself, with money to burn. If you made up
+      your mind you couldn't stand the way things were, you didn't have to lie
+      down under them, with a thousand or so &ldquo;per&rdquo; coming in. You could fix it
+      so that it would be different. By jinks! there wasn't any law against your
+      giving it all to the church but just enough to buy a flat in Harlem
+      out-right, if you wanted to. But you weren't going to run crazy and do a
+      lot of fool things in a minute, and be sorry the rest of your life. Money
+      was money. And first and foremost there was Ann, with her round cheeks
+      flushed and her voice all sweet and queer, saying, &ldquo;You wouldn't be T.
+      Tembarom; and it was T. Tembarom that&mdash;that was T. Tembarom.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He couldn't help knowing what she had begun to say, and his own face
+      flushed as he thought of it. He was at that time of life when there
+      generally happens to be one center about which the world revolves. The
+      creature who passes through this period of existence without watching it
+      revolve about such a center has missed an extraordinary and singularly
+      developing experience. It is sometimes happy, often disastrous, but always
+      more or less developing. Speaking calmly, detachedly, but not cynically,
+      it is a phase. During its existence it is the blood in the veins, the
+      sight of the eyes, the beat of the pulse, the throb of the heart. It is
+      also the day and the night, the sun, the moon, and the stars, heaven and
+      hell, the entire universe. And it doesn't matter in the least to any one
+      but the creatures living through it. T. Tembarom was in the midst of it.
+      There was Ann. There was this new crazy thing which had happened to him&mdash;&ldquo;this
+      fool thing,&rdquo; as he called it. There was this monstrous, magnificent house,&mdash;he
+      knew it was magnificent, though it wasn't his kind,&mdash;there was old
+      Palford and his solemn talk about ancestors and the name of Temple
+      Barholm. It always reminded him of how ashamed he had been in Brooklyn of
+      the &ldquo;Temple Temple&rdquo; and how he had told lies to prevent the fellows
+      finding out about it. And there was seventy thousand pounds a year, and
+      there was Ann, who looked as soft as a baby,&mdash;Good Lord! how soft
+      she'd feel if you got her in your arms and squeezed her!&mdash;and yet was
+      somehow strong enough to keep him just where she wanted him to stay and
+      believed he ought to stay until &ldquo;he had found out.&rdquo; That was it. She
+      wasn't doing it for any fool little idea of making herself seem more
+      important: she just believed it. She was doing it because she wanted to
+      let him &ldquo;have his chance,&rdquo; just as if she were his mother instead of the
+      girl he was clean crazy about. His chance! He laughed outright&mdash;a
+      short, confident laugh which startled Burrill exceedingly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When he went back to the library and lighted his pipe he began to stride
+      up and down as he continued to think it over.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wish she was as sure as I am,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I wish she was as sure of me
+      as I am of myself&mdash;and as I am of her.&rdquo; He laughed the short,
+      confident laugh again. &ldquo;I wish she was as sure as I am of us both. We're
+      all right. I've got to get through this, and find out what it's best to
+      do, and I've got to show her. When I've had my chance good and plenty, us
+      two for little old New York! Gee! won't it be fine!&rdquo; he exclaimed
+      imaginatively. &ldquo;Her going over her bills, looking like a peach of a baby
+      that's trying to knit its brows, and adding up, and thinking she ought to
+      economize. She'd do it if we had ten million.&rdquo; He laughed outright
+      joyfully. &ldquo;Good Lord! I should kiss her to death!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The simplest process of ratiocination would lead to a realization of the
+      fact that though he was lonely and uncomfortable, he was not in the least
+      pathetic or sorry for himself. His normal mental and physical structure
+      kept him steady on his feet, and his practical and unsentimental training,
+      combining itself with a touch of iron which centuries ago had expressed
+      itself through some fighting Temple Barholm and a medium of battle-axes,
+      crossbows, and spears, did the rest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It'd take more than this to get me where I'd be down and out. I'm feeling
+      fine,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I believe I'll go and 'take a walk,' as Palford says.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The fog-wreaths in the park were floating away, and he went out grinning
+      and whistling, giving Burrill and the footman a nod as he passed them with
+      a springing young stride. He got the door open so quickly that he left
+      them behind him frustrated and staring at each other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It wasn't our fault,&rdquo; said Burrill, gloomily. &ldquo;He's never had a door
+      opened for him in his life. This won't do for me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He was away for about an hour, and came back in the best of spirits. He
+      had found out that there was something in &ldquo;taking a walk&rdquo; if a fellow had
+      nothing else to do. The park was &ldquo;fine,&rdquo; and he had never seen anything
+      like it. When there were leaves on the trees and the grass and things were
+      green, it would be better than Central Park itself. You could have
+      base-ball matches in it. What a cinch it would be if you charged
+      gate-money! But he supposed you couldn't if it belonged to you and you had
+      three hundred and fifty thousand a year. You had to get used to that. But
+      it did seem a fool business to have all that land and not make a cent out
+      of it. If it was just outside New York and you cut it up into lots, you'd
+      just pile it up. He was quite innocent&mdash;calamitously innocent and
+      commercial and awful in his views. Thoughts such as these had been crammed
+      into his brain by life ever since he had gone down the staircase of the
+      Brooklyn tenement with his twenty-five cents in his ten-year-old hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The stillness of the house seemed to have accentuated itself when he
+      returned to it. His sense of it let him down a little as he entered. The
+      library was like a tomb&mdash;a comfortable luxurious tomb with a bright
+      fire in it. A new Punch and the morning papers had been laid upon a table
+      earlier in the day, and he sat down to look at them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I guess about fifty-seven or eight of the hundred and thirty-six hours
+      have gone by,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;But, gee! ain't it lonesome!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He sat so still trying to interest himself in &ldquo;London Day by Day&rdquo; in the
+      morning paper that the combination of his exercise in the fresh air and
+      the warmth of the fire made him drowsy. He leaned back in his chair and
+      closed his eyes without being aware that he did so. He was on the verge of
+      a doze.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He remained upon the verge for a few minutes, and then a soft, rustling
+      sound made him open his eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      An elderly little lady had timidly entered the room. She was neatly
+      dressed in an old-fashioned and far-from-new black silk dress, with a
+      darned lace collar and miniature brooch at her neck. She had also thin,
+      gray side-ringlets dangling against her cheeks from beneath a small, black
+      lace cap with pale-purple ribbons on it. She had most evidently not
+      expected to find any one in the room, and, having seen Tembarom, gave a
+      half-frightened cough.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&mdash;I beg your pardon,&rdquo; she faltered. &ldquo;I really did not mean to
+      intrude&mdash;really.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Tembarom jumped up, awkward, but good-natured. Was she a kind of servant
+      who was a lady?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, that's all right,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But she evidently did not feel that it was all right. She looked as though
+      she felt that she had been caught doing something wrong, and must properly
+      propitiate by apology.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm so sorry. I thought you had gone out&mdash;Mr. Temple Barholm.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I did go out&mdash;to take a walk; but I came in.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Having been discovered in her overt act, she evidently felt that duty
+      demanded some further ceremony from her. She approached him very timidly,
+      but with an exquisite, little elderly early-Victorian manner. She was of
+      the most astonishingly perfect type, though Tembarom was not aware of the
+      fact. The manner, a century earlier, would have expressed itself in a
+      curtsy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is Mr. Temple Barholm, isn't it?&rdquo; she inquired.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; it has been for the last few weeks,&rdquo; he answered, wondering why she
+      seemed so in awe of him and wishing she didn't.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I ought to apologize for being here,&rdquo; she began.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Say, don't, please!&rdquo; he interrupted. &ldquo;What I feel is, that it ought to be
+      up to me to apologize for being here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She was really quite flurried and distressed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, please, Mr. Temple Barholm!&rdquo; she fluttered, proceeding to explain
+      hurriedly, as though he without doubt understood the situation. &ldquo;I should
+      of course have gone away at once after the late Mr. Temple Barholm died,
+      but&mdash;but I really had nowhere to go&mdash;and was kindly allowed to
+      remain until about two months ago, when I went to make a visit. I fully
+      intended to remove my little belongings before you arrived, but I was
+      detained by illness and could not return until this morning to pack up. I
+      understood you were in the park, and I remembered I had left my
+      knitting-bag here.&rdquo; She glanced nervously about the room, and seemed to
+      catch sight of something on a remote corner table. &ldquo;Oh, there it is. May I
+      take it?&rdquo; she said, looking at him appealingly. &ldquo;It was a kind present
+      from a dear lost friend, and&mdash;and&mdash;&rdquo; She paused, seeing his
+      puzzled and totally non-comprehending air. It was plainly the first moment
+      it had dawned upon her that he did not know what she was talking about.
+      She took a small, alarmed step toward him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I BEG your pardon,&rdquo; she exclaimed in delicate anguish. &ldquo;I'm afraid
+      you don't know who I am. Perhaps Mr. Palford forgot to mention me. Indeed,
+      why should he mention me? There were so many more important things. I am a
+      sort of distant&mdash;VERY distant relation of yours. My name is Alicia
+      Temple Barholm.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Tembarom was relieved. But she actually hadn't made a move toward the
+      knitting-bag. She seemed afraid to do it until he gave her permission. He
+      walked over to the corner table and brought it to her, smiling broadly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here it is,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I'm glad you left it. I'm very happy to be
+      acquainted with you, Miss Alicia.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He was glad just to see her looking up at him with her timid, refined,
+      intensely feminine appeal. Why she vaguely brought back something that
+      reminded him of Ann he could not have told. He knew nothing whatever of
+      types early-Victorian or late.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He took her hand, evidently to her greatest possible amazement, and shook
+      it heartily. She knew nothing whatever of the New York street type, and it
+      made her gasp for breath, but naturally with an allayed terror.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Gee!&rdquo; he exclaimed whole-heartedly, &ldquo;I'm glad to find out I've got a
+      relation. I thought I hadn't one in the world. Won't you sit down?&rdquo; He was
+      drawing her toward his own easy-chair. But he really didn't know, she was
+      agitatedly thinking. She really must tell him. He seemed so good tempered
+      and&mdash;and DIFFERENT. She herself was not aware of the enormous
+      significance which lay in that word &ldquo;different.&rdquo; There must be no risk of
+      her seeming to presume upon his lack of knowledge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is MOST kind of you,&rdquo; she said with grateful emphasis, &ldquo;but I mustn't
+      sit down and detain you. I can explain in a few words&mdash;if I may.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He positively still held her hand in the oddest, natural, boyish way, and
+      before she knew what she was doing he had made her take the chair&mdash;quite
+      MADE her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, just sit down and explain,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I wish to thunder you would
+      detain me. Take all the time you like. I want to hear all about it&mdash;honest
+      Injun.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a cushion in the chair, and as he talked, he pulled it out and
+      began to arrange it behind her, still in the most natural and
+      matter-of-fact way&mdash;so natural and matter-of-fact, indeed, that its
+      very natural matter-of-factedness took her breath away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is that fixed all right?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Being a little lady, she could only accept his extraordinary friendliness
+      with grateful appreciation, though she could not help fluttering a little
+      in her bewilderment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, thank you, thank you, Mr. Temple Barholm,&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He sat down on the square ottoman facing her, and leaned forward with an
+      air of making a frank confession.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Guess what I was thinking to myself two minutes before you came in? I was
+      thinking, `Lord, I'm lonesome&mdash;just sick lonesome!' And then I opened
+      my eyes and looked&mdash;and there was a relation! Hully gee! I call that
+      luck!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dear me!&rdquo; she said, shyly delighted. &ldquo;DO you, Mr. Temple Barholm&mdash;REALLY?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her formal little way of saying his name was like Ann's.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do I? I'm tickled to death. My mother died when I was ten, and I've never
+      had any women kin-folks.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Poor bo&mdash;&rdquo; She had nearly said &ldquo;Poor boy!&rdquo; and only checked the
+      familiarity just in time&mdash;&ldquo;Poor Mr. Temple Barholm!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Say, what are we two to each other, anyhow?&rdquo; He put it to her with great
+      interest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is a very distant relationship, if it is one at all,&rdquo; she answered.
+      &ldquo;You see, I was only a second cousin to the late Mr. Temple Barholm, and I
+      had not really the SLIGHTEST claim upon him.&rdquo; She placed pathetic emphasis
+      on the fact. &ldquo;It was most generous of him to be so kind to me. When my
+      poor father died and I was left quite penniless, he gave me a&mdash;a sort
+      of home here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A sort of home?&rdquo; Tembarom repeated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My father was a clergyman in VERY straitened circumstances. We had barely
+      enough to live upon&mdash;barely. He could leave me nothing. It actually
+      seemed as if I should have to starve&mdash;it did, indeed.&rdquo; There was a
+      delicate quiver in her voice. &ldquo;And though the late Mr. Temple Barholm had
+      a great antipathy to ladies, he was so&mdash;so noble as to send word to
+      me that there were a hundred and fifty rooms in his house, and that if I
+      would keep out of his way I might live in one of them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That was noble,&rdquo; commented her distant relative.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, yes, indeed, especially when one considers how he disliked the
+      opposite sex and what a recluse he was. He could not endure ladies. I
+      scarcely ever saw him. My room was in quite a remote wing of the house,
+      and I never went out if I knew he was in the park. I was most careful. And
+      when he died of course I knew I must go away.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Tembarom was watching her almost tenderly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where did you go?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To a kind clergyman in Shropshire who thought he might help me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How was he going to do it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She answered with an effort to steady a somewhat lowered and hesitating
+      voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There was near his parish a very nice&mdash;charity,&rdquo;&mdash;her breath
+      caught itself pathetically,&mdash;&ldquo;some most comfortable almshouses for
+      decayed gentlewomen. He thought he might be able to use his influence to
+      get me into one.&rdquo; She paused and smiled, but her small, wrinkled hands
+      held each other closely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tembarom looked away. He spoke as though to himself, and without knowing
+      that he was thinking aloud.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Almshouses!&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Wouldn't that jolt you!&rdquo; He turned on her again
+      with a change to cheerful concern. &ldquo;Say, that cushion of yours ain't
+      comfortable. I 'm going to get you another one.&rdquo; He jumped up and, taking
+      one from a sofa, began to arrange it behind her dexterously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I mustn't trouble you any longer. I must go, really,&rdquo; she said, half
+      rising nervously. He put a hand on her shoulder and made her sit again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Go where?&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Just lean back on that cushion, Miss Alicia. For the
+      next few minutes this is going to be MY funeral.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She was at once startled and uncomprehending. What an extraordinary
+      expression! What COULD it mean?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;F&mdash;funeral?&rdquo; she stammered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Suddenly he seemed somehow to have changed. He looked as serious as though
+      he was beginning to think out something all at once. What was he going to
+      say?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's New York slang,&rdquo; he answered. &ldquo;It means that I want to explain
+      myself to you and ask a few questions.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Certainly, certainly, Mr. Temple Barholm.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He leaned his back against the mantel, and went into the matter
+      practically.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;First off, haven't you ANY folks?&rdquo; Then, answering her puzzled look,
+      added, &ldquo;I mean relations.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Alicia gently shook her head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No sisters or brothers or uncles or aunts or cousins?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She shook her head again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He hesitated a moment, putting his hands in his pockets and taking them
+      out again awkwardly as he looked down at her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now here's where I'm up against it,&rdquo; he went on. &ldquo;I don't want to be too
+      fresh or to butt in, but&mdash;didn't old Temple Barholm leave you ANY
+      money?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, no!&rdquo; she exclaimed. &ldquo;Dear me! no! I couldn't possibly EXPECT such a
+      thing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He gazed at her as though considering the situation. &ldquo;Couldn't you?&rdquo; he
+      said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was an odd reflection in his eyes, and he seemed to consider her and
+      the situation again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; he began after his pause, &ldquo;what I want to know is what you expect
+      ME to do.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was no unkindness in his manner, in fact, quite the contrary, even
+      when he uttered what seemed to Miss Alicia these awful, unwarranted words.
+      As though she had forced herself into his presence to make demands upon
+      his charity! They made her tremble and turn pale as she got up quickly,
+      shocked and alarmed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, nothing! nothing! nothing WHATEVER, Mr. Temple Barholm!&rdquo; she
+      exclaimed, her agitation doing its best to hide itself behind a fine
+      little dignity. He saw in an instant that his style of putting it had been
+      &ldquo;'way off,&rdquo; that his ignorance had betrayed him, that she had
+      misunderstood him altogether. He almost jumped at her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, say, I didn't mean THAT!&rdquo; he cried out. &ldquo;For the Lord's sake! don't
+      think I'm such a Tenderloin tough as to make a break like that! Not on
+      your life!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Never since her birth had a male creature looked at Miss Alicia with the
+      appeal which showed itself in his eyes as he actually put his arm half
+      around her shoulders, like a boy begging a favor from his mother or his
+      aunt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What I meant was&mdash;&rdquo; He broke off and began again quite anxiously,
+      &ldquo;say, just as a favor, will you sit down again and let me tell you what I
+      did mean?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was that natural, warm, boyish way which overcame her utterly. It
+      reminded her of the only boy she had ever really known, the one male
+      creature who had allowed her to be fond of him. There was moisture in her
+      eyes as she let him put her back into her chair. When he had done it, he
+      sat down on the ottoman again and poured himself forth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You know what kind of a chap I am. No, you don't, either. You mayn't know
+      a thing about me; and I want to tell you. I'm so different from everything
+      you've ever known that I scare you. And no wonder. It's the way I've
+      lived. If you knew, you'd understand what I was thinking of when I spoke
+      just now. I've been cold, I've been hungry, I've walked the wet streets on
+      my uppers. I know all about GOING WITHOUT. And do you expect that I am
+      going to let a&mdash;a little thing like you&mdash;go away from here
+      without friends and without money on the chance of getting into an
+      almshouse that isn't vacant? Do you expect that of me? Not on your life!
+      That was what I meant.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Alicia quivered; the pale-purple ribbons on her little lace cap
+      quivered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I haven't,&rdquo; she said, and the fine little dignity was piteous, &ldquo;a SHADOW
+      of a claim upon you.&rdquo; It was necessary for her to produce a
+      pocket-handkerchief. He took it from her, and touched her eyes as softly
+      as though she were a baby.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Claim nothing!&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I've got a claim on YOU. I'm going to stake one
+      out right now.&rdquo; He got up and gesticulated, taking in the big room and its
+      big furniture. &ldquo;Look at all this! It fell on me like a thunderbolt. It's
+      nearly knocked the life out of me. I'm like a lost cat on Broadway. You
+      can't go away and leave me, Miss Alicia; it's your duty to stay. You've
+      just GOT to stay to take care of me.&rdquo; He came over to her with a wheedling
+      smile. &ldquo;I never was taken care of in my life. Just be as noble to me as
+      old Temple Barholm was to you: give me a sort of home.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      If a little gentlewoman could stare, it might be said that Miss Alicia
+      stared at him. She trembled with amazed emotion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you mean&mdash;&rdquo; Despite all he had said, she scarcely dared to utter
+      the words lest, after all, she might be taking for granted more than it
+      was credible could be true. &ldquo;Can you mean that if I stayed here with you
+      it would make Temple Barholm seem more like HOME? Is it possible you&mdash;you
+      mean THAT?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I mean just that very thing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was too much for her. Finely restrained little elderly gentlewoman as
+      she was, she openly broke down under it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It can't be true!&rdquo; she ejaculated shakily. &ldquo;It isn't possible. It is too&mdash;too
+      beautiful and kind. Do forgive me! I c-a-n't help it.&rdquo; She burst into
+      tears.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She knew it was most stupidly wrong. She knew gentlemen did not like
+      tears. Her father had told her that men never really forgave women who
+      cried at them. And here, when her fate hung in the balance, she was not
+      able to behave herself with feminine decorum.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yet the new Mr. Temple Barholm took it in as matter-of-fact a manner as he
+      seemed to take everything. He stood by her chair and soothed her in his
+      dear New York voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's all right, Miss Alicia,&rdquo; he commented. &ldquo;You cry as much as you
+      want to, just so that you don't say no. You've been worried and you're
+      tired. I'll tell you there's been two or three times lately when I should
+      like to have cried myself if I'd known how. Say,&rdquo; he added with a sudden
+      outburst of imagination, &ldquo;I bet anything it's about time you had tea.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The suggestion was so entirely within the normal order of things that it
+      made her feel steadier, and she was able to glance at the clock.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A cup of tea would be refreshing,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;They will bring it in very
+      soon, but before the servants come I must try to express&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But before she could express anything further the tea appeared. Burrill
+      and a footman brought it on splendid salvers, in massive urn and tea-pot,
+      with chaste, sacrificial flame flickering, and wonderful, hot buttered and
+      toasted things and wafers of bread and butter attendant. As they crossed
+      the threshold, the sight of Miss Alicia's small form enthroned in their
+      employer's chair was one so obviously unanticipated that Burrill made a
+      step backward and the footman almost lost the firmness of his hold on the
+      smaller tray. Each recovered himself in time, however, and not until the
+      tea was arranged upon the table near the fire was any outward recognition
+      of Miss Alicia's presence made. Then Burrill, pausing, made an
+      announcement entirely without prejudice:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I beg pardon, sir, but Higgins's cart has come for Miss Temple Barholm's
+      box; he is asking when she wants the trap.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She doesn't want it at all,&rdquo; answered Tembarom. &ldquo;Carry her trunk
+      up-stairs again. She's not going away.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The lack of proper knowledge contained in the suggestion that Burrill
+      should carry trunks upstairs caused Miss Alicia to quail in secret, but
+      she spoke with outward calm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, Burrill,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I am not going away.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very good, Miss,&rdquo; Burrill replied, and with impressive civility he
+      prepared to leave the room. Tembarom glanced at the tea-things.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There's only one cup here,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Bring one for me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Burrill's expression might perhaps have been said to start slightly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very good, sir,&rdquo; he said, and made his exit. Miss Alicia was fluttering
+      again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That cup was really for you, Mr. Temple Barholm,&rdquo; she ventured.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, now it's for you, and I've let him know it,&rdquo; replied Tembarom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, PLEASE,&rdquo; she said in an outburst of feeling&mdash;&ldquo;PLEASE let me tell
+      you how GRATEFUL&mdash;how grateful I am!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But he would not let her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you do,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;I'll tell you how grateful <i>I</i> am, and that'll
+      be worse. No, that's all fixed up between us. It goes. We won't say any
+      more about it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He took the whole situation in that way, as though he was assuming no
+      responsibility which was not the simple, inevitable result of their
+      drifting across each other&mdash;as though it was only what any man would
+      have done, even as though she was a sort of delightful, unexpected
+      happening. He turned to the tray.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Say, that looks all right, doesn't it?&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Now you are here, I
+      like the way it looks. I didn't yesterday.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Burrill himself brought the extra cup and saucer and plate. He wished to
+      make sure that his senses had not deceived him. But there she sat who
+      through years had existed discreetly in the most unconsidered rooms in an
+      uninhabited wing, knowing better than to presume upon her privileges&mdash;there
+      she sat with an awed and rapt face gazing up at this new outbreak into
+      Temple Barholm's and &ldquo;him joking and grinning as though he was as pleased
+      as Punch.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0015" id="link2HCH0015">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XV
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      To employ the figure of Burrill, Tembarom was indeed &ldquo;as pleased as
+      Punch.&rdquo; He was one of the large number of men who, apart from all
+      sentimental relations, are made particularly happy by the kindly society
+      of women; who expand with quite unconscious rejoicing when a woman begins
+      to take care of them in one way or another. The unconsciousness is a
+      touching part of the condition. The feminine nearness supplies a primeval
+      human need. The most complete of men, as well as the weaklings, feel it.
+      It is a survival of days when warm arms held and protected, warm hands
+      served, and affectionate voices soothed. An accomplished male servant may
+      perform every domestic service perfectly, but the fact that he cannot be a
+      woman leaves a sense of lack. An accustomed feminine warmth in the
+      surrounding daily atmosphere has caused many a man to marry his
+      housekeeper or even his cook, as circumstances prompted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tembarom had known no woman well until he had met Little Ann. His feeling
+      for Mrs. Bowse herself had verged on affection, because he would have been
+      fond of any woman of decent temper and kindliness, especially if she gave
+      him opportunities to do friendly service. Little Ann had seemed the
+      apotheosis of the feminine, the warmly helpful, the subtly supporting, the
+      kind. She had been to him an amazement and a revelation. She had
+      continually surprised him by revealing new characteristics which seemed to
+      him nicer things than he had ever known before, but which, if he had been
+      aware of it, were not really surprising at all. They were only the
+      characteristics of a very nice young feminine creature.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The presence of Miss Alicia, with the long-belated fashion of her ringlets
+      and her little cap, was delightful to him. He felt as though he would like
+      to take her in his arms and hug her. He thought perhaps it was partly
+      because she was a little like Ann, and kept repeating his name in Ann's
+      formal little way. Her delicate terror of presuming or intruding he felt
+      in its every shade. Mentally she touched him enormously. He wanted to make
+      her feel that she need not be afraid of him in the least, that he liked
+      her, that in his opinion she had more right in the house than he had. He
+      was a little frightened lest through ignorance he should say things the
+      wrong way, as he had said that thing about wanting to know what she
+      expected him to do. What he ought to have said was, &ldquo;You're not expecting
+      me to let that sort of thing go on.&rdquo; It had made him sick when he saw what
+      a break he'd made and that she thought he was sort of insulting her. The
+      room seemed all right now that she was in it. Small and unassuming as she
+      was, she seemed to make it less over-sized. He didn't so much mind the
+      loftiness of the ceiling, the depth and size of the windows, and the walls
+      covered with thousands of books he knew nothing whatever about. The
+      innumerable books had been an oppressing feature. If he had been one of
+      those &ldquo;college guys&rdquo; who never could get enough of books, what a &ldquo;cinch&rdquo;
+       the place would have been for him&mdash;good as the Astor Library! He
+      hadn't a word to say against books,&mdash;good Lord! no;&mdash;but even if
+      he'd had the education and the time to read, he didn't believe he was
+      naturally that kind, anyhow. You had to be &ldquo;that kind&rdquo; to know about
+      books. He didn't suppose she&mdash;meaning Miss Alicia&mdash;was learned
+      enough to make you throw a fit. She didn't look that way, and he was
+      mighty glad of it, because perhaps she wouldn't like him much if she was.
+      It would worry her when she tried to talk to him and found out he didn't
+      know a darned thing he ought to.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They'd get on together easier if they could just chin about common sort of
+      every-day things. But though she didn't look like the Vassar sort, he
+      guessed that she was not like himself: she had lived in libraries before,
+      and books didn't frighten her. She'd been born among people who read lots
+      of them and maybe could talk about them. That was why she somehow seemed
+      to fit into the room. He was aware that, timid as she was and shabby as
+      her neat dress looked, she fitted into the whole place, as he did not.
+      She'd been a poor relative and had been afraid to death of old Temple
+      Barholm, but she'd not been afraid of him because she wasn't his sort. She
+      was a lady; that was what was the matter with her. It was what made things
+      harder for her, too. It was what made her voice tremble when she'd tried
+      to seem so contented and polite when she'd talked about going into one of
+      those &ldquo;decayed alms-houses.&rdquo; As if the old ladies were vegetables that had
+      gone wrong, by gee! he thought.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He liked her little, modest, delicate old face and her curls and her
+      little cap with the ribbons so much that he smiled with a twinkling eye
+      every time he looked at her. He wanted to suggest something he thought
+      would be mighty comfortable, but he was half afraid he might be asking her
+      to do something which wasn't &ldquo;her job,&rdquo; and it might hurt her feelings.
+      But he ventured to hint at it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Has Burrill got to come back and pour that out?&rdquo; he asked, with an
+      awkward gesture toward the tea-tray. &ldquo;Has he just GOT to?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, no, unless you wish it,&rdquo; she answered. &ldquo;Shall&mdash;may I give it to
+      you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will you?&rdquo; he exclaimed delightedly. &ldquo;That would be fine. I shall feel
+      like a regular Clarence.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She was going to sit at the table in a straight-backed chair, but he
+      sprang at her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This big one is more comfortable,&rdquo; he said, and he dragged it forward and
+      made her sit in it. &ldquo;You ought to have a footstool,&rdquo; he added, and he got
+      one and put it under her feet. &ldquo;There, that's all right.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A footstool, as though she were a royal personage and he were a gentleman
+      in waiting, only probably gentlemen in waiting did not jump about and look
+      so pleased. The cheerful content of his boyish face when he himself sat
+      down near the table was delightful.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;we can ring up for the first act.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She filled the tea-pot and held it for a moment, and then set it down as
+      though her feelings were too much for her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I feel as if I were in a dream,&rdquo; she quavered happily. &ldquo;I do indeed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But it's a nice one, ain't it?&rdquo; he answered. &ldquo;I feel as if I was in two.
+      Sitting here in this big room with all these fine things about me, and
+      having afternoon tea with a relation! It just about suits me. It didn't
+      feel like this yesterday, you bet your life!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Does it seem&mdash;nicer than yesterday?&rdquo; she ventured. &ldquo;Really, Mr.
+      Temple Barholm?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nicer!&rdquo; he ejaculated. &ldquo;It's got yesterday beaten to a frazzle.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was beyond all belief. He was speaking as though the advantage, the
+      relief, the happiness, were all on his side. She longed to enlighten him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you can't realize what it is to me,&rdquo; she said gratefully, &ldquo;to sit
+      here, not terrified and homeless and&mdash;a beggar any more, with your
+      kind face before me. Do forgive me for saying it. You have such a kind
+      young face, Mr. Temple Barholm. And to have an easy-chair and cushions,
+      and actually a buffet brought for my feet!&rdquo; She suddenly recollected
+      herself. &ldquo;Oh, I mustn't let your tea get cold,&rdquo; she added, taking up the
+      tea-pot apologetically. &ldquo;Do you take cream and sugar, and is it to be one
+      lump or two?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I take everything in sight,&rdquo; he replied joyously, &ldquo;and two lumps,
+      please.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She prepared the cup of tea with as delicate a care as though it had been
+      a sacramental chalice, and when she handed it to him she smiled wistfully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No one but you ever thought of such a thing as bringing a buffet for my
+      feet&mdash;no one except poor little Jem,&rdquo; she said, and her voice was
+      wistful as well as her smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was obviously unaware that she was introducing an entirely new
+      acquaintance to him. Poor little Jem was supposed to be some one whose
+      whole history he knew.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Jem?&rdquo; he repeated, carefully transferring a piece of hot buttered crumpet
+      to his plate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Jem Temple Barholm,&rdquo; she answered. &ldquo;I say little Jem because I remember
+      him only as a child. I never saw him after he was eleven years old.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who was he?&rdquo; he asked. The tone of her voice, and her manner of speaking
+      made him feel that he wanted to hear something more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She looked rather startled by his ignorance. &ldquo;Have you&mdash;have you
+      never heard of him?&rdquo; she inquired.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No. Is he another distant relation?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her hesitation caused him to neglect his crumpet, to look up at her. He
+      saw at once that she wore the air of a sensitive and beautifully mannered
+      elderly lady who was afraid she had made a mistake and said something
+      awkward.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am so sorry,&rdquo; she apologized. &ldquo;Perhaps I ought not to have mentioned
+      him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why shouldn't he be mentioned?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She was embarrassed. She evidently wished she had not spoken, but breeding
+      demanded that she should ignore the awkwardness of the situation, if
+      awkwardness existed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course&mdash;I hope your tea is quite as you like it&mdash;of course
+      there is no real reason. But&mdash;shall I give you some more cream? No?
+      You see, if he hadn't died, he&mdash;he would have inherited Temple
+      Barholm.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Now he was interested. This was the other chap.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Instead of me?&rdquo; he asked, to make sure. She endeavored not to show
+      embarrassment and told herself it didn't really matter&mdash;to a
+      thoroughly nice person. But&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He was the next of kin&mdash;before you. I'm so sorry I didn't know you
+      hadn't heard of him. It seemed natural that Mr. Palford should have
+      mentioned him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He did say that there was a young fellow who had died, but he didn't tell
+      me about him. I guess I didn't ask. There were such a lot of other things.
+      I'd like to hear about him. You say you knew him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Only when he was a little fellow. Never after he grew up. Something
+      happened which displeased my father. I'm afraid papa was very easily
+      displeased. Mr. Temple Barholm disliked him, too. He would not have him at
+      Temple Barholm.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He hadn't much luck with his folks, had he?&rdquo; remarked Tembarom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He had no luck with any one. I seemed to be the only person who was fond
+      of him, and of course I didn't count.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I bet you counted with him,&rdquo; said Tembarom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do think I did. Both his parents died quite soon after he was born, and
+      people who ought to have cared for him were rather jealous because he
+      stood so near to Temple Barholm. If Mr. Temple Barholm had not been so
+      eccentric and bitter, everything would have been done for him; but as it
+      was, he seemed to belong to no one. When he came to the vicarage it used
+      to make me so happy. He used to call me Aunt Alicia, and he had such
+      pretty ways.&rdquo; She hesitated and looked quite tenderly at the tea-pot, a
+      sort of shyness in her face. &ldquo;I am sure,&rdquo; she burst forth, &ldquo;I feel quite
+      sure that you will understand and won't think it indelicate; but I had
+      thought so often that I should like to have a little boy&mdash;if I had
+      married,&rdquo; she added in hasty tribute to propriety.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tembarom's eyes rested on her in a thoughtfulness openly touched with
+      affection. He put out his hand and patted hers two or three times in
+      encouraging sympathy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Say,&rdquo; he said frankly, &ldquo;I just believe every woman that's the real
+      thing'd like to have a little boy&mdash;or a little girl&mdash;or a little
+      something or other. That's why pet cats and dogs have such a cinch of it.
+      And there's men that's the same way. It's sort of nature.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He had such a high spirit and such pretty ways,&rdquo; she said again. &ldquo;One of
+      his pretty ways was remembering to do little things to make one
+      comfortable, like thinking of giving one a cushion or a buffet for one's
+      feet. I noticed it so much because I had never seen boys or men wait upon
+      women. My own dear papa was used to having women wait upon him&mdash;bring
+      his slippers, you know, and give him the best chair. He didn't like Jem's
+      ways. He said he liked a boy who was a boy and not an affected nincompoop.
+      He wasn't really quite just.&rdquo; She paused regretfully and sighed as she
+      looked back into a past doubtlessly enriched with many similar memories of
+      &ldquo;dear papa.&rdquo; &ldquo;Poor Jem! Poor Jem!&rdquo; she breathed softly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tembarom thought that she must have felt the boy's loss very much, almost
+      as much as though she had really been his mother; perhaps more
+      pathetically because she had not been his mother or anybody's mother. He
+      could see what a good little mother she would have made, looking after her
+      children and doing everything on earth to make them happy and comfortable,
+      just the kind of mother Ann would make, though she had not Ann's steady
+      wonder of a little head or her shrewd farsightedness. Jem would have been
+      in luck if he had been her son. It was a darned pity he hadn't been. If he
+      had, perhaps he would not have died young.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; he answered sympathetically, &ldquo;it's hard for a young fellow to die.
+      How old was he, anyhow? I don't know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not much older than you are now. It was seven years ago. And if he had
+      only died, poor dear! There are things so much worse than death.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Worse!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Awful disgrace is worse,&rdquo; she faltered. She was plainly trying to keep
+      moisture out of her eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did he get into some bad mix-up, poor fellow?&rdquo; If there had been anything
+      like that, no wonder it broke her up to think of him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It surely did break her up. She flushed emotionally.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The cruel thing was that he didn't really do what he was accused of,&rdquo; she
+      said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He didn't?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No; but he was a ruined man, and he went away to the Klondike because he
+      could not stay in England. And he was killed&mdash;killed, poor boy! And
+      afterward it was found out that he was innocent&mdash;too late.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Gee!&rdquo; Tembarom gasped, feeling hot and cold. &ldquo;Could you beat that for
+      rotten luck! What was he accused of?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Alicia leaned forward and spoke in a whisper. It was too dreadful to
+      speak of aloud.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Cheating at cards&mdash;a gentleman playing with gentlemen. You know what
+      that means.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Tembarom grew hotter and colder. No wonder she looked that way, poor
+      little thing!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But,&rdquo;&mdash;he hesitated before he spoke,&mdash;&ldquo;but he wasn't that kind,
+      was he? Of course he wasn't.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no. But, you see,&rdquo;&mdash;she hesitated herself here,&mdash;&ldquo;everything
+      looked so much against him. He had been rather wild.&rdquo; She dropped her
+      voice even lower in making the admission.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tembarom wondered how much she meant by that.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He was so much in debt. He knew he was to be rich in the future, and he
+      was poor just in those reckless young days when it seemed unfair. And he
+      had played a great deal and had been very lucky. He was so lucky that
+      sometimes his luck seemed uncanny. Men who had played with him were
+      horrible about it afterward.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They would be,&rdquo; put in Tembarom. &ldquo;They'd be sore about it, and bring it
+      up.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They both forgot their tea. Miss Alicia forgot everything as she poured
+      forth her story in the manner of a woman who had been forced to keep
+      silent and was glad to put her case into words. It was her case. To tell
+      the truth of this forgotten wrong was again to offer justification of poor
+      handsome Jem whom everybody seemed to have dropped talk of, and even
+      preferred not to hear mentioned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There were such piteously cruel things about it,&rdquo; she went on. &ldquo;He had
+      fallen very much in love, and he meant to marry and settle down. Though we
+      had not seen each other for years, he actually wrote to me and told me
+      about it. His letter made me cry. He said I would understand and care
+      about the thing which seemed to have changed everything and made him a new
+      man. He was so sorry that he had not been better and more careful. He was
+      going to try all over again. He was not going to play at all after this
+      one evening when he was obliged to keep an engagement he had made months
+      before to give his revenge to a man he had won a great deal of money from.
+      The very night the awful thing happened he had told Lady Joan, before he
+      went into the card-room, that this was to be his last game.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Tembarom had looked deeply interested from the first, but at her last
+      words a new alertness added itself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did you say Lady Joan?&rdquo; he asked. &ldquo;Who was Lady Joan?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She was the girl he was so much in love with. Her name was Lady Joan
+      Fayre.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Was she the daughter of the Countess of Mallowe?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. Have you heard of her?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He recalled Ann's reflective consideration of him before she had said,
+      &ldquo;She'll come after you.&rdquo; He replied now: &ldquo;Some one spoke of her to me this
+      morning. They say she's a beauty and as proud as Lucifer.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She was, and she is yet, I believe. Poor Lady Joan&mdash;as well as poor
+      Jem!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She didn't believe it, did she?&rdquo; he put in hastily. &ldquo;She didn't throw him
+      down?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No one knew what happened between them afterward. She was in the
+      card-room, looking on, when the awful thing took place.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She stopped, as though to go on was almost unbearable. She had been so
+      overwhelmed by the past shame of it that even after the passing of years
+      the anguish was a living thing. Her small hands clung hard together as
+      they rested on the edge of the table. Tembarom waited in thrilled
+      suspense. She spoke in a whisper again:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He won a great deal of money&mdash;a great deal. He had that uncanny luck
+      again, and of course people in the other rooms heard what was going on,
+      and a number drifted in to look on. The man he had promised to give his
+      revenge to almost showed signs of having to make an effort to conceal his
+      irritation and disappointment. Of course, as he was a gentleman, he was as
+      cool as possible; but just at the most exciting moment, the height of the
+      game, Jem made a quick movement, and&mdash;and something fell out of his
+      sleeve.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Something,&rdquo; gasped Tembarom, &ldquo;fell out of his sleeve!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Alicia's eyes overflowed as she nodded her beribboned little cap.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rdquo;&mdash;her voice was a sob of woe&mdash;&ldquo;it was a marked card. The man
+      he was playing against snatched it and held it up. And he laughed out
+      loud.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Holy cats!&rdquo; burst from Tembarom; but the remarkable exclamation was one
+      of genuine horror, and he turned pale, got up from his seat, and took two
+      or three strides across the room, as though he could not sit still.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, he laughed&mdash;quite loudly,&rdquo; repeated Miss Alicia, &ldquo;as if he had
+      guessed it all the time. Papa heard the whole story from some one who was
+      present.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Tembarom came back to her rather breathless.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What in thunder did he do&mdash;Jem?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She actually wrung her poor little hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What could he do? There was a dead silence. People moved just a little
+      nearer to the table and stood and stared, merely waiting. They say it was
+      awful to see his face&mdash;awful. He sprang up and stood still, and
+      slowly became as white as if he were dying before their eyes. Some one
+      thought Lady Joan Fayre took a step toward him, but no one was quite sure.
+      He never uttered one word, but walked out of the room and down the stairs
+      and out of the house.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But didn't he speak to the girl?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He didn't even look at her. He passed her by as if she were stone.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What happened next?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He disappeared. No one knew where at first, and then there was a rumor
+      that he had gone to the Klondike and had been killed there. And a year
+      later&mdash;only a year! Oh, if he had only waited in England!&mdash;a
+      worthless villain of a valet he had discharged for stealing met with an
+      accident, and because he thought he was going to die, got horribly
+      frightened, and confessed to the clergyman that he had tucked the card in
+      poor Jem's sleeve himself just to pay him off. He said he did it on the
+      chance that it would drop out where some one would see it, and a marked
+      card dropping out of a man's sleeve anywhere would look black enough,
+      whether he was playing or not. But poor Jem was in his grave, and no one
+      seemed to care, though every one had been interested enough in the
+      scandal. People talked about that for weeks.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Tembarom pulled at his collar excitedly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It makes me sort of strangle,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;You've got to stand your own bad
+      luck, but to hear of a chap that's had to lie down and take the worst that
+      could come to him and know it wasn't his&mdash;just KNOW it! And die
+      before he's cleared! That knocks me out.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Almost every sentence he uttered had a mystical sound to Miss Alicia, but
+      she knew how he was taking it, with what hot, young human sympathy and
+      indignation. She loved the way he took it, and she loved the feeling in
+      his next words,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And the girl&mdash;good Lord!&mdash;the girl?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I never met her, and I know very little of her; but she has never
+      married.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm glad of that,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I'm darned glad of it. How could she?&rdquo; Ann
+      wouldn't, he knew. Ann would have gone to her grave unmarried. But she
+      would have done things first to clear her man's name. Somehow she would
+      have cleared him, if she'd had to fight tooth and nail till she was
+      eighty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They say she has grown very bitter and haughty in her manner. I'm afraid
+      Lady Mallowe is a very worldly woman. One hears they don't get on
+      together, and that she is bitterly disappointed because her daughter has
+      not made a good match. It appears that she might have made several, but
+      she is so hard and cynical that men are afraid of her. I wish I had known
+      her a little&mdash;if she really loved Jem.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Tembarom had thrust his hands into his pockets, and was standing deep in
+      thought, looking at the huge bank of red coals in the fire-grate. Miss
+      Alicia hastily wiped her eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do excuse me,&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll excuse you all right,&rdquo; he replied, still looking into the coals. &ldquo;I
+      guess I shouldn't excuse you as much if you didn't&rdquo; He let her cry in her
+      gentle way while he stared, lost in reflection.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And if he hadn't fired that valet chap, he would be here with you now&mdash;instead
+      of me. Instead of me,&rdquo; he repeated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And Miss Alicia did not know what to say in reply. There seemed to be
+      nothing which, with propriety and natural feeling, one could say.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It makes me feel just fine to know I'm not going to have my dinner all by
+      myself,&rdquo; he said to her before she left the library.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had a way of blushing about things he noticed, when she was shy or
+      moved or didn't know exactly what to say. Though she must have been sixty,
+      she did it as though she were sixteen. And she did it when he said this,
+      and looked as though suddenly she was in some sort of trouble.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are going to have dinner with me,&rdquo; he said, seeing that she hesitated&mdash;&ldquo;dinner
+      and breakfast and lunch and tea and supper and every old thing that goes.
+      You can't turn me down after me staking out that claim.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm afraid&mdash;&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;You see, I have lived such a secluded life.
+      I scarcely ever left my rooms except to take a walk. I'm sure you
+      understand. It would not have been necessary even if I could have afforded
+      it, which I really couldn't&mdash;I'm afraid I have nothing&mdash;quite
+      suitable&mdash;for evening wear.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You haven't!&rdquo; he exclaimed gleefully. &ldquo;I don't know what is suitable for
+      evening wear, but I haven't got it either. Pearson told me so with tears
+      in his eyes. It never was necessary for me either. I've got to get some
+      things to quiet Pearson down, but until I do I've got to eat my dinner in
+      a tweed cutaway; and what I've caught on to is that it's unsuitable enough
+      to throw a man into jail. That little black dress you've got on and that
+      little cap are just 'way out of sight, they're so becoming. Come down just
+      like you are.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She felt a little as Pearson had felt when confronting his new employer's
+      entire cheerfulness in face of a situation as exotically hopeless as the
+      tweed cutaway, and nothing else by way of resource. But there was
+      something so nice about him, something which was almost as though he was
+      actually a gentleman, something which absolutely, if one could go so far,
+      stood in the place of his being a gentleman. It was impossible to help
+      liking him more and more at every queer speech he made. Still, there were
+      of course things he did not realize, and perhaps one ought in kindness to
+      give him a delicate hint.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm afraid,&rdquo; she began quite apologetically. &ldquo;I'm afraid that the
+      servants, Burrill and the footmen, you know, will be&mdash;will think&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Say,&rdquo; he took her up, &ldquo;let's give Burrill and the footmen the Willies out
+      and out. If they can't stand it, they can write home to their mothers and
+      tell 'em they've got to take 'em away. Burrill and the footmen needn't
+      worry. They're suitable enough, and it's none of their funeral, anyhow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He wasn't upset in the least. Miss Alicia, who, as a timid dependent
+      either upon &ldquo;poor dear papa&rdquo; or Mr. Temple Barholm, had been secretly, in
+      her sensitive, ladylike little way, afraid of superior servants all her
+      life, knowing that they realized her utterly insignificant helplessness,
+      and resented giving her attention because she was not able to show her
+      appreciation of their services in the proper manner&mdash;Miss Alicia saw
+      that it had not occurred to him to endeavor to propitiate them in the
+      least, because somehow it all seemed a joke to him, and he didn't care.
+      After the first moment of being startled, she regarded him with a novel
+      feeling, almost a kind of admiration. Tentatively she dared to wonder if
+      there was not something even rather&mdash;rather ARISTOCRATIC in his utter
+      indifference.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If he had been a duke, he would not have regarded the servants' point of
+      view; it wouldn't have mattered what they thought. Perhaps, she hastily
+      decided, he was like this because, though he was not a duke, boot-blacking
+      in New York notwithstanding he was a Temple Barholm. There were few dukes
+      as old of blood as a Temple Barholm. That must be it. She was relieved.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Whatsoever lay at the root of his being what he was and as he was, he
+      somehow changed the aspect of things for her, and without doing anything
+      but be himself, cleared the atmosphere of her dread of the surprise and
+      mental reservations of the footmen and Burrill when she came down to
+      dinner in her high-necked, much-cleaned, and much-repaired black silk, and
+      with no more distinguishing change in her toilet than a white lace cap
+      instead of a black one, and with &ldquo;poor dear mamma's&rdquo; hair bracelet with
+      the gold clasp on her wrist, and a weeping-willow made of &ldquo;poor dear
+      papa's&rdquo; hair in a brooch at her collar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was so curious, though still &ldquo;nice,&rdquo; but he did not offer her his arm
+      when they were going into the dining-room, and he took hold of hers with
+      his hand and affectionately half led, half pushed, her along with him as
+      they went. And he himself drew back her chair for her at the end of the
+      table opposite his own. He did not let a footman do it, and he stood
+      behind it, talking in his cheerful way all the time, and he moved it to
+      exactly the right place, and then actually bent down and looked under the
+      table.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here,&rdquo; he said to the nearest man-servant, &ldquo;where's there a footstool?
+      Get one, please,&rdquo; in that odd, simple, almost aristocratic way. It was not
+      a rude dictatorial way, but a casual way, as though he knew the man was
+      there to do things, and he didn't expect any time to be wasted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And it was he himself who arranged the footstool, making it comfortable
+      for her, and then he went to his own chair at the head of the table and
+      sat down, smiling at her joyfully across the glass and silver and flowers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Push that thing in the middle on one side, Burrill,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;It's too
+      high. I can't see Miss Alicia.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Burrill found it difficult to believe the evidence of his hearing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The epergne, sir?&rdquo; he inquired.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is that what it's called, an apern? That's a new one on me. Yes, that's
+      what I mean. Push the apern over.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Shall I remove it from the table, sir?&rdquo; Burrill steeled himself to exact
+      civility. Of what use to behave otherwise? There always remained the
+      liberty to give notice if the worst came to the worst, though what the
+      worst might eventually prove to be it required a lurid imagination to
+      depict. The epergne was a beautiful thing of crystal and gold, a
+      celebrated work of art, regarded as an exquisite possession. It was almost
+      remarkable that Mr. Temple Barholm had not said, &ldquo;Shove it on one side,&rdquo;
+       but Burrill had been spared the poignant indignity of being required to
+      &ldquo;shove.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, suppose you do. It's a fine enough thing when it isn't in the way,
+      but I've got to see you while I talk, Miss Alicia,&rdquo; said Mr. Temple
+      Barholm. The episode of the epergne&mdash;Burrill's expression, and the
+      rigidly restrained mouths of Henry and James as the decoration was
+      removed, leaving a painfully blank space of table-cloth until Burrill
+      silently filled it with flowers in a low bowl&mdash;these things
+      temporarily flurried Miss Alicia somewhat, but the pleased smile at the
+      head of the table calmed even that trying moment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then what a delightful meal it was, to be sure! How entertaining and
+      cheerful and full of interesting conversation! Miss Alicia had always
+      admired what she reverently termed &ldquo;conversation.&rdquo; She had read of the
+      houses of brilliant people where they had it at table, at dinner and
+      supper parties, and in drawing-rooms. The French, especially the French
+      ladies, were brilliant conversationalists. They held &ldquo;salons&rdquo; in which the
+      conversation was wonderful&mdash;Mme. de Stael and Mme. Roland, for
+      instance; and in England, Lady Mary Wortley Montague, Sydney Smith, and
+      Horace Walpole, and surely Miss Fanny Burney, and no doubt L. E. L., whose
+      real name was Miss Letitia Elizabeth Landon&mdash;what conversation they
+      must have delighted their friends with and how instructive it must have
+      been even to sit in the most obscure corner and listen!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Such gifted persons seemed to have been chosen by Providence to delight
+      and inspire every one privileged to hear them. Such privileges had been
+      omitted from the scheme of Miss Alicia's existence. She did not know, she
+      would have felt it sacrilegious to admit it even if the fact had dawned
+      upon her, that &ldquo;dear papa&rdquo; had been a heartlessly arrogant, utterly
+      selfish, and tyrannical old blackguard of the most pronounced type. He had
+      been of an absolute morality as far as social laws were concerned. He had
+      written and delivered a denunciatory sermon a week, and had made
+      unbearable by his ministrations the suffering hours and the last moments
+      of his parishioners during the long years of his pastorate. When Miss
+      Alicia, in reading records of the helpful relationship of the male
+      progenitors of the Brontes, Jane Austen, Fanny Burney, and Mrs. Browning,
+      was frequently reminded of him, she revealed a perception of which she was
+      not aware. He had combined the virile qualities of all of them.
+      Consequently, brilliancy of conversation at table had not been the
+      attractive habit of the household; &ldquo;poor dear papa&rdquo; had confined himself
+      to scathing criticism of the incompetence of females who could not teach
+      their menials to &ldquo;cook a dinner which was not a disgrace to any decent
+      household.&rdquo; When not virulently aspersing the mutton, he was expressing
+      his opinion of muddle-headed weakness which would permit household bills
+      to mount in a manner which could only bring ruin and disaster upon a
+      minister of the gospel who throughout a protracted career of usefulness
+      had sapped his intellectual manhood in the useless effort to support in
+      silly idleness a family of brainless and maddening fools. Miss Alicia had
+      heard her character, her unsuccessful physical appearance, her mind, and
+      her pitiful efforts at table-talk, described in detail with a choice of
+      adjective and adverb which had broken into terrified fragments every atom
+      of courage and will with which she had been sparsely dowered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So, not having herself been gifted with conversational powers to begin
+      with, and never having enjoyed the exhibition of such powers in others,
+      her ideals had been high. She was not sure that Mr. Temple Barholm's
+      fluent and cheerful talk could be with exactness termed &ldquo;conversation.&rdquo; It
+      was perhaps not sufficiently lofty and intellectual, and did not confine
+      itself rigorously to one exalted subject. But how it did raise one's
+      spirits and open up curious vistas! And how good tempered and humorous it
+      was, even though sometimes the humor was a little bewildering! During the
+      whole dinner there never occurred even one of those dreadful pauses in
+      which dead silence fell, and one tried, like a frightened hen flying from
+      side to side of a coop, to think of something to say which would not sound
+      silly, but perhaps might divert attention from dangerous topics. She had
+      often thought it would be so interesting to hear a Spaniard or a native
+      Hindu talk about himself and his own country in English. Tembarom talked
+      about New York and its people and atmosphere, and he did not know how
+      foreign it all was. He described the streets&mdash;Fifth Avenue and
+      Broadway and Sixth Avenue&mdash;and the street-cars and the elevated
+      railroad, and the way &ldquo;fellows&rdquo; had to &ldquo;hustle&rdquo; &ldquo;to put it over.&rdquo; He spoke
+      of a boarding-house kept by a certain Mrs. Bowse, and a presidential
+      campaign, and the election of a mayor, and a quick-lunch counter, and when
+      President Garfield had been assassinated, and a department store; and the
+      electric lights, and the way he had of making a sort of picture of
+      everything was really instructive and, well, fascinating. She felt as
+      though she had been taken about the city in one of the vehicles the
+      conductor of which described things through a megaphone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Not that Mr. Temple Barholm suggested a megaphone, whatsoever that might
+      be, but he merely made you feel as if you had seen things. Never had she
+      been so entertained and enlightened. If she had been a beautiful girl, he
+      could not have seemed more as though in amusing her he was also really
+      pleasing himself. He was so very funny sometimes that she could not help
+      laughing in a way which was almost unladylike, because she could not stop,
+      and was obliged to put her handkerchief up to her face and wipe away
+      actual tears of mirth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fancy laughing until you cried, and the servants looking on!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Once Burrill himself was obliged to turn hastily away, and twice she heard
+      him severely reprove an overpowered young footman in a rapid undertone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tembarom at least felt that the unlifting heaviness of atmosphere which
+      had surrounded him while enjoying the companionship of Mr. Palford was a
+      thing of the past.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The thrilled interest, the surprise and delight of Miss Alicia would have
+      stimulated a man in a comatose condition, it seemed to him. The little
+      thing just loved every bit of it&mdash;she just &ldquo;eat it up.&rdquo; She asked
+      question after question, sometimes questions which would have made him
+      shout with laughter if he had not been afraid of hurting her feelings. She
+      knew as little of New York as he knew of Temple Barholm, and was, it made
+      him grin to see, allured by it as by some illicit fascination. She did not
+      know what to make of it, and sometimes she was obliged hastily to conceal
+      a fear that it was a sort of Sodom and Gomorrah; but she wanted to hear
+      more about it, and still more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And she brightened up until she actually did not look frightened, and ate
+      her dinner with an excellent appetite.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I really never enjoyed a dinner so much in my life,&rdquo; she said when they
+      went into the drawing-room to have their coffee. &ldquo;It was the conversation
+      which made it so delightful. Conversation is such a stimulating thing!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She had almost decided that it was &ldquo;conversation,&rdquo; or at least a wonderful
+      substitute.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When she said good night to him and went beaming to bed, looking forward
+      immensely to breakfast next morning, he watched her go up the staircase,
+      feeling wonderfully normal and happy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Some of these nights, when she's used to me,&rdquo; he said as he stuffed
+      tobacco into his last pipe in the library&mdash;&ldquo;some of these nights I'm
+      darned if I sha'n't catch hold of the sweet, little old thing and hug her
+      in spite of myself. I sha'n't be able to help it.&rdquo; He lit his pipe, and
+      puffed it even excitedly. &ldquo;Lord!&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;there's some blame' fool going
+      about the world right now that might have married her. And he'll never
+      know what a break he made when he didn't.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0016" id="link2HCH0016">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XVI
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      A fugitive fine day which had strayed into the month from the approaching
+      spring appeared the next morning, and Miss Alicia was uplifted by the
+      enrapturing suggestion that she should join her new relative in taking a
+      walk, in fact that it should be she who took him to walk and showed him
+      some of his possessions. This, it had revealed itself to him, she could do
+      in a special way of her own, because during her life at Temple Barholm she
+      had felt it her duty to &ldquo;try to do a little good&rdquo; among the villagers. She
+      and her long-dead mother and sister had of course been working adjuncts of
+      the vicarage, and had numerous somewhat trying tasks to perform in the way
+      of improving upon &ldquo;dear papa's&rdquo; harrying them into attending church,
+      chivying the mothers into sending their children to Sunday-school, and
+      being unsparing in severity of any conduct which might be construed into
+      implying lack of appreciation of the vicar or respect for his eloquence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It had been necessary for them as members of the vicar's family&mdash;always,
+      of course, without adding a sixpence to the household bills&mdash;to
+      supply bowls of nourishing broth and arrowroot to invalids and to bestow
+      the aid and encouragement which result in a man of God's being regarded
+      with affection and gratitude by his parishioners. Many a man's career in
+      the church, &ldquo;dear papa&rdquo; had frequently observed, had been ruined by lack
+      of intelligence and effort on the part of the female members of his
+      family.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No man could achieve proper results,&rdquo; he had said, &ldquo;if he was hampered by
+      the selfish influence and foolishness of his womenkind. Success in the
+      church depends in one sense very much upon the conduct of a man's female
+      relatives.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      After the deaths of her mother and sister, Miss Alicia had toiled on
+      patiently, fading day by day from a slim, plain, sweet-faced girl to a
+      slim, even plainer and sweeter-faced middle-aged and at last elderly
+      woman. She had by that time read aloud by bedsides a great many chapters
+      in the Bible, had given a good many tracts, and bestowed as much
+      arrowroot, barley-water, and beef-tea as she could possibly encompass
+      without domestic disaster. She had given a large amount of conscientious,
+      if not too intelligent, advice, and had never failed to preside over her
+      Sunday-school class or at mothers' meetings. But her timid
+      unimpressiveness had not aroused enthusiasm or awakened comprehension.
+      &ldquo;Miss Alicia,&rdquo; the cottage women said, &ldquo;she's well meanin', but she's not
+      one with a head.&rdquo; &ldquo;She reminds me,&rdquo; one of them had summed her up, &ldquo;of a
+      hen that lays a' egg every day, but it's too small for a meal, and 'u'd
+      never hatch into anythin'.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      During her stay at Temple Barholm she had tentatively tried to do a little
+      &ldquo;parish work,&rdquo; but she had had nothing to give, and she was always afraid
+      that if Mr. Temple Barholm found her out, he would be angry, because he
+      would think she was presuming. She was aware that the villagers knew that
+      she was an object of charity herself, and a person who was &ldquo;a lady&rdquo; and
+      yet an object of charity was, so to speak, poaching upon their own
+      legitimate preserves. The rector and his wife were rather grand people,
+      and condescended to her greatly on the few occasions of their accidental
+      meetings. She was neither smart nor influential enough to be considered as
+      an asset.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was she who &ldquo;conversed&rdquo; during their walk, and while she trotted by
+      Tembarom's side looking more early-Victorian than ever in a neat, fringed
+      mantle and a small black bonnet of a fashion long decently interred by a
+      changing world, Tembarom had never seen anything resembling it in New
+      York; but he liked it and her increasingly at every moment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was he who made her converse. He led her on by asking her questions and
+      being greatly interested in every response she made. In fact, though he
+      was quite unaware of the situation, she was creating for him such an
+      atmosphere as he might have found in a book, if he had had the habit of
+      books. Everything she told him was new and quaint and very often rather
+      touching. She related anecdotes about herself and her poor little past
+      without knowing she was doing it. Before they had talked an hour he had an
+      astonishing clear idea of &ldquo;poor dear papa&rdquo; and &ldquo;dearest Emily&rdquo; and &ldquo;poor
+      darling mama&rdquo; and existence at Rowcroft Vicarage. He &ldquo;caught on to&rdquo; the
+      fact that though she was very much given to the word &ldquo;dear,&rdquo;&mdash;people
+      were &ldquo;dear,&rdquo; and so were things and places,&mdash;she never even by chance
+      slipped into saying &ldquo;dear Rowcroft,&rdquo; which she would certainly have done
+      if she had ever spent a happy moment in it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As she talked to him he realized that her simple accustomedness to English
+      village life and all its accompaniments of county surroundings would teach
+      him anything and everything he might want to know. Her obscurity had been
+      surrounded by stately magnificence, with which she had become familiar
+      without touching the merest outskirts of its privileges. She knew names
+      and customs and families and things to be cultivated or avoided, and
+      though she would be a little startled and much mystified by his total
+      ignorance of all she had breathed in since her birth, he felt sure that
+      she would not regard him either with private contempt or with a lessened
+      liking because he was a vandal pure and simple.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And she had such a nice, little, old polite way of saying things. When, in
+      passing a group of children, he failed to understand that their hasty
+      bobbing up and down meant that they were doing obeisance to him as lord of
+      the manor, she spoke with the prettiest apologetic courtesy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm sure you won't mind touching your hat when they make their little
+      curtsies, or when a villager touches his forehead,&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good Lord! no,&rdquo; he said, starting. &ldquo;Ought I? I didn't know they were
+      doing it at me.&rdquo; And he turned round and made a handsome bow and grinned
+      almost affectionately at the small, amazed party, first puzzling, and then
+      delighting, them, because he looked so extraordinarily friendly. A
+      gentleman who laughed at you like that ought to be equal to a
+      miscellaneous distribution of pennies in the future, if not on the spot.
+      They themselves grinned and chuckled and nudged one another, with stares
+      and giggles.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am sorry to say that in a great many places the villagers are not
+      nearly so respectful as they used to be,&rdquo; Miss Alicia explained. &ldquo;In
+      Rowcroft the children were very remiss about curtseying. It's quite sad.
+      But Mr. Temple Barholm was very strict indeed in the matter of demanding
+      proper respectfulness. He has turned men off their farms for incivility.
+      The villagers of Temple Barholm have much better manners than some even a
+      few miles away.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Must I tip my hat to all of them?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you please. It really seems kinder. You&mdash;you needn't quite lift
+      it, as you did to the children just now. If you just touch the brim
+      lightly with your hand in a sort of military salute&mdash;that is what
+      they are accustomed to.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      After they had passed through the village street she paused at the end of
+      a short lane and looked up at him doubtfully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Would you&mdash;I wonder if you would like to go into a cottage,&rdquo; she
+      said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Go into a cottage?&rdquo; he asked. &ldquo;What cottage? What for?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He had not the remotest idea of any reason why he should go into a cottage
+      inhabited by people who were entire strangers to him, and Miss Alicia felt
+      a trifle awkward at having to explain anything so wholly natural.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You see, they are your cottages, and the people are your tenants, and&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But perhaps they mightn't like it. It might make 'em mad,&rdquo; he argued. &ldquo;If
+      their water-pipes had busted, and they'd asked me to come and look at them
+      or anything; but they don't know me yet. They might think I was Mr.
+      Buttinski.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't quite&mdash;&rdquo; she began. &ldquo;Buttinski is a foreign name; it sounds
+      Russian or Polish. I'm afraid I don't quite understand why they should
+      mistake you for him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then he laughed&mdash;a boyish shout of laughter which brought a cottager
+      to the nearest window to peep over the pots of fuchsias and geraniums
+      blooming profusely against the diamond panes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Say,&rdquo; he apologized, &ldquo;don't be mad because I laughed. I'm laughing at
+      myself as much as at anything. It's a way of saying that they might think
+      I was 'butting in' too much&mdash;pushing in where I wasn't asked. See? I
+      said they might think I was Mr. Butt-in-ski! It's just a bit of fool
+      slang. You're not mad, are you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, no!&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Dear me! no. It is very funny, of course. I'm afraid
+      I'm extremely ignorant about&mdash;about foreign humor&rdquo; It seemed more
+      delicate to say &ldquo;foreign&rdquo; than merely &ldquo;American.&rdquo; But her gentle little
+      countenance for a few seconds wore a baffled expression, and she said
+      softly to herself, &ldquo;Mr. Buttinski, Butt-in&mdash;to intrude. It sounds
+      quite Polish; I think even more Polish than Russian.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He was afraid he would yell with glee, but he did not. Herculean effort
+      enabled him to restrain his feelings, and present to her only an
+      ordinary-sized smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shouldn't know one from the other,&rdquo; he said; &ldquo;but if you say it sounds
+      more Polish, I bet it does.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Would you like to go into a cottage?&rdquo; she inquired. &ldquo;I think it might be
+      as well. They will like the attention.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will they? Of course I'll go if you think that. What shall I say?&rdquo; he
+      asked somewhat anxiously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you think the cottage looks clean, you might tell them so, and ask a
+      few questions about things. And you must be sure to inquire about Susan
+      Hibblethwaite's legs.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What?&rdquo; ejaculated Tembarom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Susan Hibblethwaite's legs,&rdquo; she replied in mild explanation. &ldquo;Susan is
+      Mr. Hibblethwaite's unmarried sister, and she has very bad legs. It is a
+      thing one notices continually among village people, more especially the
+      women, that they complain of what they call `bad legs.' I never quite know
+      what they mean, whether it is rheumatism or something different, but the
+      trouble is always spoken of as `bad legs' And they like you to inquire
+      about them, so that they can tell you their symptoms.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why don't they get them cured?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't know, I'm sure. They take a good deal of medicine when they can
+      afford it. I think they like to take it. They're very pleased when the
+      doctor gives them `a bottle o' summat,' as they call it. Oh, I mustn't
+      forget to tell you that most of them speak rather broad Lancashire.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Shall I understand them?&rdquo; Tembarom asked, anxious again. &ldquo;Is it a sort of
+      Dago talk?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is the English the working-classes speak in Lancashire. 'Summat' means
+      'something.' 'Whoam' means 'home.' But I should think you would be very
+      clever at understanding things.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm scared stiff,&rdquo; said Tembarom, not in the least uncourageously; &ldquo;but I
+      want to go into a cottage and hear some of it. Which one shall we go
+      into?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There were several whitewashed cottages in the lane, each in its own bit
+      of garden and behind its own hawthorn hedge, now bare and wholly
+      unsuggestive of white blossoms and almond scent to the uninitiated. Miss
+      Alicia hesitated a moment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We will go into this one, where the Hibblethwaites live,&rdquo; she decided.
+      &ldquo;They are quite clean, civil people. They have a naughty, queer, little
+      crippled boy, but I suppose they can't keep him in order because he is an
+      invalid. He's rather rude, I'm sorry to say, but he's rather sharp and
+      clever, too. He seems to lie on his sofa and collect all the gossip of the
+      village.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They went together up the bricked path, and Miss Alicia knocked at the low
+      door with her knuckles. A stout, apple-faced woman opened it, looking a
+      shade nervous.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good morning, Mrs. Hibblethwaite,&rdquo; said Miss Alicia in a kind but remote
+      manner. &ldquo;The new Mr. Temple Barholm has been kind enough to come to see
+      you. It's very good of him to come so soon, isn't it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is that,&rdquo; Mrs. Hibblethwaite answered respectfully, looking him over.
+      &ldquo;Wilt tha coom in, sir?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Tembarom accepted the invitation, feeling extremely awkward because Miss
+      Alicia's initiatory comment upon his goodness in showing himself had
+      &ldquo;rattled&rdquo; him. It had made him feel that he must appear condescending, and
+      he had never condescended to any one in the whole course of his existence.
+      He had, indeed, not even been condescended to. He had met with slanging
+      and bullying, indifference and brutality of manner, but he had not met
+      with condescension.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I hope you're well, Mrs. Hibblethwaite,&rdquo; he answered. &ldquo;You look it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I deceive ma looks a good bit, sir,&rdquo; she answered. &ldquo;Mony a day ma legs is
+      nigh as bad as Susan's.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tha 'rt jealous o' Susan's legs,&rdquo; barked out a sharp voice from a corner
+      by the fire.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The room had a flagged floor, clean with recent scrubbing with sandstone;
+      the whitewashed walls were decorated with pictures cut from illustrated
+      papers; there was a big fireplace, and by it was a hard-looking sofa
+      covered with blue-and-white checked cotton stuff. A boy of about ten was
+      lying on it, propped up with a pillow. He had a big head and a keen,
+      ferret-eyed face, and just now was looking round the end of his sofa at
+      the visitors. &ldquo;Howd tha tongue, Tummas!&rdquo; said his mother. &ldquo;I wunnot howd
+      it,&rdquo; Tummas answered. &ldquo;Ma tongue's th' on'y thing about me as works right,
+      an' I'm noan goin' to stop it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's a young nowt,&rdquo; his mother explained; &ldquo;but, he's a cripple, an' we
+      conna do owt wi' him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do not be rude, Thomas,&rdquo; said Miss Alicia, with dignity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dunnot be rude thysen,&rdquo; replied Tummas. &ldquo;I'm noan o' thy lad.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Tembarom walked over to the sofa.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Say,&rdquo; he began with jocular intent, &ldquo;you've got a grouch on, ain't you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Tummas turned on him eyes which bored. An analytical observer or a painter
+      might have seen that he had a burning curiousness of look, a sort of
+      investigatory fever of expression.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I dunnot know what tha means,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Happen tha'rt talkin' 'Merican?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's just what it is,&rdquo; admitted Tembarom. &ldquo;What are you talking?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lancashire,&rdquo; said Tummas. &ldquo;Theer's some sense i' that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Tembarom sat down near him. The boy turned over against his pillow and put
+      his chin in the hollow of his palm and stared.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've wanted to see thee,&rdquo; he remarked. &ldquo;I've made mother an' Aunt Susan
+      an' feyther tell me every bit they've heared about thee in the village.
+      Theer was a lot of it. Tha coom fro' 'Meriker?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo; Tembarom began vaguely to feel the demand in the burning curiosity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Gi' me that theer book,&rdquo; the boy said, pointing to a small table heaped
+      with a miscellaneous jumble of things and standing not far from him. &ldquo;It's
+      a' atlas,&rdquo; he added as Tembarom gave it to him. &ldquo;Yo' con find places in
+      it.&rdquo; He turned the leaves until he found a map of the world. &ldquo;Theer's
+      'Meriker,&rdquo; he said, pointing to the United States. &ldquo;That theer's north and
+      that theer's south. All th' real 'Merikens comes from the North, wheer New
+      York is.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I come from New York,&rdquo; said Tembarom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tha wert born i' th' workhouse, tha run about th' streets i' rags, tha
+      pretty nigh clemmed to death, tha blacked boots, tha sold newspapers, tha
+      feyther was a common workin'-mon&mdash;and now tha's coom into Temple
+      Barholm an' sixty thousand a year.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The last part's true all right,&rdquo; Tembarom owned, &ldquo;but there's some
+      mistakes in the first part. I wasn't born in the workhouse, and though
+      I've been hungry enough, I never starved to death&mdash;if that's what
+      `clemmed' means.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Tummas looked at once disappointed and somewhat incredulous.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's th' road they tell it i' th' village,&rdquo; he argued.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, let them tell it that way if they like it best. That's not going to
+      worry me,&rdquo; Tembarom replied uncombatively.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tummas's eyes bored deeper into him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Does na tha care?&rdquo; he demanded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What should I care for? Let every fellow enjoy himself his own way.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tha'rt not a bit like one o' th' gentry,&rdquo; said Tummas. &ldquo;Tha'rt quite a
+      common chap. Tha'rt as common as me, for aw tha foine clothes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;People are common enough, anyhow,&rdquo; said Tembarom. &ldquo;There's nothing much
+      commoner, is there? There's millions of 'em everywhere&mdash;billions of
+      'em. None of us need put on airs.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tha'rt as common as me,&rdquo; said Tummas, reflectively. &ldquo;An' yet tha owns
+      Temple Barholm an' aw that brass. I conna mak' out how th' loike happens.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Neither can I; but it does all samee.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It does na happen i' 'Meriker,&rdquo; exulted Tummas. &ldquo;Everybody's equal
+      theer.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Rats!&rdquo; ejaculated Tembarom. &ldquo;What about multimillionaires?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He forgot that the age of Tummas was ten. It was impossible not to forget
+      it. He was, in fact, ten hundred, if those of his generation had been
+      aware of the truth. But there he sat, having spent only a decade of his
+      most recent incarnation in a whitewashed cottage, deprived of the use of
+      his legs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Alicia, seeing that Tembarom was interested in the boy, entered into
+      domestic conversation with Mrs. Hibblethwaite at the other side of the
+      room. Mrs. Hibblethwaite was soon explaining the uncertainty of Susan's
+      temper on wash-days, when it was necessary to depend on her legs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Can't you walk at all?&rdquo; Tembarom asked. Tummas shook his head. &ldquo;How long
+      have you been lame?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ever since I wur born. It's summat like rickets. I've been lyin' here aw
+      my days. I look on at foak an' think 'em over. I've got to do summat.
+      That's why I loike th' atlas. Little Ann Hutchinson gave it to me onct
+      when she come to see her grandmother.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Tembarom sat upright.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you know her?&rdquo; he exclaimed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know her best o' onybody in th' world. An' I loike her best.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So do I,&rdquo; rashly admitted Tembarom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tha does?&rdquo; Tummas asked suspiciously. &ldquo;Does she loike thee?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She says she does.&rdquo; He tried to say it with proper modesty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, if she says she does, she does. An' if she does, then yo an' me'll
+      be friends.&rdquo; He stopped a moment, and seemed to be taking Tembarom in with
+      thoroughness. &ldquo;I could get a lot out o' thee,&rdquo; he said after the
+      inspection.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A lot of what?&rdquo; Tembarom felt as though he would really like to hear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A lot o' things I want to know about. I wish I'd lived th' life tha's
+      lived, clemmin' or no clemmin'. Tha's seen things goin' on every day o'
+      thy loife.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, yes, there's been plenty going on, plenty,&rdquo; Tembarom admitted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've been lying here for ten year',&rdquo; said Tummas, savagely. &ldquo;An' I've had
+      nowt i' th' world to do an' nowt to think on but what I could mak' foak
+      tell me about th' village. But nowt happens but this chap gettin' drunk
+      an' that chap deein' or losin' his place, or wenches gettin' married or
+      havin' childer. I know everything that happens, but it's nowt but a lot o'
+      women clackin'. If I'd not been a cripple, I'd ha' been at work for mony a
+      year by now, 'arnin' money to save by an' go to 'Meriker.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You seem to be sort of stuck on America. How's that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What dost mean?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I mean you seem to like it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I dunnot loike it nor yet not loike it, but I've heard a bit more about
+      it than I have about th' other places on th' map. Foak goes there to seek
+      their fortune, an' it seems loike there's a good bit doin'.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you like to read newspapers?&rdquo; said Tembarom, inspired to his query by
+      a recollection of the vision of things &ldquo;doin'&rdquo; in the Sunday Earth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wheer'd I get papers from?&rdquo; the boy asked testily. &ldquo;Foak like us hasn't
+      got th' brass for 'em.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll bring you some New York papers,&rdquo; promised Tembarom, grinning a
+      little in anticipation. &ldquo;And we'll talk about the news that's in them. The
+      Sunday Earth is full of pictures. I used to work on that paper myself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tha did?&rdquo; Tummas cried excitedly. &ldquo;Did tha help to print it, or was it
+      th' one tha sold i' th' streets?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wrote some of the stuff in it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wrote some of th' stuff in it? Wrote it thaself? How could tha, a common
+      chap like thee?&rdquo; he asked, more excited still, his ferret eyes snapping.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't know how I did it,&rdquo; Tembarom answered, with increased cheer and
+      interest in the situation. &ldquo;It wasn't high-brow sort of work.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Tummas leaned forward in his incredulous eagerness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Does tha mean that they paid thee for writin' it&mdash;paid thee?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I guess they wouldn't have done it if they'd been Lancashire,&rdquo; Tembarom
+      answered. &ldquo;But they hadn't much more sense than I had. They paid me
+      twenty-five dollars a week&mdash;that's five pounds.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I dunnot believe thee,&rdquo; said Tummas, and leaned back on his pillow short
+      of breath.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I didn't believe it myself till I'd paid my board two weeks and bought a
+      suit of clothes with it,&rdquo; was Tembarom's answer, and he chuckled as he
+      made it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Tummas did believe it. This, after he had recovered from the shock,
+      became evident. The curiosity in his face intensified itself; his
+      eagerness was even vaguely tinged with something remotely resembling
+      respect. It was not, however, respect for the money which had been earned,
+      but for the store of things &ldquo;doin'&rdquo; which must have been required. It was
+      impossible that this chap knew things undreamed of.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Has tha ever been to th' Klondike?&rdquo; he asked after a long pause.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No. I've never been out of New York.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Tummas seemed fretted and depressed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Eh, I'm sorry for that. I wished tha'd been to th' Klondike. I want to be
+      towd about it,&rdquo; he sighed. He pulled the atlas toward him and found a
+      place in it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That theer's Dawson,&rdquo; he announced. Tembarom saw that the region of the
+      Klondike had been much studied. It was even rather faded with the frequent
+      passage of searching fingers, as though it had been pored over with
+      special curiosity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There's gowd-moines theer,&rdquo; revealed Tummas. &ldquo;An' theer's welly newt else
+      but snow an' ice. A young chap as set out fro' here to get theer froze to
+      death on th' way.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How did you get to hear about it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ann she browt me a paper onet.&rdquo; He dug under his pillow, and brought out
+      a piece of newspaper, worn and frayed and cut with age and usage. &ldquo;This
+      heer's what's left of it.&rdquo; Tembarom saw that it was a fragment from an old
+      American sheet and that a column was headed &ldquo;The Rush for the Klondike.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why didna tha go theer?&rdquo; demanded Tummas. He looked up from his fragment
+      and asked his question with a sudden reflectiveness, as though a new and
+      interesting aspect of things had presented itself to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I had too much to do in New York,&rdquo; said Tembarom. &ldquo;There's always
+      something doing in New York, you know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Tummas silently regarded him a moment or so.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's a pity tha didn't go,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Happen tha'd never ha' coom back.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Tembarom laughed the outright laugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you,&rdquo; he answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tummas was still thinking the matter over and was not disturbed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was na thinkin' o' thee,&rdquo; he said in an impersonal tone. &ldquo;I was
+      thinkin' o' t' other chap. If tha'd gon i'stead o' him, he'd ha' been here
+      i'stead o' thee. Eh, but it's funny.&rdquo; And he drew a deep breath like a
+      sigh having its birth in profundity of baffled thought.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Both he and his evident point of view were &ldquo;funny&rdquo; in the Lancashire
+      sense, which does not imply humor, but strangeness and the unexplainable.
+      Singular as the phrasing was, Tembarom knew what he meant, and that he was
+      thinking of the oddity of chance. Tummas had obviously heard of &ldquo;poor Jem&rdquo;
+       and had felt an interest in him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You're talking about Jem Temple Barholm I guess,&rdquo; he said. Perhaps the
+      interest he himself had felt in the tragic story gave his voice a tone
+      somewhat responsive to Tummas's own mood, for Tummas, after one more
+      boring glance, let himself go. His interest in this special subject was,
+      it revealed itself, a sort of obsession. The history of Jem Temple Barholm
+      had been the one drama of his short life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Aye, I was thinkin' o' him,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I should na ha' cared for th'
+      Klondike so much but for him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But he went away from England when you were a baby.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Th' last toime he coom to Temple Barholm wur when I wur just born. Foak
+      said he coom to ax owd Temple Barholm if he'd help him to pay his debts,
+      an' th' owd chap awmost kicked him out o' doors. Mother had just had me,
+      an' she was weak an' poorly an' sittin' at th' door wi' me in her arms,
+      an' he passed by an' saw her. He stopped an' axed her how she was doin'.
+      An' when he was goin' away, he gave her a gold sovereign, an' he says,
+      `Put it in th' savin's-bank for him, an' keep it theer till he's a big lad
+      an' wants it.' It's been in th' savin's-bank ever sin'. I've got a whole
+      pound o' ma own out at interest. There's not many lads ha' got that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He must have been a good-natured fellow,&rdquo; commented Tembarom. &ldquo;It was
+      darned bad luck him going to the Klondike.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was good luck for thee,&rdquo; said Tummas, with resentment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Was it?&rdquo; was Tembarom's unbiased reply. &ldquo;Well, I guess it was, one way or
+      the other. I'm not kicking, anyhow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Tummas naturally did not know half he meant. He went on talking about Jem
+      Temple Barholm, and as he talked his cheeks flushed and his eyes lighted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I would na spend that sovereign if I was starvin'. I'm going to leave it
+      to Ann Hutchinson in ma will when I dee. I've axed questions about him
+      reet and left ever sin' I can remember, but theer's nobody knows much.
+      Mother says he was fine an' handsome, an' gentry through an' through. If
+      he'd coom into th' property, he'd ha' coom to see me again I'll lay a
+      shillin', because I'm a cripple an' I canna spend his sovereign. If he'd
+      coom back from th' Klondike, happen he'd ha' towd me about it.&rdquo; He pulled
+      the atlas toward him, and laid his thin finger on the rubbed spot. &ldquo;He mun
+      ha' been killed somewheer about here,&rdquo; he sighed. &ldquo;Somewheer here. Eh,
+      it's funny.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Tembarom watched him. There was something that rather gave you the
+      &ldquo;Willies&rdquo; in the way this little cripple seemed to have taken to the dead
+      man and worried along all these years thinking him over and asking
+      questions and studying up the Klondike because he was killed there. It was
+      because he'd made a kind of story of it. He'd enjoyed it in the way people
+      enjoy stories in a newspaper. You always had to give 'em a kind of story;
+      you had to make a story even if you were telling about a milk-wagon
+      running away. In newspaper offices you heard that was the secret of making
+      good with what you wrote. Dish it up as if it was a sort of story.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He not infrequently arrived at astute enough conclusions concerning
+      things. He had arrived at one now. Shut out even from the tame drama of
+      village life, Tummas, born with an abnormal desire for action and a
+      feverish curiosity, had hungered and thirsted for the story in any form
+      whatsoever. He caught at fragments of happenings, and colored and
+      dissected them for the satisfying of unfed cravings. The vanished man had
+      been the one touch of pictorial form and color in his ten years of
+      existence. Young and handsome and of the gentry, unfavored by the owner of
+      the wealth which some day would be his own possession, stopping
+      &ldquo;gentry-way&rdquo; at a cottage door to speak good-naturedly to a pale young
+      mother, handing over the magnificence of a whole sovereign to be saved for
+      a new-born child, going away to vaguely understood disgrace, leaving his
+      own country to hide himself in distant lands, meeting death amid snow and
+      ice and surrounded by gold-mines, leaving his empty place to be filled by
+      a boot-black newsboy&mdash;true there was enough to lie and think over and
+      to try to follow with the help of maps and excited questions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wish I could ha' seen him,&rdquo; said Tummas. &ldquo;I'd awmost gi' my sovereign
+      to get a look at that picture in th' gallery at Temple Barholm.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What picture?&rdquo; Tembarom asked. &ldquo;Is there a picture of him there?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is na one o' him, but there's one o' a lad as deed two hundred
+      year' ago as they say wur th' spit an' image on him when he wur a lad
+      hissen. One o' th' owd servants towd mother it wur theer.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This was a natural stimulus to interest and curiosity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Which one is it? Jinks! I'd like to see it myself. Do you know which one
+      it is? There's hundreds of them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I dunnot know,&rdquo; was Tummas's dispirited answer, &ldquo;an' neither does
+      mother. Th' woman as knew left when owd Temple Barholm deed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tummas,&rdquo; broke in Mrs. Hibblethwaite from the other end of the room, to
+      which she had returned after taking Miss Alicia out to complain about the
+      copper in the &ldquo;wash-'us'&mdash;&rdquo; &ldquo;Tummas, tha'st been talkin' like a
+      magpie. Tha'rt a lot too bold an' ready wi' tha tongue. Th' gentry's noan
+      comin' to see thee if tha clacks th' heads off theer showthers.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm afraid he always does talk more than is good for him,&rdquo; said Miss
+      Alicia. &ldquo;He looks quite feverish.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He has been talking to me about Jem Temple Barholm,&rdquo; explained Tembarom.
+      &ldquo;We've had a regular chin together. He thinks a heap of poor Jem.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Alicia looked startled, and Mrs. Hibblethwaite was plainly flustered
+      tremendously. She quite lost her temper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Eh,&rdquo; she exclaimed, &ldquo;tha wants tha young yed knocked off, Tummas
+      Hibblethwaite. He's fair daft about th' young gentleman as&mdash;as was
+      killed. He axes questions mony a day till I'd give him th' stick if he
+      wasna a cripple. He moithers me to death.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll bring you some of those New York papers to look at,&rdquo; Tembarom said
+      to the boy as he went away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He walked back through the village to Temple Barholm, holding Miss
+      Alicia's elbow in light, affectionate guidance and support, a little to
+      her embarrassment and also a little to her delight. Until he had taken her
+      into the dining-room the night before she had never seen such a thing
+      done. There was no over-familiarity in the action. It merely seemed
+      somehow to suggest liking and a wish to take care of her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That little fellow in the village,&rdquo; he said after a silence in which it
+      occurred to her that he seemed thoughtful, &ldquo;what a little freak he is!
+      He's got an idea that there's a picture in the gallery that's said to look
+      like Jem Temple Barholm when he was a boy. Have you ever heard anything
+      about it? He says a servant told his mother it was there.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, there is one,&rdquo; Miss Alicia answered. &ldquo;I sometimes go and look at it.
+      But it makes me feel very sad. It is the handsome boy who was a page in
+      the court of Charles II. He died in his teens. His name was Miles Hugo
+      Charles James. Jem could see the likeness himself. Sometimes for a little
+      joke I used to call him Miles Hugo.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I believe I remember him,&rdquo; said Tembarom. &ldquo;I believe I asked Palford his
+      name. I must go and have a look at him again. He hadn't much better luck
+      than the fellow that looked like him, dying as young as that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0017" id="link2HCH0017">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XVII
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Form, color, drama, and divers other advantages are necessary to the
+      creation of an object of interest. Presenting to the world none of these
+      assets, Miss Alicia had slipped through life a scarcely remarked unit. No
+      little ghost of prettiness had attracted the wandering eye, no suggestion
+      of agreeable or disagreeable power of self-assertion had arrested
+      attention. There had been no hour in her life when she had expected to
+      count as being of the slightest consequence. When she had knocked at the
+      door of the study at Rowcroft Vicarage, and &ldquo;dear papa&rdquo; had exclaimed
+      irritably: &ldquo;Who is that? Who is that?&rdquo; she had always replied, &ldquo;It is only
+      Alicia.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This being the case, her gradual awakening to the singularity of her new
+      situation was mentally a process full of doubts and sometimes of alarmed
+      bewilderments. If in her girlhood a curate, even a curate with prominent
+      eyes and a receding chin, had proposed to her that she should face with
+      him a future enriched by the prospect of being called upon to bring up a
+      probable family of twelve on one hundred and fifty pounds a year, with
+      both parish and rectory barking and snapping at her worn-down heels, she
+      would have been sure to assert tenderly that she was afraid she was &ldquo;not
+      worthy.&rdquo; This was the natural habit of her mind, and in the weeks which
+      followed the foggy afternoon when Tembarom &ldquo;staked out his claim&rdquo; she
+      dwelt often upon her unworthiness of the benefits bestowed upon her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      First the world below-stairs, then the village, and then the county itself
+      awoke to the fact that the new Temple Temple Barholm had &ldquo;taken her up.&rdquo;
+       The first tendency of the world below-stairs was to resent the unwarranted
+      uplifting of a person whom there had been a certain luxury in regarding
+      with disdain and treating with scarcely veiled lack of consideration. To
+      be able to do this with a person who, after all was said and done, was not
+      one of the servant class, but a sort of lady of birth, was not
+      unstimulating. And below-stairs the sense of personal rancor against &ldquo;a
+      'anger-on&rdquo; is strong. The meals served in Miss Alicia's remote
+      sitting-room had been served at leisure, her tea had rarely been hot, and
+      her modestly tinkled bell irregularly answered. Often her far from
+      liberally supplied fire had gone out on chilly days, and she had been
+      afraid to insist on its being relighted. Her sole defense against
+      inattention would have been to complain to Mr. Temple Barholm, and when on
+      one occasion a too obvious neglect had obliged her to gather her quaking
+      being together in mere self-respect and say, &ldquo;If this continues to occur,
+      William, I shall be obliged to speak to Mr. Temple Barholm,&rdquo; William had
+      so looked at her and so ill hid a secret smile that it had been almost
+      tantamount to his saying, &ldquo;I'd jolly well like to see you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And now! Sitting at the end of the table opposite him, if you please!
+      Walking here and walking there with him! Sitting in the library or
+      wherever he was, with him talking and laughing and making as much of her
+      as though she were an aunt with a fortune to leave, and with her making as
+      free in talk as though at liberty to say anything that came into her head!
+      Well, the beggar that had found himself on horseback was setting another
+      one galloping alongside of him. In the midst of this natural resentment it
+      was &ldquo;a bit upsetting,&rdquo; as Burrill said, to find it dawning upon one that
+      absolute exactness of ceremony was as much to be required for &ldquo;her&rdquo; as for
+      &ldquo;him.&rdquo; Miss Alicia had long felt secretly sure that she was spoken of as
+      &ldquo;her&rdquo; in the servants' hall. That businesslike sharpness which Palford had
+      observed in his client aided Tembarom always to see things without
+      illusions. He knew that There was no particular reason why his army of
+      servants should regard him for the present as much more than an intruder;
+      but he also knew that if men and women had employment which was not made
+      hard for them, and were well paid for doing, they were not anxious to lose
+      it, and the man who paid their wages might give orders with some certainty
+      of finding them obeyed. He was &ldquo;sharp&rdquo; in more ways than one. He observed
+      shades he might have been expected to overlook. He observed a certain
+      shade in the demeanor of the domestics when attending Miss Alicia, and it
+      was a shade which marked a difference between service done for her and
+      service done for himself. This was only at the outset, of course, when the
+      secret resentment was felt; but he observed it, mere shade though it was.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He walked out into the hall after Burrill one morning. Not having yet
+      adjusted himself to the rule that when one wished to speak to a man one
+      rang a bell and called him back, fifty times if necessary, he walked after
+      Burrill and stopped him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This is a pretty good place for servants, ain't it?&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good pay, good food, not too much to do?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Certainly, sir,&rdquo; Burrill replied, somewhat disturbed by a casualness
+      which yet suggested a method of getting at something or other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You and the rest of them don't want to change, do you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, sir. There is no complaint whatever as far as I have heard.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's all right.&rdquo; Mr. Temple Barholm had put his hands into his pockets,
+      and stood looking non-committal in a steady sort of way. &ldquo;There's
+      something I want the lot of you to get on to&mdash;right away. Miss Temple
+      Barholm is going to stay here. She's got to have everything just as she
+      wants it. She's got to be pleased. She's the lady of the house. See?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I hope, sir,&rdquo; Burrill said with professional dignity, &ldquo;that Miss Temple
+      Barholm has not had reason to express any dissatisfaction.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm the one that would express it&mdash;quick,&rdquo; said Tembarom. &ldquo;She
+      wouldn't have time to get in first. I just wanted to make sure I shouldn't
+      have to do it. The other fellows are under you. You've got a head on your
+      shoulders, I guess. It's up to you to put 'em on to it. That's all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you, sir,&rdquo; said Burrill.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His master went back into the library smiling genially, and Burrill stood
+      still a moment or so gazing at the door he closed behind him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Be sure the village, and finally circles not made up of cottagers, heard
+      of this, howsoever mysteriously. Miss Alicia was not aware that the
+      incident had occurred. She could not help observing, however, that the
+      manners of the servants of the household curiously improved; also, when
+      she passed through the village, that foreheads were touched without
+      omission and the curtseys of playing children were prompt. When she
+      dropped into a cottage, housewives polished off the seats of chairs
+      vigorously before offering them, and symptoms and needs were explained
+      with a respectful fluency which at times almost suggested that she might
+      be relied on to use influence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm afraid I have done the village people injustice,&rdquo; she said leniently
+      to Tembarom. &ldquo;I used to think them so disrespectful and unappreciative. I
+      dare say it was because I was so troubled myself. I'm afraid one's own
+      troubles do sometimes make one unfair.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, yours are over,&rdquo; said Tembarom. &ldquo;And so are mine as long as you
+      stay by me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Never had Miss Alicia been to London. She had remained, as was demanded of
+      her by her duty to dear papa, at Rowcroft, which was in Somersetshire. She
+      had only dreamed of London, and had had fifty-five years of dreaming. She
+      had read of great functions, and seen pictures of some of them in the
+      illustrated papers. She had loyally endeavored to follow at a distance the
+      doings of her Majesty,&mdash;she always spoke of Queen Victoria
+      reverentially as &ldquo;her Majesty,&rdquo;&mdash;she rejoiced when a prince or a
+      princess was born or christened or married, and believed that a
+      &ldquo;drawing-room&rdquo; was the most awe-inspiring, brilliant, and important
+      function in the civilized world, scarcely second to Parliament. London&mdash;no
+      one but herself or an elderly gentlewoman of her type could have told any
+      one the nature of her thoughts of London.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Let, therefore, those of vivid imagination make an effort to depict to
+      themselves the effect produced upon her mind by Tembarom's casually
+      suggesting at breakfast one morning that he thought it might be rather a
+      good &ldquo;stunt&rdquo; for them to run up to London. By mere good fortune she
+      escaped dropping the egg she had just taken from the egg-stand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;London!&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Oh!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pearson thinks it would be a first-rate idea,&rdquo; he explained. &ldquo;I guess he
+      thinks that if he can get me into the swell clothing stores he can fix me
+      up as I ought to be fixed, if I'm not going to disgrace him. I should hate
+      to disgrace Pearson. Then he can see his girl, too, and I want him to see
+      his girl.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is&mdash;Pearson&mdash;engaged?&rdquo; she asked; but the thought which was
+      repeating itself aloud to her was &ldquo;London! London!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He calls it 'keeping company,' or 'walking out,'&rdquo; Tembarom answered.
+      &ldquo;She's a nice girl, and he's dead stuck on her. Will you go with me, Miss
+      Alicia?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dear Mr. Temple Barholm,&rdquo; she fluttered, &ldquo;to visit London would be a
+      privilege I never dreamed it would be my great fortune to enjoy&mdash;never.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good business!&rdquo; he ejaculated delightedly. &ldquo;That's luck for me. It gave
+      me the blues&mdash;what I saw of it. But if you are with me, I'll bet
+      it'll be as different as afternoon tea was after I got hold of you. When
+      shall we start? To-morrow?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her sixteen-year-old blush repeated itself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I feel so sorry. It seems almost undignified to mention it, but&mdash;I
+      fear I should not look smart enough for London. My wardrobe is so very
+      limited. I mustn't,&rdquo; she added with a sweet effort at humor, &ldquo;do the new
+      Mr. Temple Barholm discredit by looking unfashionable.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He was more delighted than before.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Say,&rdquo; he broke out, &ldquo;I'll tell you what we'll do: we'll go together and
+      buy everything 'suitable' in sight. The pair of us'll come back here as
+      suitable as Burrill and Pearson. We'll paint the town red.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He actually meant it. He was like a boy with a new game. His sense of the
+      dreariness of London had disappeared. He knew what it would be like with
+      Miss Alicia as a companion. He had really seen nothing of the place
+      himself, and he would find out every darned thing worth looking at, and
+      take her to see it&mdash;theaters, shops, every show in town. When they
+      left the breakfast-table it was agreed upon that they would make the
+      journey the following day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He did not openly refer to the fact that among the plans for their round
+      of festivities he had laid out for himself the attending to one or two
+      practical points. He was going to see Palford, and he had made an
+      appointment with a celebrated nerve specialist. He did not discuss this
+      for several reasons. One of them was that his summing up of Miss Alicia
+      was that she had had trouble enough to think over all her little life, and
+      the thing for a fellow to do for her, if he liked her, was to give her a
+      good time and make her feel as if she was at a picnic right straight along&mdash;not
+      let her even hear of a darned thing that might worry her. He had said
+      comparatively little to her about Strangeways. His first mention of his
+      condition had obviously made her somewhat nervous, though she had been
+      full of kindly interest. She was in private not sorry that it was felt
+      better that she should not disturb the patient by a visit to his room. The
+      abnormality of his condition seemed just slightly alarming to her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But, oh, how good, how charitable, you are!&rdquo; she had murmured.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good,&rdquo; he answered, the devout admiration of her tone rather puzzling
+      him. &ldquo;It ain't that. I just want to see the thing through. I dropped into
+      it by accident, and then I dropped into this by accident, and that made it
+      as easy as falling off a log. I believe he's going to get well sometime. I
+      guess I kind of like him because he holds on to me so and believes I'm
+      just It. Maybe it's because I'm stuck on myself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His visit to Strangeways was longer than usual that afternoon. He
+      explained the situation to him so that he understood it sufficiently not
+      to seem alarmed by it. This was one of the advances Tembarom had noticed
+      recently, that he was less easily terrified, and seemed occasionally to
+      see facts in their proper relation to one another. Sometimes the
+      experiments tried on him were successful, sometimes they were not, but he
+      never resented them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are trying to help me to remember,&rdquo; he said once. &ldquo;I think you will
+      sometime.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sure I will,&rdquo; said Tembarom. &ldquo;You're better every day.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Pearson was to remain in charge of him until toward the end of the London
+      visit. Then he was to run up for a couple of days, leaving in his place a
+      young footman to whom the invalid had become accustomed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The visit to London was to Miss Alicia a period of enraptured delirium.
+      The beautiful hotel in which she was established, the afternoons at the
+      Tower, the National Gallery, the British Museum, the evenings at the play,
+      during which one saw the most brilliant and distinguished actors, the
+      mornings in the shops, attended as though one were a person of fortune,
+      what could be said of them? And the sacred day on which she saw her
+      Majesty drive slowly by, glittering helmets, splendid uniforms, waving
+      plumes, and clanking swords accompanying and guarding her, and gentlemen
+      standing still with their hats off, and everybody looking after her with
+      that natural touch of awe which royalty properly inspires! Miss Alicia's
+      heart beat rapidly in her breast, and she involuntarily made a curtsey as
+      the great lady in mourning drove by. She lost no shade of any flavor of
+      ecstatic pleasure in anything, and was to Tembarom, who knew nothing about
+      shades and flavors, indeed a touching and endearing thing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had never got so much out of anything. If Ann had just been there,
+      well, that would have been the limit. Ann was on her way to America now,
+      and she wouldn't write to him or let him write to her. He had to make a
+      fair trial of it. He could find out only in that way, she said. It was not
+      to be denied that the youth and longing in him gave him some half-hours to
+      face which made him shut himself up in his room and stare hard at the
+      wall, folding his arms tightly as he tilted his chair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There arrived a day when one of the most exalted shops in Bond Street was
+      invaded by an American young man of a bearing the peculiarities of which
+      were subtly combined with a remotely suggested air of knowing that if he
+      could find what he wanted, there was no doubt as to his power to get it.
+      What he wanted was not usual, and was explained with a frankness which
+      might have seemed unsophisticated, but, singularly, did not. He wanted to
+      have a private talk with some feminine power in charge, and she must be
+      some one who knew exactly what ladies ought to have.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Being shown into a room, such a feminine power was brought to him and
+      placed at his service. She was a middle-aged person, wearing beautifully
+      fitted garments and having an observant eye and a dignified suavity of
+      manner. She looked the young American over with a swift inclusion of all
+      possibilities. He was by this time wearing extremely well-fitting garments
+      himself, but she was at once aware that his tailored perfection was a new
+      thing to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He went to his point without apologetic explanation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You know all the things any kind of a lady ought to have,&rdquo; he said&mdash;&ldquo;all
+      the things that would make any one feel comfortable and as if they'd got
+      plenty? Useful things as well as ornamental ones?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, sir,&rdquo; she replied, with rising interest. &ldquo;I have been in the
+      establishment thirty years.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good business,&rdquo; Tembarom replied. Already he felt relieved. &ldquo;I've got a
+      relation, a little old lady, and I want her to fix herself out just as she
+      ought to be fixed. Now, what I'm afraid of is that she won't get
+      everything she ought to unless I manage it for her somehow beforehand.
+      She's got into a habit of&mdash;well, economizing. Now the time's past for
+      that, and I want her to get everything a woman like you would know she
+      really wants, so that she could look her best, living in a big country
+      house, with a relation that thinks a lot of her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He paused a second or so, and then went further, fixing a clear and
+      astonishingly shrewd eye upon the head of the department listening to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I found out this was a high-class place,&rdquo; he explained. &ldquo;I made sure of
+      that before I came in. In a place that was second or third class there
+      might be people who'd think they'd caught a 'sucker' that would take
+      anything that was unloaded on to him, because he didn't know. The things
+      are for Miss Temple Barholm, and she DOES know. I shall ask her to come
+      here herself to-morrow morning, and I want you to take care of her, and
+      show her the best you've got that's suitable.&rdquo; He seemed to like the word;
+      he repeated it&mdash;&ldquo;Suitable,&rdquo; and quickly restrained a sudden,
+      unexplainable, wide smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The attending lady's name was Mrs. Mellish. Thirty years' experience had
+      taught her many lessons. She was a hard woman and a sharp one, but beneath
+      her sharp hardness lay a suppressed sense of the perfect in taste. To have
+      a customer with unchecked resources put into her hands to do her best by
+      was an inspiring incident. A quiver of enlightenment had crossed her
+      countenance when she had heard the name of Temple Barholm. She had a
+      newspaper knowledge of the odd Temple Barholm story. This was the next of
+      kin who had blacked boots in New York, and the obvious probability that he
+      was a fool, if it had taken the form of a hope, had been promptly nipped
+      in the bud. The type from which he was furthest removed was that of the
+      fortune-intoxicated young man who could be obsequiously flattered into
+      buying anything which cost money enough.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not a thing's to be unloaded on her that she doesn't like,&rdquo; he added,
+      &ldquo;and she's not a girl that goes to pink teas. She's a&mdash;a&mdash;lady&mdash;and
+      not young&mdash;and used to quiet ways.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The evidently New York word &ldquo;unload&rdquo; revealed him to his hearer as by a
+      flash, though she had never heard it before.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We have exactly the things which will be suitable, sir,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I
+      think I quite understand.&rdquo; Tembarom smiled again, and, thanking her, went
+      away still smiling, because he knew Miss Alicia was safe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There were of course difficulties in the way of persuading Miss Alicia
+      that her duty lay in the direction of spending mornings in the most
+      sumptuous of Bond Street shops, ordering for herself an entire wardrobe on
+      a basis of unlimited resources. Tembarom was called upon to employ the
+      most adroitly subtle reasoning, entirely founded on his &ldquo;claim&rdquo; and her
+      affectionate willingness to give him pleasure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He really made love to her in the way a joyful young fellow can make love
+      to his mother or his nicest aunt. He made her feel that she counted for so
+      much in his scheme of enjoyment that to do as he asked would be to add a
+      glow to it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And they won't spoil you,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;The Mellish woman that's the boss
+      has promised that. I wouldn't have you spoiled for a farm,&rdquo; he added
+      heartily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And he spoke the truth. If he had been told that he was cherishing her
+      type as though it were a priceless bit of old Saxe, he would have stared
+      blankly and made a jocular remark. But it was exactly this which he
+      actually clung to and adored. He even had a second private interview with
+      Mrs. Mellish, and asked her to &ldquo;keep her as much like she was&rdquo; as was
+      possible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Stimulated by the suppressed touch of artistic fervor, Mrs. Mellish
+      guessed at something even before her client arrived; but the moment she
+      entered the showroom all was revealed to her at once. The very hint of
+      flush and tremor in Miss Alicia's manner was an assistance. Surrounded by
+      a small and extremely select court composed of Mrs. Mellish and two
+      low-voiced, deft-handed assistants, it was with a fine little effort that
+      Miss Alicia restrained herself from exterior suggestion of her feeling
+      that there was something almost impious in thinking of possessing the
+      exquisite stuffs and shades displayed to her in flowing beauty on every
+      side. Such linens and batistes and laces, such delicate, faint grays and
+      lavenders and soft-falling blacks! If she had been capable of approaching
+      the thought, such luxury might even have hinted at guilty splendor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Mellish became possessed of an &ldquo;idea&rdquo; To create the costume of an
+      exquisite, early-Victorian old lady in a play done for the most
+      fashionable and popular actor manager of the most &ldquo;drawing-room&rdquo; of West
+      End theaters, where one saw royalty in the royal box, with bouquets on
+      every side, the orchestra breaking off in the middle of a strain to play
+      &ldquo;God Save the Queen,&rdquo; and the audience standing up as the royal party came
+      in&mdash;that was her idea. She carried it out, steering Miss Alicia with
+      finished tact through the shoals and rapids of her timidities. And the
+      result was wonderful; color,&mdash;or, rather, shades,&mdash;textures, and
+      forms were made subservient by real genius. Miss Alicia&mdash;as she was
+      turned out when the wardrobe was complete&mdash;might have been an elderly
+      little duchess of sweet and modest good taste in the dress of forty years
+      earlier. It took time, but some of the things were prepared as though by
+      magic, and the night the first boxes were delivered at the hotel Miss
+      Alicia, on going to bed, in kneeling down to her devotions prayed
+      fervently that she might not be &ldquo;led astray by fleshly desires,&rdquo; and that
+      her gratitude might be acceptable, and not stained by a too great joy &ldquo;in
+      the things which corrupt.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The very next day occurred Rose. She was the young person to whom Pearson
+      was engaged, and it appeared that if Miss Alicia would make up her mind to
+      oblige Mr. Temple Barholm by allowing the girl to come to her as
+      lady's-maid, even if only temporarily, she would be doing a most kind and
+      charitable thing. She was a very nice, well-behaved girl, and
+      unfortunately she had felt herself forced to leave her place because her
+      mistress's husband was not at all a nice man. He had shown himself so far
+      from nice that Pearson had been most unhappy, and Rose had been compelled
+      to give notice, though she had no other situation in prospect and her
+      mother was dependent on her. This was without doubt not Mr. Temple
+      Barholm's exact phrasing of the story, but it was what Miss Alicia
+      gathered, and what moved her deeply. It was so cruel and so sad! That
+      wicked man! That poor girl! She had never had a lady's-maid, and might be
+      rather at a loss at first, but it was only like Mr. Temple Barholm's kind
+      heart to suggest such a way of helping the girl and poor Pearson.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So occurred Rose, a pretty creature whose blue eyes suppressed grateful
+      tears as she took Miss Alicia's instructions during their first interview.
+      And Pearson arrived the same night, and, waiting upon Tembarom, stood
+      before him, and with perfect respect, choked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Might I thank you, if you please, sir,&rdquo; he began, recovering himself&mdash;&ldquo;might
+      I thank you and say how grateful&mdash;Rose and me, sir&mdash;&rdquo; and choked
+      again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I told you it would be all right,&rdquo; answered Tembarom. &ldquo;It is all right. I
+      wish I was fixed like you are, Pearson.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      When the Countess of Mallowe called, Rose had just dressed Miss Alicia for
+      the afternoon in one of the most perfect of the evolutions of Mrs.
+      Mellish's idea. It was a definite creation, as even Lady Mallowe detected
+      the moment her eyes fell upon it. Its hue was dull, soft gray, and how it
+      managed to concede points and elude suggestions of modes interred, and yet
+      remain what it did remain, and accord perfectly with the side ringlets and
+      the lace cap of Mechlin, only dressmaking genius could have explained. The
+      mere wearing of it gave Miss Alicia a support and courage which she could
+      scarcely believe to be her own. When the cards of Lady Mallowe and Lady
+      Joan Fayre were brought up to her, she was absolutely not really
+      frightened; a little nervous for a moment, perhaps, but frightened, no. A
+      few weeks of relief and ease, of cheery consideration, of perfectly good
+      treatment and good food and good clothes, had begun a rebuilding of the
+      actual cells of her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Mallowe entered alone. She was a handsome person, and astonishingly
+      young when considered as the mother of a daughter of twenty-seven. She
+      wore a white veil, and looked pink through it. She swept into the room,
+      and shook hands with Miss Alicia with delicate warmth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We do not really know each other at all,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;It is disgraceful
+      how little relatives see of one another.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The disgrace, if measured by the extent of the relationship, was not
+      immense. Perhaps this thought flickered across Miss Alicia's mind among a
+      number of other things. She had heard &ldquo;dear papa&rdquo; on Lady Mallowe, and,
+      howsoever lacking in graces, the vicar of Rowcroft had not lacked an acrid
+      shrewdness. Miss Alicia's sensitively self-accusing soul shrank before a
+      hasty realization of the fact that if he had been present when the cards
+      were brought up, he would, on glancing over them through his spectacles,
+      have jerked out immediately: &ldquo;What does the woman want? She's come to get
+      something.&rdquo; Miss Alicia wished she had not been so immediately beset by
+      this mental vision.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Mallowe had come for something. She had come to be amiable to Miss
+      Temple Barholm and to establish relations with her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Joan should have been here to meet me,&rdquo; she explained. &ldquo;Her dressmaker is
+      keeping her, of course. She will be so annoyed. She wanted very much to
+      come with me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was further revealed that she might arrive at any moment, which gave
+      Miss Alicia an opportunity to express, with pretty grace, the hope that
+      she would, and her trust that she was quite well.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She is always well,&rdquo; Lady Mallowe returned. &ldquo;And she is of course as
+      interested as we all are in this romantic thing. It is perfectly
+      delicious, like a three-volumed novel.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is romantic,&rdquo; said Miss Alicia, wondering how much her visitor knew or
+      thought she knew, and what circumstances would present themselves to her
+      as delicious.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course one has heard only the usual talk one always hears when
+      everybody is chattering about a thing,&rdquo; Lady Mallowe replied, with a
+      propitiating smile. &ldquo;No one really knows what is true and what isn't. But
+      it is nice to notice that all the gossip speaks so well of him. No one
+      seems to pretend that he is anything but extremely nice himself,
+      notwithstanding his disadvantages.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She kept a fine hazel eye, surrounded by a line which artistically
+      represented itself as black lashes, steadily resting on Miss Alicia as she
+      said the last words.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He is,&rdquo; said Miss Alicia, with gentle firmness, &ldquo;nicer than I had ever
+      imagined any young man could be&mdash;far nicer.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Mallowe's glance round the luxurious private sitting-room and over
+      the perfect &ldquo;idea&rdquo; of Mrs. Mellish was so swift as to be almost
+      imperceptible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How delightful!&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;He must be unusually agreeable, or you would
+      not have consented to stay and take care of him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I cannot tell you how HAPPY I am to have been asked to stay with him,
+      Lady Mallowe,&rdquo; Miss Alicia replied, the gentle firmness becoming a soft
+      dignity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Which of course shows all the more how attractive he must be. And in view
+      of the past lack of advantages, what a help you can be to him! It is quite
+      wonderful for him to have a relative at hand who is an Englishwoman and
+      familiar with things he will feel he must learn.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A perhaps singular truth is that but for the unmistakable nature of the
+      surroundings she quickly took in the significance of, and but for the
+      perfection of the carrying out of Mrs. Mellish's delightful idea, it is
+      more than probable that her lady-ship's manner of approaching Miss Alicia
+      and certain subjects on which she desired enlightenment would have been
+      much more direct and much less propitiatory. Extraordinary as it was, &ldquo;the
+      creature&rdquo;&mdash;she thought of Tembarom as &ldquo;the creature&rdquo;&mdash;had
+      plainly been so pleased with the chance of being properly coached that he
+      had put everything, so to speak, in the little old woman's hands. She had
+      got a hold upon him. It was quite likely that to regard her as a definite
+      factor would only be the part of the merest discretion. She was evidently
+      quite in love with him in her early-Victorian, spinster way. One had to be
+      prudent with women like that who had got hold of a male creature for the
+      first time in their lives, and were almost unaware of their own power.
+      Their very unconsciousness made them a dangerous influence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With a masterly review of these facts in her mind Lady Mallowe went on
+      with a fluent and pleasant talk, through the medium of which she managed
+      to convey a large number of things Miss Alicia was far from being clever
+      enough to realize she was talking about. She lightly waved wings of
+      suggestion across the scene, she dropped infinitesimal seeds in passing,
+      she left faint echoes behind her&mdash;the kind of echoes one would find
+      oneself listening to and trying to hear as definitely formed sounds. She
+      had been balancing herself on a precarious platform of rank and title,
+      unsupported by any sordid foundation of a solid nature, through a lifetime
+      spent in London. She had learned to catch fiercely at straws of chance,
+      and bitterly to regret the floating past of the slightest, which had made
+      of her a finished product of her kind. She talked lightly, and was
+      sometimes almost witty. To her hearer she seemed to know every brilliant
+      personage and to be familiar with every dazzling thing. She knew well what
+      social habits and customs meant, what their value, or lack of value, was.
+      There were customs, she implied skilfully, so established by time that it
+      was impossible to ignore them. Relationships, for instance, stood for so
+      much that was fine in England that one was sometimes quite touched by the
+      far-reachingness of family loyalty. The head of the house of a great
+      estate represented a certain power in the matter of upholding the dignity
+      of his possessions, of caring for his tenantry, of standing for proper
+      hospitality and friendly family feeling. It was quite beautiful as one
+      often saw it. Throughout the talk there were several references to Joan,
+      who really must come in shortly, which were very interesting to Miss
+      Alicia. Lady Joan, Miss Alicia heard casually, was a great beauty. Her
+      perfection and her extreme cleverness had made her perhaps a trifle
+      difficile. She had not done&mdash;Lady Mallowe put it with a lightness of
+      phrasing which was delicacy itself&mdash;what she might have done, with
+      every exalted advantage, so many times. She had a profound nature. Here
+      Lady Mallowe waved away, as it were, a ghost of a sigh. Since Miss Temple
+      Barholm was a relative, she had no doubt heard of the unfortunate, the
+      very sad incident which her mother sometimes feared prejudiced the girl
+      even yet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You mean&mdash;poor Jem!&rdquo; broke forth involuntarily from Miss Alicia's
+      lips. Lady Mallowe stared a little.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you call him that?&rdquo; she asked. &ldquo;Did you know him, then?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I loved him,&rdquo; answered Miss Alicia, winking her eyes to keep back the
+      moisture in them, &ldquo;though it was only when he was a little boy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh,&rdquo; said Lady Mallowe, with a sudden, singular softness, &ldquo;I must tell
+      Joan that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Joan had not appeared even after they had had tea and her mother went
+      away, but somehow Miss Alicia had reached a vaguely yearning feeling for
+      her and wished very much the dressmaker had released her. She was quite
+      stirred when it revealed itself almost at the last moment that in a few
+      weeks both she and Lady Mallowe were to pay a visit at no great distance
+      from Temple Barholm itself, and that her ladyship would certainly arrange
+      to drive over to continue her delightful acquaintance and to see the
+      beautiful old place again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In any case one must, even if he lived in lonely state, pay one's
+      respects to the head of the house. The truth is, of course, one is
+      extremely anxious to meet him, and it is charming to know that one is not
+      merely invading the privacy of a bachelor,&rdquo; Lady Mallowe put it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She'll come for YOU,&rdquo; Little Ann had soberly remarked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tembarom remembered the look in her quiet, unresentful blue eyes when he
+      came in to dinner and Miss Alicia related to him the events of the
+      afternoon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0018" id="link2HCH0018">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XVIII
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The spring, when they traveled back to the north, was so perceptibly
+      nearer that the fugitive soft days strayed in advance at intervals that
+      were briefer. They chose one for their journey, and its clear sunshine and
+      hints at faint greenness were so exhilarating to Miss Alicia that she was
+      a companion to make any journey an affair to rank with holidays and
+      adventures. The strange luxury of traveling in a reserved first-class
+      carriage, of being made timid by no sense of unfitness of dress or
+      luggage, would have filled her with grateful rapture; but Rose, journeying
+      with Pearson a few coaches behind, appeared at the carriage window at
+      every important station to say, &ldquo;Is there anything I may do for you,
+      ma'am?&rdquo; And there really never was anything she could do, because Mr.
+      Temple Barholm remembered everything which could make her comfort perfect.
+      In the moods of one who searches the prospect for suggestions as to
+      pleasure he can give to himself by delighting a dear child, he had found
+      and bought for her a most elegant little dressing-bag, with the neatest of
+      plain-gold fittings beautifully initialed. It reposed upon the cushioned
+      seat near her, and made her heart beat every time she caught sight of it
+      anew. How wonderful it would be if poor dear, darling mama could look down
+      and see everything and really know what happiness had been vouchsafed to
+      her unworthy child!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Having a vivid recollection of the journey made with Mr. Palford, Tembarom
+      felt that his whole world had changed for him. The landscape had altered
+      its aspect. Miss Alicia pointed out bits of freshening grass, was sure of
+      the breaking of brown leaf-buds, and more than once breathlessly suspected
+      a primrose in a sheltered hedge corner. A country-bred woman, with
+      country-bred keenness of eye and a country-bred sense of the seasons'
+      change, she saw so much that he had never known that she began to make him
+      see also. Bare trees would be thick-leaved nesting-places, hedges would be
+      white with hawthorn, and hold blue eggs and chirps and songs. Skylarks
+      would spring out of the fields and soar into the sky, dropping crystal
+      chains of joyous trills. The cottage gardens would be full of flowers,
+      there would be poppies gleaming scarlet in the corn, and in buttercup-time
+      all the green grass would be a sheet of shining gold.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When it all happens I shall be like a little East-Sider taken for a day
+      in the country. I shall be asking questions at every step,&rdquo; Tembarom said.
+      &ldquo;Temple Barholm must be pretty fine then.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is so lovely,&rdquo; said Miss Alicia, turning to him almost solemnly, &ldquo;that
+      sometimes it makes one really lose one's breath.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He looked out of the window with sudden wistfulness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wish Ann&mdash;&rdquo; he began and then, seeing the repressed question in
+      her eyes, made up his mind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He told her about Little Ann. He did not use very many words, but she knew
+      a great deal when he had finished. And her spinster soul was thrilled.
+      Neither she nor poor Emily had ever had an admirer, and it was not
+      considered refined for unsought females to discuss &ldquo;such subjects.&rdquo;
+       Domestic delirium over the joy of an engagement in families in which
+      daughters were a drug she had seen. It was indeed inevitable that there
+      should be more rejoicing over one Miss Timson who had strayed from the
+      fold into the haven of marriage than over the ninety-nine Misses Timson
+      who remained behind. But she had never known intimately any one who was in
+      love&mdash;really in love. Mr. Temple Barholm must be. When he spoke of
+      Little Ann he flushed shyly and his eyes looked so touching and nice. His
+      voice sounded different, and though of course his odd New York expressions
+      were always rather puzzling, she felt as though she saw things she had had
+      no previous knowledge of&mdash;things which thrilled her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She must be a very&mdash;very nice girl,&rdquo; she ventured at length. &ldquo;I am
+      afraid I have never been into old Mrs. Hutchinson's cottage. She is quite
+      comfortably off in her way, and does not need parish care. I wish I had
+      seen Miss Hutchinson.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wish she had seen you,&rdquo; was Tembarom's answer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Alicia reflected.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She must be very clever to have such&mdash;sensible views,&rdquo; she remarked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If he had remained in New York, and there had been no question of his
+      inheriting Temple Barholm, the marriage would have been most suitable. But
+      however &ldquo;superior&rdquo; she might be, a vision of old Mrs. Hutchinson's
+      granddaughter as the wife of Mr. Temple Barholm, and of noisy old Mr.
+      Hutchinson as his father-in-law was a staggering thing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You think they were sensible?&rdquo; asked Tembarom. &ldquo;Well, she never did
+      anything that wasn't. So I guess they were. And what she says GOES. I
+      wanted you to know, anyhow. I wouldn't like you not to know. I'm too fond
+      of you, Miss Alicia.&rdquo; And he put his hand round her neat glove and
+      squeezed it. The tears of course came into her tender eyes. Emotion of any
+      sort always expressed itself in her in this early-Victorian manner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This Lady Joan girl,&rdquo; he said suddenly not long afterward, &ldquo;isn't she the
+      kind that I'm to get used to&mdash;the kind in the pictorial magazine Ann
+      talked about? I bought one at the news-stand at the depot before we
+      started. I wanted to get on to the pictures and see what they did to me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He found the paper among his belongings and regarded it with the
+      expression of a serious explorer. It opened at a page of illustrations of
+      slim goddesses in court dresses. By actual measurement, if regarded
+      according to scale, each was about ten feet high; but their long lines,
+      combining themselves with court trains, waving plumes, and falling veils,
+      produced an awe-inspiring effect. Tembarom gazed at them in absorbed
+      silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is she something like any of these?&rdquo; he inquired finally.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Alicia looked through her glasses.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Far more beautiful, I believe,&rdquo; she answered. &ldquo;These are only
+      fashion-plates, and I have heard that she is a most striking girl.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A beaut' from Beautsville!&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;So that's what I'm up against! I
+      wonder how much use that kind of a girl would have for me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He gave a good deal of attention to the paper before he laid it aside. As
+      she watched him, Miss Alicia became gradually aware of the existence of a
+      certain hint of determined squareness in his boyish jaw. It was perhaps
+      not much more than a hint, but it really was there, though she had not
+      noticed it before. In fact, it usually hid itself behind his slangy
+      youthfulness and his readiness for any good cheer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One may as well admit that it sustained him during his novitiate and aided
+      him to pass through it without ignominy or disaster. He was strengthened
+      also by a private resolve to bear himself in such a manner as would at
+      least do decent credit to Little Ann and her superior knowledge. With the
+      curious eyes of servants, villagers, and secretly outraged neighborhood
+      upon him, he was shrewd enough to know that he might easily become a
+      perennial fount of grotesque anecdote, to be used as a legitimate source
+      of entertainment in cottages over the consumption of beans and bacon, as
+      well as at great houses when dinner-table talk threatened to become dull
+      if not enlivened by some spice. He would not have thought of this or been
+      disturbed by it but for Ann. She knew, and he was not going to let her be
+      met on her return from America with what he called &ldquo;a lot of funny dope&rdquo;
+       about him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No girl would like it,&rdquo; he said to himself. &ldquo;And the way she said she
+      'cared too much' just put it up to me to see that the fellow she cares for
+      doesn't let himself get laughed at.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Though he still continued to be jocular on subjects which to his valet
+      seemed almost sacred, Pearson was relieved to find that his employer
+      gradually gave himself into his hands in a manner quite amenable. In the
+      touching way in which nine out of ten nice, domesticated American males
+      obey the behests of the women they are fond of, he had followed Ann's
+      directions to the letter. Guided by the adept Pearson, he had gone to the
+      best places in London and purchased the correct things, returning to
+      Temple Barholm with a wardrobe to which any gentleman might turn at any
+      moment without a question.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's got good shoulders, though he does slouch a bit,&rdquo; Pearson said to
+      Rose. &ldquo;And a gentleman's shoulders are more than half the battle.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      What Tembarom himself felt cheered by was the certainty that if Ann saw
+      him walking about the park or the village, or driving out with Miss Alicia
+      in the big landau, or taking her in to dinner every evening, or even going
+      to church with her, she would not have occasion to flush at sight of him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The going to church was one of the duties of his position he found out.
+      Miss Alicia &ldquo;put him on&rdquo; to that. It seemed that he had to present himself
+      to the villagers &ldquo;as an example.&rdquo; If the Temple Barholm pews were empty,
+      the villagers, not being incited to devotional exercise by his exalted
+      presence, would feel at liberty to remain at home, and in the irreligious
+      undress of shirt-sleeves sit and smoke their pipes, or, worse still,
+      gather at &ldquo;the Hare and Hounds&rdquo; and drink beer. Also, it would not be &ldquo;at
+      all proper&rdquo; not to go to church.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pearson produced a special cut of costume for this ceremony, and Tembarom
+      walked with Miss Alicia across the park to the square-towered Norman
+      church.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In a position of dignity the Temple Barholm pews over-looked the
+      congregation. There was the great square pew for the family, with two
+      others for servants. Footmen and house-maids gazed reverentially at
+      prayer-books. Pearson, making every preparation respectfully to declare
+      himself a &ldquo;miserable sinner&rdquo; when the proper moment arrived, could
+      scarcely re-strain a rapid side glance as the correctly cut and fitted and
+      entirely &ldquo;suitable&rdquo; work of his hands opened the pew-door for Miss Alicia,
+      followed her in, and took his place.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Let not the fact that he had never been to church before be counted
+      against him. There was nothing very extraordinary in the fact. He had felt
+      no antipathy to church-going, but he had not by chance fallen under
+      proselyting influence, and it had certainly never occurred to him that he
+      had any place among the well-dressed, comfortable-looking people he had
+      seen flocking into places of worship in New York. As far as religious
+      observances were concerned, he was an unadulterated heathen, and was all
+      the more to be congratulated on being a heathen of genial tendencies.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The very large pew, under the stone floor of which his ancestors had slept
+      undisturbedly for centuries, interested him greatly. A recumbent marble
+      crusader in armor, with feet crossed in the customary manner, fitted into
+      a sort of niche in one side of the wall. There were carved tablets and
+      many inscriptions in Latin wheresoever one glanced. The place was like a
+      room. A heavy, round table, on which lay prayer-books, Bibles, and
+      hymn-books, occupied the middle. About it were arranged beautiful old
+      chairs, with hassocks to kneel on. Toward a specially imposing chair with
+      arms Miss Alicia directed, him with a glance. It was apparently his place.
+      He was going to sit down when he saw Miss Alicia gently push forward a
+      hassock with her foot, and kneel on it, covering her face with her hands
+      as she bent her head. He hastily drew forth his hassock and followed her
+      example.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That was it, was it? It wasn't only a matter of listening to a sermon; you
+      had to do things. He had better watch out and see that he didn't miss
+      anything. She didn't know it was his first time, and it might worry her to
+      the limit if he didn't put it over all right. One of the things he had
+      noticed in her was her fear of attracting attention by failing to do
+      exactly the &ldquo;proper thing.&rdquo; If he made a fool of himself by kneeling down
+      when he ought to stand up, or lying down when he ought to sit, she'd get
+      hot all over, thinking what the villagers or the other people would say.
+      Well, Ann hadn't wanted him to look different from other fellows or to
+      make breaks. He'd look out from start to finish. He directed a watchful
+      eye at Miss Alicia through his fingers. She remained kneeling a few
+      moments, and then very quietly got up. He rose with her, and took his big
+      chair when she sat down. He breathed more freely when they had got that
+      far. That was the first round.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was not a large church, but a gray and solemn impression of dignity
+      brooded over it. It was dim with light, which fell through stained-glass
+      memorial windows set deep in the thick stone walls. The silence which
+      reigned throughout its spaces seemed to Tembarom of a new kind, different
+      from the silence of the big house. The occasional subdued rustle of turned
+      prayer-book leaves seemed to accentuate it; the most careful movement
+      could not conceal itself; a slight cough was a startling thing. The way,
+      Tembarom thought, they could get things dead-still in English places!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The chimes, which had been ringing their last summons to the tardy,
+      slackened their final warning notes, became still slower, stopped. There
+      was a slight stir in the benches occupied by the infant school. It
+      suggested that something new was going to happen. From some unseen place
+      came the sound of singing voices&mdash;boyish voices and the voices of
+      men. Tembarom involuntarily turned his head. Out of the unseen place came
+      a procession in white robes. Great Scott! every one was standing up! He
+      must stand up, too. The boys and men in white garments filed into their
+      seats. An elderly man, also in white robes, separated himself from them,
+      and, going into his special place, kneeled down. Then he rose and began to
+      read:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When the wicked man turneth away from his wickedness&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Tembarom took the open book which Miss Alicia had very delicately pushed
+      toward him. He read the first words,&mdash;that was plain sailing,&mdash;then
+      he seemed to lose his place. Miss Alicia turned a leaf. He turned one
+      also.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dearly beloved brethren&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There you were. This was once more plain sailing. He could follow it. What
+      was the matter with Miss Alicia? She was kneeling again, everybody was
+      kneeling. Where was the hassock? He went down upon his knees, hoping Miss
+      Alicia had not seen that he wasn't going to kneel at all. Then when the
+      minister said &ldquo;Amen,&rdquo; the congregation said it, too, and he came in too
+      late, so that his voice sounded out alone. He must watch that. Then the
+      minister knelt, and all the people prayed aloud with him. With the book
+      before him he managed to get in after the first few words; but he was not
+      ready with the responses, and in the middle of them everybody stood up
+      again. And then the organ played, and every one sang. He couldn't sing,
+      anyhow, and he knew he couldn't catch on to the kind of thing they were
+      doing. He hoped Miss Alicia wouldn't mind his standing up and holding his
+      book and doing nothing. He could not help seeing that eyes continually
+      turned toward him. They'd notice every darned break he made, and Miss
+      Alicia would know they did. He felt quite hot more than once. He watched
+      Miss Alicia like a hawk; he sat down and listened to reading, he stood up
+      and listened to singing; he kneeled, he tried to chime in with &ldquo;Amens&rdquo; and
+      to keep up with Miss Alicia's bending of head and knee. But the creed,
+      with its sudden turn toward the altar, caught him unawares, he lost
+      himself wholly in the psalms, the collects left him in deep water,
+      hopeless of ever finding his place again, and the litany baffled him, when
+      he was beginning to feel safe, by changing from &ldquo;miserable sinners&rdquo; to
+      &ldquo;Spare us Good Lord&rdquo; and &ldquo;We beseech thee to hear us.&rdquo; If he could just
+      have found the place he would have been all right, but an honest anxiety
+      to be right excited him, and the fear of embarrassing Miss Alicia by going
+      wrong made the morning a strenuous thing. He was so relieved to find he
+      might sit still when the sermon began that he gave the minister an
+      attention which might have marked him, to the chance beholder, as a
+      religious enthusiast.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By the time the service had come to an end the stately peace of the place
+      had seemed to sink into his being and become part of himself. The voice of
+      the minister bestowing his blessing, the voices of the white-clothed choir
+      floating up into the vaulted roof, stirred him to a remote pleasure. He
+      liked it, or he knew he would like it when he knew what to do. The filing
+      out of the choristers, the silent final prayer, the soft rustle of people
+      rising gently from their knees, somehow actually moved him by its
+      suggestion of something before unknown. He was a heathen still, but a
+      heathen vaguely stirred.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was very quiet as he walked home across the park with Miss Alicia.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How did you enjoy the sermon?&rdquo; she asked with much sweetness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I 'm not used to sermons, but it seemed all right to me,&rdquo; he answered.
+      &ldquo;What I've got to get on to is knowing when to stand up and when to sit
+      down. I wasn't much of a winner at it this morning. I guess you noticed
+      that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But his outward bearing had been much more composed than his inward
+      anxiety had allowed him to believe. His hesitations had not produced the
+      noticeable effect he had feared.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you mean you are not quite familiar with the service?&rdquo; she said. Poor
+      dear boy! he had perhaps not been able to go to church regularly at all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm not familiar with any service,&rdquo; he answered without prejudice. &ldquo;I
+      never went to church before.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She slightly started and then smiled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, you mean you have never been to the Church of England,&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then he saw that, if he told her the exact truth, she would be frightened
+      and shocked. She would not know what to say or what to think. To her
+      unsophisticated mind only murderers and thieves and criminals NEVER went
+      to church. She just didn't know. Why should she? So he smiled also.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I've never been to the Church of England,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0019" id="link2HCH0019">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XIX
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The country was discreetly conservative in its social attitude. The gulf
+      between it and the new owner of Temple Barholm was too wide and deep to be
+      crossed without effort combined with immense mental agility. It was on the
+      whole, much easier not to begin a thing at all than to begin it and find
+      one must hastily search about for not too noticeable methods of ending it.
+      A few unimportant, tentative calls were made, and several ladies who had
+      remained unaware of Miss Alicia during her first benefactor's time drove
+      over to see what she was like and perhaps by chance hear something of
+      interest. One or two of them who saw Tembarom went away puzzled and
+      amazed. He did not drop his h's, which they had of course expected, and he
+      was well dressed, and not bad-looking; but it was frequently impossible to
+      understand what he was talking about, he used such odd phrases. He seemed
+      good natured enough, and his way with little old Miss Temple Barholm was
+      really quite nice, queer as it was. It was queer because he was attentive
+      to her in a manner in which young men were not usually attentive to
+      totally insignificant, elderly dependents.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tembarom derived an extremely diluted pleasure from the visits. The few
+      persons he saw reminded him in varying degrees of Mr. Palford. They had
+      not before seen anything like his species, and they did not know what to
+      do with him. He also did not know what to do with them. A certain
+      inelasticity frustrated him at the outset. When, in obedience to Miss
+      Alicia's instructions, he had returned the visits, he felt he had not gone
+      far.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Serious application enabled him to find his way through the church
+      service, and he accompanied Miss Alicia to church with great regularity.
+      He began to take down the books from the library shelves and look them
+      over gravely. The days gradually ceased to appear so long, but he had a
+      great deal of time on his hands, and he tried to find ways of filling it.
+      He wondered if Ann would be pleased if he learned things out of books.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When he tentatively approached the subject of literature with Miss Alicia,
+      she glowed at the delightful prospect of his reading aloud to her in the
+      evenings&mdash;&ldquo;reading improving things like history and the poets.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let's take a hack at it some night,&rdquo; he said pleasantly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The more a fellow knew, the better it was for him, he supposed; but he
+      wondered, if anything happened and he went back to New York, how much
+      &ldquo;improving things&rdquo; and poetry would help a man in doing business.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The first evening they began with Gray's &ldquo;Elegy,&rdquo; and Miss Alicia felt
+      that it did not exhilarate him; she was also obliged to admit that he did
+      not read it very well. But she felt sure he would improve. Personally she
+      was touchingly happy. The sweetly domestic picture of the situation, she
+      sitting by the fire with her knitting and he reading aloud, moved and
+      delighted her. The next evening she suggested Tennyson's &ldquo;Maud.&rdquo; He was
+      not as much stirred by it as she had hoped. He took a somewhat humorous
+      view of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He had it pretty bad, hadn't he?&rdquo;' he said of the desperate lover.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, if only you could once have heard Sims Reeves sing 'Come into the
+      Garden, Maud'!&rdquo; she sighed. &ldquo;A kind friend once took me to hear him, and I
+      have never, never forgotten it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Mr. Temple Barholm notably did not belong to the atmosphere of
+      impassioned tenors.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On still another evening they tried Shakspere. Miss Alicia felt that a
+      foundation of Shakspere would be &ldquo;improving&rdquo; indeed. They began with
+      &ldquo;Hamlet.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He found play-reading difficult and Shaksperian language baffling, but he
+      made his way with determination until he reached a point where he suddenly
+      grew quite red and stopped.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Say, have you read this?&rdquo; he inquired after his hesitation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The plays of Shakspere are a part of every young lady's education,&rdquo; she
+      answered; &ldquo;but I am afraid I am not at all a Shaksperian scholar.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A young lady's education?&rdquo; he repeated. &ldquo;Gee whizz!&rdquo; he added softly
+      after a pause.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He glanced over a page or so hastily, and then laid the book down.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Say,&rdquo; he suggested, with an evasive air, &ldquo;let's go over that 'Maud' one
+      again. It's&mdash;well, it's easier to read aloud.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The crude awkwardness of his manner suddenly made Miss Alicia herself
+      flush and drop a stitch in her knitting. How dreadful of her not to have
+      thought of that!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Elizabethan age was, I fear, a rather coarse one in some respects.
+      Even history acknowledges that Queen Elizabeth herself used profane
+      language.&rdquo; She faltered and coughed a little apologetic cough as she
+      picked up her stitch again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I bet Ann's never seen inside Shakspere,&rdquo; said Tembarom. Before reading
+      aloud in the future he gave some previous personal attention to the poem
+      or subject decided upon. It may be at once frankly admitted that when he
+      read aloud it was more for Miss Alicia's delectation than for his own. He
+      saw how much she enjoyed the situation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His effect of frankness and constant boyish talk was so inseparable from
+      her idea of him that she found it a puzzling thing to realize that she
+      gradually began to feel aware of a certain remote reserve in him, or what
+      might perhaps be better described as a habit of silence upon certain
+      subjects. She felt it marked in the case of Strangeways. She surmised that
+      he saw Strangeways often and spent a good deal of time with him, but he
+      spoke of him rarely, and she never knew exactly what hours were given to
+      him. Sometimes she imagined he found him a greater responsibility than he
+      had expected. Several times when she believed that he had spent part of a
+      morning or afternoon in his room, he was more silent than usual and looked
+      puzzled and thoughtful. She observed, as Mr. Palford had, that the
+      picture-gallery, with its portraits of his ancestors, had an attraction. A
+      certain rainy day he asked her to go with him and look them over. It was
+      inevitable that she should soon wander to the portrait of Miles Hugo and
+      remain standing before it. Tembarom followed, and stood by her side in
+      silence until her sadness broke its bounds with a pathetic sigh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Was he very like him?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She made an unconscious, startled movement. For the moment she had
+      forgotten his presence, and she had not really expected him to remember.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I mean Jem,&rdquo; he answered her surprised look. &ldquo;How was he like him? Was
+      there&mdash;&rdquo; he hesitated and looked really interested&mdash;&ldquo;was he like
+      him in any particular thing?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; she said, turning to the portrait of Miles Hugo again. &ldquo;They both
+      had those handsome, drooping eyes, with the lashes coming together at the
+      corners. There is something very fascinating about them, isn't there? I
+      used to notice it so much in dear little Jem. You see how marked they are
+      in Miles Hugo.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; Tembarom answered. &ldquo;A fellow who looked that way at a girl when he
+      made love to her would get a strangle-holt. She wouldn't forget him soon.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It strikes you in that way, too?&rdquo; said Miss Alicia, shyly. &ldquo;I used to
+      wonder if it was&mdash;not quite nice of me to think of it. But it did
+      seem that if any one did look at one like that&mdash;&rdquo; Maidenly shyness
+      overcame her. &ldquo;Poor Lady Joan!&rdquo; she sighed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There's a sort of cleft in his chin, though it's a good, square chin,&rdquo; he
+      suggested. &ldquo;And that smile of his&mdash;Were Jem's&mdash;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, they were. The likeness was quite odd sometimes&mdash;quite.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Those are things that wouldn't be likely to change much when he grew up,&rdquo;
+       Tembarom said, drawing a little closer to the picture. &ldquo;Poor Jem! He was
+      up against it hard and plenty. He had it hardest. This chap only died.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was no mistaking his sympathy. He asked so many questions that they
+      sat down and talked instead of going through the gallery. He was
+      interested in the detail of all that had occurred after the ghastly moment
+      when Jem had risen from the card-table and stood looking around, like some
+      baited dying animal, at the circle of cruel faces drawing in about him.
+      How soon had he left London? Where had he gone first? How had he been
+      killed? He had been buried with others beneath a fall of earth and stones.
+      Having heard this much, Tembarom saw he could not ask more questions. Miss
+      Alicia became pale, and her hands trembled. She could not bear to discuss
+      details so harrowing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Say, I oughtn't to let you talk about that,&rdquo; he broke out, and he patted
+      her hand and made her get up and finish their walk about the gallery. He
+      held her elbow in his own odd, nice way as he guided her, and the things
+      he said, and the things he pretended to think or not to understand, were
+      so amusing that in a short time he had made her laugh. She knew him well
+      enough by this time to be aware that he was intentionally obliging her to
+      forget what it only did her harm to remember. That was his practical way
+      of looking at it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Getting a grouch on or being sorry for what you can't help cuts no ice,&rdquo;
+       he sometimes said. &ldquo;When it does, me for getting up at daybreak and
+      keeping at it! But it doesn't, you bet your life on that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She could see that he had really wanted to hear about Jem, but he knew it
+      was bad for her to recall things, and he would not allow her to dwell on
+      them, just as she knew he would not allow himself to dwell on little Miss
+      Hutchinson, remotely placed among the joys of his beloved New York.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Two other incidents besides the visit to Miles Hugo afterward marked that
+      day when Miss Alicia looked back on it. The first was his unfolding to her
+      his plans for the house-party, which was characteristic of his habit of
+      thinking things over and deciding them before he talked about them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I'm going to try the thing out, as Ann says I must,&rdquo; he began when
+      they had gone back to the library after lunch, &ldquo;I've got to get going. I'm
+      not seeing any of those Pictorial girls, and I guess I've got to see
+      some.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You will be invited to dine at places,&rdquo; said Miss Alicia,&mdash;&ldquo;presently,&rdquo;
+       she added bravely, in fact, with an air of greater conviction than she
+      felt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If it's not the law that they've got to invite me or go to jail,&rdquo; said
+      Tembarom, &ldquo;I don't blame 'em for not doing it if they're not stuck on me.
+      And they're not; and it's natural. But I've got to get in my fine work, or
+      my year'll be over before I've 'found out for myself,' as Ann called it.
+      There's where I'm at, Miss Alicia&mdash;and I've been thinking of Lady
+      Joan and her mother. You said you thought they'd come and stay here if
+      they were properly asked.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think they would,&rdquo; answered Miss Alicia with her usual delicacy. &ldquo;I
+      thought I gathered from Lady Mallowe that, as she was to be in the
+      neighborhood, she would like to see you and Temple Barholm, which she
+      greatly admires.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you'll tell me what to do, I'll get her here to stay awhile,&rdquo; he said,
+      &ldquo;and Lady Joan with her. You'd have to show me how to write to ask them;
+      but perhaps you'd write yourself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They will be at Asshawe Holt next week,&rdquo; said Miss Alicia, &ldquo;and we could
+      go and call on them together. We might write to them in London before they
+      leave.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We'll do it,&rdquo; answered Tembarom. His manner was that of a practical young
+      man attacking matter-of-fact detail. &ldquo;From what I hear, Lady Joan would
+      satisfy even Ann. They say she's the best-looker on the slate. If I see
+      her every day I shall have seen the blue-ribbon winner. Then if she's
+      here, perhaps others of her sort'll come, too; and they'll have to see me
+      whether they like it or not&mdash;and I shall see them. Good Lord!&rdquo; he
+      added seriously, &ldquo;I'd let 'em swarm all over me and bite me all summer if
+      it would fix Ann.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He stood up, with his hands thrust deep in his pockets, and looked down at
+      the floor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wish she knew T. T. like T. T. knows himself,&rdquo; he said. It was quite
+      wistful.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was so wistful and so boyish that Miss Alicia was thrilled as he often
+      thrilled her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She ought to be a very happy girl,&rdquo; she exclaimed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She's going to be,&rdquo; he answered, &ldquo;sure as you're alive. But whatever she
+      does, is right, and this is as right as everything else. So it just goes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They wrote their letters at once, and sent them off by the afternoon post.
+      The letter Miss Alicia composed, and which Tembarom copied, he read and
+      reread, with visions of Jim Bowles and Julius looking over his shoulder.
+      If they picked it up on Broadway, with his name signed to it, and read it,
+      they'd throw a fit over it, laughing. But he supposed she knew what you
+      ought to write.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It had not, indeed, the masculine touch. When Lady Mallowe read it, she
+      laughed several times. She knew quite well that he had not known what to
+      say, and, allowing Miss Alicia to instruct him, had followed her
+      instructions to the letter. But she did not show the letter to Joan, who
+      was difficult enough to manage without being given such material to
+      comment upon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The letters had just been sent to the post when a visitor was announced&mdash;Captain
+      Palliser. Tembarom remembered the name, and recalled also certain points
+      connected with him. He was the one who was a promoter of schemes&mdash;&ldquo;One
+      of the smooth, clever ones that get up companies,&rdquo; Little Ann had said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That in a well-bred and not too pronounced way he looked smooth and clever
+      might be admitted. His effect was that of height, finished slenderness of
+      build, and extremely well-cut garments. He was no longer young, and he had
+      smooth, thin hair and a languidly observant gray eye.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have been staying at Detchworth Grange,&rdquo; he explained when he had
+      shaken hands with the new Temple Barholm and Miss Alicia. &ldquo;It gave me an
+      excellent opportunity to come and pay my respects.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a hint of uncertainty in the observant gray eye. The fact was
+      that he realized in the space of five minutes that he knew his ground even
+      less than he had supposed he did. He had not spent his week at Detchworth
+      Grange without making many quiet investigations, but he had found out
+      nothing whatever. The new man was an ignoramus, but no one had yet seemed
+      to think him exactly a fool. He was not excited by the new grandeurs of
+      his position and he was not ashamed of himself. Captain Palliser wondered
+      if he was perhaps sharp&mdash;one of those New Yorkers shrewd even to
+      light-fingeredness in clever scheming. Stories of a newly created method
+      of business dealing involving an air of candor and almost primitive good
+      nature&mdash;an American method&mdash;had attracted Captain Palliser's
+      attention for some time. A certain Yankee rawness of manner played a part
+      as a factor, a crudity which would throw a man off guard if he did not
+      recognize it. The person who employed the method was of philosophical
+      non-combativeness. The New York phrase was that &ldquo;He jollied a man along.&rdquo;
+       Immense schemes had been carried through in that way. Men in London, in
+      England, were not sufficiently light of touch in their jocularity. He
+      wondered if perhaps this young fellow, with his ready laugh and rather
+      loose-jointed, casual way of carrying himself, was of this dangerous new
+      school.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What, however, could he scheme for, being the owner of Temple Barholm's
+      money? It may be mentioned at once that Captain Palliser's past had been
+      such as had fixed him in the belief that every one was scheming for
+      something. People with money wanted more or were privately arranging
+      schemes to prevent other schemers from getting any shade the better of
+      them. Debutantes with shy eyes and slim figures had their little plans to
+      engineer delicately. Sometimes they were larger plans than the uninitiated
+      would have suspected as existing in the brains of creatures in their
+      'teens, sometimes they were mere fantastic little ideas connected with
+      dashing young men or innocent dances which must be secured or lovely young
+      rivals who must be evaded. Young men had also deft things to do&mdash;people
+      to see or not to see, reasons for themselves being seen or avoiding
+      observation. As years increased, reasons for schemes became more numerous
+      and amazingly more varied. Women with daughters, with sons, with husbands,
+      found in each relationship a necessity for active, if quiet, manoeuvering.
+      Women like Lady Mallowe&mdash;good heaven! by what schemes did not that
+      woman live and have her being&mdash;and her daughter's&mdash;from day to
+      day! Without money, without a friend who was an atom more to be relied on
+      than she would have been herself if an acquaintance had needed her aid,
+      her outwardly well-to-do and fashionable existence was a hand-to-hand
+      fight. No wonder she had turned a still rather brilliant eye upon Sir
+      Moses Monaldini, the great Israelite financier. All of these types passed
+      rapidly before his mental vision as he talked to the American Temple
+      Barholm. What could he want, by chance? He must want something, and it
+      would be discreet to find out what it chanced to be.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If it was social success, he would be better off in London, where in these
+      days you could get a good run for your money and could swing yourself up
+      from one rung of the ladder to another if you paid some one to show you
+      how. He himself could show him how. A youngster who had lived the beastly
+      hard life he had lived would be likely to find exhilaration in many things
+      not difficult to purchase. It was an odd thing, by the way, the fancy he
+      had taken to the little early-Victorian spinster. It was not quite
+      natural. It perhaps denoted tendencies&mdash;or lack of tendencies&mdash;it
+      would also be well to consider. Palliser was a sufficiently finished
+      product himself to be struck greatly by the artistic perfection of Miss
+      Alicia, and to wonder how much the new man understood it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He did not talk to him about schemes. He talked to him of New York, which
+      he had never seen and hoped sometime shortly to visit. The information he
+      gained was not of the kind he most desired, but it edified him. Tembarom's
+      knowledge of high finance was a street lad's knowledge of it, and he
+      himself knew its limitations and probable unreliability. Such of his facts
+      as rested upon the foundation of experience did not include
+      multimillionaires and their resources.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Captain Palliser passed lightly to Temple Barholm and its neighborhood. He
+      knew places and names, and had been to Detchworth more than once. He had
+      never visited Temple Barholm, and his interest suggested that he would
+      like to walk through the gardens. Tembarom took him out, and they strolled
+      about for some time. Even an alert observer would not have suspected the
+      fact that as they strolled, Tembarom slouching a trifle and with his hands
+      in his pockets, Captain Palliser bearing himself with languid distinction,
+      each man was summing up the other and considering seriously how far and in
+      what manner he could be counted as an asset.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You haven't been to Detchworth yet?&rdquo; Palliser inquired.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, not yet,&rdquo; answered Tembarom. The Granthams were of those who had not
+      yet called.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's an agreeable house. The Granthams are agreeable people.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are there any young people in the family?&rdquo; Tembarom asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Young people? Male or female?&rdquo; Palliser smilingly put it. Suddenly it
+      occurred to him that this might give him a sort of lead.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Girls,&rdquo; said Tembarom, crudely&mdash;&ldquo;just plain girls.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Palliser laughed. Here it was, perhaps.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They are not exactly 'plain' girls, though they are not beauties. There
+      are four Misses Grantham. Lucy is the prettiest. Amabel is quite
+      tremendous at tennis.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are they ladies?&rdquo; inquired Tembarom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Captain Palliser turned and involuntarily stared at him. What was the
+      fellow getting at?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm afraid I don't quite understand,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The new Temple Barholm looked quite serious. He did not, amazing to
+      relate, look like a fool even when he gave forth his extraordinary
+      question. It was his almost business-like seriousness which saved him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I mean, do you call them Lady Lucy and Lady Amabel?&rdquo; he answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If he had been younger, less hardened, or less finished, Captain Palliser
+      would have laughed outright. But he answered without self-revelation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I see. You were asking whether the family is a titled one. No; it is
+      a good old name, quite old, in fact, but no title goes with the estate.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who are the titled people about here?&rdquo; Tembarom asked, quite unabashed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Earl of Pevensy at Pevensy Park, the Duke of Stone at Stone Hover,
+      Lord Hambrough at Doone. Doone is in the next county, just over the
+      border.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have they all got daughters?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Captain Palliser found it expedient to clear his throat before speaking.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lord Pevensy has daughters, so has the duke. Lord Hambrough has three
+      sons.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How many daughters are there&mdash;in a bunch?&rdquo; Mr. Temple Barholm
+      suggested liberally.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There Captain Palliser felt it safe to allow himself to smile, as though
+      taking it with a sense of humor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'In a bunch' is an awfully good way of putting it,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;It happens
+      to apply perhaps rather unfortunately well; both families are much poorer
+      than they should be, and daughters must be provided for. Each has four.
+      'In a bunch' there are eight: Lady Alice, Lady Edith, Lady Ethel, and Lady
+      Celia at Stone Hover; Lady Beatrice, Lady Gwynedd, Lady Honora, and Lady
+      Gwendolen at Pevensy Park. And not a fortune among them, poor girls!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's not the money that matters so much,&rdquo; said the astounding foreigner,
+      &ldquo;it's the titles.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Captain Palliser stopped short in the garden path for a moment. He could
+      scarcely believe his ears. The crude grotesqueness of it so far got the
+      better of him that if he had not coughed he would have betrayed himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've had a confounded cold lately,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Excuse me; I must get it
+      over.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He turned a little aside and coughed energetically.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After watching him a few seconds Tembarom slipped two fingers into his
+      waistcoat pocket and produced a small tube of tablets.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Take two of these,&rdquo; he said as soon as the cough stopped. &ldquo;I always carry
+      it about with me. It's a New York thing called 'G. Destroyer.' G stands
+      for grippe.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Palliser took it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thanks. With water? No? Just dissolve in the mouth. Thanks awfully.&rdquo; And
+      he took two, with tears still standing in his eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't taste bad, do they?&rdquo; Mr. Temple Barholm remarked encouragingly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not at all. I think I shall be all right now. I just needed the relief. I
+      have been trying to restrain it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's a mistake,&rdquo; said Tembarom. They strolled on a pace or so, and he
+      began again, as though he did not mean to let the subject drop. &ldquo;It's the
+      titles,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;and the kind. How many of them are good-lookers?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Palliser reflected a moment, as though making mental choice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lady Alice and Lady Celia are rather plain,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;and both of them
+      are invalidish. Lady Ethel is tall and has handsome eyes, but Lady Edith
+      is really the beauty of the family. She rides and dances well and has a
+      charming color.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And the other ones,&rdquo; Tembaron suggested as he paused&mdash;&ldquo;Lady Beatrice
+      and Lady Gwynedd and Lady Honora and Lady Gwendolen.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You remember their names well,&rdquo; Palliser remarked with a half-laugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I shall remember them all right,&rdquo; Tembarom answered. &ldquo;I earned
+      twenty-five per in New York by getting names down fine.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Talchesters are really all rather taking. Talchester is Lord
+      Pevensy's family name,&rdquo; Palliser explained. &ldquo;They are girls who have
+      pretty little noses and bright complexions and eyes. Lady Gwynedd and Lady
+      Honora both have quite fascinating dimples.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dimples!&rdquo; exclaimed his companion. &ldquo;Good business.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you like dimples particularly?&rdquo; Palliser inquired with an impartial
+      air.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'd always make a bee-line for a dimple,&rdquo; replied Mr. Temple Barholm.
+      &ldquo;Clear the way when I start.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This was New York phrasing, and was plainly humorous; but there was
+      something more than humor in his eye and smile&mdash;something hinting
+      distantly at recollection.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You'll find them at Pevensy Park,&rdquo; said Palliser.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What about Lady Joan Fayre?&rdquo; was the next inquiry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Palliser's side glance at him was observant indeed. He asked himself how
+      much the man could know. Taking the past into consideration, Lady Joan
+      might turn out to be a subject requiring delicate handling. It was not the
+      easiest thing in the world to talk at all freely to a person with whom one
+      desired to keep on good terms, about a young woman supposed still to
+      cherish a tragic passion for the dead man who ought to stand at the
+      present moment in the person's, figuratively speaking, extremely
+      ill-fitting shoes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lady Joan has been from her first season an undeniable beauty,&rdquo; he
+      replied.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She and the old lady are going to stay at a place called Asshawe Holt. I
+      think they're going next week,&rdquo; Tembarom said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The old lady?&rdquo; repeated Captain Palliser.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I mean her mother. The one that's the Countess of Mallowe.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have you met Lady Mallowe?&rdquo; Palliser inquired with a not wholly repressed
+      smile. A vision of Lady Mallowe over-hearing their conversation arose
+      before him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I haven't. What's she like?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She is not the early-or mid-Victorian old lady,&rdquo; was Palliser's reply.
+      &ldquo;She wears Gainsborough hats, and looks a quite possible eight and thirty.
+      She is a handsome person herself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He was not aware that the term &ldquo;old lady&rdquo; was, among Americans of the
+      class of Mrs. Bowse's boarders, a sort of generic term signifying almost
+      anything maternal which had passed thirty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tembarom proceeded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;After they get through at the Asshawe Holt place, I've asked them to come
+      here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Indeed,&rdquo; said Palliser, with an inward start. The man evidently did not
+      know what other people did. After all, why should he? He had been selling
+      something or other in the streets of New York when the thing happened, and
+      he knew nothing of London.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The countess called on Miss Alicia when we were in London,&rdquo; he heard
+      next. &ldquo;She said we were relations.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are&mdash;as we are. The connection is rather distant, but it is near
+      enough to form a sort of link.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've wanted to see Lady Joan,&rdquo; explained Tembarom. &ldquo;From what I've heard,
+      I should say she was one of the 'Lady's Pictorial' kind.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am afraid&mdash;&rdquo; Palliser's voice was slightly unsteady for the moment&mdash;&ldquo;I
+      have not studied the type sufficiently to know. The 'Pictorial' is so
+      exclusively a women's periodical.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His companion laughed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I've only looked through it once myself just to find out. Some way
+      I always think of Lady Joan as if she was like one of those Beaut's from
+      Beautsville, with trains as long as parlor-cars and feathers in their
+      heads&mdash;dressed to go to see the queen. I guess she's been presented
+      at court,&rdquo; he added.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, she has been presented.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do they let 'em go more than once?&rdquo; he asked with casual curiosity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Confound this cough!&rdquo; exclaimed Captain Palliser, and he broke forth
+      again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Take another G,&rdquo; said Tembarom, producing his tube. &ldquo;Say, just take the
+      bottle and keep it in your pocket.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      When the brief paroxysm was over and they moved on again, Palliser was
+      looking an odd thing or so in the face. &ldquo;I always think of Lady Joan&rdquo; was
+      one of them. &ldquo;Always&rdquo; seemed to go rather far. How often and why had he
+      &ldquo;always thought&rdquo;? The fellow was incredible. Did his sharp, boyish face
+      and his slouch conceal a colossal, vulgar, young ambition? There was not
+      much concealment about it, Heaven knew. And as he so evidently was not
+      aware of the facts, how would they affect him when he discovered them? And
+      though Lady Mallowe was a woman not in the least distressed or hampered by
+      shades of delicacy and scruple, she surely was astute enough to realize
+      that even this bounder's dullness might be awakened to realize that there
+      was more than a touch of obvious indecency in bringing the girl to the
+      house of the man she had tragically loved, and manoeuvering to work her
+      into it as the wife of the man who, monstrously unfit as he was, had taken
+      his place. Captain Palliser knew well that the pressing of the
+      relationship had meant only one thing. And how, in the name of the Furies!
+      had she dragged Lady Joan into the scheme with her?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was as unbelievable as was the new Temple Barholm himself. And how
+      unconcerned the fellow looked! Perhaps the man he had supplanted was no
+      more to him than a scarcely remembered name, if he was as much as that.
+      Then Tembarom, pacing slowly by his side, hands in pockets, eyes on the
+      walk, spoke:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did you ever see Jem Temple Barholm?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was like a thunderbolt. He said it as though he were merely carrying
+      his previous remarks on to their natural conclusion; but Palliser felt
+      himself so suddenly unadjusted, so to speak, that he palpably hesitated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did you?&rdquo; his companion repeated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I knew him well,&rdquo; was the answer made as soon as readjustment was
+      possible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Remember just how he looked?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perfectly. He was a striking fellow. Women always said he had fascinating
+      eyes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sort of slant downward on the outside corners&mdash;and black eyelashes
+      sorter sweeping together?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Palliser turned with a movement of surprise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How did you know? It was just that odd sort of thing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Miss Alicia told me. And there's a picture in the gallery that's like
+      him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Captain Palliser felt as embarrassed as Miss Alicia had felt, but it was
+      for a different reason. She had felt awkward because she had feared she
+      had touched on a delicate subject. Palliser was embarrassed because he was
+      entirely thrown out of all his calculations. He felt for the moment that
+      there was no calculating at all, no security in preparing paths. You never
+      know where they would lead. Here had he been actually alarmed in secret!
+      And the oaf stood before him undisturbedly opening up the subject himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For a fellow like that to lose a girl as he lost Lady Joan was pretty
+      tough,&rdquo; the oaf said. &ldquo;By gee! it was tough!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He knew it all&mdash;the whole thing, scandal, tragically broken marriage,
+      everything. And knowing it, he was laying his Yankee plans for getting the
+      girl to Temple Barholm to look her over. It was of a grossness one
+      sometimes heard of in men of his kind, and yet it seemed in its casualness
+      to out-leap any little scheme of the sort he had so far looked on at.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lady Joan felt it immensely,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A footman was to be seen moving toward them, evidently bearing a message.
+      Tea was served in the drawing-room, and he had come to announce the fact.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They went back to the house, and Miss Alicia filled cups for them and
+      presided over the splendid tray with a persuasive suggestion in the matter
+      of hot or cold things which made it easy to lead up to any subject. She
+      was the best of unobtrusive hostesses.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Palliser talked of his visit at Detchworth, which had been shortened
+      because he had gone to &ldquo;fit in&rdquo; and remain until a large but uncertain
+      party turned up. It had turned up earlier than had been anticipated, and
+      of course he could only delicately slip away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am sorry it has happened, however,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;not only because one does
+      not wish to leave Detchworth, but because I shall miss Lady Mallowe and
+      Lady Joan, who are to be at Asshawe Holt next week. I particularly wanted
+      to see them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Alicia glanced at Tembarom to see what he would do. He spoke before
+      he could catch her glance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Say,&rdquo; he suggested, &ldquo;why don't you bring your grip over here and stay? I
+      wish you would.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A grip means a Gladstone bag,&rdquo; Miss Alicia murmured in a rapid undertone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Palliser replied with appreciative courtesy. Things were going extremely
+      well.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's awfully kind of you,&rdquo; he answered. &ldquo;I should like it tremendously.
+      Nothing better. You are giving me a delightful opportunity. Thank you,
+      thank you. If I may turn up on Thursday I shall be delighted.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was satisfaction in this at least in the observant gray eye when he
+      went away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0020" id="link2HCH0020">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XX
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Dinner at Detchworth Grange was most amusing that evening. One of the
+      chief reasons&mdash;in fact, it would not be too venturesome to say THE
+      chief reason&mdash;for Captain Palliser's frequent presence in very good
+      country houses was that he had a way of making things amusing. His
+      relation of anecdotes, of people and things, was distinguished by a manner
+      which subtly declined to range itself on the side of vulgar gossip.
+      Quietly and with a fine casualness he conveyed the whole picture of the
+      new order at Temple Barholm. He did it with wonderfully light touches, and
+      yet the whole thing was to be seen&mdash;the little old maid in her
+      exquisite clothes, her unmistakable stamp of timid good breeding, her
+      protecting adoration combined with bewilderment; the long, lean, not
+      altogether ill-looking New York bounder, with his slight slouch, his
+      dangerously unsophisticated-looking face, and his American jocularity of
+      slang phrase.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's of a class I know nothing about. I own he puzzled me a trifle at
+      first,&rdquo; Palliser said with his cool smile. &ldquo;I'm not sure that I've 'got on
+      to him' altogether yet. That's an expressive New York phrase of his own.
+      But when we were strolling about together, he made revelations apparently
+      without being in the least aware that they were revelations. He was
+      unbelievable. My fear was that he would not go on.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But he did go on?&rdquo; asked Amabel. &ldquo;One must hear something of the
+      revelations.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then was given in the best possible form the little drama of the talk in
+      the garden. No shade of Mr. Temple Barholm's characteristics was lost.
+      Palliser gave occasionally an English attempt at the reproduction of his
+      nasal twang, but it was only a touch and not sufficiently persisted in to
+      become undignified.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can't do it,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;None of us can really do it. When English
+      actors try it on the stage, it is not in the least the real thing. They
+      only drawl through their noses, and it is more than that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The people of Detchworth Grange were not noisy people, but their laughter
+      was unrestrained before the recital was finished. Nobody had gone so far
+      as either to fear or to hope for anything as undiluted in its nature as
+      this was.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then he won't give us a chance, the least chance,&rdquo; cried Lucy and Amabel
+      almost in unison. &ldquo;We are out of the running.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You won't get even a look in&mdash;because you are not 'ladies,'&rdquo; said
+      their brother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Poor Jem Temple Barholm! What a different thing it would have been if we
+      had had him for a neighbor!&rdquo; Mr. Grantham fretted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We should have had Lady Joan Fayre as well,&rdquo; said his wife.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;At least she's a gentlewoman as well as a 'lady,'&rdquo; Mr. Grantham said.
+      &ldquo;She would not have become so bitter if that hideous thing had not
+      occurred.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They wondered if the new man knew anything about Jem. Palliser had not
+      reached that part of his revelation when the laughter had broken into it.
+      He told it forthwith, and the laughter was overcome by a sort of dismayed
+      disgust. This did not accord with the rumors of an almost &ldquo;nice&rdquo; good
+      nature.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There's a vulgar horridness about it,&rdquo; said Lucy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What price Lady Mallowe!&rdquo; said the son. &ldquo;I'll bet a sovereign she began
+      it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She did,&rdquo; remarked Palliser; &ldquo;but I think one may leave Mr. Temple
+      Barholm safely to Lady Joan.&rdquo; Mr. Grantham laughed as one who knew
+      something of Lady Joan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There's an Americanism which I didn't learn from him,&rdquo; Palliser added,
+      &ldquo;and I remembered it when he was talking her over. It's this: when you
+      dispose of a person finally and forever, you 'wipe up the earth with him.'
+      Lady Joan will 'wipe up the earth' with your new neighbor.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a little shout of laughter. &ldquo;Wipe up the earth&rdquo; was entirely new
+      to everybody, though even the country in England was at this time by no
+      means wholly ignorant of American slang.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This led to so many other things both mirth-provoking and serious, even
+      sometimes very serious indeed, that the entire evening at Detchworth was
+      filled with talk of Temple Barholm. Very naturally the talk did not end by
+      confining itself to one household. In due time Captain Palliser's little
+      sketches were known in divers places, and it became a habit to discuss
+      what had happened, and what might possibly happen in the future. There
+      were those who went to the length of calling on the new man because they
+      wanted to see him face to face. People heard new things every few days,
+      but no one realized that it was vaguely through Palliser that there
+      developed a general idea that, crude and self-revealing as he was, there
+      lurked behind the outward candor of the intruder a hint of over-sharpness
+      of the American kind. There seemed no necessity for him to lay schemes
+      beyond those he had betrayed in his inquiries about &ldquo;ladies,&rdquo; but somehow
+      it became a fixed idea that he was capable of doing shady things if at any
+      time the temptation arose. That was really what his boyish casualness
+      meant. That in truth was Palliser's final secret conclusion. And he wanted
+      very much to find out why exactly little old Miss Temple Barholm had been
+      taken up. If the man wanted introductions, he could have contrived to pick
+      up a smart and enterprising unprofessional chaperon in London who would
+      have done for him what Miss Temple Barholm would never presume to attempt.
+      And yet he seemed to have chosen her deliberately. He had set her
+      literally at the head of his house. And Palliser, having heard a vague
+      rumor that he had actually settled a decent income upon her, had made
+      adroit inquiries and found it was true.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was. To arrange the matter had been one of his reasons for going to see
+      Mr. Palford during their stay in London.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wanted to fix you&mdash;fix you safe,&rdquo; he said when he told Miss Alicia
+      about it. &ldquo;I guess no one can take it away from you, whatever old thing
+      happens.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What could happen, dear Mr. Temple Barholm?&rdquo; said Miss Alicia in the
+      midst of tears of gratitude and tremulous joy. &ldquo;You are so young and
+      strong and&mdash;everything! Don't even speak of such a thing in jest.
+      What could happen?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Anything can happen,&rdquo; he answered, &ldquo;just anything. Happening's the one
+      thing you can't bet on. If I was betting, I'd put my money on the thing I
+      was sure couldn't happen. Look at this Temple Barholm song and dance! Look
+      at T. T. as he was half strangling in the blizzard up at Harlem and
+      thanking his stars little Munsberg didn't kick him out of his
+      confectionery store less than a year ago! So long as I'm all right, you're
+      all right. But I wanted you fixed, anyhow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He paused and looked at her questioningly for a moment. He wanted to say
+      something and he was not sure he ought. His reverence for her little
+      finenesses and reserves increased instead of wearing away. He was always
+      finding out new things about her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Say,&rdquo; he broke forth almost impetuously after his hesitation, &ldquo;I wish you
+      wouldn't call me Mr. Temple Barholm.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;D-do you?&rdquo; she fluttered. &ldquo;But what could I call you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; he answered, reddening a shade or so, &ldquo;I'd give a house and lot if
+      you could just call me Tem.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But it would sound so unbecoming, so familiar,&rdquo; she protested.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's just what I'm asking for,&rdquo; he said&mdash;&ldquo;some one to be familiar
+      with. I'm the familiar kind. That's what's the matter with me. I'd be
+      familiar with Pearson, but he wouldn't let me. I'd frighten him half to
+      death. He'd think that he wasn't doing his duty and earning his wages, and
+      that somehow he'd get fired some day without a character.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He drew nearer to her and coaxed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Couldn't you do it?&rdquo; he asked almost as though he were asking a favor of
+      a girl. &ldquo;Just Tem? I believe that would come easier to you than T. T. I
+      get fonder and fonder of you every day, Miss Alicia, honest Injun. And I'd
+      be so grateful to you if you'd just be that unbecomingly familiar.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He looked honestly in earnest; and if he grew fonder and fonder of her,
+      she without doubt had, in the face of everything, given her whole heart to
+      him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Might I call you Temple&mdash;to begin with?&rdquo; she asked. &ldquo;It touches me
+      so to think of your asking me. I will begin at once. Thank you&mdash;Temple,&rdquo;
+       with a faint gasp. &ldquo;I might try the other a little later.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was only a few evenings later that he told her about the flats in
+      Harlem. He had sent to New York for a large bundle of newspapers, and when
+      he opened them he read aloud an advertisement, and showed her a picture of
+      a large building given up entirely to &ldquo;flats.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He had realized from the first that New York life had a singular
+      attraction for her. The unrelieved dullness of her life&mdash;those few
+      years of youth in which she had stifled vague longings for the joys
+      experienced by other girls; the years of middle age spent in the dreary
+      effort to be &ldquo;submissive to the will of God,&rdquo; which, honestly translated,
+      signified submission to the exactions and domestic tyrannies of &ldquo;dear
+      papa&rdquo; and others like him&mdash;had left her with her capacities for
+      pleasure as freshly sensitive as a child's. The smallest change in the
+      routine of existence thrilled her with excitement. Tembarom's casual
+      references to his strenuous boyhood caused her eyes to widen with
+      eagerness to hear more. Having seen this, he found keen delight in telling
+      her stories of New York life&mdash;stories of himself or of other lads who
+      had been his companions. She would drop her work and gaze at him almost
+      with bated breath. He was an excellent raconteur when he talked of the
+      things he knew well. He had an unconscious habit of springing from his
+      seat and acting his scenes as he depicted them, laughing and using
+      street-boy phrasing:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's just like a tale,&rdquo; Miss Alicia would breathe, enraptured as he
+      jumped from one story to another. &ldquo;It's exactly like a wonderful tale.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She learned to know the New York streets when they blazed with heat, when
+      they were hard with frozen snow, when they were sloppy with melting slush
+      or bright with springtime sunshine and spring winds blowing, with pretty
+      women hurrying about in beflowered spring hats and dresses and the
+      exhilaration of the world-old springtime joy. She found herself hurrying
+      with them. She sometimes hung with him and his companions on the railing
+      outside dazzling restaurants where scores of gay people ate rich food in
+      the sight of their boyish ravenousness. She darted in and out among horses
+      and vehicles to find carriages after the theater or opera, where everybody
+      was dressed dazzlingly and diamonds glittered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, how rich everybody must have seemed to you&mdash;how cruelly rich,
+      poor little boy!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They looked rich, right enough,&rdquo; he answered when she said it. &ldquo;And there
+      seemed a lot of good things to eat all corralled in a few places. And you
+      wished you could be let loose inside. But I don't know as it seemed cruel.
+      That was the way it was, you know, and you couldn't help it. And there
+      were places where they'd give away some of what was left. I tell you, we
+      were in luck then.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was some spirit in his telling it all&mdash;a spirit which had
+      surely been with him through his hardest days, a spirit of young mirth in
+      rags&mdash;which made her feel subconsciously that the whole experience
+      had, after all, been somehow of the nature of life's high adventure. He
+      had never been ill or heart-sick, and he laughed when he talked of it, as
+      though the remembrance was not a recalling of disaster.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Clemmin' or no clemmin'. I wish I'd lived the loife tha's lived,&rdquo; Tummas
+      Hibblethwaite had said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her amazement would indeed have been great if she had been told that she
+      secretly shared his feeling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It seems as if somehow you had never been dull,&rdquo; was her method of
+      expressing it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dull! Holy cats! no,&rdquo; he grinned. &ldquo;There wasn't any time for being
+      anything. You just had to keep going.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She became in time familiar with Mrs. Bowse's boarding-house and boarders.
+      She knew Mrs. Peck and Mr. Jakes and the young lady from the notion
+      counter (those wonderful shops!). Julius and Jem and the hall bedroom and
+      the tilted chairs and cloud of smoke she saw so often that she felt at
+      home with them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Poor Mrs. Bowse,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;must have been a most respectable, motherly,
+      hard-working creature. Really a nice person of her class.&rdquo; She could not
+      quite visualize the &ldquo;parlor,&rdquo; but it must have been warm and comfortable.
+      And the pianola&mdash;a piano which you could play without even knowing
+      your notes&mdash;What a clever invention! America seemed full of the most
+      wonderfully clever things.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tembarom was actually uplifted in soul when he discovered that she laid
+      transparent little plans for leading him into talk about New York. She
+      wanted him to talk about it, and the Lord knows he wanted to talk about
+      himself. He had been afraid at first. She might have hated it, as Palford
+      did, and it would have hurt him somehow if she hadn't understood. But she
+      did. Without quite realizing the fact, she was beginning to love it, to
+      wish she had seen it. Her Somerset vicarage imagination did not allow of
+      such leaps as would be implied by the daring wish that sometime she might
+      see it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Tembarom's imagination was more athletic.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Jinks! wouldn't it be fine to take her there! The lark in London wouldn't
+      be ace high to it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Hutchinsons were not New Yorkers, but they had been part of the
+      atmosphere of Mrs. Bowse's. Mr. Hutchinson would of course be rather a
+      forward and pushing man to be obliged to meet, but Little Ann! She did so
+      like Little Ann! And the dear boy did so want, in his heart of hearts, to
+      talk about her at times. She did not know whether, in the circumstances,
+      she ought to encourage him; but he was so dear, and looked so much dearer
+      when he even said &ldquo;Little Ann,&rdquo; that she could not help occasionally
+      leading him gently toward the subject.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When he opened the newspapers and found the advertisements of the flats,
+      she saw the engaging, half-awkward humorousness come into his eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here's one that would do all right,&rdquo; he said&mdash;&ldquo;four rooms and a
+      bath, eleventh floor, thirty-five dollars a month.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He spread the newspaper on the table and rested on his elbow, gazing at it
+      for a few minutes wholly absorbed. Then he looked up at her and smiled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There's a plan of the rooms,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Would you like to look at it?
+      Shall I bring your chair up to the table while we go over it together?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He brought the chair, and side by side they went over it thoroughly. To
+      Miss Alicia it had all the interest of a new kind of puzzle. He explained
+      it in every detail. One of his secrets had been that on several days when
+      Galton's manner had made him hopeful he had visited certain flat buildings
+      and gone into their intricacies. He could therefore describe with color
+      their resources&mdash;the janitor; the elevator; the dumb-waiters to carry
+      up domestic supplies and carry down ashes and refuse; the refrigerator;
+      the unlimited supply of hot and cold water, the heating plan; the
+      astonishing little kitchen, with stationary wash-tubs; the telephone, if
+      you could afford it,&mdash;all the conveniences which to Miss Alicia,
+      accustomed to the habits of Rowcroft Vicarage, where you lugged cans of
+      water up-stairs and down if you took a bath or even washed your face;
+      seemed luxuries appertaining only to the rich and great.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How convenient! How wonderful! Dear me! Dear me!&rdquo; she said again and
+      again, quite flushed with excitement. &ldquo;It is like a fairy-story. And it's
+      not big at all, is it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You could get most of it into this,&rdquo; he answered, exulting. &ldquo;You could
+      get all of it into that big white-and gold parlor.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The white saloon?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He showed his teeth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I guess I ought to remember to call it that,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;but it always
+      makes me think of Kid MacMurphy's on Fourth Avenue. He kept what was
+      called a saloon, and he'd had it painted white.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did you know him?&rdquo; Miss Alicia asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Know him! Gee! no! I didn't fly as high as that. He'd have thought me
+      pretty fresh if I'd acted like I knew him. He thought he was one of the
+      Four Hundred. He'd been a prize-fighter. He was the fellow that knocked
+      out Kid Wilkens in four rounds.&rdquo; He broke off and laughed at himself.
+      &ldquo;Hear me talk to you about a tough like that!&rdquo; he ended, and he gave her
+      hand the little apologetic, protective pat which always made her heart
+      beat because it was so &ldquo;nice.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He drew her back to the advertisements, and drew such interesting pictures
+      of what the lives of two people&mdash;mother and son or father and
+      daughter or a young married couple who didn't want to put on style&mdash;might
+      be in the tiny compartments, that their excitement mounted again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This could be a bedroom, that could be a bedroom, that could be the
+      living-room, and if you put a bit of bright carpet on the hallway and hung
+      up a picture or so, it would look first-rate. He even went into the matter
+      of measurements, which made it more like putting a puzzle together than
+      ever, and their relief when they found they could fit a piece of furniture
+      he called &ldquo;a lounge&rdquo; into a certain corner was a thing of flushing
+      delight. The &ldquo;lounge,&rdquo; she found, was a sort of cot with springs. You
+      could buy them for three dollars, and when you put on a mattress and
+      covered it with a &ldquo;spread,&rdquo; you could sit on it in the daytime and sleep
+      on it at night, if you had to.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From measurements he went into calculations about the cost of things. He
+      had seen unpainted wooden tables you could put mahogany stain on, and
+      they'd look all you'd want. He'd seen a splendid little rocking-chair in
+      Second Avenue for five dollars, one of the padded kind that ladies like.
+      He had seen an arm-chair for a man that was only seven; but there mightn't
+      be room for both, and you'd have to have the rocking-chair. He had once
+      asked the price of a lot of plates and cups and saucers with roses on
+      them, and you could get them for six; and you didn't need a stove because
+      there was the range.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had once heard Little Ann talking to Mrs. Bowse about the price of
+      frying-pans and kettles, and they seemed to cost next to nothing. He'd
+      looked into store windows and noticed the prices of groceries and
+      vegetables and things like that&mdash;sugar, for instance; two people
+      wouldn't use much sugar in a week&mdash;and they wouldn't need a ton of
+      tea or flour or coffee. If a fellow had a mother or sister or wife who had
+      a head and knew about things, you could &ldquo;put it over&rdquo; on mighty little,
+      and have a splendid time together, too. You'd even be able to work in a
+      cheap seat in a theater every now and then. He laughed and flushed as he
+      thought of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Alicia had never had a doll's house. Rowcroft Vicarage did not run to
+      dolls and their belongings. Her thwarted longing for a doll's house had a
+      sort of parallel in her similarly thwarted longing for &ldquo;a little boy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And here was her doll's house so long, so long unpossessed! It was like
+      that, this absorbed contriving and fitting of furniture into corners. She
+      also flushed and laughed. Her eyes were so brightly eager and her cheeks
+      so pink that she looked quite girlish under her lace cap.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How pretty and cozy it might be made, how dear!&rdquo; she exclaimed. &ldquo;And one
+      would be so high up on the eleventh floor, that one would feel like a bird
+      in a nest.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His face lighted. He seemed to like the idea tremendously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, that's so,&rdquo; he laughed. &ldquo;That idea suits me down to the ground. A
+      bird in a nest. But there'd have to be two. One would be lonely. Say, Miss
+      Alicia, how would you like to live in a place like that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am sure any one would like it&mdash;if they had some dear relative with
+      them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He loved her &ldquo;dear relative,&rdquo; loved it. He knew how much it meant of what
+      had lain hidden unacknowledged, even unknown to her, through a lifetime in
+      her early-Victorian spinster breast.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let's go to New York and rent one and live in it together. Would you
+      come?&rdquo; he said, and though he laughed, he was not jocular in the usual
+      way. &ldquo;Would you, if we waked up and found this Temple Barholm thing was a
+      dream?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Something in his manner, she did not know what, puzzled her a little.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But if it were a dream, you would be quite poor again,&rdquo; she said,
+      smiling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I wouldn't. I'd get Galton to give me back the page. He'd do it quick&mdash;quick,&rdquo;
+       he said, still with a laugh. &ldquo;Being poor's nothing, anyhow. We'd have the
+      time of our lives. We'd be two birds in a nest. You can look out those
+      eleventh-story windows 'way over to the Bronx, and get bits of the river.
+      And perhaps after a while Ann would do like she said, and we'd be three
+      birds.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; she sighed ecstatically. &ldquo;How beautiful it would be! We should be a
+      little family!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So we should,&rdquo; he exulted. &ldquo;Think of T. T. with a family!&rdquo; He drew his
+      paper of calculations toward him again. &ldquo;Let's make believe we're going to
+      do it, and work out what it would cost&mdash;for three. You know about
+      housekeeping, don't you? Let's write down a list.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      If he had warmed to his work before, he warmed still more after this. Miss
+      Alicia was drawn into it again, and followed his fanciful plans with a new
+      fervor. They were like two children who had played at make-believe until
+      they had lost sight of commonplace realities.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Alicia had lived among small economies and could be of great
+      assistance to him. They made lists and added up lines of figures until the
+      fine, huge room and its thousands of volumes melted away. In the great
+      hall, guarded by warriors in armor, the powdered heads of the waiting
+      footmen drooped and nodded while the prices of pounds of butter and sugar
+      and the value of potatoes and flour and nutmegs were balanced with a
+      hectic joy, and the relative significance of dollars and cents and
+      shillings and half-crowns and five-cent pieces caused Miss Alicia a mild
+      delirium.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By the time that she had established the facts that a shilling was
+      something like twenty-five cents, a dollar was four and twopence, and
+      twenty-five dollars was something over five pounds, it was past midnight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They heard the clock strike the half-hour, and stopped to stare at each
+      other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tembarom got up with yet another laugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Say, I mustn't keep you up all night,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;But haven't we had a
+      fine time&mdash;haven't we? I feel as if I'd been there.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They had been there so entirely that Miss Alicia brought herself back with
+      difficulty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can scarcely believe that we have not,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I feel as if I
+      didn't like to leave it. It was so delightful.&rdquo; She glanced about her.
+      &ldquo;The room looks huge,&rdquo; she said&mdash;&ldquo;almost too huge to live in.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Doesn't it?&rdquo; he answered. &ldquo;Now you know how I feel.&rdquo; He gathered his
+      scraps of paper together with a feeling touch. &ldquo;I didn't want to come back
+      myself. When I get a bit of a grouch I shall jerk these out and go back
+      there again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, do let me go with you!&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I have so enjoyed it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You shall go whenever you like,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;We'll keep it up for a sort of
+      game on rainy days. How much is a dollar, Miss Alicia?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Four and twopence. And sugar is six cents a pound.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Go to the head,&rdquo; he answered. &ldquo;Right again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The opened roll of newspapers was lying on the table near her. They were
+      copies of The Earth, and the date of one of them by merest chance caught
+      her eye.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How odd!&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Those are old papers. Did you notice? Is it a
+      mistake? This one is dated&rdquo; She leaned forward, and her eye caught a word
+      in a head-line.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Klondike,&rdquo; she read. &ldquo;There's something in it about the Klondike.&rdquo; He
+      put his hand out and drew the papers away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't you read that,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I don't want you to go to bed and dream
+      about the Klondike. You've got to dream about the flat in Harlem.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; she answered. &ldquo;I mustn't think about sad things. The flat in Harlem
+      is quite happy. But it startled me to see that word.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I only sent for them&mdash;because I happened to want to look something
+      up,&rdquo; he explained. &ldquo;How much is a pound, Miss Alicia?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Four dollars and eighty-six cents,&rdquo; she replied, recovering herself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Go up head again. You're going to stay there.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      When she gave him her hand on their parting for the night he held it a
+      moment. A subtle combination of things made him do it. The calculations,
+      the measurements, the nest from which one could look out over the Bronx,
+      were prevailing elements in its make-up. Ann had been in each room of the
+      Harlem flat, and she always vaguely reminded him of Ann.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We are relations, ain't we?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am sure we often seem quite near relations&mdash;Temple.&rdquo; She added the
+      name with very pretty kindness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We're not distant ones any more, anyhow,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Are we near enough&mdash;would
+      you let me kiss you good night, Miss Alicia?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      An emotional flush ran up to her cap ribbons.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Indeed, my dear boy&mdash;indeed, yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Holding her hand with a chivalric, if slightly awkward, courtesy, he bent,
+      and kissed her cheek. It was a hearty, affectionately grateful young kiss,
+      which, while it was for herself, remotely included Ann.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's the first time I've ever said good night to any one like that,&rdquo; he
+      said. &ldquo;Thank you for letting me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He patted her hand again before releasing it. She went up-stairs blushing
+      and feeling rather as though she had been proposed to, and yet, spinster
+      though she was, somehow quite understanding about the nest and Ann.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0021" id="link2HCH0021">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXI
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Lady Mallowe and her daughter did not pay their visit to Asshawe Holt, the
+      absolute, though not openly referred to, fact being that they had not been
+      invited. The visit in question had merely floated in the air as a delicate
+      suggestion made by her ladyship in her letter to Mrs. Asshe Shaw, to the
+      effect that she and Joan were going to stay at Temple Barholm, the visit
+      to Asshawe they had partly arranged some time ago might now be fitted in.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The partial arrangement itself, Mrs. Asshe Shaw remarked to her eldest
+      daughter when she received the suggesting note, was so partial as to
+      require slight consideration, since it had been made &ldquo;by the woman
+      herself, who would push herself and her daughter into any house in England
+      if a back door were left open.&rdquo; In the civilly phrased letter she received
+      in answer to her own, Lady Mallowe read between the lines the point of
+      view taken, and writhed secretly, as she had been made to writhe scores of
+      times in the course of her career. It had happened so often, indeed, that
+      it might have been imagined that she had become used to it; but the woman
+      who acted as maid to herself and Joan always knew when &ldquo;she had tried to
+      get in somewhere&rdquo; and failed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The note of explanation sent immediately to Miss Alicia was at once adroit
+      and amiable. They had unfortunately been detained in London a day or two
+      past the date fixed for their visit to Asshawe, and Lady Mallowe would not
+      allow Mrs. Asshe Shawe, who had so many guests, to be inconvenienced by
+      their arriving late and perhaps disarranging her plans. So if it was quite
+      convenient, they would come to Temple Barholm a week earlier; but not, of
+      course, if that would be the least upsetting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When they arrived, Tembarom himself was in London. He had suddenly found
+      he was obliged to go. The business which called him was something which
+      could not be put off. He expected to return at once. It was made very easy
+      for him when he made his excuses to Palliser, who suggested that he might
+      even find himself returning by the same train with his guests, which would
+      give him opportunities. If he was detained, Miss Alicia could take charge
+      of the situation. They would quite understand when she explained. Captain
+      Palliser foresaw for himself some quiet entertainment in his own meeting
+      with the visitors. Lady Mallowe always provided a certain order of
+      amusement for him, and no man alive objected to finding interest and even
+      a certain excitement in the society of Lady Joan. It was her chief
+      characteristic that she inspired in a man a vague, even if slightly
+      irritated, desire to please her in some degree. To lead her on to talk in
+      her sometimes brilliant, always heartlessly unsparing, fashion, perhaps to
+      smile her shade of a bitter smile, gave a man something to do, especially
+      if he was bored. Palliser anticipated a possible chance of repeating the
+      dialogue of &ldquo;the ladies,&rdquo; not, however, going into the Jem Temple Barholm
+      part of it. When one finds a man whose idle life has generated in him the
+      curiosity which is usually called feminine, it frequently occupies him
+      more actively than he is aware or will admit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A fashionable male gossip is a curious development. Palliser was, upon the
+      whole, not aware that he had an intense interest in finding out the exact
+      reason why Lady Mallowe had not failed utterly in any attempt to drag her
+      daughter to this particular place, to be flung headlong, so to speak, at
+      this special man. Lady Mallowe one could run and read, but Lady Joan was
+      in this instance unexplainable. And as she never deigned the slightest
+      concealment, the story of the dialogue would no doubt cause her to show
+      her hand. She must have a hand, and it must be one worth seeing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was not he, however, who could either guess or understand. The
+      following would have been his summing up of her: &ldquo;Flaringly handsome girl,
+      brought up by her mother to one end. Bad temper to begin with. Girl who
+      might, if she lost her head, get into some frightful mess. Meets a
+      fascinating devil in the first season. A regular Romeo and Juliet passion
+      blazes up&mdash;all for love and the world well lost. All London looking
+      on. Lady Mallowe frantic and furious. Suddenly the fascinating devil
+      ruined for life, done for. Bolts, gets killed. Lady Mallowe triumphant.
+      Girl dragged about afterward like a beautiful young demon in chains.
+      Refuses all sorts of things. Behaves infernally. Nobody knows anything
+      else.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Nobody did know; Lady Mallowe herself did not. From the first year in
+      which Joan had looked at her with child consciousness she had felt that
+      there was antagonism in the deeps of her eyes. No mother likes to
+      recognize such a thing, and Lady Mallowe was a particularly vain woman.
+      The child was going to be an undeniable beauty, and she ought to adore the
+      mother who was to arrange her future. Instead of which, she plainly
+      disliked her. By the time she was three years old, the antagonism had
+      become defiance and rebellion. Lady Mallowe could not even indulge herself
+      in the satisfaction of showing her embryo beauty off, and thus preparing a
+      reputation for her. She was not cross or tearful, but she had the temper
+      of a little devil. She would not be shown off. She hated it, and her
+      bearing dangerously suggested that she hated her handsome young mother. No
+      effects could be produced with her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Before she was four the antagonism was mutual, and it increased with
+      years. The child was of a passionate nature, and had been born intensely
+      all her mother was not, and intensely not all her mother was. A throw-back
+      to some high-spirited and fiercely honest ancestor created in her a fury
+      at the sight of mean falsities and dishonors. Before she was old enough to
+      know the exact cause of her rage she was shaken by it. She thought she had
+      a bad temper, and was bad enough to hate her own mother without being able
+      to help it. As she grew older she found out that she was not really so bad
+      as she had thought, though she was obliged to concede that nothing
+      palliative could be said about the temper. It had been violent from the
+      first, and she had lived in an atmosphere which infuriated it. She did not
+      suppose such a thing could be controlled. It sometimes frightened her. Had
+      not the old Marquis of Norborough been celebrated through his entire life
+      for his furies? Was there not a hushed-up rumor that he had once thrown a
+      decanter at his wife, and so nearly killed her that people had been asking
+      one another in whispers if a peer of the realm could be hanged. He had
+      been born that way, so had she. Her school-room days had been a horror to
+      her, and also a terror, because she had often almost flung ink-bottles and
+      heavy rulers at her silly, lying governesses, and once had dug a pair of
+      scissors into one sneaking old maid fool's arm when she had made her &ldquo;see
+      red&rdquo; by her ignoble trickeries. Perhaps she would be hanged some day
+      herself. She once prayed for a week that she might be made better
+      tempered,&mdash;not that she believed in prayer,&mdash;and of course
+      nothing came of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Every year she lived she raged more furiously at the tricks she saw played
+      by her mother and every one who surrounded her; the very servants were
+      greater liars and pilferers than any other servants. Her mother was always
+      trying to get things from people which they did not want to give her. She
+      would carry off slights and snubs as though they were actual tributes, if
+      she could gain her end. The girl knew what the meaning of her own future
+      would be. Since she definitely disliked her daughter, Lady Mallowe did not
+      mince matters when they were alone. She had no money, she was extremely
+      good looking, she had a certain number of years in which to fight for her
+      own hand among the new debutantes who were presented every season. Her
+      first season over, the next season other girls would be fresher than she
+      was, and newer to the men who were worth marrying. Men like novelty. After
+      her second season the debutantes would seem fresher still by contrast.
+      Then people would begin to say, &ldquo;She was presented four or five years
+      ago.&rdquo; After that it would be all struggle,&mdash;every season it would be
+      worse. It would become awful. Unmarried women over thirty-five would speak
+      of her as though they had been in the nursery together. Married girls with
+      a child or so would treat her as though she were a maiden aunt. She knew
+      what was before her. Beggary stared them both in the face if she did not
+      make the most of her looks and waste no time. And Joan knew it was all
+      true, and that worse, far worse things were true also. She would be
+      obliged to spend a long life with her mother in cheap lodgings, a faded,
+      penniless, unmarried woman, railed at, taunted, sneered at, forced to be
+      part of humiliating tricks played to enable them to get into debt and then
+      to avoid paying what they owed. Had she not seen one horrible old woman of
+      their own rank who was an example of what poverty might bring one to, an
+      old harpy who tried to queen it over her landlady in an actual back
+      street, and was by turns fawned upon and disgustingly &ldquo;your ladyshiped&rdquo; or
+      outrageously insulted by her landlady?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then that first season! Dear, dear God! that first season when she met
+      Jem! She was not nineteen, and the facile world pretended to be at her
+      feet, and the sun shone as though London were in Italy, and the park was
+      marvelous with flowers, and there were such dances and such laughter!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And it was all so young&mdash;and she met Jem! It was at a garden-party at
+      a lovely old house on the river, a place with celebrated gardens which
+      would always come back to her memory as a riot of roses. The frocks of the
+      people on the lawn looked as though they were made of the petals of
+      flowers, and a mad little haunting waltz was being played by the band, and
+      there under a great copper birch on the green velvet turf near her stood
+      Jem, looking at her with dark, liquid, slanting eyes! They were only a few
+      feet from each other,&mdash;and he looked, and she looked, and the
+      haunting, mad little waltz played on, and it was as though they had been
+      standing there since the world began, and nothing else was true.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Afterward nothing mattered to either of them. Lady Mallowe herself ceased
+      to count. Now and then the world stops for two people in this unearthly
+      fashion. At such times, as far as such a pair are concerned, causes and
+      effects cease. Her bad temper fled, and she knew she would never feel its
+      furious lash again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With Jem looking at her with his glowing, drooping eyes, there would be no
+      reason for rage and shame. She confessed the temper to him and told of her
+      terror of it; he confessed to her his fondness for high play, and they
+      held each other's hands, not with sentimental youthful lightness, but with
+      the strong clasp of sworn comrades, and promised on honor that they would
+      stand by each other every hour of their lives against their worst selves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They would have kept the pact. Neither was a slight or dishonest creature.
+      The phase of life through which they passed is not a new one, but it is
+      not often so nearly an omnipotent power as was their three-months' dream.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It lasted only that length of time. Then came the end of the world. Joan
+      did not look fresh in her second season, and before it was over men were
+      rather afraid of her. Because she was so young the freshness returned to
+      her cheek, but it never came back to her eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What exactly had happened, or what she thought, it was impossible to know.
+      She had delicate, black brows, and between them appeared two delicate,
+      fierce lines. Her eyes were of a purplish-gray, &ldquo;the color of thunder,&rdquo; a
+      snubbed admirer had once said. Between their black lashes they were more
+      deeply thunder-colored. Her life with her mother was a thing not to be
+      spoken of. To the desperate girl's agony of rebellion against the horror
+      of fate Lady Mallowe's taunts and beratings were devilish. There was a
+      certain boudoir in the house in Hill Street which was to Joan like the
+      question chamber of the Inquisition. Shut up in it together, the two went
+      through scenes which in their cruelty would have done credit to the Middle
+      Ages. Lady Mallowe always locked the door to prevent the unexpected
+      entrance of a servant, but servants managed to hover about it, because her
+      ladyship frequently forgot caution so far as to raise her voice at times,
+      as ladies are not supposed to do.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We fight,&rdquo; Joan said with a short, horrible laugh one morning&mdash;&ldquo;we
+      fight like cats and dogs. No, like two cats. A cat-and-dog fight is more
+      quickly over. Some day we shall scratch each other's eyes out.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have you no shame?&rdquo; her mother cried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am burning with it. I am like St. Lawrence on his gridiron. 'Turn me
+      over on the other side,'&rdquo; she quoted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This was when she had behaved so abominably to the Duke of Merthshire that
+      he had actually withdrawn his more than half-finished proposal. That which
+      she hated more than all else was the God she had prayed to when she asked
+      she might be helped to control her temper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had not believed in Him at the time, but because she was frightened
+      after she had stuck the scissors into Fraulein she had tried the appeal as
+      an experiment. The night after she met Jem, when she went to her room in
+      Hill Street for the night, she knelt down and prayed because she suddenly
+      did believe. Since there was Jem in the world, there must be the other
+      somewhere.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As day followed day, her faith grew with her love. She told Jem about it,
+      and they agreed to say a prayer together at the same hour every night. The
+      big young man thought her piety beautiful, and, his voice was unsteady as
+      they talked. But she told him that she was not pious, but impious.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I want to be made good,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I have been bad all my life. I was a
+      bad child, I have been a bad girl; but now I must be good.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      On the night after the tragic card-party she went to her room and kneeled
+      down in a new spirit. She knelt, but not to cover her face, she knelt with
+      throat strained and her fierce young face thrown back and upward.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her hands were clenched to fists and flung out and shaken at the ceiling.
+      She said things so awful that her own blood shuddered as she uttered them.
+      But she could not&mdash;in her mad helplessness&mdash;make them awful
+      enough. She flung herself on the carpet at last, her arms outstretched
+      like a creature crucified face downward on the cross.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I believed in You!&rdquo; she gasped. &ldquo;The first moment you gave me a reason I
+      believed. I did! I did! We both said our prayer to You every night, like
+      children. And you've done this&mdash;this&mdash;this!&rdquo; And she beat with
+      her fists upon the floor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Several years had passed since that night, and no living being knew what
+      she carried in her soul. If she had a soul, she said to herself, it was
+      black&mdash;black. But she had none. Neither had Jem had one; when the
+      earth and stones had fallen upon him it had been the end, as it would have
+      been if he had been a beetle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This was the guest who was coming to the house where Miles Hugo smiled
+      from his frame in the picture-gallery&mdash;the house which would to-day
+      have been Jem's if T. Tembarom had not inherited it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tembarom returned some twenty-four hours after Miss Alicia had received
+      his visitors for him. He had been &ldquo;going into&rdquo; absorbing things in London.
+      His thoughts during his northward journey were puzzled and discouraged
+      ones. He sat in the corner of the railway carriage and stared out of the
+      window without seeing the springtime changes in the flying landscape.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The price he would have given for a talk with Ann would not have been easy
+      to compute. Her head, her level little head, and her way of seeing into
+      things and picking out facts without being rattled by what didn't really
+      count, would have been worth anything. The day itself was a discouraging
+      one, with heavy threatenings of rain which did not fall.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The low clouds were piles of dark-purple gray, and when the sun tried to
+      send lances of ominous yellow light through them, strange and lurid
+      effects were produced, and the heavy purple-gray masses rolled together
+      again. He wondered why he did not hear low rumblings of thunder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He went to his room at once when he reached home. He was late, and Pearson
+      told him that the ladies were dressing for dinner. Pearson was in waiting
+      with everything in readiness for the rapid performance of his duties.
+      Tembarom had learned to allow himself to be waited upon. He had, in fact,
+      done this for the satisfying of Pearson, whose respectful unhappiness
+      would otherwise have been manifest despite his efforts to conceal it. He
+      dressed quickly and asked some questions about Strangeways. Otherwise
+      Pearson thought he seemed preoccupied. He only made one slight joke.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You'd be a first-rate dresser for a quick-change artist, Pearson,&rdquo; he
+      remarked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On his way to the drawing-room he deflected from the direct path, turning
+      aside for a moment to the picture-gallery because for a reason of his own
+      he wanted to take a look at Miles Hugo. He took a look at Miles Hugo
+      oftener than Miss Alicia knew.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The gallery was dim and gloomy enough, now closing in in the purple-gray
+      twilight. He walked through it without glancing at the pictures until he
+      came to the tall boy in the satin and lace of Charles II period. He paused
+      there only for a short time, but he stood quite near the portrait, and
+      looked hard at the handsome face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Gee!&rdquo; he exclaimed under his breath, &ldquo;it's queer, gee!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then he turned suddenly round toward one of the big windows. He turned
+      because he had been startled by a sound, a movement. Some one was standing
+      before the window. For a second's space the figure seemed as though it was
+      almost one with the purple-gray clouds that were its background. It was a
+      tall young woman, and her dress was of a thin material of exactly their
+      color&mdash;dark-gray and purple at once. The wearer held her head high
+      and haughtily. She had a beautiful, stormy face, and the slender, black
+      brows were drawn together by a frown. Tembarom had never seen a girl as
+      handsome and disdainful. He had, indeed, never been looked at as she
+      looked at him when she moved slightly forward.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He knew who it was. It was the Lady Joan girl, and the sudden sight of her
+      momentarily &ldquo;rattled&rdquo; him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You quite gave me a jolt,&rdquo; he said awkwardly, and knowing that he said it
+      like a &ldquo;mutt.&rdquo; &ldquo;I didn't know any one was in the gallery.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What are you doing here?&rdquo; she asked. She spoke to him as though she were
+      addressing an intruding servant. There was emphasis on the word &ldquo;you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her intention was so evident that it increased his feeling of being
+      &ldquo;rattled.&rdquo; To find himself confronting deliberate ill nature of a superior
+      and finished kind was like being spoken to in a foreign language.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&mdash;I'm T. Tembarom.&rdquo; he answered, not able to keep himself from
+      staring because she was such a &ldquo;winner&rdquo; as to looks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;T. Tembarom?&rdquo; she repeated slowly, and her tone made him at once see what
+      a fool he had been to say it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I forgot,&rdquo; he half laughed. &ldquo;I ought to have said I'm Temple Barholm.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; was her sole comment. She actually stood still and looked him up and
+      down.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She knew perfectly well who he was, and she knew perfectly well that no
+      palliative view could possibly be taken by any well-bred person of her
+      bearing toward him. He was her host. She had come, a guest, to his house
+      to eat his bread and salt, and the commonest decency demanded that she
+      should conduct herself with civility. But she cared nothing for the
+      commonest, or the most uncommon, decency. She was thinking of other
+      things. As she had stood before the window she had felt that her soul had
+      never been so black as it was when she turned away from Miles Hugo's
+      portrait&mdash;never, never. She wanted to hurt people. Perhaps Nero had
+      felt as she did and was not so hideous as he seemed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The man's tailor had put him into proper clothes, and his features were
+      respectable enough, but nothing on earth could make him anything but what
+      he so palpably was. She had seen that much across the gallery as she had
+      watched him staring at Miles Hugo.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should think,&rdquo; she said, dropping the words slowly again, &ldquo;that you
+      would often forget that you are Temple Barholm.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You're right there,&rdquo; he answered. &ldquo;I can't nail myself down to it. It
+      seems like a sort of joke.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She looked him over again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is a joke,&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was as though she had slapped him in the face, though she said it so
+      quietly. He knew he had received the slap, and that, as it was a woman, he
+      could not slap back. It was a sort of surprise to her that he did not
+      giggle nervously and turn red and shuffle his feet in impotent misery. He
+      kept quite still a moment or so and looked at her, though not as she had
+      looked at him. She wondered if he was so thick-skinned that he did not
+      feel anything at all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's so,&rdquo; he admitted. &ldquo;That's so.&rdquo; Then he actually smiled at her. &ldquo;I
+      don't know how to behave myself, you see,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;You're Lady Joan
+      Fayre, ain't you? I'm mighty glad to see you. Happy to make your
+      acquaintance, Lady Joan.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He took her hand and shook it with friendly vigor before she knew what he
+      was going to do.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll bet a dollar dinner's ready,&rdquo; he added, &ldquo;and Burrill's waiting. It
+      scares me to death to keep Burrill waiting. He's got no use for me,
+      anyhow. Let's go and pacify him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He did not lead the way or drag her by the arm, as it seemed to her quite
+      probable that he might, as costermongers do on Hampstead Heath. He knew
+      enough to let her pass first through the door; and when Lady Mallowe
+      looked up to see her enter the drawing-room, he was behind her. To her
+      ladyship's amazement and relief, they came in, so to speak, together. She
+      had been spared the trying moment of assisting at the ceremony of their
+      presentation to each other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0022" id="link2HCH0022">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXII
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      In a certain sense she had been dragged to the place by her mother. Lady
+      Mallowe had many resources, and above all she knew how to weary her into
+      resistlessness which was almost indifference. There had been several
+      shameless little scenes in the locked boudoir. But though she had been
+      dragged, she had come with an intention. She knew what she would find
+      herself being forced to submit to if the intruder were not disposed of at
+      the outset, and if the manoeuvering began which would bring him to London.
+      He would appear at her elbow here and there and at every corner, probably
+      unaware that he was being made an offensive puppet by the astute
+      cleverness against which she could not defend herself, unless she made
+      actual scenes in drawing-rooms, at dinner-tables, in the very streets
+      themselves. Gifted as Lady Mallowe was in fine and light-handed dealing of
+      her cards in any game, her stakes at this special juncture were seriously
+      high. Joan knew what they were, and that she was in a mood touched with
+      desperation. The defenselessly new and ignorant Temple Barholm was to her
+      mind a direct intervention of Providence, and it was only Joan herself who
+      could rob her of the benefits and reliefs he could provide. With regard to
+      Lady Joan, though Palliser's quoted New Yorkism, &ldquo;wipe up the earth,&rdquo; was
+      unknown to her, the process she had in mind when she left London for
+      Lancashire would have been well covered by it. As in feudal days she might
+      have ordered the right hand of a creature such as this to be struck off,
+      forgetting that he was a man, so was she capable to-day of inflicting upon
+      him any hurt which might sweep him out of her way. She had not been a
+      tender-hearted girl, and in these years she was absolutely callous. The
+      fellow being what he was, she had not the resources she might have called
+      upon if he had been a gentleman. He would not understand the chills and
+      slights of good manners. In the country he would be easier to manage than
+      in town, especially if attacked in his first timidity before his new
+      grandeurs. His big house no doubt frightened him, his servants, the people
+      who were of a class of which he knew nothing. When Palliser told his story
+      she saw new openings. He would stand in servile awe of her and of others
+      like her. He would be afraid of her, to begin with, and she could make him
+      more so.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But though she had come to alarm him so that he would be put to absolute
+      flight, she had also come for another reason. She had never seen Temple
+      Barholm, and she had discovered before they had known each other a week
+      that it was Jem's secret passion. He had loved it with a slighted and
+      lonely child's romantic longing; he had dreamed of it as boy and man,
+      knowing that it must some time be his own, his home, and yet prevented by
+      his uncle's attitude toward him from daring to act as though he remembered
+      the fact. Old Mr. Temple Barholm's special humor had been that of a man
+      guarding against presumption.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jem had not intended to presume, but he had been snubbed with relentless
+      cruelty even for boyish expressions of admiration. And he had hid his
+      feeling in his heart until he poured it out to Joan. To-day it would have
+      been his. Together, together, they would have lived in it and loved every
+      stone of it, every leaf on every great tree, every wild daffodil nodding
+      in the green grass. Most people, God be thanked! can forget. The wise ones
+      train themselves beyond all else to forgetting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Joan had been a luckless, ill-brought-up, passionate child and girl. In
+      her Mayfair nursery she had been as little trained as a young savage.
+      Since her black hour she had forgotten nothing, allowed herself no
+      palliating moments. Her brief dream of young joy had been the one real
+      thing in her life. She absolutely had lain awake at night and
+      reconstructed the horror of Jem's death, had lived it over again, writhing
+      in agony on her bed, and madly feeling that by so doing she was holding
+      her love close to her life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And the man who stood in the place Jem had longed for, the man who sat at
+      the head of his table, was this &ldquo;thing!&rdquo; That was what she felt him to be,
+      and every hurt she could do him, every humiliation which should write
+      large before him his presumption and grotesque unfitness, would be a blow
+      struck for Jem, who could never strike a blow for himself again. It was
+      all senseless, but she had not want to reason. Fate had not reasoned in
+      her behalf. She watched Tembarom under her lids at the dinner-table.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had not wriggled or shuffled when she spoke to him in the gallery; he
+      did neither now, and made no obvious efforts to seem unembarrassed. He
+      used his knife and fork in odd ways, and he was plainly not used to being
+      waited upon. More than once she saw the servants restrain smiles. She
+      addressed no remarks to him herself, and answered with chill indifference
+      such things as he said to her. If conversation had flagged between him and
+      Mr. Palford because the solicitor did not know how to talk to him, it did
+      not even reach the point of flagging with her, because she would not talk
+      and did not allow it to begin. Lady Mallowe, sick with annoyance, was
+      quite brilliant. She drew out Miss Alicia by detailed reminiscences of a
+      visit paid to Rowlton Hall years before. The vicar had dined at the hall
+      while she had been there. She remembered perfectly his charm of manner and
+      powerful originality of mind, she said sweetly. He had spoken with such
+      affection of his &ldquo;little Alicia,&rdquo; who was such a help to him in his parish
+      work.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I thought he was speaking of a little girl at first,&rdquo; she said smilingly,
+      &ldquo;but it soon revealed itself that 'little Alicia' was only his caressing
+      diminutive.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A certain widening of Miss Alicia's fascinated eye, which could not remove
+      itself from her face, caused her to quail slightly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He was of course a man of great force of character and&mdash;and
+      expression,&rdquo; she added. &ldquo;I remember thinking at the time that his eloquent
+      frankness of phrase might perhaps seem even severe to frivolous creatures
+      like myself. A really remarkable personality.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;His sermons,&rdquo; faltered Miss Alicia, as a refuge, &ldquo;were indeed remarkable.
+      I am sure he must greatly have enjoyed his conversations with you. I am
+      afraid there were very few clever women in the neighborhood of Rowlton.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Casting a bitter side glance on her silent daughter, Lady Mallowe lightly
+      seized upon New York as a subject. She knew so much of it from delightful
+      New Yorkers. London was full of delightful New Yorkers. She would like
+      beyond everything to spend a winter in New York. She understood that the
+      season there was in the winter and that it was most brilliant. Mr. Temple
+      Barholm must tell them about it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Lady Joan, looking at him through narrowed lids, &ldquo;Mr. Temple
+      Barholm ought to tell us about it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She wanted to hear what he would say, to see how he would try to get out
+      of the difficulty or flounder staggeringly through it. Her mother knew in
+      an instant that her own speech had been a stupid blunder. She had put the
+      man into exactly the position Joan would enjoy seeing him in. But he
+      wasn't in a position, it appeared.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is the season, anyhow?&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;You've got one on me when you talk
+      about seasons.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In London,&rdquo; Miss Alicia explained courageously, &ldquo;it is the time when her
+      Majesty is at Buckingham Palace, and when the drawing-rooms are held, and
+      Parliament sits, and people come up to town and give balls.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She wished that Lady Mallowe had not made her remark just at this time.
+      She knew that the quietly moving servants were listening, and that their
+      civilly averted eyes had seen Captain Palliser smile and Lady Joan's
+      curious look, and that the whole incident would form entertainment for
+      their supper-table.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I guess they have it in the winter in New York, then, if that's it,&rdquo; he
+      said. &ldquo;There's no Buckingham Palace there, and no drawing-rooms, and
+      Congress sits in Washington. But New York takes it out in suppers at
+      Sherry's and Delmonico's and theaters and receptions. Miss Alicia knows
+      how I used to go to them when I was a little fellow, don't you, Miss
+      Alicia?&rdquo; he added, smiling at her across the table.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have told me,&rdquo; she answered. She noticed that Burrill and the footmen
+      stood at attention in their places.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I used to stand outside in the snow and look in through the windows at
+      the people having a good time,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Us kids that were selling
+      newspapers used to try to fill ourselves up with choosing whose plate we'd
+      take if we could get at it. Beefsteak and French fried potatoes were the
+      favorites, and hot oyster stews. We were so all-fired hungry!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How pathetic!&rdquo; exclaimed Lady Mallowe. &ldquo;And how interesting, now that it
+      is all over!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She knew that her manner was gushing, and Joan's slight side glance of
+      subtle appreciation of the fact exasperated her almost beyond endurance.
+      What could one do, what could one talk about, without involving oneself in
+      difficulties out of which one's hasty retreat could be effected only by
+      gushing? Taking into consideration the awkwardness of the whole situation
+      and seeing Joan's temper and attitude, if there had not been so much at
+      stake she would have received a summoning telegram from London the next
+      day and taken flight. But she had been forced to hold her ground before in
+      places she detested or where she was not wanted, and she must hold it
+      again until she had found out the worst or the best. And, great heaven!
+      how Joan was conducting herself, with that slow, quiet insultingness of
+      tone and look, the wicked, silent insolence of bearing which no man was
+      able to stand, however admiringly he began! The Duke of Merthshire had
+      turned his back upon it even after all the world had known his intentions,
+      even after the newspapers had prematurely announced the engagement and she
+      herself had been convinced that he could not possibly retreat. She had
+      worked desperately that season, she had fawned on and petted newspaper
+      people, and stooped to little things no one but herself could have
+      invented and which no one but herself knew of. And never had Joan been so
+      superb; her beauty had seemed at its most brilliant height. The match
+      would have been magnificent; but he could not stand her, and would not.
+      Why, indeed, should any man? She glanced at her across the table. A
+      beauty, of course; but she was thinner, and her eyes had a hungry
+      fierceness in them, and the two delicate, straight lines between her black
+      brows were deepening.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And there were no dukes on the horizon. Merthshire had married almost at
+      once, and all the others were too young or had wives already. If this man
+      would take her, she might feel herself lucky. Temple Barholm and seventy
+      thousand a year were not to be trifled with by a girl who had made herself
+      unpopular and who was twenty-six. And for her own luck the moment had come
+      just before it was too late&mdash;a second marriage, wealth, the end of
+      the hideous struggle. Joan was the obstacle in her path, and she must be
+      forced out of it. She glanced quickly at Tembarom. He was trying to talk
+      to Joan now. He was trying to please her. She evidently had a fascination
+      for him. He looked at her in a curious way when she was not looking at
+      him. It was a way different from that of other men whom she had watched as
+      they furtively stared. It had struck her that he could not take his eyes
+      away. That was because he had never before been on speaking terms with a
+      woman of beauty and rank.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Joan herself knew that he was trying to please her, and she was asking
+      herself how long he would have the courage and presumption to keep it up.
+      He could scarcely be enjoying it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was not enjoying it, but he kept it up. He wanted to be friends with
+      her for more reasons than one. No one had ever remained long at enmity
+      with him. He had &ldquo;got over&rdquo; a good many people in the course of his
+      career, as he had &ldquo;got over&rdquo; Joseph Hutchinson. This had always been
+      accomplished because he presented no surface at which arrows could be
+      thrown. She was the hardest proposition he had ever come up against, he
+      was thinking; but if he didn't let himself be fool enough to break loose
+      and get mad, she'd not hate him so much after a while. She would begin to
+      understand that it wasn't his fault; then perhaps he could get her to make
+      friends. In fact, if she had been able to read his thoughts, there is no
+      certainty as to how far her temper might have carried her. But she could
+      see him only as a sharp-faced, common American of the shop-boy class,
+      sitting at the head of Jem Temple Barholm's table, in his chair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As they passed through the hall to go to the drawing-room after the meal
+      was over, she saw a neat, pale young man speaking to Burrill and heard a
+      few of his rather anxiously uttered words.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The orders were that he was always to be told when Mr. Strangeways was
+      like this, under all circumstances. I can't quiet him, Mr. Burrill. He
+      says he must see him at once.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Burrill walked back stiffly to the dining-room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It won't trouble HIM much to be disturbed at his wine,&rdquo; he muttered
+      before going. &ldquo;He doesn't know hock from port.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      When the message was delivered to him, Tembarom excused himself with
+      simple lack of ceremony.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I 'll be back directly,&rdquo; he said to Palliser. &ldquo;Those are good cigars.&rdquo;
+       And he left the room without going into the matter further.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Palliser took one of the good cigars, and in taking it exchanged a glance
+      with Burrill which distantly conveyed the suggestion that perhaps he had
+      better remain for a moment or so. Captain Palliser's knowledge of
+      interesting detail was obtained &ldquo;by chance here and there,&rdquo; he sometimes
+      explained, but it was always obtained with a light and casual air.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am not sure,&rdquo; he remarked as he took the light Burrill held for him and
+      touched the end of his cigar&mdash;&ldquo;I am not quite sure that I know
+      exactly who Mr. Strangeways is.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's the gentleman, sir, that Mr. Temple Barholm brought over from New
+      York,&rdquo; replied Burrill with a stolidity clearly expressive of distaste.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Indeed, from New York! Why doesn't one see him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's not in a condition to see people, sir,&rdquo; said Burrill, and Palliser's
+      slightly lifted eyebrow seeming to express a good deal, he added a
+      sentence, &ldquo;He's not all there, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;From New York, and not all there. What seems to be the matter?&rdquo; Palliser
+      asked quietly. &ldquo;Odd idea to bring a lunatic all the way from America.
+      There must be asylums there.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Us servants have orders to keep out of the way,&rdquo; Burrill said with
+      sterner stolidity. &ldquo;He's so nervous that the sight of strangers does him
+      harm. I may say that questions are not encouraged.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then I must not ask any more,&rdquo; said Captain Palliser. &ldquo;I did not know I
+      was edging on to a mystery.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wasn't aware that I was myself, sir,&rdquo; Burrill remarked, &ldquo;until I asked
+      something quite ordinary of Pearson, who is Mr. Temple Barholm's valet,
+      and it was not what he said, but what he didn't, that showed me where I
+      stood.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A mystery is an interesting thing to have in a house,&rdquo; said Captain
+      Palliser without enthusiasm. He smoked his cigar as though he was enjoying
+      its aroma, and even from his first remark he had managed not to seem to be
+      really quite addressing himself to Burrill. He was certainly not talking
+      to him in the ordinary way; his air was rather that of a gentleman
+      overhearing casual remarks in which he was only vaguely interested. Before
+      Burrill left the room, however, and he left it under the impression that
+      he had said no more than civility demanded, Captain Palliser had reached
+      the point of being able to deduce a number of things from what he, like
+      Pearson, had not said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0023" id="link2HCH0023">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXIII
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The man who in all England was most deeply submerged in deadly boredom
+      was, the old Duke of Stone said with wearied finality, himself. He had
+      been a sinful young man of finished taste in 1820; he had cultivated these
+      tastes, which were for literature and art and divers other things, in the
+      most richly alluring foreign capitals until finding himself becoming an
+      equally sinful and finished elderly man, he had decided to marry. After
+      the birth of her four daughters, his wife had died and left them on his
+      hands. Developing at that time a tendency to rheumatic gout and a daily
+      increasing realization of the fact that the resources of a poor dukedom
+      may be hopelessly depleted by an expensive youth passed brilliantly in
+      Vienna, Paris, Berlin, and London, when it was endurable, he found it
+      expedient to give up what he considered the necessities of life and to
+      face existence in the country in England. It is not imperative that one
+      should enter into detail. There was much, and it covered years during
+      which his four daughters grew up and he &ldquo;grew down,&rdquo; as he called it. If
+      his temper had originally been a bad one, it would doubtless have become
+      unbearable; as he had been born an amiable person, he merely sank into the
+      boredom which threatens extinction. His girls bored him, his neighbors
+      bored him, Stone Hover bored him, Lancashire bored him, England had always
+      bored him except at abnormal moments.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I read a great deal, I walk when I can,&rdquo; this he wrote once to a friend
+      in Rome. &ldquo;When I am too stiff with rheumatic gout, I drive myself about in
+      a pony chaise and feel like an aunt in a Bath chair. I have so far escaped
+      the actual chair itself. It perpetually rains here, I may mention, so I
+      don't get out often. You who gallop on white roads in the sunshine and
+      hear Italian voices and vowels, figure to yourself your friend trundling
+      through damp, lead-colored Lancashire lanes and being addressed in the
+      Lancashire dialect. But so am I driven by necessity that I listen to it
+      gratefully. I want to hear village news from villagers. I have become a
+      gossip. It is a wonderful thing to be a gossip. It assists one to get
+      through one's declining years. Do not wait so long as I did before
+      becoming one. Begin in your roseate middle age.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      An attack of gout more severe than usual had confined him to his room for
+      some time after the arrival of the new owner of Temple Barholm. He had, in
+      fact, been so far indisposed that a week or two had passed before he had
+      heard of him. His favorite nurse had been chosen by him, because she was a
+      comfortable village woman whom he had taught to lay aside her proper awe
+      and talk to him about her own affairs and her neighbors when he was in the
+      mood to listen. She spoke the broadest possible dialect,&mdash;he liked
+      dialect, having learned much in his youth from mellow-eyed Neapolitan and
+      Tuscan girls,&mdash;and she had never been near a hospital, but had been
+      trained by the bedsides of her children and neighbors.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I were a writing person, she would become literature, impinging upon
+      Miss Mitford's tales of 'Our Village,' Miss Austen's varieties, and the
+      young Bronte woman's 'Wuthering Heights.' Mon Dieu! what a resource it
+      would be to be a writing person!&rdquo; he wrote to the Roman friend.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To his daughters he said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She brings back my tenderest youth. When she pokes the fire in the
+      twilight and lumbers about the room, making me comfortable, I lie in my
+      bed and watch the flames dancing on the ceiling and feel as if I were six
+      and had the measles. She tucks me in, my dears&mdash;she tucks me in, I
+      assure you. Sometimes I feel it quite possible that she will bend over and
+      kiss me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She had tucked him in luxuriously in his arm-chair by the fire on the
+      first day of his convalescence, and as she gave him his tray, with his
+      beef tea and toast, he saw that she contained anecdotal information of
+      interest which tactful encouragement would cause to flow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now that I am well enough to be entertained, Braddle,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;tell me
+      what has been happening.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A graidely lot, yore Grace,&rdquo; she answered; &ldquo;but not so much i' Stone
+      Hover as i' Temple Barholm. He's coom!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then the duke vaguely recalled rumors he had heard sometime before his
+      indisposition.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The new Mr. Temple Barholm? He's an American, isn't he? The lost heir who
+      had to be sought for high and low&mdash;principally low, I understand.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The beef tea was excellently savory, the fire was warm, and relief from
+      two weeks of pain left a sort of Nirvana of peace. Rarely had the duke
+      passed a more delightfully entertaining morning. There was a richness in
+      the Temple Barholm situation, as described in detail by Mrs. Braddle,
+      which filled him with delight. His regret that he was not a writing person
+      intensified itself. Americans had not appeared upon the horizon in Miss
+      Mitford's time, or in Miss Austen's, or in the Brontes' the type not
+      having entirely detached itself from that of the red Indian. It struck
+      him, however, that Miss Austen might have done the best work with this
+      affair if she had survived beyond her period. Her finely demure and sly
+      sense of humor would have seen and seized upon its opportunities. Stark
+      moorland life had not encouraged humor in the Brontes, and village
+      patronage had not roused in Miss Mitford a sense of ironic contrasts. Yes,
+      Jane Austen would have done it best.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That the story should be related by Mrs. Braddle gave it extraordinary
+      flavor. No man or woman of his own class could have given such a
+      recounting, or revealed so many facets of this jewel of entertainment. He
+      and those like him could have seen the thing only from their own amused,
+      outraged, bewildered, or cynically disgusted point of view. Mrs. Braddle
+      saw it as the villagers saw it&mdash;excited, curious, secretly hopeful of
+      undue lavishness from &ldquo;a chap as had nivver had brass before an' wants to
+      chuck it away for brag's sake,&rdquo; or somewhat alarmed at the possible
+      neglecting of customs and privileges by a person ignorant of memorial
+      benefactions. She saw it as the servants saw it&mdash;secretly disdainful,
+      outwardly respectful, waiting to discover whether the sacrifice of
+      professional distinction would be balanced by liberties permitted and
+      lavishness of remuneration and largess. She saw it also from her own point
+      of view&mdash;that of a respectable cottage dweller whose
+      great-great-grandfather had been born in a black-and-white timbered house
+      in a green lane, and who knew what were &ldquo;gentry ways&rdquo; and what nature of
+      being could never even remotely approach the assumption of them. She had
+      seen Tembarom more than once, and summed him up by no means ill-naturedly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's not such a bad-lookin' chap. He is na short-legged or turn-up-nosed,
+      an' that's summat. He con stride along, an' he looks healthy enow for aw
+      he's thin. A thin chap nivver looks as common as a fat un. If he wur
+      pudgy, it ud be a lot more agen him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think, perhaps,&rdquo; amiably remarked the duke, sipping his beef tea, &ldquo;that
+      you had better not call him a `chap,' Braddle. The late Mr. Temple Barholm
+      was never referred to as a `chap' exactly, was he?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Braddle gave vent to a sort of internal-sounding chuckle. She had not
+      meant to be impertinent, and she knew her charge was aware that she had
+      not, and that he was neither being lofty or severe with her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Eh, I'd 'a'loiked to ha' heard somebody do it when he was nigh,&rdquo; she
+      said. &ldquo;Happen I'd better be moindin' ma P's an' Q's a bit more. But that's
+      what this un is, yore Grace. He's a `chap' out an' out. An' theer's some
+      as is sayin' he's not a bad sort of a chap either. There's lots o' funny
+      stories about him i' Temple Barholm village. He goes in to th' cottages
+      now an' then, an' though a fool could see he does na know his place, nor
+      other people's, he's downreet open-handed. An' he maks foak laugh. He took
+      a lot o' New York papers wi' big pictures in 'em to little Tummas
+      Hibblethwaite. An' wot does tha think he did one rainy day? He walks in to
+      the owd Dibdens' cottage, an' sits down betwixt 'em as they sit one each
+      side o' th' f're, an' he tells 'em they've got to cheer him up a bit becos
+      he's got nought to do. An' he shows 'em th' picter-papers, too, an' tells
+      'em about New York, an' he ends up wi' singin' 'em a comic song. They was
+      frightened out o' their wits at first, but somehow he got over 'em, an'
+      made 'em laugh their owd heads nigh off.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her charge laid his spoon down, and his shrewd, lined face assumed a new
+      expression of interest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did he! Did he, indeed!&rdquo; he exclaimed. &ldquo;Good Lord! what an exhilarating
+      person! I must go and see him. Perhaps he'd make me laugh my `owd head
+      nigh off.' What a sensation!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was really immense color in the anecdotes and in the side views
+      accompanying them; the routing out of her obscurity of the isolated,
+      dependent spinster relative, for instance. Delicious! The man was either
+      desperate with loneliness or he was one of the rough-diamond benefactors
+      favored by novelists, in which latter case he would not be so
+      entertaining. Pure self-interest caused the Duke of Stone quite
+      unreservedly to hope that he was anguished by the unaccustomedness of his
+      surroundings, and was ready to pour himself forth to any one who would
+      listen. There would be originality in such a situation, and one could draw
+      forth revelations worth forming an audience to. He himself had thought
+      that the volte-face such circumstances demanded would surely leave a man
+      staring at things foreign enough to bore him. This, indeed, had been one
+      of his cherished theories; but the only man he had ever encountered who
+      had become a sort of millionaire between one day and another had been an
+      appalling Yorkshire man, who had had some extraordinary luck with
+      diamond-mines in South Africa, and he had been simply drunk with
+      exhilaration and the delight of spending money with both hands, while he
+      figuratively slapped on the back persons who six weeks before would have
+      kicked him for doing it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This man did not appear to be excited. The duke mentally rocked with
+      gleeful appreciation of certain things Mrs. Braddle detailed. She gave, of
+      course, Burrill's version of the brief interview outside the dining-room
+      door when Miss Alicia's status in the household bad been made clear to
+      him. But the duke, being a man endowed with a subtle sense of shades, was
+      wholly enlightened as to the inner meaning of Burrill's master.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, that was good,&rdquo; he said to himself, almost chuckling. &ldquo;By the Lord!
+      the man might have been a gentleman.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      When to all this was added the story of the friend or poor relative, or
+      what not, who was supposed to be &ldquo;not quoite reet i' th' yed,&rdquo; and was
+      taken care of like a prince, in complete isolation, attended by a valet,
+      visited and cheered up by his benefactor, he felt that a boon had indeed
+      been bestowed upon him. It was a nineteenth century &ldquo;Mysteries of Udolpho&rdquo;
+       in embryo, though too greatly diluted by the fact that though the stranger
+      was seen by no one, the new Temple Barholm made no secret of him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If he had only made a secret of him, the whole thing would have been
+      complete. There was of course in the situation a discouraging suggestion
+      that Temple Barholm MIGHT turn out to be merely the ordinary noble
+      character bestowing boons.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will burn a little candle to the Virgin and offer up prayers that he
+      may NOT. That sort of thing would have no cachet whatever, and would only
+      depress me,&rdquo; thought his still sufficiently sinful Grace.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When, Braddle, do you think I shall be able to take a drive again?&rdquo; he
+      asked his nurse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Braddle was not prepared to say upon her own responsibility, but the
+      doctor would tell him when he came in that afternoon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I feel astonishingly well, considering the sharpness of the attack,&rdquo; her
+      patient said. &ldquo;Our little talk has quite stimulated me. When I go out,&rdquo;&mdash;there
+      was a gleam in the eye he raised to hers,&mdash;&ldquo;I am going to call at
+      Temple Barholm.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I knowed tha would,&rdquo; she commented with maternal familiarity. &ldquo;I dunnot
+      believe tha could keep away.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And through the rest of the morning, as he sat and gazed into the fire,
+      she observed that he several times chuckled gently and rubbed his
+      delicate, chill, swollen knuckled hands together.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A few weeks later there were some warm days, and his Grace chose to go out
+      in his pony carriage. Much as he detested the suggestion of &ldquo;the aunt in
+      the Bath chair,&rdquo; he had decided that he found the low, informal vehicle
+      more entertaining than a more imposing one, and the desperation of his
+      desire to be entertained can be comprehended only by those who have known
+      its parallel. If he was not in some way amused, he found himself whirling,
+      with rheumatic gout and seventy years, among recollections of vivid
+      pictures better hung in galleries with closed doors. It was always
+      possible to stop the pony carriage to look at views&mdash;bits of
+      landscape caught at by vision through trees or under their spreading
+      branches, or at the end of little green-hedged lanes apparently adorned
+      with cottages, or farm-houses with ricks and barn-yards and pig-pens
+      designed for the benefit of Morland and other painters of rusticity. He
+      could also slacken the pony's pace and draw up by roadsides where solitary
+      men sat by piles of stone, which they broke at leisure with hammers as
+      though they were cracking nuts. He had spent many an agreeable half-hour
+      in talk with a road-mender who could be led into conversation and was left
+      elated by an extra shilling. As in years long past he had sat under
+      chestnut-trees in the Apennines and shared the black bread and sour wine
+      of a peasant, so in these days he frequently would have been glad to sit
+      under a hedge and eat bread and cheese with a good fellow who did not know
+      him and whose summing up of the domestic habits and needs of &ldquo;th' workin'
+      mon&rdquo; or the amiabilities or degeneracies of the gentry would be expressed,
+      figuratively speaking, in thoughts and words of one syllable. The pony,
+      however, could not take him very far afield, and one could not lunch on
+      the grass with a stone-breaker well within reach of one's own castle
+      without an air of eccentricity which he no more chose to assume than he
+      would have chosen to wear long hair and a flowing necktie. Also, rheumatic
+      gout had not hovered about the days in the Apennines. He did not, it might
+      be remarked, desire to enter into conversation with his humble fellow-man
+      from altruistic motives. He did it because there was always a chance more
+      or less that he would be amused. He might hear of little tragedies or
+      comedies,&mdash;he much preferred the comedies,&mdash;and he often learned
+      new words or phrases of dialect interestingly allied to pure Anglo-Saxon.
+      When this last occurred, he entered them in a notebook he kept in his
+      library. He sometimes pretended to himself that he was going to write a
+      book on dialects; but he knew that he was a dilettante sort of creature
+      and would really never do it. The pretense, however, was a sort of asset.
+      In dire moments during rains or foggy weather when he felt twinges and had
+      read till his head ached, he had wished that he had not eaten all his cake
+      at the first course of life's feast, that he had formed a habit or so
+      which might have survived and helped him to eke out even an easy-chair
+      existence through the last courses. He did not find consolation in the use
+      of the palliative adjective as applied to himself. A neatly cynical sense
+      of humor prevented it. He knew he had always been an entirely selfish man
+      and that he was entirely selfish still, and was not revoltingly fretful
+      and domineering only because he was constitutionally unirritable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was, however, amiably obstinate, and was accustomed to getting his own
+      way in most things. On this day of his outing he insisted on driving
+      himself in the face of arguments to the contrary. He was so fixed in his
+      intention that his daughters and Mrs. Braddle were obliged to admit
+      themselves overpowered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nonsense! Nonsense!&rdquo; he protested when they besought him to allow himself
+      to be driven by a groom. &ldquo;The pony is a fat thing only suited to a Bath
+      chair. He does not need driving. He doesn't go when he is driven. He
+      frequently lies down and puts his cheek on his hand and goes to sleep, and
+      I am obliged to wait until he wakes up.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But, papa, dear,&rdquo; Lady Edith said, &ldquo;your poor hands are not very strong.
+      And he might run away and kill you. Please do be reasonable!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear girl,&rdquo; he answered, &ldquo;if he runs, I shall run after him and kill
+      him when I catch him. George,&rdquo; he called to the groom holding the plump
+      pony's head, &ldquo;tell her ladyship what this little beast's name is.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Indolent Apprentice, your Grace,&rdquo; the groom answered, touching his
+      hat and suppressing a grin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I called him that a month ago,&rdquo; said the duke. &ldquo;Hogarth would have
+      depicted all sorts of evil ends for him. Three weeks since, when I was in
+      bed being fed by Braddle with a spoon, I could have outrun him myself. Let
+      George follow me on a horse if you like, but he must keep out of my sight.
+      Half a mile behind will do.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He got into the phaeton, concealing his twinges with determination, and
+      drove down the avenue with a fine air, sitting erect and smiling. Indoor
+      existence had become unendurable, and the spring was filling the woods.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I love the spring,&rdquo; he murmured to himself. &ldquo;I am sentimental about it. I
+      love sentimentality, in myself, when I am quite alone. If I had been a
+      writing person, I should have made verses every year in April and sent
+      them to magazines&mdash;and they would have been returned to me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Indolent Apprentice was, it is true, fat, though comely, and he was
+      also entirely deserving of his name. Like his Grace of Stone, however, he
+      had seen other and livelier days, and now and then he was beset by
+      recollections. He was still a rather high, though slow, stepper&mdash;the
+      latter from fixed preference. He had once stepped fast, as well as with a
+      spirited gait. During his master's indisposition he had stood in his loose
+      box and professed such harmlessness that he had not been annoyed by being
+      taken out for exercise as regularly as he might have been. He had champed
+      his oats and listened to the repartee of the stable-boys, and he had,
+      perhaps, felt the coming of the spring when the cuckoo insisted upon it
+      with thrilling mellowness across the green sweeps of the park land.
+      Sometimes it made him sentimental, as it made his master, sometimes it
+      made him stamp his small hoofs restlessly in his straw and want to go out.
+      He did not intend, when he was taken out, to emulate the Industrious
+      Apprentice by hastening his pace unduly and raising false hopes for the
+      future, but he sniffed in the air the moist green of leafage and damp
+      moss, massed with yellow primroses cuddling in it as though for warmth,
+      and he thought of other fresh scents and the feel of the road under a
+      pony's feet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Therefore, when he found himself out in the world again, he shook his head
+      now and then and even tossed it with the recurring sensations of a pony
+      who was a mere boy and still slight in the waist.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You feel it too, do you?&rdquo; said the duke. &ldquo;I won't remind you of your
+      years.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The drive from Stone Hover to the village of Temple Barholm was an easy
+      one, of many charms of leaf-arched lanes and green-edged road. The duke
+      had always had a partiality for it, and he took it this morning. He would
+      probably have taken it in any case, but Mrs. Braddle's anecdotes had been
+      floating through his mind when he set forth and perhaps inclined him in
+      its direction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The groom was a young man of three and twenty, and he felt the spring
+      also. The horse he rode was a handsome animal, and he himself was not
+      devoid of a healthy young man's good looks. He knew his belted livery was
+      becoming to him, and when on horseback he prided himself on what he
+      considered an almost military bearing. Sarah Hibson, farmer Hibson's
+      dimple-chinned and saucy-eyed daughter, had been &ldquo;carryin' on a good bit&rdquo;
+       with a soldier who was a smart, well-set-up, impudent fellow, and it was
+      the manifest duty of any other young fellow who had considered himself to
+      be &ldquo;walking out with her&rdquo; to look after his charges. His Grace had been
+      most particular about George's keeping far enough behind him; and as half
+      a mile had been mentioned as near enough, certainly one was absolved from
+      the necessity of keeping in sight. Why should not one turn into the lane
+      which ended at Hibson's farm-yard, and drop into the dairy, and &ldquo;have it
+      out wi' Sarah?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Dimpled chins and saucy eyes, and bare, dimpled arms and hands patting
+      butter while heads are tossed in coquettishly alluring defiance, made even
+      &ldquo;having it out&rdquo; an attractive and memory-obscuring process. Sarah was a
+      plump and sparkling imp of prettiness, and knew the power of every sly
+      glance and every dimple and every golden freckle she possessed. George did
+      not know it so well, and in ten minutes had lost his head and entirely
+      forgotten even the half-mile behind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was lover-like, he was masterful, he brought the spring with him; he
+      &ldquo;carried on,&rdquo; as Sarah put it, until he had actually out-distanced the
+      soldier, and had her in his arms, kissing her as she laughed and prettily
+      struggled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Shame o' tha face! Shame o' tha face, George!&rdquo; she scolded and dimpled
+      and blushed. &ldquo;Wilt tha be done now? Wilt tha be done? I'll call mother.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And at that very moment mother came without being called, running, red of
+      face, heavy-footed, and panting, with her cap all on one side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Th' duke's run away! Th' duke's run away!&rdquo; she shouted. &ldquo;Jo seed him.
+      Pony got freetened at summat&mdash;an' what art doin' here, George Bind?
+      Get o' thy horse an' gallop. If he's killed, tha 'rt a ruined man.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was an odd turn of chance in it, the duke thought afterward. Though
+      friskier than usual, the Indolent Apprentice had behaved perfectly well
+      until they neared the gates of Temple Barholm, which chanced to be open
+      because a cart had just passed through. And it was not the cart's fault,
+      for the Indolent Apprentice regarded it with friendly interest. It
+      happened, however, that perhaps being absorbed in the cart, which might
+      have been drawn by a friend or even a distant relative, the Indolent
+      Apprentice was horribly startled by a large rabbit which leaped out of the
+      hedge almost under his nose, and, worse still, was followed the next
+      instant by another rabbit even larger and more sudden and unexpected in
+      its movements. The Indolent Apprentice snorted, pawed, whirled, dashed
+      through the open gateway,&mdash;the duke's hands were even less strong
+      than his daughter had thought,&mdash;and galloped, head in air and bit
+      between teeth, up the avenue, the low carriage rocking from side to side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Damn! Damn!&rdquo; cried the duke, rocking also. &ldquo;Oh, damn! I shall be killed
+      in a runaway perambulator!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And ridiculous as it was, things surged through his brain, and once,
+      though he laughed at himself bitterly afterward, he gasped &ldquo;Ah, Heloise;&rdquo;
+       as he almost whirled over a jagged tree-stump; gallop and gallop and
+      gallop, off the road and through trees, and back again on to the sward,
+      and gallop and gallop and jerk and jolt and jerk, and he was nearing the
+      house, and a long-legged young man ran down the steps, pushing aside
+      footmen, and was ahead of the drunken little beast of a pony, and caught
+      him just as the phaeton overturned and shot his grace safely though not
+      comfortably in a heap upon the grass.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was of course no trifle of a shock, but its victim's sensations gave
+      him strong reason to hope, as he rolled over, that no bones were broken.
+      The following servants were on the spot almost at once, and took the
+      pony's head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The young man helped the duke to his feet and dusted him with masterly
+      dexterity. He did not know he was dusting a duke, and he would not have
+      cared if he had.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hello,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;you're not hurt. I can see that. Thank the Lord! I
+      don't believe you've got a scratch.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His grace felt a shade shaky, and he was slightly pale, but he smiled in a
+      way which had been celebrated forty years earlier, and the charm of which
+      had survived even rheumatic gout.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you. I'm not hurt in the least. I am the Duke of Stone. This isn't
+      really a call. It isn't my custom to arrive in this way. May I address you
+      as my preserver, Mr. Temple Barholm?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0024" id="link2HCH0024">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXIV
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Upon the terrace, when he was led up the steps, stood a most perfect
+      little elderly lady in a state of agitation much greater than his own or
+      his rescuer's. It was an agitation as perfect in its femininity as she
+      herself was. It expressed its kind tremors in the fashion which belonged
+      to the puce silk dress and fine bits of collar and undersleeve the belated
+      gracefulness of which caused her to present herself to him rather as a
+      figure cut neatly from a book of the styles he had admired in his young
+      manhood. It was of course Miss Alicia, who having, with Tembarom, seen the
+      galloping pony from a window, had followed him when he darted from the
+      room. She came forward, looking pale with charming solicitude.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do so hope you are not hurt,&rdquo; she exclaimed. &ldquo;It really seemed that
+      only divine Providence could prevent a terrible accident.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am afraid that it was more grotesque than terrible,&rdquo; he answered a
+      shade breathlessly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let me make you acquainted with the Duke of Stone, Miss Alicia,&rdquo; Tembarom
+      said in the formula of Mrs. Bowse's boarders on state occasions of
+      introduction. &ldquo;Duke, let me make you acquainted, sir, with my&mdash;relation&mdash;Miss
+      Alicia Temple Barholm.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The duke's bow had a remote suggestion of almost including a kissed hand
+      in its gallant courtesy. Not, however, that Early Victorian ladies had
+      been accustomed to the kissing of hands; but at the period when he had
+      best known the type he had daily bent over white fingers in Continental
+      capitals.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A glass of wine,&rdquo; Miss Alicia implored. &ldquo;Pray let me give you a glass of
+      wine. I am sure you need it very much.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He was taken into the library and made to sit in a most comfortable
+      easy-chair. Miss Alicia fluttered about him with sympathy still delicately
+      tinged with alarm. How long, how long, it had been since he had been
+      fluttered over! Nearly forty years. Ladies did not flutter now, and he
+      remembered that it was no longer the fashion to call them &ldquo;ladies.&rdquo; Only
+      the lower-middle classes spoke of &ldquo;ladies.&rdquo; But he found himself mentally
+      using the word again as he watched Miss Alicia.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It had been &ldquo;ladies&rdquo; who had fluttered and been anxious about a man in
+      this quite pretty way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He could scarcely remove his eyes from her as he sipped his wine. She felt
+      his escape &ldquo;providential,&rdquo; and murmured such devout little phrases
+      concerning it that he was almost consoled for the grotesque inward vision
+      of himself as an aged peer of the realm tumbling out of a baby-carriage
+      and rolled over on the grass at the feet of a man on whom later he had
+      meant to make, in proper state, a formal call. She put her hand to her
+      side, smiling half apologetically.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My heart beats quite fast yet,&rdquo; she said. Whereupon a quaintly novel
+      thing took place, at the sight of which the duke barely escaped opening
+      his eyes very wide indeed. The American Temple Barholm put his arm about
+      her in the most casual and informally accustomed way, and led her to a
+      chair, and put her in it, so to speak.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Say,&rdquo; he announced with affectionate authority, &ldquo;you sit down right away.
+      It's you that needs a glass of wine, and I'm going to give it to you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The relations between the two were evidently on a basis not common in
+      England even among people who were attached to one another. There was a
+      spontaneous, every-day air of natural, protective petting about it, as
+      though the fellow was fond of her in his crude fashion, and meant to take
+      care of her. He was fond of her, and the duke perceived it with elation,
+      and also understood. He might be the ordinary bestower of boons, but the
+      protective curve of his arm included other things. In the blank dullness
+      of his unaccustomed splendors he had somehow encountered this fine,
+      delicately preserved little relic of other days, and had seized on her and
+      made her his own.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have not seen anything as delightful as Miss Temple Barholm for many a
+      year,&rdquo; the duke said when Miss Alicia was called from the room and left
+      them together.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ain't she great?&rdquo; was Tembarom's reply. &ldquo;She's just great.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's an exquisite survival of type,&rdquo; said the duke. &ldquo;She belongs to my
+      time, not yours,&rdquo; he added, realizing that &ldquo;survival of type&rdquo; might not
+      clearly convey itself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, she belongs to mine now,&rdquo; answered Tembarom. &ldquo;I wouldn't lose her
+      for a farm.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The voice, the phrases, the carriage might survive,-they do in remote
+      neighborhoods, I suppose&mdash;but the dress is quite delightfully
+      incredible. It is a work of art,&rdquo; the duke went on. She had seemed too
+      good to be true. Her clothes, however, had certainly not been dug out of a
+      wardrobe of forty years ago.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When I went to talk to the head woman in the shop in Bond Street I fixed
+      it with 'em hard and fast that she was not to spoil her. They were to keep
+      her like she was. She's like her little cap, you know, and her little
+      mantles and tippets. She's like them,&rdquo; exclaimed Tembarom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Did he see that? What an odd feature in a man of his sort! And how
+      thoroughly New Yorkish it was that he should march into a fashionable shop
+      and see that he got what he wanted and the worth of his money! There had
+      been no rashness in the hope that the unexplored treasure might be a rich
+      one. The man's simplicity was an actual complexity. He had a boyish eye
+      and a grin, but there was a business-like line about his mouth which was
+      strong enough to have been hard if it had not been good-natured.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That was confoundedly clever of you,&rdquo; his grace commented heartily&mdash;&ldquo;confoundedly.
+      I should never have had the wit to think of it myself, or the courage to
+      do it if I had. Shop-women make me shy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, well, I just put it up to them,&rdquo; Tembarom answered easily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I believe,&rdquo; cautiously translated the duke, &ldquo;that you mean that you made
+      them feel that they alone were responsible.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I do,&rdquo; assented Tembarom, the grin slightly in evidence. &ldquo;Put it up
+      to them's the short way of saying it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Would you mind my writing that down?&rdquo; said the duke. &ldquo;I have a fad for
+      dialects and new phrases.&rdquo; He hastily scribbled the words in a tablet that
+      he took from his pocket. &ldquo;Do you like living in England?&rdquo; he asked in
+      course of time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should like it if I'd been born here,&rdquo; was the answer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I see, I see.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If it had not been for finding Miss Alicia, and that I made a promise I'd
+      stay for a year, anyhow, I'd have broken loose at the end of the first
+      week and worked my passage back if I hadn't had enough in my clothes to
+      pay for it.&rdquo; He laughed, but it was not real laughter. There was a thing
+      behind it. The situation was more edifying than one could have hoped. &ldquo;I
+      made a promise, and I'm going to stick it out,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was going to stick it out because he had promised to endure for a year
+      Temple Barholm and an income of seventy thousand pounds! The duke gazed at
+      him as at a fond dream realized.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've nothing to do,&rdquo; Tembarom added.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Neither have I,&rdquo; replied the Duke of Stone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you're used to it, and I'm not. I'm used to working 'steen hours a
+      day, and dropping into bed as tired as a dog, but ready to sleep like one
+      and get up rested.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I used to play twenty hours a day once,&rdquo; answered the duke, &ldquo;but I didn't
+      get up rested. That's probably why I have gout and rheumatism combined.
+      Tell me how you worked, and I will tell you how I played.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was worth while taking this tone with him. It had been worth while
+      taking it with the chestnut-gathering peasants in the Apennines, sometimes
+      even with a stone-breaker by an English roadside. And this one was of a
+      type more unique and distinctive than any other&mdash;a fellow who, with
+      the blood of Saxon kings and Norman nobles in his veins, had known nothing
+      but the street life of the crudest city in the world, who spoke a sort of
+      argot, who knew no parallels of the things which surrounded him in the
+      ancient home he had inherited and in which he stood apart, a sort of
+      semi-sophisticated savage. The duke applied himself with grace and
+      finished ability to drawing him out. The questions he asked were all
+      seemingly those of a man of the world charmingly interested in the
+      superior knowledge of a foreigner of varied experience. His method was one
+      which engaged the interest of Tembarom himself. He did not know that he
+      was not only questioned, but, so to speak, delicately cross-examined and
+      that before the end of the interview the Duke of Stone knew more of him,
+      his past existence and present sentiments, than even Miss Alicia knew
+      after their long and intimate evening talks. The duke, however, had the
+      advantage of being a man and of cherishing vivid recollections of the days
+      of his youth, which, unlike as it had been to that of Tembarom, furnished
+      a degree of solid foundation upon which go to build conjecture.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A young man of his age,&rdquo; his grace reflected astutely, &ldquo;has always just
+      fallen out of love, is falling into it, or desires vaguely to do so. Ten
+      years later there would perhaps be blank spaces, lean years during which
+      he was not in love at all; but at his particular period there must be a
+      young woman somewhere. I wonder if she is employed in one of the
+      department stores he spoke of, and how soon he hopes to present her to us.
+      His conversation has revealed so far, to use his own rich simile, 'neither
+      hide nor hair' of her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      On his own part, he was as ready to answer questions as to ask them. In
+      fact, he led Tembarom on to asking.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will tell you how I played&rdquo; had been meant. He made a human document of
+      the history he enlarged, he brilliantly diverged, he included, he made
+      pictures, and found Tembarom's point of view or lack of it gave spice and
+      humor to relations he had thought himself tired of. To tell familiar
+      anecdotes of courts and kings to a man who had never quite believed that
+      such things were realities, who almost found them humorous when they were
+      casually spoken of, was edification indeed. The novel charm lay in the
+      fact that his class in his country did not include them as possibilities.
+      Peasants in other countries, plowmen, shopkeepers, laborers in England&mdash;all
+      these at least they knew of, and counted them in as factors in the lives
+      of the rich and great; but this dear young man&mdash;!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What's a crown like? I'd like to see one. How much do you guess such a
+      thing would cost&mdash;in dollars?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did not Miss Temple Barholm take you to see the regalia in the Tower of
+      London? I am quite shocked,&rdquo; said the duke. He was, in fact, a trifle
+      disappointed. With the puce dress and undersleeves and little fringes she
+      ought certainly to have rushed with her pupil to that seat of historical
+      instruction on their first morning in London, immediately after
+      breakfasting on toast and bacon and marmalade and eggs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She meant me to go, but somehow it was put off. She almost cried on our
+      journey home when she suddenly remembered that we'd forgotten it, after
+      all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am sure she said it was a wasted opportunity,&rdquo; suggested his grace.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, that was what hit her so hard. She'd never been to London before,
+      and you couldn't make her believe she could ever get there again, and she
+      said it was ungrateful to Providence to waste an opportunity. She's always
+      mighty anxious to be grateful to Providence, bless her!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She regards you as Providence,&rdquo; remarked the duke, enraptured. With a
+      touch here and there, the touch of a master, he had gathered the whole
+      little story of Miss Alicia, and had found it of a whimsical exquisiteness
+      and humor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She's a lot too good to me,&rdquo; answered Tembarom. &ldquo;I guess women as nice as
+      her are always a lot too good to men. She's a kind of little old angel.
+      What makes me mad is to think of the fellows that didn't get busy and
+      marry her thirty-five years ago.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Were there&mdash;er&mdash;many of 'em?&rdquo; the duke inquired.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thousands of 'em, though most of 'em never saw her. I suppose you never
+      saw her then. If you had, you might have done it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The duke, sitting with an elbow on each arm of his chair, put the tips of
+      his fine, gouty fingers together and smiled with a far-reaching inclusion
+      of possibilities.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So I might,&rdquo; he said; &ldquo;so I might. My loss entirely&mdash;my abominable
+      loss.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They had reached this point of the argument when the carriage from Stone
+      Hover arrived. It was a stately barouche the coachman and footman of which
+      equally with its big horses seemed to have hastened to an extent which
+      suggested almost panting breathlessness. It contained Lady Edith and Lady
+      Celia, both pale, and greatly agitated by the news which had brought them
+      horrified from Stone Hover without a moment's delay.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They both ascended in haste and swept in such alarmed anxiety up the
+      terrace steps and through the hall to their father's side that they had
+      barely a polite gasp for Miss Alicia and scarcely saw Tembarom at all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dear Papa!&rdquo; they cried when he revealed himself in his chair in the
+      library intact and smiling. &ldquo;How wicked of you, dear! How you have
+      frightened us!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I begged you to be good, dearest,&rdquo; said Lady Edith, almost in tears.
+      &ldquo;Where was George? You must dismiss him at once. Really&mdash;really&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He was half a mile away, obeying my orders,&rdquo; said the duke. &ldquo;A groom
+      cannot be dismissed for obeying orders. It is the pony who must be
+      dismissed, to my great regret; or else we must overfeed him until he is
+      even fatter than he is and cannot run away.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Were his arms and legs and his ribs and collar-bones and head quite right?
+      Was he sure that he had not received any internal injury when he fell out
+      of the pony-carriage? They could scarcely be convinced, and as they hung
+      over and stroked and patted him, Tembarom stood aside and watched them
+      with interest. They were the girls he had to please Ann by &ldquo;getting next
+      to,&rdquo; giving himself a chance to fall in love with them, so that she'd know
+      whether they were his kind or not. They were nice-looking, and had a way
+      of speaking that sounded rather swell, but they weren't ace high to a
+      little slim, redheaded thing that looked at you like a baby and pulled
+      your heart up into your throat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't poke me any more, dear children. I am quite, quite sound,&rdquo; he heard
+      the duke say. &ldquo;In Mr. Temple Barholm you behold the preserver of your
+      parent. Filial piety is making you behave with shocking ingratitude.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They turned to Tembarom at once with a pretty outburst of apologies and
+      thanks. Lady Celia wasn't, it is true, &ldquo;a looker,&rdquo; with her narrow
+      shoulders and rather long nose, but she had an air of breeding, and the
+      charming color of which Palliser had spoken, returning to Lady Edith's
+      cheeks, illuminated her greatly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They both were very polite and made many agreeably grateful speeches, but
+      in the eyes of both there lurked a shade of anxiety which they hoped to be
+      able to conceal. Their father watched them with a wicked pleasure. He
+      realized clearly their well-behaved desire to do and say exactly the right
+      thing and bear themselves in exactly the right manner, and also their
+      awful uncertainty before an entirely unknown quantity. Almost any other
+      kind of young man suddenly uplifted by strange fortune they might have
+      known some parallel for, but a newsboy of New York! All the New Yorkers
+      they had met or heard of had been so rich and grand as to make them feel
+      themselves, by contrast, mere country paupers, quite shivering with
+      poverty and huddling for protection in their barely clean rags, so what
+      was there to go on? But how dreadful not to be quite right, precisely
+      right, in one's approach&mdash;quite familiar enough, and yet not a shade
+      too familiar, which of course would appear condescending! And be it said
+      the delicacy of the situation was added to by the fact that they had heard
+      something of Captain Palliser's extraordinary little story about his
+      determination to know &ldquo;ladies.&rdquo; Really, if Willocks the butcher's boy had
+      inherited Temple Barholm, it would have been easier to know where one
+      stood in the matter of being civil and agreeable to him. First Lady Edith,
+      made perhaps bold by the suggestion of physical advantage bestowed by the
+      color, talked to him to the very best of her ability; and when she felt
+      herself fearfully flagging, Lady Celia took him up and did her very
+      well-conducted best. Neither she nor her sister were brilliant talkers at
+      any time, and limited by the absence of any common familiar topic, effort
+      was necessary. The neighborhood he did not know; London he was barely
+      aware of; social functions it would be an impertinence to bring in; games
+      he did not play; sport he had scarcely heard of. You were confined to
+      America, and if you knew next to nothing of American life, there you were.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tembarom saw it all,&mdash;he was sharp enough for that,&mdash;and his
+      habit of being jocular and wholly unashamed saved him from the misery of
+      awkwardness that Willocks would have been sure to have writhed under. His
+      casual frankness, however, for a moment embarrassed Lady Edith to the
+      bitterest extremity. When you are trying your utmost to make a queer
+      person oblivious to the fact that his world is one unknown to you, it is
+      difficult to know where do you stand when he says.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's mighty hard to talk to a man who doesn't know a thing that belongs
+      to the kind of world you've spent your life in, ain't it? But don't you
+      mind me a minute. I'm glad to be talked to anyhow by people like you. When
+      I don't catch on, I'll just ask. No man was ever electrocuted for not
+      knowing, and that's just where I am. I don't know, and I'm glad to be
+      told. Now, there's one thing. Burrill said 'Your Ladyship' to you, I heard
+      him. Ought I to say it, er oughtn't I?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, no,&rdquo; she answered, but somehow without distaste in the momentary
+      stare he had startled her into; &ldquo;Burrill is&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's a servant,&rdquo; he aided encouragingly. &ldquo;Well, I've never been a butler,
+      but I've been somebody's servant all my life, and mighty glad of the
+      chance. This is the first time I've been out of a job.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      What nice teeth he had! What a queer, candid, unresentful creature! What a
+      good sort of smile! And how odd that it was he who was putting her more at
+      her ease by the mere way in which he was saying this almost alarming
+      thing! By the time he had ended, it was not alarming at all, and she had
+      caught her breath again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was actually sorry when the door opened and Lady Joan Fayre came in,
+      followed almost immediately by Lady Mallowe and Captain Palliser, who
+      appeared to have just returned from a walk and heard the news.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Mallowe was most sympathetic. Why not, indeed? The Duke of Stone was
+      a delightful, cynical creature, and Stone Hover was, despite its ducal
+      poverty, a desirable place to be invited to, if you could manage it. Her
+      ladyship's method of fluttering was not like Miss Alicia's, its character
+      being wholly modern; but she fluttered, nevertheless. The duke, who knew
+      all about her, received her amiabilities with appreciative smiles, but it
+      was the splendidly handsome, hungry-eyed young woman with the line between
+      her black brows who engaged his attention. On the alert, as he always was,
+      for a situation, he detected one at once when he saw his American address
+      her. She did not address him, and scarcely deigned a reply when he spoke
+      to her. When he spoke to others, she conducted herself as though he were
+      not in the room, so obviously did she choose to ignore his existence. Such
+      a bearing toward one's host had indeed the charm of being an interesting
+      novelty. And what a beauty she was, with her lovely, ferocious eyes and
+      the small, black head poised on the exquisite long throat, which was on
+      the verge of becoming a trifle too thin! Then as in a flash he recalled
+      between one breath and another the quite fiendish episode of poor Jem
+      Temple Barholm&mdash;and she was the girl!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then he became almost excited in his interest. He saw it all. As he had
+      himself argued must be the case, this poor fellow was in love. But it was
+      not with a lady in the New York department stores; it was with a young
+      woman who would evidently disdain to wipe her feet upon him. How
+      thrilling! As Lady Mallowe and Palliser and the others chattered, he
+      watched him, observing his manner. He stood the handsome creature's
+      steadily persistent rudeness very well; he made no effort to push into the
+      talk when she coolly held him out of it. He waited without external
+      uneasiness or spasmodic smiles. If he could do that despite the inevitable
+      fact that he must feel his position uncomfortable, he was possessed of
+      fiber. That alone would make him worth cultivating. And if there were
+      persons who were to be made uncomfortable, why not cut in and circumvent
+      the beauty somewhat and give her a trifle of unease? It was with the light
+      and adroit touch of accustomedness to all orders of little situations that
+      his grace took the matter in hand, with a shade, also, of amiable malice.
+      He drew Tembarom adroitly into the center of things; he knew how to lead
+      him to make easily the odd, frank remarks which were sufficiently novel to
+      suggest that he was actually entertaining. He beautifully edged Lady Joan
+      out of her position. She could not behave ill to him, he was far too old,
+      he said to himself, leaving out the fact that a Duke of Stone is a too
+      respectable personage to be quite waved aside.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tembarom began to enjoy himself a little more. Lady Celia and Lady Edith
+      began to enjoy themselves a little more also. Lady Mallowe was filled with
+      admiring delight. Captain Palliser took in the situation, and asked
+      himself questions about it. On her part, Miss Alicia was restored to the
+      happiness any lack of appreciation of her &ldquo;dear boy&rdquo; touchingly disturbed.
+      In circumstances such as these he appeared to the advantage which in a
+      brief period would surely reveal his wonderful qualities. She clung so to
+      his &ldquo;wonderful qualities&rdquo; because in all the three-volumed novels of her
+      youth the hero, debarred from early advantages and raised by the turn of
+      fortune's wheel to splendor, was transformed at once into a being of the
+      highest accomplishments and the most polished breeding, and ended in the
+      third volume a creature before whom emperors paled. And how more than
+      charmingly cordial his grace's manner was when he left them!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To-morrow,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;if my daughters do not discover that I have injured
+      some more than vital organ, I shall call to proffer my thanks with the
+      most immense formality. I shall get out of the carriage in the manner
+      customary in respectable neighborhoods, not roll out at your feet.
+      Afterward you will, I hope, come and dine with us. I am devoured by a
+      desire to become more familiar with The Earth.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0025" id="link2HCH0025">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXV
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      It was Lady Mallowe who perceived the moment when he became the fashion.
+      The Duke of Stone called with the immense formality he had described, and
+      his visit was neither brief nor dull. A little later Tembarom with his
+      guests dined at Stone Hover, and the dinner was further removed from
+      dullness than any one of numerous past dinners always noted for being the
+      most agreeable the neighborhood afforded. The duke managed his guest as an
+      impresario might have managed his tenor, though this was done with subtly
+      concealed methods. He had indeed a novelty to offer which had been
+      discussed with much uncertainty of point of view. He presented it to an
+      only languidly entertained neighborhood as a trouvaille of his own choice.
+      Here was drama, here was atmosphere, here was charm verging in its
+      character upon the occult. You would not see it if you were not a
+      collector of such values.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nobody will be likely to see him as he is unless he is pointed out to
+      them,&rdquo; was what he said to his daughters. &ldquo;But being bored to death,&mdash;we
+      are all bored,&mdash;once adroitly assisted to suspect him of being
+      alluring, most of them will spring upon him and clasp him to their wearied
+      breasts. I haven't the least idea what will happen afterward. I shall in
+      fact await the result with interest.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Being told Palliser's story of the &ldquo;Ladies,&rdquo; he listened, holding the tips
+      of his fingers together, and wearing an expression of deep interest
+      slightly baffled in its nature. It was Lady Edith who related the anecdote
+      to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;it would be very curious and complicating if that were
+      true; but I don't believe it is. Palliser, of course, likes to tell a good
+      story. I shall be able to discover in time whether it is true or not; but
+      at present I don't believe it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Following the dinner party at Stone Hover came many others. All the
+      well-known carriages began to roll up the avenue to Temple Barholm. The
+      Temple Barholm carriages also began to roll down the avenue and between
+      the stone griffins on their way to festive gatherings of varied order.
+      Burrill and the footmen ventured to reconsider their early plans for
+      giving warning. It wasn't so bad if the country was going to take him up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you see what is happening?&rdquo; Lady Mallowe said to Joan. &ldquo;The man is
+      becoming actually popular.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He is popular as a turn at a music hall is,&rdquo; answered Joan. &ldquo;He will be
+      dropped as he was taken up.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There's something about him they like, and he represents what everybody
+      most wants. For God's sake! Joan, don't behave like a fool this time. The
+      case is more desperate. There is nothing else&mdash;nothing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There never was,&rdquo; said Joan, &ldquo;and I know the desperateness of the case.
+      How long are you going to stay here?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am going to stay for some time. They are not conventional people. It
+      can be managed very well. We are relatives.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will you stay,&rdquo; inquired Joan in a low voice, &ldquo;until they ask you to
+      remove yourself?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Mallowe smiled an agreeably subtle smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not quite that,&rdquo; she answered. &ldquo;Miss Alicia would never have the courage
+      to suggest it. It takes courage and sophistication to do that sort of
+      thing. Mr. Temple Barholm evidently wants us to remain. He will be willing
+      to make as much of the relationship as we choose to let him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you choose to let him make as much of it as will establish us here for
+      weeks&mdash;or months?&rdquo; Joan asked, her low voice shaking a little.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That will depend entirely upon circumstances. It will, in fact, depend
+      entirely upon you,&rdquo; said Lady Mallowe, her lips setting themselves into a
+      straight, thin line.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For an appreciable moment Joan was silent; but after it she lost her head
+      and whirled about.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shall go away,&rdquo; she cried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where?&rdquo; asked Lady Mallowe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Back to London.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How much money have you?&rdquo; asked her mother. She knew she had none. She
+      was always sufficiently shrewd to see that she had none. If the girl had
+      had a pound a week of her own, her mother had always realized that she
+      would have been unmanageable. After the Jem Temple Barholm affair she
+      would have been capable of going to live alone in slums. As it was, she
+      knew enough to be aware that she was too handsome to walk out into
+      Piccadilly without a penny in her pocket; so it had been just possible to
+      keep her indoors.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How much money have you?&rdquo; she repeated quietly. This was the way in which
+      their unbearable scenes began&mdash;the scenes which the servants passing
+      the doors paused to listen to in the hope that her ladyship would forget
+      that raised voices may be heard by the discreet outsider.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How much money have you?&rdquo; she said again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Joan looked at her; this time it was for about five seconds. She turned
+      her back on her and walked out of the room. Shortly afterward Lady Mallowe
+      saw her walking down the avenue in the rain, which was beginning to fall.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had left the house because she dared not stay in it. Once out in the
+      park, she folded her long purple cloak about her and pulled her soft
+      purple felt hat down over her brows, walking swiftly under the big trees
+      without knowing where she intended to go before she returned. She liked
+      the rain, she liked the heavy clouds; she wore her dark purples because
+      she felt a fantastic, secret comfort in calling them her mourning&mdash;her
+      mourning which she would wear forevermore.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No one could know so well as herself how desperate from her own point of
+      view the case was. She had long known that her mother would not hesitate
+      for a moment before any chance of a second marriage which would totally
+      exclude her daughter from her existence. Why should she, after all, Joan
+      thought? They had always been antagonists. The moment of chance had been
+      looming on the horizon for months. Sir Moses Monaldini had hovered about
+      fitfully and evidently doubtfully at first, more certainly and frequently
+      of late, but always with a clearly objecting eye cast askance upon
+      herself. With determination and desire to establish a social certainty,
+      astute enough not to care specially for young beauty and exactions he did
+      not purpose to submit to, and keen enough to see the advantage of a
+      handsome woman with bitter reason to value what was offered to her in the
+      form of a luxurious future, Sir Moses was moving toward action, though
+      with proper caution. He would have no penniless daughters hanging about
+      scowling and sneering. None of that for him. And the ripest apple upon the
+      topmost bow in the highest wind would not drop more readily to his feet
+      than her mother would, Joan knew with sharp and shamed burnings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As the rain fell, she walked in her purple cloak, unpaid for, and her
+      purple hat, for which they had been dunned with threatening insults, and
+      knew that she did not own and could not earn a penny. She could not dig,
+      and to beg she was ashamed, and all the more horribly because she had been
+      a beggar of the meaner order all her life. It made her sick to think of
+      the perpetual visits they had made where they were not wanted, of the
+      times when they had been politely bundled out of places, of the methods
+      which had been used to induce shop-keepers to let them run up bills. For
+      years her mother and she had been walking advertisements of smart shops
+      because both were handsome, wore clothes well, and carried them where they
+      would be seen and talked about. Now this would be all over, since it had
+      been Lady Mallowe who had managed all details. Thrown upon her own
+      resources, Joan would have none of them, even though she must walk in
+      rags. Her education had prepared her for only one thing&mdash;to marry
+      well, if luck were on her side. It had never been on her side. If she had
+      never met Jem, she would have married somebody, since that would have been
+      better than the inevitable last slide into an aging life spent in cheap
+      lodgings with her mother. But Jem had been the beginning and the end.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She bit her lips as she walked, and suddenly tears swept down her cheeks
+      and dripped on to the purple cloth folded over her breast.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And he sits in Jem's place! And every day that common, foolish stare will
+      follow me!&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He sat, it was true, in the place Jem Temple Barholm would have occupied
+      if he had been a living man, and he looked at her a good deal. Perhaps he
+      sometimes unconsciously stared because she made him think of many things.
+      But if she had been in a state of mind admitting of judicial fairness, she
+      would have been obliged to own that it was not quite a foolish stare.
+      Absorbed, abstracted, perhaps, but it was not foolish. Sometimes, on the
+      contrary, it was searching and keen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Of course he was doing his best to please her. Of all the &ldquo;Ladies,&rdquo; it
+      seemed evident that he was most attracted by her. He tried to talk to her
+      despite her unending rebuffs, he followed her about and endeavored to
+      interest her, he presented a hide-bound unsensitiveness when she did her
+      worst. Perhaps he did not even know that she was being icily rude. He was
+      plainly &ldquo;making up to her&rdquo; after the manner of his class. He was perhaps
+      playing the part of the patient adorer who melted by noble long-suffering
+      in novels distinguished by heroes of humble origin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had reached the village when the rain changed its mind, and without
+      warning began to pour down as if the black cloud passing overhead had
+      suddenly opened. She was wondering if she would not turn in somewhere for
+      shelter until the worst was over when a door opened and Tembarom ran out
+      with an umbrella.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come in to the Hibblethwaites cottage, Lady Joan,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;This will be
+      over directly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He did not affectionately hustle her in by the arm as he would have
+      hustled in Miss Alicia, but he closely guarded her with the umbrella until
+      he guided her inside.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you,&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The first object she became aware of was a thin face with pointed chin and
+      ferret eyes peering at her round the end of a sofa, then a sharp voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tak' off her cloak an' shake th' rain off it in th' wash 'us',&rdquo; it said.
+      &ldquo;Mother an' Aunt Susan's out. Let him unbutton it fer thee.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can unbutton it myself, thank you,&rdquo; said Lady Joan. Tembarom took it
+      when she had unbuttoned it. He took it from her shoulders before she had
+      time to stop him. Then he walked into the tiny &ldquo;wash 'us&rdquo; and shook it
+      thoroughly. He came back and hung it on a chair before the fire.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tummas was leaning back in his pillows and gazing at her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know tha name,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;He towd me,&rdquo; with a jerk of the head toward
+      Tembarom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did he?&rdquo; replied Lady Joan without interest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A flaringly illustrated New York paper was spread out upon his sofa. He
+      pushed it aside and pulled the shabby atlas toward him. It fell open at a
+      map of North America as if through long habit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sit thee down,&rdquo; he ordered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tembarom had stood watching them both.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I guess you'd better not do that,&rdquo; he suggested to Tummas.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why not?&rdquo; said the boy, sharply. &ldquo;She's th' wench he was goin' to marry.
+      It's th' same as if he'd married her. If she wur his widder, she'd want to
+      talk about him. Widders allus wants to talk. Why shouldn't she? Women's
+      women. He'd ha' wanted to talk about her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who is `he'?&rdquo; asked Joan with stiff lips.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Temple Barholm as' 'd be here if he was na.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Joan turned to Tembarom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you come here to talk to this boy about HIM?&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;How dare
+      you!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Tummas's eyes snapped; his voice snapped also.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He knew next to nowt about him till I towd him,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Then he came
+      to ax me things an' foind out more. He knows as much as I do now. Us sits
+      here an' talks him over.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Joan still addressed Tembarom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What interest can you have in the man who ought to be in your place?&rdquo; she
+      asked. &ldquo;What possible interest?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; he answered awkwardly, &ldquo;because he ought to be, I suppose. Ain't
+      that reason enough?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He had never had to deal with women who hated him and who were angry and
+      he did not know exactly what to say. He had known very few women, and he
+      had always been good-natured with them and won their liking in some
+      measure. Also, there was in his attitude toward this particular woman a
+      baffled feeling that he could not make her understand him. She would
+      always think of him as an enemy and believe he meant things he did not
+      mean. If he had been born and educated in her world, he could have used
+      her own language; but he could use only his own, and there were so many
+      things he must not say for a time at least.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you not realize,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;that you are presuming upon your position&mdash;that
+      you and this boy are taking liberties?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Tummas broke in wholly without compunction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've taken liberties aw my loife,&rdquo; he stated, &ldquo;an' I'm goin' to tak' 'em
+      till I dee. They're th' on'y things I can tak', lyin' here crippled, an'
+      I'm goin' to tak' 'em.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Stop that, Tummas!&rdquo; said Tembarom with friendly authority. &ldquo;She doesn't
+      catch on, and you don't catch on, either. You're both of you 'way off.
+      Stop it!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I thought happen she could tell me things I didn't know,&rdquo; protested
+      Tummas, throwing himself back on his pillows. &ldquo;If she conna, she conna,
+      an' if she wunnot, she wunnot. Get out wi' thee!&rdquo; he said to Joan. &ldquo;I
+      dunnot want thee about th' place.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Say,&rdquo; said Tembarom, &ldquo;shut up!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am going,&rdquo; said Lady Joan and turned to open the door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The rain was descending in torrents, but she passed swiftly out into its
+      deluge walking as rapidly as she could. She thought she cared nothing
+      about the rain, but it dashed in her face and eyes, taking her breath
+      away, and she had need of breath when her heart was beating with such
+      fierceness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If she wur his widder,&rdquo; the boy had said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Even chance could not let her alone at one of her worst moments. She
+      walked faster and faster because she was afraid Tembarom would follow her,
+      and in a few minutes she heard him splashing behind her, and then he was
+      at her side, holding the umbrella over her head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You're a good walker,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;but I'm a sprinter. I trained running
+      after street cars and catching the 'L' in New York.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She had so restrained her miserable hysteric impulse to break down and
+      utterly humiliate herself under the unexpected blow of the episode in the
+      cottage that she had had no breath to spare when she left the room, and
+      her hurried effort to escape had left her so much less that she did not
+      speak.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll tell you something,&rdquo; he went on. &ldquo;He's a little freak, but you can't
+      blame him much. Don't be mad at him. He's never moved from that corner
+      since he was born, I guess, and he's got nothing to do or to think of but
+      just hearing what's happening outside. He's sort of crazy curious, and
+      when he gets hold of a thing that suits him he just holds on to it till
+      the last bell rings.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She said nothing whatever, and he paused a moment because he wanted to
+      think over the best way to say the next thing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. James Temple Barholm &ldquo;&mdash;he ventured it with more delicacy of
+      desire not to seem to &ldquo;take liberties&rdquo; than she would have credited him
+      with&mdash;&ldquo;saw his mother sitting with him in her arms at the cottage
+      door a week or so after he was born. He stopped at the gate and talked to
+      her about him, and he left him a sovereign. He's got it now. It seems a
+      fortune to him. He's made a sort of idol of him. That's why he talks like
+      he does. I wouldn't let it make me mad if I were you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He did not know that she could not have answered him if she would, that
+      she felt that if he did not stop she might fling herself down upon the wet
+      heather and wail aloud.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You don't like me,&rdquo; he began after they had walked a few steps farther.
+      &ldquo;You don't like me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This was actually better. It choked back the sobs rising in her throat.
+      The stupid shock of it, his tasteless foolishness, helped her by its very
+      folly to a sort of defense against the disastrous wave of emotion she
+      might not have been able to control. She gathered herself together.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It must be an unusual experience,&rdquo; she answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, it is&mdash;sort of,&rdquo; he said, but in a manner curiously free from
+      fatuous swagger. &ldquo;I've had luck that way. I guess it's been because I'd
+      GOT to make friends so as I could earn a living. It seems sort of queer to
+      know that some one's got a grouch against me that&mdash;that I can't get
+      away with.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She looked up the avenue to see how much farther they must walk together,
+      since she was not &ldquo;a sprinter&rdquo; and could not get away from him. She
+      thought she caught a glimpse through the trees of a dog-cart driven by a
+      groom, and hoped she had not mistaken and that it was driving in their
+      direction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It must, indeed,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;though I am not sure I quite understand what
+      a grouch is.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When you've got a grouch against a fellow,&rdquo; he explained impersonally,
+      &ldquo;you want to get at him. You want to make him feel like a mutt; and a
+      mutt's the worst kind of a fool. You've got one against me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She looked before her between narrowed lids and faintly smiled&mdash;the
+      most disagreeable smile she was capable of. And yet for some too
+      extraordinary reason he went on. But she had seen men go on before this
+      when all the odds were against them. Sometimes their madness took them
+      this way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I knew there was a lot against me when I came here,&rdquo; he persisted. &ldquo;I
+      should have been a fool if I hadn't. I knew when you came that I was up
+      against a pretty hard proposition; but I thought perhaps if I got busy and
+      SHOWED you&mdash;you've got to SHOW a person&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Showed me what?&rdquo; she asked contemptuously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Showed you&mdash;well&mdash;me,&rdquo; he tried to explain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And that I wanted to be friends,&rdquo; he added candidly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Was the man mad? Did he realize nothing? Was he too thick of skin even to
+      see?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Friends! You and I?&rdquo; The words ought to have scorched him, pachyderm
+      though he was.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I thought you'd give me a chance&mdash;a sort of chance&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She stopped short on the avenue.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You did?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She had not been mistaken. The dog-cart had rounded the far-off curve and
+      was coming toward them. And the man went on talking.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You've felt every minute that I was in a place that didn't belong to me.
+      You know that if the man that it did belong to was here, you'd be here
+      with him. You felt as if I'd robbed him of it&mdash;and I'd robbed you. It
+      was your home&mdash;yours. You hated me too much to think of anything
+      else. Suppose&mdash;suppose there was a way I could give it back to you&mdash;make
+      it your home again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His voice dropped and was rather unsteady. The fool, the gross, brutal,
+      vulgar, hopeless fool! He thought this was the way to approach her, to
+      lead her to listen to his proposal of marriage! Not for a second did she
+      guess that they were talking at cross purposes. She did not know that as
+      he kept himself steady under her contemptuousness he was thinking that Ann
+      would have to own that he had been up against it hard and plenty while the
+      thing was going on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm always up against it when I'm talking to you,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;You get me
+      rattled. There's things I want to talk about and ask you. Suppose you give
+      me a chance, and let us start out by being sort of friends.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am staying in your house,&rdquo; she answered in a deadly voice, &ldquo;and I
+      cannot go away because my mother will not let me. You can force yourself
+      upon me, if you choose, because I cannot help it; but understand once for
+      all that I will not give you your ridiculous chance. And I will not utter
+      one word to you when I can avoid it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He was silent for a moment and seemed to be thinking rather deeply. She
+      realized now that he saw the nearing dog-cart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You won't. Then it's up to me,&rdquo; he said. Then with a change of tone, he
+      added, &ldquo;I'll stop the cart and tell the man to drive you to the house. I'm
+      not going to force myself on you, as you call it. It'd be no use. Perhaps
+      it'll come all right in the end.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He made a sign to the groom, who hastened his horse's pace and drew up
+      when he reached them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Take this lady back to the house,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The groom, who was a new arrival, began to prepare to get down and give up
+      his place.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You needn't do that,&rdquo; said Tembarom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Won't you get up and take the reins, sir?&rdquo; the man asked uncertainly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No. I can't drive. You'll have to do it. I'll walk.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And to the groom's amazement, they left him standing under the trees
+      looking after them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's up to me,&rdquo; he was saying. &ldquo;The whole durned thing's up to me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0026" id="link2HCH0026">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXVI
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The neighborhood of Temple Barholm was not, upon the whole, a brilliant
+      one. Indeed, it had been frankly designated by the casual guest as dull.
+      The country was beautiful enough, and several rather large estates lay
+      within reach of one another, but their owners were neither very rich nor
+      especially notable personages. They were of extremely good old blood, and
+      were of established respectability. None of them, however, was given to
+      entertaining house parties made up of the smart and dazzlingly sinful
+      world of fashion said by moralists to be composed entirely of young and
+      mature beauties, male and female, capable of supplying at any moment
+      enlivening detail for the divorce court&mdash;glittering beings whose
+      wardrobes were astonishing and whose conversations were composed wholly of
+      brilliant paradox and sparkling repartee.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Most of the residents took their sober season in London, the men of the
+      family returning gladly to their pheasants, the women not regretfully to
+      their gardens and tennis, because their successes in town had not been
+      particularly delirious. The guests who came to them were generally as
+      respectable and law-abiding as themselves, and introduced no iconoclastic
+      diversions. For the greater portion of the year, in fact, diners out were
+      of the neighborhood and met the neighborhood, and were reduced to
+      discussing neighborhood topics, which was not, on the whole, a fevered
+      joy. The Duke of Stone was, perhaps, the one man who might have furnished
+      topics. Privately it was believed, and in part known, that he at least had
+      had a brilliant, if not wholly unreprehensible, past. He might have
+      introduced enlivening elements from London, even from Paris, Vienna,
+      Berlin, and Rome; but the sobering influence of years of rheumatic gout
+      and a not entirely sufficing income prevented activities, and his opinions
+      of his social surroundings were vaguely guessed to be those of a not too
+      lenient critic.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not know anything technical or scientific about ditch-water,&rdquo; he had
+      expressed himself in the bosom of his family. &ldquo;I never analyzed it, but
+      analyzers, I gather, consider it dull. If anything could be duller than
+      ditch-water, I should say it was Stone Hover and its surrounding
+      neighborhood.&rdquo; He had also remarked at another time: &ldquo;If our society could
+      be enriched by some of the characters who form the house parties and seem,
+      in fact, integral parts of all country society in modern problem or even
+      unproblem novels, how happy one might be, how edified and amused! A wicked
+      lady or so of high, or extremely low, rank, of immense beauty and
+      corruscating brilliancy; a lovely creature, male or female, whom she is
+      bent upon undoing&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dear papa!&rdquo; protested Lady Celia.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Reproach me, dearest. Reproach me as severely as you please. It inspires
+      me. It makes me feel like a wicked, dangerous man, and I have not felt
+      like one for many years. Such persons as I describe form the charm of
+      existence, I assure you. A ruthless adventuress with any kind of good
+      looks would be the making of us. Several of them, of different types, a
+      handsome villain, and a few victims unknowing of their fate, would cause
+      life to flow by like a peaceful stream.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Edith laughed an unseemly little laugh&mdash;unseemly, since filial
+      regret at paternal obliquity should have restrained it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Papa, you are quite horrible,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;You ought not to make your few
+      daughters laugh at improper things.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I would make my daughters laugh at anything so long as I must doom them
+      to Stone Hover&mdash;and Lady Pevensy and Mrs. Stoughton and the rector,
+      if one may mention names,&rdquo; he answered. &ldquo;To see you laugh revives me by
+      reminding me that once I was considered a witty person&mdash;quite so.
+      Some centuries ago, however; about the time when things were being rebuilt
+      after the flood.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In such circumstances it cannot be found amazing that a situation such as
+      Temple Barholm presented should provide rich food for conversation,
+      supposition, argument, and humorous comment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      T. Tembarom himself, after the duke had established him, furnished an
+      unlimited source of interest. His household became a perennial fount of
+      quiet discussion. Lady Mallowe and her daughter were the members of it who
+      met with the most attention. They appeared to have become members of it
+      rather than visitors. Her ladyship had plainly elected to extend her stay
+      even beyond the period to which a fond relative might feel entitled to
+      hospitality. She had been known to extend visits before with great
+      cleverness, but this one assumed an established aspect. She was not going
+      away, the neighborhood decided, until she had achieved that which she had
+      come to accomplish. The present unconventional atmosphere of the place
+      naturally supported her. And how probable it seemed, taking into
+      consideration Captain Palliser's story, that Mr. Temple Barholm wished her
+      to stay. Lady Joan would be obliged to stay also, if her mother intended
+      that she should. But the poor American&mdash;there were some expressions
+      of sympathy, though the situation was greatly added to by the feature&mdash;the
+      poor American was being treated by Lady Joan as only she could treat a
+      man. It was worth inviting the whole party to dinner or tea or lunch
+      merely to see the two together. The manner in which she managed to ignore
+      him and be scathing to him without apparently infringing a law of
+      civility, and the number of laws she sometimes chose to sweep aside when
+      it was her mood to do so, were extraordinary. If she had not been a
+      beauty, with a sort of mystic charm for the male creature, surely he would
+      have broken his chains. But he did not. What was he going to do in the
+      end? What was she going to do? What was Lady Mallowe going to do if there
+      was no end at all? He was not as unhappy-looking a lover as one might have
+      expected, they said. He kept up his spirits wonderfully. Perhaps she was
+      not always as icily indifferent to him as she chose to appear in public.
+      Temple Barholm was a great estate, and Sir Moses Monaldini had been
+      mentioned by rumor. Of course there would be something rather strange and
+      tragic in it if she came to Temple Barholm as its mistress in such
+      singular circumstances. But he certainly did not look depressed or
+      discouraged. So they talked it over as they looked on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How they gossip! How delightfully they gossip!&rdquo; said the duke. &ldquo;But it is
+      such a perfect subject. They have never been so enthralled before. Dear
+      young man! how grateful we ought to be for him!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      One of the most discussed features of the case was the duke's own
+      cultivation of the central figure. There was an actual oddity about it. He
+      drove from Stone Hover to Temple Barholm repeatedly. He invited Tembarom
+      to the castle and had long talks with him&mdash;long, comfortable talks in
+      secluded, delightful rooms or under great trees on a lawn. He wanted to
+      hear anecdotes of his past, to draw him on to giving his points of view.
+      When he spoke of him to his daughters, he called him &ldquo;T. Tembarom,&rdquo; but
+      the slight derision of his earlier tone modified itself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That delightful young man will shortly become my closest intimate,&rdquo; he
+      said. &ldquo;He not only keeps up my spirits, but he opens up vistas. Vistas
+      after a man's seventy-second birthday! At times I could clasp him to my
+      breast.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I like him first rate,&rdquo; Tembarom said to Miss Alicia. &ldquo;I liked him the
+      minute he got up laughing like an old sport when he fell out of the pony
+      carriage.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As he became more intimate with him, he liked him still better. Obscured
+      though it was by airy, elderly persiflage, he began to come upon a
+      background of stability and points of view wholly to be relied on in his
+      new acquaintance. It had evolved itself out of long and varied experience,
+      with the aid of brilliant mentality. The old peer's reasons were always
+      logical. He laughed at most things, but at a few he did not laugh at all.
+      After several of the long conversations Tembarom began to say to himself
+      that this seemed like a man you need not be afraid to talk things over
+      with&mdash;things you didn't want to speak of to everybody.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Seems to me,&rdquo; he said thoughtfully to Miss Alicia, &ldquo;he's an old fellow
+      you could tie to. I've got on to one thing when I've listened to him: he
+      talks all he wants to and laughs a lot, but he never gives himself away.
+      He wouldn't give another fellow away either if he said he wouldn't. He
+      knows how not to.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was an afternoon on which during a drive they took together the duke
+      was enlightened as to several points which had given him cause for
+      reflection, among others the story beloved of Captain Palliser and his
+      audiences.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I guess you've known a good many women,&rdquo; T. Tembarom remarked on this
+      occasion after a few minutes of thought. &ldquo;Living all over the world as
+      you've done, you'd be likely to come across a whole raft of them one time
+      and another.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A whole raft of them, one time and another,&rdquo; agreed the duke. &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You've liked them, haven't you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Immensely. Sometimes a trifle disastrously. Find me a more absolutely
+      interesting object in the universe than a woman&mdash;any woman&mdash;and
+      I will devote the remainder of my declining years to the study of it,&rdquo;
+       answered his grace.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He said it with a decision which made T. Tembarom turn to look at him, and
+      after his look decide to proceed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have you ever known a bit of a slim thing&rdquo;&mdash;he made an odd embracing
+      gesture with his arm&mdash;&ldquo;the size that you could pick up with one hand
+      and set on your knee as if she was a child&rdquo;&mdash;the duke remained still,
+      knowing this was only the beginning and pricking up his ears as he took a
+      rapid kaleidoscopic view of all the &ldquo;Ladies&rdquo; in the neighborhood, and as
+      hastily waved them aside&mdash;&ldquo;a bit of a thing that some way seems to
+      mean it all to you&mdash;and moves the world?&rdquo; The conclusion was one
+      which brought the incongruous touch of maturity into his face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not one of the `Ladies,&rdquo;' the duke was mentally summing the matter up.
+      &ldquo;Certainly not Lady Joan, after all. Not, I think, even the young person
+      in the department store.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He leaned back in his corner the better to inspect his companion directly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have, I see,&rdquo; he replied quietly. &ldquo;Once I myself did.&rdquo; (He had cried
+      out, &ldquo;Ah! Heloise!&rdquo; though he had laughed at himself when he seemed facing
+      his ridiculous tragedy.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; confessed T. Tembarom. &ldquo;I met her at the boarding-house where I
+      lived. Her father was a Lancashire man and an inventor. I guess you've
+      heard of him; his name is Joseph Hutchinson.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The whole country had heard of him; more countries, indeed, than one had
+      heard. He was the man who was going to make his fortune in America because
+      T. Tembarom had stood by him in his extremity. He would make a fortune in
+      America and another in England and possibly several others on the
+      Continent. He had learned to read in the village school, and the girl was
+      his daughter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; replied the duke.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't know whether the one you knew had that quiet little way of seeing
+      right straight into a thing, and making you see it, too,&rdquo; said Tembarom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She had,&rdquo; answered the duke, and an odd expression wavered in his eyes
+      because he was looking backward across forty years which seemed a hundred.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's what I meant by moving the world,&rdquo; T. Tembarom went on. &ldquo;You know
+      she's RIGHT, and you've got to do what she says, if you love her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you always do,&rdquo; said the duke&mdash;&ldquo;always and forever. There are
+      very few. They are the elect.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      T. Tembarom took it gravely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I said to her once that there wasn't more than one of her in the world
+      because there couldn't be enough to make two of that kind. I wasn't
+      joshing either; I meant it. It's her quiet little voice and her quiet,
+      babyfied eyes that get you where you can't move. And it's something else
+      you don't know anything about. It's her never doing anything for herself,
+      but just doing it because it's the right thing for you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The duke's chin had sunk a little on his breast, and looking back across
+      the hundred years, he forgot for a moment where he was. The one he
+      remembered had been another man's wife, a little angel brought up in a
+      convent by white-souled nuns, passed over by her people to an elderly
+      vaurien of great magnificence, and she had sent the strong, laughing,
+      impassioned young English peer away before it was too late, and with the
+      young, young eyes of her looking upward at him in that way which saw
+      &ldquo;straight into a thing&rdquo; and with that quiet little voice. So long ago! So
+      long ago!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! Heloise!&rdquo; he sighed unconsciously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What did you say?&rdquo; asked T. Tembarom. The duke came back.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was thinking of the time when I was nine and twenty,&rdquo; he answered. &ldquo;It
+      was not yesterday nor even the day before. The one I knew died when she
+      was twenty-four.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Died!&rdquo; said Tembarom. &ldquo;Good Lord!&rdquo; He dropped his head and even changed
+      color. &ldquo;A fellow can't get on to a thing like that. It seems as if it
+      couldn't happen. Suppose&mdash;&rdquo; he caught his breath hard and then pulled
+      himself up&mdash;&ldquo;Nothing could happen to her before she knew that I've
+      proved what I said&mdash;just proved it, and done every single thing she
+      told me to do.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am sure you have,&rdquo; the duke said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's because of that I began to say this.&rdquo; Tembarom spoke hurriedly that
+      he might thrust away the sudden dark thought. &ldquo;You're a man, and I'm a
+      man; far away ahead of me as you are, you're a man, too. I was crazy to
+      get her to marry me and come here with me, and she wouldn't.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The duke's eyes lighted anew.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She had her reasons,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She laid 'em out as if she'd been my mother instead of a little
+      red-headed angel that you wanted to snatch up and crush up to you so she
+      couldn't breathe. She didn't waste a word. She just told me what I was up
+      against. She'd lived in the village with her grandmother, and she knew.
+      She said I'd got to come and find out for myself what no one else could
+      teach me. She told me about the kind of girls I'd see&mdash;beauties that
+      were different from anything I'd ever seen before. And it was up to me to
+      see all of them&mdash;the best of them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ladies?&rdquo; interjected the duke gently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. With titles like those in novels, she said, and clothes like those
+      in the Ladies' Pictorial. The kind of girls, she said, that would make her
+      look like a housemaid. Housemaid be darned!&rdquo; he exclaimed, suddenly
+      growing hot. &ldquo;I've seen the whole lot of them; I've done my darndest to
+      get next, and there's not one&mdash;&rdquo; he stopped short. &ldquo;Why should any of
+      them look at me, anyhow?&rdquo; he added suddenly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That was not her point,&rdquo; remarked the duke. &ldquo;She wanted you to look at
+      them, and you have looked.&rdquo; T. Tembarom's eagerness was inspiring to
+      behold.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have, haven't I?&rdquo; he cried. &ldquo;That was what I wanted to ask you. I've
+      done as she said. I haven't shirked a thing. I've followed them around
+      when I knew they hadn't any use on earth for me. Some of them have handed
+      me the lemon pretty straight. Why shouldn't they? But I don't believe she
+      knew how tough it might be for a fellow sometimes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, she did not,&rdquo; the duke said. &ldquo;Also she probably did not know that in
+      ancient days of chivalry ladies sent forth their knights to bear buffeting
+      for their sakes in proof of fealty. Rise up, Sir Knight!&rdquo; This last phrase
+      of course T. Tembarom did not know the poetic significance of.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To his hearer Palliser's story became an amusing thing, read in the light
+      of this most delicious frankness. It was Palliser himself who played the
+      fool, and not T. Tembarom, who had simply known what he wanted, and had,
+      with businesslike directness, applied himself to finding a method of
+      obtaining it. The young women he gave his time to must be &ldquo;Ladies&rdquo; because
+      Miss Hutchinson had required it from him. The female flower of the noble
+      houses had been passed in review before him to practise upon, so to speak.
+      The handsomer they were, the more dangerously charming, the better Miss
+      Hutchinson would be pleased. And he had been regarded as a presumptuous
+      aspirant. It was a situation for a comedy. But the &ldquo;Ladies&rdquo; would not
+      enjoy it if they were told. It was also not the Duke of Stone who would
+      tell them. They could not in the least understand the subtlety of the
+      comedy in which they had unconsciously taken part. Ann Hutchinson's
+      grandmother curtsied to them in her stiff old way when they passed. Ann
+      Hutchinson had gone to the village school and been presented with prizes
+      for needlework and good behavior. But what a girl she must be, the slim
+      bit of a thing with a red head! What a clear-headed and firm little
+      person!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In courts he had learned to wear a composed countenance when he was
+      prompted to smile, and he wore one now. He enjoyed the society of T.
+      Tembarom increasingly every hour. He provided him with every joy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Their drive was a long one, and they talked a good deal. They talked of
+      the Hutchinsons, of the invention, of the business &ldquo;deals&rdquo; Tembarom had
+      entered into at the outset, and of their tremendously encouraging result.
+      It was not mere rumor that Hutchinson would end by being a rich man. The
+      girl would be an heiress. How complex her position would be! And being of
+      the elect who unknowingly bear with them the power that &ldquo;moves the world,&rdquo;
+       how would she affect Temple Barholm and its surrounding neighborhood?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wish to God she was here now!&rdquo; exclaimed Tembarom, suddenly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It had been an interesting talk, but now and then the duke had wondered
+      if, as it went on, his companion was as wholly at his ease as was usual
+      with him. An occasional shade of absorption in his expression, as if he
+      were thinking of two things at once despite himself, a hint of
+      restlessness, revealed themselves occasionally. Was there something more
+      he was speculating on the possibility of saying, something more to tell or
+      explain? If there was, let him take his time. His audience, at all events,
+      was possessed of perceptions. This somewhat abrupt exclamation might open
+      the way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is easily understood, my dear fellow,&rdquo; replied the duke.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There's times when you want a little thing like that just to talk things
+      over with, just to ask, because you&mdash;you're dead sure she'd never
+      lose her head and give herself away without knowing she was doing it. She
+      could just keep still and let the waves roll over her and be standing
+      there ready and quiet when the tide had passed. It's the keeping your
+      mouth shut that's so hard for most people, the not saying a darned thing,
+      whatever happens, till just the right time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Women cannot often do it,&rdquo; said the duke. &ldquo;Very few men can.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You're right,&rdquo; Tembarom answered, and there was a trifle of anxiety in
+      his tone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There's women, just the best kind, that you daren't tell a big thing to.
+      Not that they'd mean to give it away&mdash;perhaps they wouldn't know when
+      they did it&mdash;but they'd feel so anxious they'd get&mdash;they'd get&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Rattled,&rdquo; put in the duke, and knew who he was thinking of. He saw Miss
+      Alicia's delicate, timid face as he spoke.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      T. Tembarom laughed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's just it,&rdquo; he answered. &ldquo;They wouldn't go back on you for worlds,
+      but&mdash;well, you have to be careful with them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's got something on his mind,&rdquo; mentally commented the duke. &ldquo;He wonders
+      if he will tell it to me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And there's times when you'd give half you've got to be able to talk a
+      thing out and put it up to some one else for a while. I could do it with
+      her. That's why I said I wish to God that she was here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have learned to know how to keep still,&rdquo; the duke said. &ldquo;So have I.
+      We learned it in different schools, but we have both learned.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As he was saying the words, he thought he was going to hear something;
+      when he had finished saying them he knew that he would without a doubt. T.
+      Tembarom made a quick move in his seat; he lost a shade of color and
+      cleared his throat as he bent forward, casting a glance at the backs of
+      the coachman and footman on the high seat above them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Can those fellows hear me?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; the duke answered; &ldquo;if you speak as you are speaking now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are the biggest man about here,&rdquo; the young man went on. &ldquo;You stand
+      for everything that English people care for, and you were born knowing all
+      the things I don't. I've been carrying a big load for quite a while, and I
+      guess I'm not big enough to handle it alone, perhaps. Anyhow, I want to be
+      sure I'm not making fool mistakes. The worst of it is that I've got to
+      keep still if I'm right, and I've got to keep still if I'm wrong. I've got
+      to keep still, anyhow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I learned to hold my tongue in places where, if I had not held it, I
+      might have plunged nations into bloodshed,&rdquo; the duke said. &ldquo;Tell me all
+      you choose.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As a result of which, by the time their drive had ended and they returned
+      to Stone Hover, he had told him, and, the duke sat in his corner of the
+      carriage with an unusual light in his eyes and a flush of somewhat excited
+      color on his cheek.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You're a queer fellow, T. Tembarom,&rdquo; he said when they parted in the
+      drawing-room after taking tea. &ldquo;You exhilarate me. You make me laugh. If I
+      were an emotional person, you would at moments make me cry. There's an
+      affecting uprightness about you. You're rather a fine fellow too, 'pon my
+      life.&rdquo; Putting a waxen, gout-knuckled old hand on his shoulder, and giving
+      him a friendly push which was half a pat, he added, &ldquo;You are, by God!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And after his guest had left him, the duke stood for some minutes gazing
+      into the fire with a complicated smile and the air of a man who finds
+      himself quaintly enriched.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have had ambitions in the course of my existence&mdash;several of
+      them,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;but even in over-vaulting moments never have I aspired to
+      such an altitude as this&mdash;to be, as it were, part of a melodrama. One
+      feels that one scarcely deserves it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0027" id="link2HCH0027">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXVII
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. Temple Barholm seems in better spirits,&rdquo; Lady Mallowe said to Captain
+      Palliser as they walked on the terrace in the starlight dusk after dinner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Captain Palliser took his cigar from his mouth and looked at the glowing
+      end of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Has it struck you that he has been in low spirits?&rdquo; he inquired
+      speculatively. &ldquo;One does not usually connect him with depression.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Certainly not with depression. He's an extraordinary creature. One would
+      think he would perish from lack of the air he is used to breathing&mdash;New
+      York air.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He is not perishing. He's too shrewd,&rdquo; returned Palliser. &ldquo;He mayn't
+      exactly like all this, but he's getting something out of it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He is not getting much of what he evidently wants most. I am out of all
+      patience,&rdquo; said Lady Mallowe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her acquaintance with Palliser had lasted through a number of years. They
+      argued most matters from the same basis of reasoning. They were at times
+      almost candid with each other. It may be acknowledged, however, that of
+      the two Lady Mallowe was the more inclined to verge on self-revelation.
+      This was of course because she was the less clever and had more temper.
+      Her temper, she had, now and then, owned bitterly to herself, had played
+      her tricks. Captain Palliser's temper never did this. It was Lady
+      Mallowe's temper which spoke now, but she did not in the least mind his
+      knowing that Joan was exasperating her beyond endurance. He knew the whole
+      situation well enough to be aware of it without speech on her part. He had
+      watched similar situations several times before.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Her manner toward him is, to resort to New York colloquialisms, `the
+      limit,'&rdquo; Palliser said quietly. &ldquo;Is it your idea that his less good
+      spirits have been due to Lady Joan's ingenuities? They are ingenious, you
+      know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They are devilish,&rdquo; exclaimed her mother. &ldquo;She treads him in the mire and
+      sails about professing to be conducting herself flawlessly. She is too
+      clever for me,&rdquo; she added with bitterness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Palliser laughed softly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But very often you have been too clever for her,&rdquo; he suggested. &ldquo;For my
+      part, I don't quite see how you got her here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Mallowe became not almost, but entirely, candid.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Upon the whole, I don't quite know myself. I believe she really came for
+      some mysterious reason of her own.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is rather my impression,&rdquo; said Palliser. &ldquo;She has got something up
+      her sleeve, and so has he.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He!&rdquo; Lady Mallowe quite ejaculated the word. &ldquo;She always has. That's her
+      abominable secretive way. But he! T. Tembarom with something up his
+      sleeve! One can't imagine it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Almost everybody has. I found that out long years ago,&rdquo; said Palliser,
+      looking at his cigar end again as if consulting it. &ldquo;Since I arrived at
+      the conclusion, I always take it for granted, and look out for it. I've
+      become rather clever in following such things up, and I have taken an
+      unusual interest in T. Tembarom from the first.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Mallowe turned her handsome face, much softened by an enwreathing
+      gauze scarf, toward him anxiously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you think his depression, or whatever it is, means Joan?&rdquo; she asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If he is depressed by her, you need not be discouraged,&rdquo; smiled Palliser.
+      &ldquo;The time to lose hope would be when, despite her ingenuities, he became
+      entirely cheerful. But,&rdquo; he added after a moment of pause, &ldquo;I have an idea
+      there is some other little thing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you suppose that some young woman he has left behind in New York is
+      demanding her rights?&rdquo; said Lady Mallowe, with annoyance. &ldquo;That is exactly
+      the kind of thing Joan would like to hear, and so entirely natural. Some
+      shop-girl or other.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Quite natural, as you say; but he would scarcely be running up to London
+      and consulting Scotland Yard about her,&rdquo; Palliser answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Scotland Yard!&rdquo; ejaculated his companion. &ldquo;How in the world did you find
+      that out?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Captain Palliser did not explain how he had done it. Presumably his
+      knowledge was due to the adroitness of the system of &ldquo;following such
+      things up.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Scotland Yard has also come to him,&rdquo; he went on. &ldquo;Did you chance to see a
+      red-faced person who spent a morning with him last week?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He looked like a butcher, and I thought he might be one of his friends,&rdquo;
+       Lady Mallowe said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I recognized the man. He is an extremely clever detective, much respected
+      for his resources in the matter of following clues which are so attenuated
+      as to be scarcely clues at all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Clues have no connection with Joan,&rdquo; said Lady Mallowe, still more
+      annoyed. &ldquo;All London knows her miserable story.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have you&mdash;&rdquo; Captain Palliser's tone was thoughtful, &ldquo;&mdash;has any
+      one ever seen Mr. Strangeways?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No. Can you imagine anything more absurdly romantic? A creature without a
+      memory, shut up in a remote wing of a palace like this, as if he were the
+      Man with the Iron Mask. Romance is not quite compatible with T. Tembarom.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is so incongruous that it has entertained me to think it over a good
+      deal,&rdquo; remarked Palliser. &ldquo;He leaves everything to one's imagination. All
+      one knows is that he isn't a relative; that he isn't mad, but only too
+      nervous to see or be seen. Queer situation. I've found there is always a
+      reason for things; the queerer they are, the more sure it is that there's
+      a reason. What is the reason Strangeways is kept here, and where would a
+      detective come in? Just on general principles I'm rather going into the
+      situation. There's a reason, and it would be amusing to find it out. Don't
+      you think so?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He spoke casually, and Lady Mallowe's answer was casual, though she knew
+      from experience that he was not as casual as he chose to seem. He was
+      clever enough always to have certain reasons of his own which formulated
+      themselves into interests large and small. He knew things about people
+      which were useful. Sometimes quite small things were useful. He was always
+      well behaved, and no one had ever accused him of bringing pressure to
+      bear; but it was often possible for him to sell things or buy things or
+      bring about things in circumstances which would have presented
+      difficulties to other people. Lady Mallowe knew from long experience all
+      about the exigencies of cases when &ldquo;needs must,&rdquo; and she was not critical.
+      Temple Barholm as the estate of a distant relative and T. Tembarom as its
+      owner were not assets to deal with indifferently. When a man made a
+      respectable living out of people who could be persuaded to let you make
+      investments for them, it was not an unbusinesslike idea to be in the
+      position to advise an individual strongly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's quite natural that you should feel an interest,&rdquo; she answered. &ldquo;But
+      the romantic stranger is too romantic, though I will own Scotland Yard is
+      a little odd.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, that is exactly what I thought,&rdquo; said Palliser.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had in fact thought a good deal and followed the thing up in a quiet,
+      amateur way, though with annoyingly little result. Occasionally he had
+      felt rather a fool for his pains, because he had been led to so few facts
+      of importance and had found himself so often confronted by T. Tembarom's
+      entirely frank grin. His own mental attitude was not a complex one. Lady
+      Mallowe's summing up had been correct enough on the whole. Temple Barholm
+      ought to be a substantial asset, regarded in its connection with its
+      present owner. Little dealings in stocks&mdash;sometimes rather large ones
+      when luck was with him&mdash;had brought desirable returns to Captain
+      Palliser throughout a number of years. Just now he was taking an interest
+      in a somewhat imposing scheme, or what might prove an imposing one if it
+      were managed properly and presented to the right persons. If T. Tembarom
+      had been sufficiently lured by the spirit of speculation to plunge into
+      old Hutchinson's affair, as he evidently had done, he was plainly of the
+      temperament attracted by the game of chance. There had been no reason but
+      that of temperament which could have led him to invest. He had found
+      himself suddenly a moneyed man and had liked the game. Never having so
+      much as heard of Little Ann Hutchinson, Captain Palliser not unnaturally
+      argued after this wise. There seemed no valid reason why, if a vague
+      invention had allured, a less vague scheme, managed in a more businesslike
+      manner, should not. This Mexican silver and copper mine was a dazzling
+      thing to talk about. He could go into details. He had, in fact, allowed a
+      good deal of detail to trail through his conversation at times. It had not
+      been difficult to accomplish this in his talks with Lady Mallowe in his
+      host's presence. Lady Mallowe was always ready to talk of mines, gold,
+      silver, or copper. It happened at times that one could manage to secure a
+      few shares without the actual payment of money. There were little
+      hospitalities or social amiabilities now and then which might be regarded
+      as value received. So she had made it easy for Captain Palliser to talk,
+      and T. Tembarom had heard much which would have been of interest to the
+      kind of young man he appeared to be. Sometimes he had listened absorbedly,
+      and on a few occasions he had asked a few questions which laid him
+      curiously bare in his role of speculator. If he had no practical knowledge
+      of the ways and means of great mining companies, he at least professed
+      none. At all events, if there was any little matter he preferred to keep
+      to himself, there was no harm in making oneself familiar with its aspect
+      and significance. A man's arguments, so far as he himself is concerned,
+      assume the character with which his own choice of adjectives and adverbs
+      labels them. That is, if he labels them. The most astute do not. Captain
+      Palliser did not. He dealt merely with reasoning processes which were
+      applicable to the subject in hand, whatsoever its nature. He was a
+      practical man of the world&mdash;a gentleman, of course. It was necessary
+      to adjust matters without romantic hair-splitting. It was all by the way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      T. Tembarom had at the outset seemed to present, so to speak, no surface.
+      Palliser had soon ceased to be at all sure that his social ambitions were
+      to be relied on as a lever. Besides which, when the old Duke of Stone took
+      delighted possession of him, dined with him, drove with him, sat and
+      gossiped with him by the hour, there was not much one could offer him.
+      Strangeways had at first meant only eccentricity. A little later he had
+      occasionally faintly stirred curiosity, and perhaps the fact that Burrill
+      enjoyed him as a grievance and a mystery had stimulated the stirring. The
+      veriest chance had led him to find himself regarding the opening up of
+      possible vistas.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From a certain window in a certain wing of the house a much-praised view
+      was to be seen. Nothing was more natural than that on the occasion of a
+      curious sunset Palliser should, in coming from his room, decide to take a
+      look at it. As he passed through a corridor Pearson came out of a room
+      near him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How is Mr. Strangeways to-day?&rdquo; Palliser asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not quite so well, I am afraid, sir,&rdquo; was the answer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sorry to hear it,&rdquo; replied Palliser, and passed on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On his return he walked somewhat slowly down the corridor. As he turned
+      into it he thought he heard the murmur of voices. One was that of T.
+      Tembarom, and he was evidently using argument. It sounded as if he were
+      persuading some one to agree with him, and the persuasion was earnest. He
+      was not arguing with Pearson or a housemaid. Why was he arguing with his
+      pensioner? His voice was as low as it was eager, and the other man's
+      replies were not to be heard. Only just after Palliser had passed the door
+      there broke out an appeal which was a sort of cry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No! My God, no! Don't send me away? Don't send me away!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      One could not, even if so inclined, stand and listen near a door while
+      servants might chance to be wandering about. Palliser went on his way with
+      a sense of having been slightly startled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He wants to get rid of him, and the fellow is giving him trouble,&rdquo; he
+      said to himself. &ldquo;That voice is not American. Not in the least.&rdquo; It set
+      him thinking and observing. When Tembarom wore the look which was not a
+      look of depression, but of something more puzzling, he thought that he
+      could guess at its reason. By the time he talked with Lady Mallowe he had
+      gone much further than he chose to let her know.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0028" id="link2HCH0028">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXVIII
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The popularity of Captain Palliser's story of the &ldquo;Ladies&rdquo; had been great
+      at the outset, but with the passage of time it had oddly waned. This had
+      resulted from the story's ceasing to develop itself, as the simplest
+      intelligence might have anticipated, by means of the only person capable
+      of its proper development. The person in question was of course T.
+      Tembarom. Expectations, amusing expectations, of him had been raised, and
+      he had singularly failed in the fulfilling of them. The neighborhood had,
+      so to speak, stood upon tiptoe,&mdash;the feminine portion of it, at
+      least,&mdash;looking over shoulders to get the first glimpses of what
+      would inevitably take place.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As weeks flew by, the standing on tiptoe became a thing of the past. The
+      whole thing flattened out most disappointingly. No attack whatever was
+      made upon the &ldquo;Ladies.&rdquo; That the Duke of Stone had immensely taken up Mr.
+      Temple Barholm had of course resulted in his being accepted in such a
+      manner as gave him many opportunities to encounter one and all. He
+      appeared at dinners, teas, and garden parties. Miss Alicia, whom he had in
+      some occult manner impressed upon people until they found themselves
+      actually paying a sort of court to her, was always his companion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One realizes one cannot possibly leave her out of anything,&rdquo; had been
+      said. &ldquo;He has somehow established her as if she were his mother or his
+      aunt&mdash;or his interpreter. And such clothes, my dear, one doesn't
+      behold. Worth and Paquin and Doucet must go sleepless for weeks to invent
+      them. They are without a flaw in shade or line or texture.&rdquo; Which was
+      true, because Mrs. Mellish of the Bond Street shop had become quite
+      obsessed by her idea and committed extravagances Miss Alicia offered up
+      contrite prayer to atone for, while Tembarom, simply chortling in his
+      glee, signed checks to pay for their exquisite embodiment. That he was not
+      reluctant to avail himself of social opportunities was made manifest by
+      the fact that he never refused an invitation. He appeared upon any spot to
+      which hospitality bade him, and unashamedly placed himself on record as a
+      neophyte upon almost all occasions. His well-cut clothes began in time to
+      wear more the air of garments belonging to him, but his hat made itself
+      remarked by its trick of getting pushed back on his head or tilted on
+      side, and his New York voice and accent rang out sharp and finely nasal in
+      the midst of low-pitched, throaty, or mellow English enunciations. He
+      talked a good deal at times because he found himself talked to by people
+      who either wanted to draw him out or genuinely wished to hear the things
+      he would be likely to say.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That the hero of Palliser's story should so comport himself as to provide
+      either diversion or cause for haughty displeasure would have been only a
+      natural outcome of his ambitions. In a brief period of time, however,
+      every young woman who might have expected to find herself an object of
+      such ambitions realized that his methods of approach and attack were not
+      marked by the usual characteristics of aspirants of his class. He
+      evidently desired to see and be seen. He presented himself, as it were,
+      for inspection and consideration, but while he was attentive, he did not
+      press attentions upon any one. He did not make advances in the ordinary
+      sense of the word. He never essayed flattering or even admiring remarks.
+      He said queer things at which one often could not help but laugh, but he
+      somehow wore no air of saying them with the intention of offering them as
+      witticisms which might be regarded as allurements. He did not ogle, he did
+      not simper or shuffle about nervously and turn red or pale, as eager and
+      awkward youths have a habit of doing under the stress of unrequited
+      admiration. In the presence of a certain slightingness of treatment, which
+      he at the outset met with not infrequently, he conducted himself with a
+      detached good nature which seemed to take but small account of attitudes
+      less unoffending than his own. When the slightingness disappeared from
+      sheer lack of anything to slight, he did not change his manner in any
+      degree.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He is not in the least forward,&rdquo; Beatrice Talchester said, the time
+      arriving when she and her sisters occasionally talked him over with their
+      special friends, the Granthams, &ldquo;and he is not forever under one's feet,
+      as the pushing sort usually is. Do you remember those rich people from the
+      place they called Troy&mdash;the ones who took Burnaby for a year&mdash;and
+      the awful eldest son who perpetually invented excuses for calling,
+      bringing books and ridiculous things?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This one never makes an excuse,&rdquo; Amabel Grantham put in.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But he never declines an invitation. There is no doubt that he wants to
+      see people,&rdquo; said Lady Honora, with the pretty little nose and the
+      dimples. She had ceased to turn up the pretty little nose, and she showed
+      a dimple as she added: &ldquo;Gwynedd is tremendously taken with him. She is
+      teaching him to play croquet. They spend hours together.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's beginning to play a pretty good game,&rdquo; said Gwynedd. &ldquo;He's not
+      stupid, at all events.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I believe you are the first choice, if he is really choosing,&rdquo; Amabel
+      Grantham decided. &ldquo;I should like to ask you a question.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ask it, by all means,&rdquo; said Gwynedd.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Does he ever ask you to show him how to hold his mallet, and then do
+      idiotic things, such as managing to touch your hand?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Never,&rdquo; was Gwynedd's answer. &ldquo;The young man from Troy used to do it, and
+      then beg pardon and turn red.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't understand him, or I don't understand Captain Palliser's story,&rdquo;
+       Amabel Grantham argued. &ldquo;Lucy and I are quite out of the running, but I
+      honestly believe that he takes as much notice of us as he does of any of
+      you. If he has intentions, he 'doesn't act the part,' which is pure New
+      York of the first water.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He said, however, that the things that mattered were not only titles, but
+      looks. He asked how many of us were 'lookers.' Don't be modest, Amabel.
+      Neither you nor Lucy are out of the running,&rdquo; Beatrice amiably suggested.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ladies first,&rdquo; commented Amabel, pertly. There was no objection to being
+      supported in one's suspicion that, after all, one was a &ldquo;looker.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There may be a sort of explanation,&rdquo; Honora put the idea forward somewhat
+      thoughtfully. &ldquo;Captain Palliser insists that he is much shrewder than he
+      seems. Perhaps he is cautious, and is looking us all over before he
+      commits himself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He is a Temple Barholm, after all,&rdquo; said Gwynedd, with boldness. &ldquo;He's
+      rather good looking. He has the nicest white teeth and the most cheering
+      grin I ever saw, and he's as 'rich as grease is,' as I heard a housemaid
+      say one day. I'm getting quite resigned to his voice, or it is improving,
+      I don't know which. If he only knew the mere A B C of ordinary people like
+      ourselves, and he committed himself to me, I wouldn't lay my hand on my
+      heart and say that one might not think him over.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I told you she was tremendously taken with him,&rdquo; said her sister. &ldquo;It's
+      come to this.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But,&rdquo; said Lady Gwynedd, &ldquo;he is not going to commit himself to any of us,
+      incredible as it may seem. The one person he stares at sometimes is Joan
+      Fayre, and he only looks at her as if he were curious and wouldn't object
+      to finding out why she treats him so outrageously. He isn't annoyed; he's
+      only curious.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's been adored by salesladies in New York,&rdquo; said Honora, &ldquo;and he can't
+      understand it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's been liked,&rdquo; Amabel Grantham summed him up. &ldquo;He's a likable thing.
+      He's even rather a dear. I've begun to like him myself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I hear you are learning to play croquet,&rdquo; the Duke of Stone remarked to
+      him a day or so later. &ldquo;How do you like it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lady Gwynedd Talchester is teaching me,&rdquo; Tembarom answered. &ldquo;I'd learn to
+      iron shirt-waists if she would give me lessons. She's one of the two that
+      have dimples,&rdquo; he added, reflection in his tone. &ldquo;I guess that'll count.
+      Shouldn't you think it would?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Miss Hutchinson?&rdquo; queried the duke.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tembarom nodded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, it's always her,&rdquo; he answered without a ray of humor. &ldquo;I just want
+      to stack 'em up.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are doing it,&rdquo; the duke replied with a slightly twisted mouth. There
+      were, in fact, moments when he might have fallen into fits of laughter
+      while Tembarom was seriousness itself. &ldquo;I must, however, call your
+      attention to the fact that there is sometimes in your manner a hint of a
+      businesslike pursuit of a fixed object which you must beware of. The Lady
+      Gwynedds might not enjoy the situation if they began to suspect. If they
+      decided to flout you,&mdash;'to throw you down,' I ought to say&mdash;where
+      would little Miss Hutchinson be?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Tembarom looked startled and disturbed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Say,&rdquo; he exclaimed, &ldquo;do I ever look that way? I must do better than that.
+      Anyhow, it ain't all put on. I'm doing my stunt, of course, but I like
+      them. They're mighty nice to me when you consider what they're up against.
+      And those two with the dimples,&mdash;Lady Gwynned and Lady Honora, are
+      just peaches. Any fellow might&rdquo;&mdash;he stopped and looked serious again&mdash;&ldquo;That's
+      why they'd count,&rdquo; he added.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They were having one of their odd long talks under a particularly splendid
+      copper beech which provided the sheltered out-of-door corner his grace
+      liked best. When they took their seats together in this retreat, it was
+      mysteriously understood that they were settling themselves down to
+      enjoyment of their own, and must not be disturbed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When I am comfortable and entertained,&rdquo; Moffat, the house steward, had
+      quoted his master as saying, &ldquo;you may mention it if the castle is in
+      flames; but do not annoy me with excitement and flurry. Ring the bell in
+      the courtyard, and call up the servants to pass buckets; but until the
+      lawn catches fire, I must insist on being left alone.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What dear papa talks to him about, and what he talks about to dear papa,&rdquo;
+       Lady Celia had more than once murmured in her gently remote, high-nosed
+      way, &ldquo;I cannot possibly imagine. Sometimes when I have passed them on my
+      way to the croquet lawn I have really seen them both look as absorbed as
+      people in a play. Of course it is very good for papa. It has had quite a
+      marked effect on his digestion. But isn't it odd!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wish,&rdquo; Lady Edith remarked almost wistfully, &ldquo;that I could get on
+      better with him myself conversationally. But I don't know what to talk
+      about, and it makes me nervous.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Their father, on the contrary, found in him unique resources, and this
+      afternoon it occurred to him that he had never so far heard him express
+      himself freely on the subject of Palliser. If led to do so, he would
+      probably reveal that he had views of Captain Palliser of which he might
+      not have been suspected, and the manner in which they would unfold
+      themselves would more than probably be illuminating. The duke was, in
+      fact, serenely sure that he required neither warning nor advice, and he
+      had no intention of offering either. He wanted to hear the views.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you know,&rdquo; he said as he stirred his tea, &ldquo;I've been thinking about
+      Palliser, and it has occurred to me more than once that I should like to
+      hear just how he strikes you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What I got on to first was how I struck him,&rdquo; answered Tembarom, with a
+      reasonable air. &ldquo;That was dead easy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was no hint of any vaunt of superior shrewdness. His was merely the
+      level-toned manner of an observer of facts in detail.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He has given you an opportunity of seeing a good deal of him,&rdquo; the duke
+      added. &ldquo;What do you gather from him&mdash;unless he has made up his mind
+      that you shall not gather anything at all?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A fellow like that couldn't fix it that way, however much he wanted to,&rdquo;
+       Tembarom answered again reasonably. &ldquo;Just his trying to do it would give
+      him away.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You mean you have gathered things?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I've gathered enough, though I didn't go after it. It hung on the
+      bushes. Anyhow, it seemed to me that way. I guess you run up against that
+      kind everywhere. There's stacks of them in New York&mdash;different shapes
+      and sizes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you met a man of his particular shape and size in New York, how would
+      you describe him?&rdquo; the duke asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should never have met him when I was there. He wouldn't have come my
+      way. He'd have been on Wall Street, doing high-class bucket-shop business,
+      or he'd have had a swell office selling copper-mines&mdash;any old kind of
+      mine that's going to make ten million a minute, the sort of deal he's in
+      now. If he'd been the kind I might have run up against,&rdquo; he added with
+      deliberation, &ldquo;he wouldn't have been as well dressed or as well spoken.
+      He'd have been either flashy or down at heel. You'd have called him a
+      crook.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The duke seemed pleased with his tea as, after having sipped it, he put it
+      down on the table at his side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A crook?&rdquo; he repeated. &ldquo;I wonder if that word is altogether American?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's not complimentary, but you asked me,&rdquo; said Tembarom. &ldquo;But I don't
+      believe you asked me because you thought I wasn't on to him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Frankly speaking, no,&rdquo; answered the duke. &ldquo;Does he talk to you about the
+      mammoth mines and the rubber forests?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Say, that's where he wins out with me,&rdquo; Tembarom replied admiringly. &ldquo;He
+      gets in such fine work that I switch him on to it whenever I want cheering
+      up. It makes me sorter forget things that worry me just to see a man act
+      the part right up to the top notch the way he does it. The very way his
+      clothes fit, the style he's got his hair brushed, and that swell, careless
+      lounge of his, are half of the make-up. You see, most of us couldn't
+      mistake him for anything else but just what he looks like&mdash;a
+      gentleman visiting round among his friends and a million miles from
+      wanting to butt in with business. The thing that first got me interested
+      was watching how he slid in the sort of guff he wanted you to get worked
+      up about and think over. Why, if I'd been what I look like to him, he'd
+      have had my pile long ago, and he wouldn't be loafing round here any
+      more.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you think you look like to him?&rdquo; his host inquired.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I look as if I'd eat out of his hand,&rdquo; Tembarom answered, quite unbiased
+      by any touch of wounded vanity. &ldquo;Why shouldn't I? And I'm not trying to
+      wake him up, either. I like to look that way to him and to his sort. It
+      gives me a chance to watch and get wise to things. He's a high-school
+      education in himself. I like to hear him talk. I asked him to come and
+      stay at the house so that I could hear him talk.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did he introduce the mammoth mines in his first call?&rdquo; the duke inquired.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I don't mean that kind of talk. I didn't know how much good I was
+      going to get out of him at first. But he was the kind I hadn't known, and
+      it seemed like he was part of the whole thing&mdash;like the girls with
+      title that Ann said I must get next to. And an easy way of getting next to
+      the man kind was to let him come and stay. He wanted to, all right. I
+      guess that's the way he lives when he's down on his luck, getting invited
+      to stay at places. Like Lady Mallowe,&rdquo; he added, quite without prejudice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You do sum them up, don't you?&rdquo; smiled the duke.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I don't see how I could help it,&rdquo; he said impartially. &ldquo;They're
+      printed in sixty-four point black-face, seems to me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is that?&rdquo; the duke inquired with interest. He thought it might be a
+      new and desirable bit of slang. &ldquo;I don't know that one.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Biggest type there is,&rdquo; grinned Tembarom. &ldquo;It's the kind that's used for
+      head-lines. That's newspaper-office talk.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, technical, I see. What, by the way, is the smallest lettering
+      called?&rdquo; his grace followed up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Brilliant,&rdquo; answered Tembarom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You,&rdquo; remarked the duke, &ldquo;are not printed in sixty-four-point black-face
+      so far as they are concerned. You are not even brilliant. They don't find
+      themselves able to sum you up. That fact is one of my recreations.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll tell you why,&rdquo; Tembarom explained with his clearly unprejudiced air.
+      &ldquo;There's nothing much about me to sum up, anyhow. I'm too sort of plain
+      sailing and ordinary. I'm not making for anywhere they'd think I'd want to
+      go. I'm not hiding anything they'd be sure I'd want to hide.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By the Lord! you're not!&rdquo; exclaimed the duke.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When I first came here, every one of them had a fool idea I'd want to
+      pretend I'd never set eyes on a newsboy or a boot-black, and that I
+      couldn't find my way in New York when I got off Fifth Avenue. I used to
+      see them thinking they'd got to look as if they believed it, if they
+      wanted to keep next. When I just let out and showed I didn't care a darn
+      and hadn't sense enough to know that it mattered, it nearly made them
+      throw a fit. They had to turn round and fix their faces all over again and
+      act like it was 'interesting.' That's what Lady Mallowe calls it. She says
+      it's so 'interesting!'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is,&rdquo; commented the duke.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, you know that, but she doesn't. Not on your life! I guess it makes
+      her about sick to think of it and have to play that it's just what you'd
+      want all your men friends to have done. Now, Palliser&mdash;&rdquo; he paused
+      and grinned again. He was sitting in a most casual attitude, his hands
+      clasped round one up-raised knee, which he nursed, balancing himself. It
+      was a position of informal ease which had an air of assisting enjoyable
+      reflection.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, Palliser? Don't let us neglect Palliser,&rdquo; his host encouraged him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's in a worse mix-up than the rest because he's got more to lose. If he
+      could work this mammoth-mine song and dance with the right people, there'd
+      be money enough in it to put him on Easy Street. That's where he's aiming
+      for. The company's just where it has to have a boost. It's just GOT to. If
+      it doesn't, there'll be a bust up that may end in fitting out a high-toned
+      promoter or so in a striped yellow-and-black Jersey suit and set him to
+      breaking rocks or playing with oakum. I'll tell you, poor old Palliser
+      gets the Willies sometimes after he's read his mail. He turns the color of
+      ecru baby Irish. That's a kind of lace I got a dressmaker to tell me about
+      when I wrote up receptions and dances for the Sunday Earth. Ecru baby
+      Irish&mdash;that's Palliser's color after he's read his letters.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I dare say the fellow's in a devil of a mess, if the truth were known,&rdquo;
+       the duke said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And here's 'T. T.,' hand-made and hand-painted for the part of the kind
+      of sucker he wants.&rdquo; T. Tembarom's manner was almost sympathetic in its
+      appreciation. &ldquo;I can tell you I'm having a real good time with Palliser.
+      It looked like I'd just dropped from heaven when he first saw me. If he'd
+      been the praying kind, I'd have been just the sort he'd have prayed for
+      when he said his `Now-I-lay-me's' before he went to bed. There wasn't a
+      chance in a hundred that I wasn't a fool that had his head swelled so that
+      he'd swallow any darned thing if you handed it to him smooth enough. First
+      time he called he asked me a lot of questions about New York business.
+      That was pretty smart of him. He wanted to find out, sort of careless, how
+      much I knew&mdash;or how little.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The duke was leaning back luxuriously in his chair and gazing at him as he
+      might have gazed at the work of an old master of which each line and shade
+      was of absorbing interest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can see him,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I can see him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He found out I knew nothing,&rdquo; Tembarom continued. &ldquo;And what was to hinder
+      him trying to teach me something, by gee! Nothing on top of the green
+      earth. I was there, waiting with my mouth open, it seemed like.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And he has tried&mdash;in his best manner?&rdquo; said his grace.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What he hasn't tried wouldn't be worthy trying,&rdquo; Tembarom answered
+      cheerfully. &ldquo;Sometimes it seems like a shame to waste it. I've got so I
+      know how to start him when he doesn't know I'm doing it. I tell you, he's
+      fine. Gentlemanly&mdash;that's his way, you know. High-toned friend that
+      just happens to know of a good thing and thinks enough of you in a sort of
+      reserved way to feel like it's a pity not to give you a chance to come in
+      on the ground floor, if you've got the sense to see the favor he's
+      friendly enough to do you. It's such a favor that it'd just disgust a man
+      if you could possibly turn it down. But of course you're to take it or
+      leave it. It's not to his interest to push it. Lord, no! Whatever you did
+      his way is that he'd not condescend to say a darned word. High-toned
+      silence, that's all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Duke of Stone was chuckling very softly. His chuckles rather broke his
+      words when he spoke.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By&mdash;by&mdash;Jove!&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;You&mdash;you do see it, don't you?
+      You do see it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Tembarom nursed his knee comfortably.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;it's what keeps me up. You know a lot more about me than
+      any one else does, but there's a whole raft of things I think about that I
+      couldn't hang round any man's neck. If I tried to hang them round yours,
+      you'd know that I would be having a hell of a time here, if I'd let myself
+      think too much. If I didn't see it, as you call it, if I didn't see so
+      many things, I might begin to get sorry for myself.&rdquo; There was a pause of
+      a second. &ldquo;Gee!&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;Gee! this not hearing a thing about Ann!&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good Lord! my dear fellow,&rdquo; the duke said hastily, &ldquo;I know. I know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Tembarom turned and looked at him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You've been there,&rdquo; he remarked. &ldquo;You've been there, I bet.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I've been there,&rdquo; answered the duke. &ldquo;I've been there&mdash;and come
+      back. But while it's going on&mdash;you have just described it. A man can
+      have a hell of a time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He can,&rdquo; Tembarom admitted unreservedly. &ldquo;He's got to keep going to stand
+      it. Well, Strangeways gives me some work to do. And I've got Palliser.
+      He's a little sunbeam.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A man-servant approaching to suggest a possible need of hot tea started at
+      hearing his grace break into a sudden and plainly involuntary crow of
+      glee. He had not heard that one before either. Palliser as a little
+      sunbeam brightening the pathway of T. Tembarom, was, in the particular
+      existing circumstances, all that could be desired of fine humor. It
+      somewhat recalled the situation of the &ldquo;Ladies&rdquo; of the noble houses of
+      Pevensy, Talchester, and Stone unconsciously passing in review for the
+      satisfaction of little Miss Hutchinson. Tembarom laughed a little himself,
+      but he went on with a sort of seriousness,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There's one thing sure enough. I've got on to it by listening and working
+      out what he would do by what he doesn't know he says. If he could put the
+      screws on me in any way, he wouldn't hold back. It'd be all quite polite
+      and gentlemanly, but he'd do it all the same. And he's dead-sure that
+      everybody's got something they'd like to hide&mdash;or get. That's what he
+      works things out from.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Does he think you have something to hide&mdash;or get?&rdquo; the duke inquired
+      rather quickly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's sure of it. But he doesn't know yet whether it's get or hide. He
+      noses about. Pearson's seen him. He asks questions and plays he ain't
+      doing it and ain't interested, anyhow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He doesn't like you, he doesn't like you,&rdquo; the duke said rather
+      thoughtfully. &ldquo;He has a way of conveying that you are far more subtle than
+      you choose to look. He is given to enlarging on the fact that an air of
+      entire frankness is one of the chief assets of certain promoters of huge
+      American schemes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Tembarom smiled the smile of recognition.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;it looks like that's a long way round, doesn't it? But
+      it's not far to T. T. when you want to hitch on the connection. Anyhow,
+      that's the way he means it to look. If ever I was suspected of being in
+      any mix-up, everybody would remember he'd said that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's very amusin',&rdquo; said the duke. &ldquo;It's very amusin'.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They had become even greater friends and intimates by this time than the
+      already astonished neighborhood suspected them of being. That they spent
+      much time together in an amazing degree of familiarity was the talk of the
+      country, in fact, one of the most frequent resources of conversation.
+      Everybody endeavored to find reason for the situation, but none had been
+      presented which seemed of sufficiently logical convincingness. The duke
+      was eccentric, of course. That was easy to hit upon. He was amiably
+      perverse and good-humoredly cynical. He was of course immensely amused by
+      the incongruity of the acquaintance. This being the case, why exactly he
+      had never before chosen for himself a companion equally out of the picture
+      it was not easy to explain. There were plow-boys or clerks out of
+      provincial shops who would surely have been quite as incongruous when
+      surrounded by ducal splendors. He might have got a young man from
+      Liverpool or Blackburn who would have known as little of polite society as
+      Mr. Temple Barholm; there were few, of course, who could know less. But he
+      had never shown the faintest desire to seek one out. Palliser, it is true,
+      suggested it was Tembarom's &ldquo;cheek&rdquo; which stood him in good stead. The
+      young man from behind the counter in a Liverpool or Blackburn shop would
+      probably have been frightened to death and afraid to open his mouth in
+      self-revelation, whereas Temple Barholm was so entirely a bounder that he
+      did not know he was one, and was ready to make an ass of himself to any
+      extent. The frankest statement of the situation, if any one had so chosen
+      to put it, would have been that he was regarded as a sort of court fool
+      without cap or bells.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No one was aware of the odd confidences which passed between the weirdly
+      dissimilar pair. No one guessed that the old peer sat and listened to
+      stories of a red-headed, slim-bodied girl in a dingy New York
+      boarding-house, that he liked them sufficiently to encourage their
+      telling, that he had made a mental picture of a certain look in a pair of
+      maternally yearning and fearfully convincing round young eyes, that he
+      knew the burnished fullness and glow of the red hair until he could
+      imagine the feeling of its texture and abundant warmth in the hand. And
+      this subject was only one of many. And of others they talked with
+      interest, doubt, argument, speculation, holding a living thrill.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The tap of croquet mallets sounded hollow and clear from the sunken lawn
+      below the mass of shrubs between them and the players as the duke
+      repeated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's hugely amusin',&rdquo; dropping his &ldquo;g,&rdquo; which was not one of his usual
+      affectations.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Confound it!&rdquo; he said next, wrinkling the thin, fine skin round his eyes
+      in a speculative smile, &ldquo;I wish I had had a son of my own just like you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      All of Tembarom's white teeth revealed themselves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'd have liked to have been in it,&rdquo; he replied, &ldquo;but I shouldn't have
+      been like me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, you would.&rdquo; The duke put the tips of his fingers delicately
+      together. &ldquo;You are of the kind which in all circumstances is like itself.&rdquo;
+       He looked about him, taking in the turreted, majestic age and mass of the
+      castle. &ldquo;You would have been born here. You would have learned to ride
+      your pony down the avenue. You would have gone to Eton and to Oxford. I
+      don't think you would have learned much, but you would have been decidedly
+      edifying and companionable. You would have had a sense of humor which
+      would have made you popular in society and at court. A young fellow who
+      makes those people laugh holds success in his hand. They want to be made
+      to laugh as much as I do. Good God! how they are obliged to be bored and
+      behave decently under it! You would have seen and known more things to be
+      humorous about than you know now. I don't think you would have been a fool
+      about women, but some of them would have been fools about you, because
+      you've got a way. I had one myself. It's all the more dangerous because
+      it's possibility suggesting without being sentimental. A friendly young
+      fellow always suggests possibilities without being aware of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Would I have been Lord Temple Temple Barholm or something of that sort?&rdquo;
+       Tembarom asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You would have been the Marquis of Belcarey,&rdquo; the duke replied, looking
+      him over thoughtfully, &ldquo;and your name would probably have been Hugh
+      Lawrence Gilbert Henry Charles Adelbert, or words to that effect.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A regular six-shooter,&rdquo; said Tembarom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The duke was following it up with absorption in his eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You'd have gone into the Guards, perhaps,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;and drill would have
+      made you carry yourself better. You're a good height. You'd have been a
+      well-set-up fellow. I should have been rather proud of you. I can see you
+      riding to the palace with the rest of them, sabres and chains clanking and
+      glittering and helmet with plumes streaming. By Jove! I don't wonder at
+      the effect they have on nursery-maids. On a sunny morning in spring they
+      suggest knights in a fairytale.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should have liked it all right if I hadn't been born in Brooklyn,&rdquo;
+       grinned Tembarom. &ldquo;But that starts you out in a different way. Do you
+      think, if I'd been born the Marquis of Bel&mdash;what's his name&mdash;I
+      should have been on to Palliser's little song and dance, and had as much
+      fun out of it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;On my soul, I believe you would,&rdquo; the duke answered. &ldquo;Brooklyn or Stone
+      Hover Castle, I'm hanged if you wouldn't have been YOU.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0029" id="link2HCH0029">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXIX
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At last he said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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 &ldquo;good
+      and ready.&rdquo; When he was &ldquo;good and ready&rdquo; he usually revealed himself to
+      the duke, but he was not equally expansive with others.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, you have not mentioned it,&rdquo; his grace answered, and laughed a little.
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It took about ten years to kick that into me&mdash;ten good years, I
+      should say.&rdquo; T. Tembarom looked as if he were looking backward at many
+      episodes as he said it. &ldquo;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.'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Say nothing and saw wood,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;It's worth writing down. It means
+      'shut your mouth and keep on working.'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you,&rdquo; said the duke. &ldquo;It is worth writing down. Thank you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I did not talk about the books because I wanted to get used to them
+      before I began to talk,&rdquo; Tembarom explained. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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,&rdquo; commented the
+      duke.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's what's happened,&rdquo; Tembarom answered. &ldquo;There's not so many now. I
+      can cut 'em off in chunks.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How did it begin?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He listened with much pleasure while Tembarom told him how it had begun
+      and how it had gone on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'd been having a pretty bad time one day. Strangeways had been worse&mdash;a
+      darned sight worse&mdash;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are standing a good deal,&rdquo; said the duke.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I am&mdash;but so is she.&rdquo; He set his hard young jaw and nursed his
+      knee, staring once more at the velvet shadows. &ldquo;The girl in the book I
+      picked up&mdash;&rdquo; he began.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The first book?&rdquo; his host inquired.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tembarom nodded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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&mdash;a
+      whole raft of them&mdash;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He was a cantankerous old brute,&rdquo; said the Duke of Stone with candor,
+      &ldquo;but he chanced to be an omnivorous novel-reader. Nothing was too
+      sentimental for him in his later years.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I took the thing out and read it,&rdquo; Tembarom went on, uneasily, the
+      emotion of his first novel-reading stirring him as he talked. &ldquo;It kept me
+      up half the night, and I hadn't finished it then. I wanted to know the
+      end.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Benisons upon the books of which one wants to know the end!&rdquo; the duke
+      murmured.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tembarom's interest had plainly not terminated with &ldquo;the end.&rdquo; Its
+      freshness made it easily revived. There was a hint of emotional
+      indignation in his relation of the plot.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was about a couple of fools who were dead stuck on each other&mdash;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's the way it hit me&mdash;once,&rdquo; remarked his grace.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is only once,&rdquo; said Tembarom, doggedly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Occasionally,&rdquo; said his host. &ldquo;Occasionally.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Tembarom knew what he meant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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&mdash;though you were as mad as hops.
+      The girl began to die&mdash;slow&mdash;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&mdash;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?&rdquo; quite fiercely. &ldquo;I guess it was sentimental all right,
+      but it got you by the throat.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Good-bye, Sweetheart, Good-bye,&rdquo;' his grace quoted. &ldquo;First-class title.
+      We are all sentimental. And that was the first, was it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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&mdash;that it's the whole thing. But
+      it isn't, by gee!&rdquo; His air became thoughtful. &ldquo;I've begun to kind of get
+      on to what all this means&rdquo;&mdash;glancing about him&mdash;&ldquo;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&mdash;I can't read his things right straight through&mdash;but
+      he 's an eye-opener.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have tried nothing BUT novels?&rdquo; his enthralled hearer inquired.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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&mdash;but it wasn't like that first
+      one. It was about a man &ldquo;&mdash;he spoke slowly, as if searching for words
+      and parallels&mdash;&ldquo;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.&rdquo; There was
+      a humorous sense of illumination in his half-laugh. &ldquo;It was their New
+      York, by jings,&rdquo; he put in. &ldquo;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&mdash;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Was it Hereward the Wake, by chance?&rdquo; exclaimed his auditor. &ldquo;Hereward
+      the Last of the English?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's the man,&rdquo; cried Tembarom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;An engaging ruffian and thief and murderer, and a touching one also,&rdquo;
+       commented the duke. &ldquo;You liked him?&rdquo; He really wanted to know.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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&mdash;hot
+      and strong.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His sharp face had reddened and his voice rose high and nasal. There was a
+      look of roused blood in him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you a fighter from Fightersville?&rdquo; 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 &ldquo;Brain-Biter&rdquo; itself. The modern
+      entity slipped back again through the lengthened links of bygone centuries&mdash;back
+      until it became T. Tembarom once more&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll fight,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;for what I've got to fight for, but not for a
+      darned thing else. Not a darned thing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you would fight,&rdquo; smiled the duke, grimly. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tembarom seemed to think it out interestedly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I did not,&rdquo; he answered. &ldquo;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&mdash;just got there!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He was oddly in sympathy with &ldquo;the early savages here,&rdquo; 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 &ldquo;got in some
+      good work, though it wasn't square.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He was a big man,&rdquo; he ended. &ldquo;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&mdash;tough as
+      hell!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      From &ldquo;Good-bye, Sweetheart&rdquo; to &ldquo;Hereward the Last of the English&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The women in the Hereward book made me think of Lady Joan,&rdquo; he remarked,
+      suddenly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Torfreda?&rdquo; the duke asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He nodded quite seriously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She had ways that reminded me of her, and I kept thinking they must both
+      have had the same look in their eyes&mdash;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That sounds rather like Miss Hutchinson,&rdquo; his host suggested, &ldquo;though the
+      parallel between a Harlem flat and an English forest in the eleventh
+      century is not exact.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I thought that, too,&rdquo; Tembarom admitted. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Another lady, if I remember rightly,&rdquo; said the duke.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He left her, the fool!&rdquo; Tembarom answered. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But, my good fellow,&rdquo; protested the duke, despite feeling a touch of the
+      thrill again, &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's what I know about half as well again as I know anything else,&rdquo;
+       answered Tembarom. He added, with a deliberation holding its own meaning,
+      &ldquo;That's what I'm coming to.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The duke waited. What was it he was coming to?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That she is mistaken in thinking&mdash;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The duke set the tips of his fingers together.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How would you do it?&rdquo; he inquired.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just straight,&rdquo; replied T. Tembarom. &ldquo;There's no other way.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      From the old worldling broke forth an involuntary low laugh, which was a
+      sort of cackle. So this was what he was coming to.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I cannot think of any devious method,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;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.'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not a darned thing, and never has been,&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If she will listen&mdash;&rdquo; the duke began.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, she'll listen,&rdquo; put in Tembarom. &ldquo;I'll make her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know something of Lady Joan and I know something of you,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;but
+      I don't exactly foresee what will happen. I will not say that I should not
+      like to be present.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There'll be nobody present but just me and her,&rdquo; Tembarom answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0030" id="link2HCH0030">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXX
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The visits of Lady Mallowe and Captain Palliser had had their features.
+      Neither of the pair had come to one of the most imposing &ldquo;places&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They think I don't know I'm not doing it all myself,&rdquo; was his easy mental
+      summing-up. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you and Rose know old Mrs. Hutchinson?&rdquo; he had inquired of Pearson the
+      night before the talk with the duke.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, not to say exactly know her, sir, but everybody knows of her. She
+      is a most remarkable old person, sir.&rdquo; Then, after watching his face for a
+      moment or so, he added tentatively, &ldquo;Would you perhaps wish us to make her
+      acquaintance for&mdash;for any reason?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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&mdash;and most of them lookers, at that,&rdquo; was his
+      answer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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,&rdquo; he remarked. &ldquo;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&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Has she?&rdquo; exclaimed Tembarom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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, &ldquo;Coom in!&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm Temple Temple Barholm, Mrs. Hutchinson,&rdquo; he announced.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know that,&rdquo; she answered. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't know whether I ought to have come to see you or not,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, tha'st coom,&rdquo; she replied, going on with her knitting. &ldquo;Sit thee
+      doun and have a bit of a chat.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Say!&rdquo; he broke out. &ldquo;Ain't you going to shake hands with me?&rdquo; He held his
+      hand out impetuously. He knew he was all right if she'd shake hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Theer's nowt agen that surely,&rdquo; she answered, with a shrewd bit of a
+      smile. She gave him her hand. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you got up and made me a curtsey,&rdquo; Tembarom said, &ldquo;I should throw a
+      fit. Say, Mrs. Hutchinson, I bet you know that as well as I do.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The shrewd bit of a smile lighted her eyes as well as twinkled about her
+      mouth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sit thee doun,&rdquo; she said again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So he sat down and looked at her as straight as she looked at him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tha 'd give a good bit,&rdquo; she said presently, over her flashing needles,
+      &ldquo;to know how much Little Ann's tow'd me about thee.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'd give a lot to know how much it'd be square to ask you to tell me
+      about her,&rdquo; he gave back to her, hesitating yet eager.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What does tha mean by square?&rdquo; she demanded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So tha coom to see her grandmother?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He reddened, but held his head up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In Germany they wur,&rdquo; she put in, forgetting herself. &ldquo;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&mdash;but
+      he'll never know it. She's got a chap to travel wi' him as can talk aw th'
+      languages under th' sun.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her face flushed and she stopped herself sharply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm talkin' about her to thee!&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I would na ha' believed o'
+      mysen'.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He got up from his chair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I guess I oughtn't to have come,&rdquo; he said, restlessly. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tha showed sense i' doin' that,&rdquo; remarked Mrs. Hutchinson. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;in the deeps of her strong old mind&mdash;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 &ldquo;What she
+      likes about thee.&rdquo; If Ann said things like that to her, he was pretty well
+      off.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Happen a look at a lass's grandmother&mdash;when tha conna get at th'
+      lass hersen&mdash;is a bit o' comfort,&rdquo; she added. &ldquo;But don't tha go
+      walkin' by here to look in at th' window too often. She would na think
+      well o' that either.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Say! There's one thing I'm going to get off my chest before I go,&rdquo; he
+      announced, &ldquo;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&mdash;unless
+      something knocks me on the head and finishes me. I'm going to marry her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tha art, art tha?&rdquo; laconically; but her eyes were still on his, and the
+      something in their depths by no means diminished.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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,&rdquo; he said obstinately.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tha'd like me to tell her that?&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If she doesn't know it, you telling her wouldn't cut any ice,&rdquo; was his
+      reply. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's for her and thee to settle,&rdquo; she commented, impersonally.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is settled,&rdquo; he answered. &ldquo;There 's no way out of it. Will you shake
+      hands with me again before I go?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Aye,&rdquo; she consented, &ldquo;I will.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She knows aw tha' does,&rdquo; she said coolly, as if she were not suddenly
+      revealing immensities. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm going to Broome Haughton,&rdquo; she announced to Joan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When?&rdquo; Joan inquired.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;At the end of the week. I am invited for a fortnight.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Am I going?&rdquo; Joan asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No. You will go to London to meet some friends who are coming over from
+      Paris.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you had conducted yourself sensibly you need not have gone,&rdquo; continued
+      her mother. &ldquo;I could have made an excuse and left you here. You would at
+      least have been sure of good food and decent comforts.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;After your visit, are we to return here?&rdquo; was Lady Joan's sole reply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't look at me like that,&rdquo; said Lady Mallowe. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not know what will happen when I leave Broome Haughton,&rdquo; her mother
+      added, a note of rasped uncertainty in her voice. &ldquo;We may be obliged to
+      come here for a short time, or we may go abroad.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I refuse to come, would you let me starve to death in Piers Street?&rdquo;
+       Joan inquired.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; she snapped, fiercely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can wear some of your things, with a little alteration,&rdquo; she said.
+      &ldquo;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?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We are like rats in a trap,&rdquo; she remarked. &ldquo;I hope you will get out.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I do, you will be left inside. Get out yourself! Get out yourself!&rdquo;
+       said Lady Mallowe in a fierce whisper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;and always would. So few places gave one the same
+      feeling. They should both look forward&mdash;greedy as it seemed&mdash;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&mdash;even
+      with the dingy horrors of the closed town house before her&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;the hard line
+      showed itself about his mouth&mdash;he wasn't going to leave things as
+      they were.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think this is from Broome Haughton,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;If you will excuse me,
+      I will go into the library and read it. It may require answering at once.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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 &ldquo;relative of Miss Temple Barholm, whose
+      perfect wardrobe you supplied,&rdquo; had listened to all seductions with a
+      civil eye fixed unmovedly and had referred to the &ldquo;rules of the
+      establishment.&rdquo; Nearer and nearer the edge of the abyss the years had
+      pushed them, and now if something did not happen&mdash;something&mdash;something&mdash;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&mdash;oh, she knew
+      that&mdash;she knew that with bitter certainty!&mdash;but oh, how it would
+      matter to them!&mdash;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&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was obliged to dash off a note to Broome Haughton so that it would be
+      ready for the early post,&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I came here because you brought me,&rdquo; she would answer. &ldquo;I did not come to
+      be entertaining or polite.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      T. Tembarom was coming toward her. She had heard Palliser suggest a game
+      of billiards.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will you come and play billiards with us?&rdquo; Tembarom asked. &ldquo;Palliser says
+      you play splendidly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She plays brilliantly,&rdquo; put in Lady Mallowe. &ldquo;Come, Joan.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, thank you,&rdquo; she answered. &ldquo;Let me stay here and read.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You had better show Temple Barholm what you can do,&rdquo; he remarked. &ldquo;This
+      will be your last chance, as you leave so soon. You ought never let a last
+      chance slip by. I never do.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What I would like to do,&rdquo; was the unspoken crudity which passed through
+      his mind, &ldquo;would be to swat him on the mouth. He's getting at her just
+      when she ought to be let alone.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Would you like it better to stay here and read?&rdquo; he inquired.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Much better, if you please,&rdquo; was her reply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then that goes,&rdquo; he answered, and left her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He swept the others out of the room with a good-natured promptness which
+      put an end to argument. When he said of anything &ldquo;Then that goes,&rdquo; it
+      usually did so.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0031" id="link2HCH0031">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXXI
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;how YOUNG! Her throat strained itself because sobs
+      rose in it, and her eyes were hot with the swell of tears.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;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:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come into the billiard-room. I command it!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Joan lifted her eyes from her book. Her voice was as low as her mother's,
+      but steadier.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; she answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is this conduct to continue? Is it?&rdquo; Lady Mallowe panted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Joan, and laid her book on the table near her. There was
+      nothing else to say. Words made things worse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Mallowe had lost her head, but she still spoke in the suppressed
+      voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You SHALL behave yourself!&rdquo; she cried, under her breath, and actually
+      made a passionate half-start toward her. &ldquo;You violent-natured virago! The
+      very look on your face is enough to drive one mad!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know I am violent-natured,&rdquo; said Joan. &ldquo;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&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Mallowe's temper was as elemental as any Billingsgate could provide.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You think you can take advantage of that!&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;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?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How can I spoil everything?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By behaving as you have been behaving since we came here&mdash;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There are servants outside,&rdquo; Joan warned her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You shall not stop me!&rdquo; cried Lady Mallowe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You cannot stop yourself,&rdquo; said Joan. &ldquo;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&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shall soon be twenty-seven,&rdquo; Joan answered. &ldquo;I wish I were a hundred.
+      Then it would all be over.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But it will not be over for years and years and years,&rdquo; her mother flung
+      back at her. &ldquo;Have you forgotten that the very rags you wear are not paid
+      for?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I have not forgotten.&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You will get no more such rags&mdash;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have made yourself a laughing-stock for all London for years. You are
+      mad about a man who disgraced and ruined himself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She saw the javelin quiver as it struck; but Joan's voice as it answered
+      her had a quality of low and deadly steadiness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have said that a thousand times, and you will say it another thousand&mdash;though
+      you know the story was a lie and was proved to be one.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Mallowe knew her way thoroughly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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&mdash;dead! When a man's dead it's
+      too late.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She was desperate enough to drive her javelin home deeper than she had
+      ever chanced to drive it before. The truth&mdash;the awful truth she
+      uttered shook Joan from head to foot. She sprang up and stood before her
+      in heart-wrung fury.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! You are a hideously cruel woman!&rdquo; she cried. &ldquo;They say even tigers
+      care for their young! But you&mdash;you can say that to <i>me</i>. 'When a
+      man's dead, it's too late.'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It <i>is</i> too late&mdash;it IS too late!&rdquo; Lady Mallowe persisted. Why
+      had not she struck this note before? It was breaking her will: &ldquo;I would
+      say anything to bring you to your senses.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Joan began to move restlessly to and fro.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, what a fool I am!&rdquo; she exclaimed. &ldquo;As if you could understand&mdash;as
+      if you could care!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I came here because it <i>is</i> your 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&mdash;when I am out of the trap.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Joan laughed. It was a wild little laugh, and she felt there was no sense
+      in it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I might apply for a place in Miss Alicia's Home for Decayed Gentlewomen,&rdquo;
+       she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Mallowe nodded her head fiercely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Apply, then. There will be no place for you in the home I am going to
+      live in,&rdquo; she retorted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Joan ceased moving about. She was about to hear the one argument that was
+      new.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You may as well tell me,&rdquo; she said, wearily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I knew you would be,&rdquo; answered Joan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He detests you,&rdquo; Lady Mallowe went on. &ldquo;He will not hear of your living
+      with us&mdash;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!&rdquo; And she actually
+      stamped her foot on the carpet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;she
+      thought it wildly&mdash;people sometimes did die of feelings like this.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He would crawl at your feet,&rdquo; 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. &ldquo;You might live
+      in the very house you would have lived in with Jem Temple Barholm, on the
+      income he could have given you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Jem's house and Jem's money&mdash;and the New York newsboy in his shoes,&rdquo;
+       she flung at her. &ldquo;T. Tembarom to live with until one lay down on one's
+      deathbed. T. Tembarom!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! Mother! Mother!&rdquo; she ended. &ldquo;Oh! Jem! Jem!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Crying!&rdquo; there was absolute spite in her voice. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She turned her back and went out of the room&mdash;as she had come into it&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh Jem! Jem!&rdquo; she cried. &ldquo;If you were only in the same world with me! If
+      you were just in the same world!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;indecent&mdash;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&mdash;the dolt!&mdash;that he must make some apology.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Say! Lady Joan!&rdquo; he began. &ldquo;I beg your pardon. I didn't want to butt in.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then go away,&rdquo; she commanded. &ldquo;Instantly&mdash;instantly!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;N-no,&rdquo; he replied, deliberately. &ldquo;I guess&mdash;I won't.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You won't?&rdquo; Lady Joan repeated after him. &ldquo;Then I will.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He made a stride forward and laid his hand on her arm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No. Not on your life. You won't, either&mdash;if I can help it. And
+      you're going to LET me help it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Almost any one but herself&mdash;any one, at least, who did not resent his
+      very existence&mdash;would have felt the drop in his voice which suddenly
+      struck the note of boyish, friendly appeal in the last sentence. &ldquo;You're
+      going to LET me,&rdquo; he repeated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She stood looking down at the daring, unconscious hand on her arm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose,&rdquo; she said, with cutting slowness, &ldquo;that you do not even <i>know</i>
+      that you are insolent. Take your hand away,&rdquo; in arrogant command.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He removed it with an unabashed half-smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I beg your pardon,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I didn't even know I'd put it there. It was
+      a break&mdash;but I wanted to keep you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Say, Lady Joan!&rdquo; he broke forth, in the frank outburst of a man who wants
+      to get something over. &ldquo;I should be a fool if I didn't see that you're up
+      against it&mdash;hard! What's the matter?&rdquo; His voice dropped again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was something in the drop this time which&mdash;perhaps because of
+      her recent emotion&mdash;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 &ldquo;What's the matter?&rdquo; to her in the same way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you think it likely that I should confide in you?&rdquo; she said, and
+      inwardly quaked at the memory as she said it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; he answered, considering the matter gravely. &ldquo;It's not likely&mdash;the
+      way things look to you now. But if you knew me better perhaps it would be
+      likely.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I once explained to you that I do not intend to know you better,&rdquo; she
+      gave answer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He nodded acquiescently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Cannot even you see that I am not in the mood to accept confidences?&rdquo; she
+      exclaimed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I can. But you're going to accept this one,&rdquo; steadily. &ldquo;No,&rdquo; as she
+      made a swift movement, &ldquo;I'm not going to clear the way till I've done.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I insist!&rdquo; she cried. &ldquo;If you were&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He put out his hand, but not to touch her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know what you're going to say. If I were a gentleman&mdash;Well, I'm
+      not laying claim to that&mdash;but I'm a sort of a man, anyhow, though you
+      mayn't think it. And you're going to listen.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've not bucked against anything you've said or done since you've been
+      here,&rdquo; he went on, speaking fast and grimly. &ldquo;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&mdash;if they could be squared. You threw me down
+      every time I tried!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What in the name of New York slang does that mean?&rdquo; she demanded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Never mind New York,&rdquo; he answered, cool as well as grim. &ldquo;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&mdash;that you're
+      almost down and out.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This time she spoke to him in the voice with the quality of deadliness in
+      it which she had used to her mother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you think that because you are in your own house you can be as
+      intrusively insulting as you choose?&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I don't,&rdquo; he answered. &ldquo;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&mdash;a woman most of all&mdash;he's a cheap skate if he
+      don't get busy and try to help&mdash;just plain, straight help.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He saw in her eyes all her concentrated disdain of him, but he went on,
+      still obstinate and cool and grim.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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&mdash;just
+      easier.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her contemptuous gesture registered no impression on him as he paused a
+      moment and looked fixedly at her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You just hate me, don't you?&rdquo; It was a mere statement which couldn't have
+      been more impersonal to himself if he had been made of wood. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What,&rdquo; fiercely, &ldquo;is that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That I'm mutt enough to have a mash on you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't want to be brash&mdash;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&mdash;you're a beaut from Beautville. If I were
+      your kind, and things were different, I'd be crazy about you&mdash;crazy!
+      But I'm not your kind&mdash;and things are different.&rdquo; He drew a step
+      nearer still to her in his intentness. &ldquo;They're this different. Why, Lady
+      Joan! I'm dead stuck on another girl!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She caught her breath again, leaning forward.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Another&mdash;!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She says she's not a lady; she threw me down just because all this darned
+      money came to me,&rdquo; he hastened on, and suddenly he was imperturbable no
+      longer, but flushed and boyish, and more of New York than ever. &ldquo;She's a
+      little bit of a quiet thing and she drops her h's, but gee&mdash;! You're
+      a looker&mdash;you're a queen and she's not. But Little Ann Hutchinson&mdash;Why,
+      Lady Joan, as far as this boy's concerned&rdquo;&mdash;and he oddly touched
+      himself on the breast&mdash;&ldquo;she makes you look like thirty cents.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are in love with Ann Hutchinson,&rdquo; she said, in a low voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Am I?&rdquo; he answered hotly. &ldquo;Well, I should smile!&rdquo; He disdained to say
+      more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;a good turn. Knowing what she was capable of in
+      the way of arrogance and villainous temper, he had determined to do her&mdash;in
+      spite of herself&mdash;a good turn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't understand you,&rdquo; she faltered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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&mdash;friendly&mdash;that's
+      all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You would have been friends with me!&rdquo; she exclaimed. &ldquo;You would have told
+      me, and I wouldn't let you! Oh!&rdquo; with an impulsive flinging out of her
+      hand to him, &ldquo;you good&mdash;good fellow!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good be darned!&rdquo; he answered, taking the hand at once.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are good to tell me! I have behaved like a devil to you. But oh! if
+      you only knew!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His face became mature again; but he took a most informal seat on the edge
+      of the table near her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do know&mdash;part of it. That's why I've been trying to be friends
+      with you all the time.&rdquo; He said his next words deliberately. &ldquo;If I was the
+      woman Jem Temple Barholm had loved wouldn't it have driven me mad to see
+      another man in his place&mdash;and remember what was done to him. I never
+      even saw him, but, good God! &ldquo;&mdash;she saw his hand clench itself&mdash;&ldquo;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!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She sat up stiffly and watched him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do&mdash;you&mdash;feel like that&mdash;about him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do I!&rdquo; red-hotly. &ldquo;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,&rdquo; hastily. And then, as hastily again: &ldquo;No,
+      I mean it. Damn fools!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; she gasped, just once.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't you mind me, Lady Joan,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, don't go! Don't!&rdquo; she begged. &ldquo;It is so wonderful to find some one
+      who sees the cruelty of it.&rdquo; She spoke fast and passionately. &ldquo;No one
+      would listen to any defense of him. My mother simply raved when I said
+      what you are saying.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you want &ldquo;&mdash;he put it to her with a curious comprehending of her
+      emotion&mdash;&ldquo;to talk about him? Would it do you good?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes! Yes! I have never talked to any one. There has been no one to
+      listen.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Talk all you want,&rdquo; he answered, with immense gentleness. &ldquo;I'm here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can't understand it even now, but he would not see me!&rdquo; she broke out.
+      &ldquo;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?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You didn't think he'd gone because he didn't love you?&rdquo; he put it to her
+      quite literally and unsentimentally. &ldquo;You knew better than that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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&mdash;and
+      you may bet your life it hurt him like hell. I beg your pardon&mdash;but
+      that's the word&mdash;just plain hell.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's what I've remembered &ldquo;&mdash;quite slowly&mdash;&ldquo;every time I've
+      looked at you. By gee! I'd have stood anything from a woman that had
+      suffered as much as that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It made her cry&mdash;his genuineness&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! to think it should have been you,&rdquo; she wept, &ldquo;just you who
+      understood!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; he answered speculatively, &ldquo;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&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;Little
+      Ann! Old Hutchinson wouldn't listen, I know that. And it would be all shut
+      up burning in her big little heart&mdash;burning. And T. T. dead, and not
+      a word to say for himself. Jehoshaphat!&rdquo;&mdash;taking out his handkerchief
+      and touching his forehead&mdash;&ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He put out his hand and caught hers and frankly squeezed it&mdash;squeezed
+      it hard; and the unconventional clutch was a wonderful thing to her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's all right now, ain't it?&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;We've got it straightened out.
+      You'll not be afraid to come back here if your mother wants you to.&rdquo; He
+      stopped for a moment and then went on with something of hesitation: &ldquo;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&mdash;I'll straighten it out with her if you like.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing will need straightening out after I tell her that you are going
+      to marry Little Ann Hutchinson,&rdquo; said Joan, with a half-smile. &ldquo;And that
+      you were engaged to her before you saw me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, that does sort of finish things up, doesn't it?&rdquo; said T. Tembarom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He looked at her so speculatively for a moment after this that she
+      wondered whether he had something more to say. He had.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There's something I want to ask you,&rdquo; he ventured.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ask anything.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you know any one&mdash;just any one&mdash;who has a photo&mdash;just
+      any old photo&mdash;of Jem Temple Barholm?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She was rather puzzled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. I know a woman who has worn one for nearly eight years. Do you want
+      to see it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'd give a good deal to,&rdquo; was his answer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She took a flat locket from her dress and handed it to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Women don't wear lockets in these days.&rdquo; He could barely hear her voice
+      because it was so low. &ldquo;But I've never taken it off. I want him near my
+      heart. It's Jem!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's&mdash;sorter like that picture of Miles Hugo, ain't it?&rdquo; he
+      suggested.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. People always said so. That was why you found me in the
+      picture-gallery the first time we met.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I knew that was the reason&mdash;and I knew I'd made a break when I
+      butted in,&rdquo; he answered. Then, still looking at the photograph, &ldquo;You'd
+      know this face again most anywhere you saw it, I guess.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There are no faces like it anywhere,&rdquo; said Joan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I guess that's so,&rdquo; he replied. &ldquo;And it's one that wouldn't change much
+      either. Thank you, Lady Joan.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He handed back the picture, and she put out her hand again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think I'll go to my room now,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;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&mdash;I
+      shall want to.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The sooner the quicker,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;And so long as I'm here I'll be ready
+      and waiting.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't go away,&rdquo; she said softly. &ldquo;I shall need you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Isn't that great?&rdquo; he cried, flushing delightedly. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The liking in her eyes was actually wistful.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's your way of thinking, isn't it?&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Teach it to me if you
+      can. I wish you could. Good-night.&rdquo; She hesitated a second. &ldquo;God bless
+      you!&rdquo; she added, quite suddenly&mdash;almost fantastic as the words
+      sounded to her. That she, Joan Fayre, should be calling down devout
+      benisons on the head of T. Tembarom&mdash;T. Tembarom!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her mother was in her room when she reached it. She had come up early to
+      look over her possessions&mdash;and Joan's&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am going over your things as well as my own,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I shall take
+      what I can use. You will require nothing in London. You will require
+      nothing anywhere in future. What is the matter?&rdquo; she said sharply, as she
+      saw her daughter's face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Joan came forward feeling it a strange thing that she was not in the mood
+      to fight&mdash;to lash out and be glad to do it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Captain Palliser told me as I came up that Mr. Temple Barholm had been
+      talking to you,&rdquo; her mother went on. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What has happened has nothing to do with my decision. He wasn't waiting
+      for that,&rdquo; Joan answered her. &ldquo;We were both entirely mistaken, Mother.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What are you talking about?&rdquo; cried Lady Mallowe, but she temporarily laid
+      the white coat on a chair. &ldquo;What do you mean by mistaken?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He doesn't want me&mdash;he never did,&rdquo; 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: &ldquo;He is what they call in New York `dead stuck on another girl.&rdquo;'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Mallowe sat down on the chair that held the white coat, and she did
+      not push the coat aside.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He told you that in his vulgar slang!&rdquo; she gasped it out. &ldquo;You&mdash;you
+      ought to have struck him dead with your answer.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Except poor Jem Temple Barholm,&rdquo; was the amazing reply she received, &ldquo;he
+      is the only friend I ever had in my life.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0032" id="link2HCH0032">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXXII
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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 &ldquo;see people&rdquo;&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose he will be very rich some day,&rdquo; Miss Alicia remarked the first
+      morning she and T. Tembarom took their breakfast alone together after his
+      departure. &ldquo;It would frighten me to think of having as much money as he
+      seems likely to have quite soon.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It would scare me to death,&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He seemed to think that it would be an excellent thing for you to invest
+      in&mdash;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&mdash;&rdquo; she
+      went on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I guess it was the whole lot,&rdquo; put in Tembarom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am sure he meant to be most obliging, dear,&rdquo; she explained. &ldquo;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&rdquo;&mdash;affectionately&mdash;&ldquo;that
+      I had you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Tembarom regarded her with tender curiosity. She often opened up vistas
+      for him as he himself opened them for the Duke of Stone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you hadn't had me, would you have let him treble your income in a
+      year?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her expression was that of a soft, woodland rabbit or a trusting spinster
+      dove.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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,&rdquo; she answered. &ldquo;But it was his friendly solicitude which
+      touched me. I have not been accustomed to such interested delicacy on the
+      part of&mdash;of gentlemen.&rdquo; Her hesitance before the last word being the
+      result of training, which had made her feel that it was a little bold for
+      &ldquo;ladies&rdquo; to refer quite openly to &ldquo;gentlemen.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You sometimes read in the newspapers,&rdquo; said Tembarom, buttering his
+      toast, &ldquo;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&mdash;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&mdash;just plain five.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Temple!&rdquo; gasped Miss Alicia. &ldquo;You&mdash;you surely cannot mean that you
+      do not think Captain Palliser is&mdash;sincere!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sincere?&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;He's sincere down to the ground&mdash;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I could not help saying to him that I didn't think you could want any
+      more money when you had so much,&rdquo; she added, &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's nice to be by ourselves again for a while,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You do look well, ma'am,&rdquo; Rose said, when she helped her to dress.
+      &ldquo;You've got such a nice color, and that tiny bit of old rose Mrs. Mellish
+      put in the bonnet does bring it out.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wonder if it is wrong of me to be so pleased,&rdquo; Miss Alicia thought. &ldquo;I
+      must make it a subject of prayer, and ask to be aided to conquer a haughty
+      and vain-glorious spirit.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It has sometimes even seemed to me that our Heavenly Father has a special
+      objection to ladies,&rdquo; she had once timorously confessed to Tembarom. &ldquo;I
+      suppose it is because we are so much weaker than men, and so much more
+      given to vanity and petty vices.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Say!&rdquo; he had laughed. &ldquo;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.'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know you don't mean to be irreverent, dear Temple,&rdquo; she gasped. &ldquo;I am
+      quite sure you don't! It is&mdash;it is only your American way of
+      expressing your kind thoughts. And of course&rdquo;&mdash;quite hastily&mdash;&ldquo;the
+      Almighty must understand Americans&mdash;as he made so many.&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;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&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He is the most popular man in the county,&rdquo; he had chuckled. &ldquo;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&mdash;if it were
+      into hottest Hades.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Tembarom was rather silent during the first part of their walk, and when
+      he spoke it was of Captain Palliser.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's a fellow that's got lots of curiosity. I guess he's asked you more
+      questions than he's asked me,&rdquo; he began at last, and he looked at her
+      interestedly, though she was not aware of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I thought&mdash;&rdquo; she hesitated slightly because she did not wish to be
+      critical&mdash;&ldquo;I sometimes thought he asked me too many.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What was he trying to get on to mostly?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He asked so many things about you and your life in New York&mdash;but
+      more, I think, about you and Mr. Strangeways. He was really quite
+      persistent once or twice about poor Mr. Strangeways.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What did he ask?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I guess it is&mdash;the way he'd look at it,&rdquo; Tembarom dropped in.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She hesitated again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wonder,&rdquo; she said, still hesitating even after her pause, &ldquo;I wonder if
+      I ought to mention a rather rude thing I saw him do twice?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, you ought,&rdquo; Tembarom answered promptly; &ldquo;I've a reason for wanting
+      to know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was such a singular thing to do&mdash;in the circumstances,&rdquo; she went
+      on obediently. &ldquo;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&mdash;his queer way of looking
+      up. Quite suddenly he threw something which rattled on the panes of glass&mdash;it
+      sounded like gravel or small pebbles. I couldn't help believing he thought
+      Mr. Strangeways would be startled into coming to the window.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Tembarom cleared his throat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He did that twice,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;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&mdash;bing! He didn't do it
+      again. Darned fool! What does he think he's after?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am afraid he is rather&mdash;I hope it is not wrong to say so&mdash;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&mdash;and
+      he is bored himself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He'll be more bored if he tries it again when he comes back,&rdquo; remarked
+      Tembarom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Alicia's surprised expression made him laugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you think he will come back?&rdquo; she exclaimed. &ldquo;After such a long
+      visit?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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&mdash;or until I've done with him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Until you've done with him, dear?&rdquo; inquiringly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! well,&rdquo;&mdash;casually&mdash;&ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Temple&rdquo;&mdash;imploringly&mdash;&ldquo;are you afraid he wishes to do you an
+      injury?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I'm not afraid. I'm just waiting to see him take a chance on it,&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      How could any one&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      About nine o'clock he laid his sheet of the Earth down and spoke to her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm going to ask you to do me a favor,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I couldn't ask it if we
+      weren't alone like this. I know you won't mind.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Of course she wouldn't mind. She was made happier by the mere idea of
+      doing something for him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm going to ask you to go to your room rather early,&rdquo; he explained. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is he so much better as that?&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Will it be safe?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He looked as serious as she had ever seen him look&mdash;even a trifle
+      more serious.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't know how much better he is,&rdquo; was his answer. &ldquo;Sometimes you'd
+      think he was almost all right. And then&mdash;! 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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you think you could persuade him to go?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've tried my level best, but so far&mdash;nothing doing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He got up and stood before the mantel, his back against it, his hands in
+      his pockets.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've found out one thing,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;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&mdash;that's what he called it&mdash;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&mdash;if he'll come.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have such a wonderfully reasoning mind, dear,&rdquo; said Miss Alicia, as
+      she rose. &ldquo;You would have made a great detective, I'm sure.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If Ann had been with him,&rdquo; he said, rather gloomily, &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We are having some fine moments, my good fellow,&rdquo; he had said, rubbing
+      his hands. &ldquo;This is extremely like the fourth act. I'd like to be sure
+      what comes next.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'd like to be sure myself,&rdquo; Tembarom answered. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;even a big chance&mdash;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, &ldquo;mixed up to
+      beat the band.&rdquo; 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&mdash;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!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I feel better,&rdquo; he said, two or three times. &ldquo;Things seem clearer&mdash;nearer.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good business!&rdquo; exclaimed Tembarom. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What you need is to get out of the way of wanting to stay in one place,&rdquo;
+       he argued. &ldquo;The doctor says you've got to have a change, and even going
+      from one room to another is a fine thing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I believe&mdash;perhaps he is right,&rdquo; he murmured.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sure he's right!&rdquo; said Tembarom. &ldquo;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!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 &ldquo;stuff&rdquo;
+       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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;had &ldquo;done something to him,&rdquo;
+       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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now that's first-rate! I'm glad you feel like coming,&rdquo; Tembarom plunged
+      in. He didn't intend to give him too much time to think.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you. It will be a change, as you said,&rdquo; Strangeways answered. &ldquo;One
+      needs change.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is a beautiful old place,&rdquo; he said, as they crossed the hall. &ldquo;That
+      armor was worn by a crusader.&rdquo; 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&mdash;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&mdash;awed, marveling at the blackness of the pit into
+      which it can descend&mdash;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&mdash;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!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 &ldquo;for a block of Fifth Avenue,&rdquo; 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&mdash;at a strangely long distance.
+      Twice he turned his head and appeared to look slowly round the room, but
+      not as normal people look&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How dead still the room is!&rdquo; Tembarom found himself thinking.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was &ldquo;dead still.&rdquo; And it was a queer deal sitting, not daring to move&mdash;just
+      watching. Something was bound to happen, sure! What was it going to be?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I forgot it altogether. It's gone out,&rdquo; he remarked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have another,&rdquo; suggested Tembarom, moving the box nearer to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, thank you.&rdquo; 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. &ldquo;What a swell he looked when he moved
+      about like that! What a swell, by jings!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Listen to this,&rdquo; he said, and began to read something in a language
+      totally unknown to his hearer. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who did it?&rdquo; Tembarom inquired softly. It might be a good idea to lead
+      him on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Horace. In spite of his genius, he sometimes makes you feel he was rather
+      a blackguard.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Horace!&rdquo; For the moment T. Tembarom forgot himself. &ldquo;I always heard he
+      was a sort of Y.M.C.A. old guy&mdash;old Horace Greeley. The Tribune was
+      no yellow journal when he had it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He was sorry he had spoken the next moment. Strangeways looked puzzled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Tribune,&rdquo; he hesitated. &ldquo;The Roman Tribune?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, New York. He started it&mdash;old Horace did. But perhaps we're not
+      talking of the same man.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Strangeways hesitated again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I think we're not,&rdquo; he answered politely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've made a break,&rdquo; thought Tembarom. &ldquo;I ought to have kept my mouth
+      shut. I must try to switch him back.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Strangeways was looking down at the back of the book he held in his hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This one was the Latin poet, Quintus Horatius Flaccus, 65 B. C. You know
+      him,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, that one!&rdquo; exclaimed Tembarom, as if with an air of immense relief.
+      &ldquo;What a fool I was to forget! I'm glad it's him. Will you go on reading
+      and let me hear some more? He's a winner from Winnersville&mdash;that
+      Horace is.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Perhaps it was a sort of miracle, accomplished by his great desire to help
+      the right thing to happen, to stave off any shadow of the wrong thing.
+      Whatsoever the reason, Strangeways waited only a moment before turning to
+      his book again. It seemed to be a link in some chain slowly forming itself
+      to drag him back from his wanderings. And T. Tembarom, lightly sweating as
+      a frightened horse will, sat smoking another pipe and listening intently
+      to &ldquo;Satires&rdquo; and &ldquo;Lampoons,&rdquo; read aloud in the Latin of 65 B. C.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By gee!&rdquo; he said faithfully, at intervals, when he saw on the reader's
+      face that the moment was ripe. &ldquo;He knew it all&mdash;old Horace&mdash;didn't
+      he?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He had steered his charge back. Things were coming along the line to him.
+      He'd learned Latin at one of these big English schools. Boys always
+      learned Latin, the duke had told him. They just had to. Most of them hated
+      it like thunder, and they used to be caned when they didn't recite it
+      right. Perhaps if he went on he'd begin to remember the school. A queer
+      part of it was that he did not seem to notice that he was not reading his
+      own language.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He did not, in fact, seem to remember anything in particular, but went on
+      quite naturally for some minutes. He had replaced Horace on the shelf and
+      was on the point of taking down another volume when he paused, as if
+      recalling something else.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Weren't we going to see the picture-gallery?&rdquo; he inquired. &ldquo;Isn't it
+      getting late? I should like to see the portraits.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No hurry,&rdquo; answered T. Tembarom. &ldquo;I was just waiting till you were ready.
+      But we'll go right away, if you like.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They went without further ceremony. As they walked through the hall and
+      down the corridors side by side, an imaginative person might have felt
+      that perhaps the eyes of an ancient darkling portrait or so looked down at
+      the pair curiously: the long, loosely built New Yorker rather slouching
+      along by the soldierly, almost romantic figure which, in a measure,
+      suggested that others not unlike it might have trod the same oaken floor,
+      wearing ruff and doublet, or lace jabot and sword. There was a far cry
+      between the two, but they walked closely in friendly union. When they
+      entered the picture-gallery Strangeways paused a moment again, and stood
+      peering down its length.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is very dimly lighted. How can we see?&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I told Pearson to leave it dim,&rdquo; Tembarom answered. &ldquo;I wanted it just
+      that way at first.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He tried&mdash;and succeeded tolerably well&mdash;to say it casually, as
+      he led the way ahead of them. He and the duke had not talked the scheme
+      over for nothing. As his grace had said, they had &ldquo;worked the thing up.&rdquo;
+       As they moved down the gallery, the men and women in their frames looked
+      like ghosts staring out to see what was about to happen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We'll turn up the lights after a while,&rdquo; T. Tembarom explained, still
+      casually. &ldquo;There's a picture here I think a good deal of. I've stood and
+      looked at it pretty often. It reminded me of some one the first day I set
+      eyes on it; but it was quite a time before I made up my mind who it was.
+      It used to drive me half dotty trying to think it out.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Which one was it?&rdquo; asked Strangeways.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We're coming to it. I want to see if it reminds you of any one. And I
+      want you to see it sudden.&rdquo; &ldquo;It's got to be sudden,&rdquo; he had said to the
+      duke. &ldquo;If it's going to pan out, I believe it's got to be sudden.&rdquo; &ldquo;That's
+      why I had the rest of 'em left dim. I told Pearson to leave a lamp I could
+      turn up quick,&rdquo; he said to Strangeways.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The lamp was on a table near by and was shaded by a screen. He took it
+      from the shadow and lifted it suddenly, so that its full gleam fell upon
+      the portrait of the handsome youth with the lace collar and the dark,
+      drooping eyes. It was done in a second, with a dramatically unexpected
+      swiftness. His heart jumped up and down.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who's that?&rdquo; he demanded, with abruptness so sharp-pitched that the
+      gallery echoed with the sound. &ldquo;Who's that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He heard a hard, quick gasp, a sound which was momentarily a little
+      horrible, as if the man's soul was being jerked out of his body's depths.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who is he?&rdquo; he cried again. &ldquo;Tell me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      After the gasp, Strangeways stood still and stared. His eyes were glued to
+      the canvas, drops of sweat came out on his forehead, and he was
+      shuddering. He began to back away with a look of gruesome struggle. He
+      backed and backed, and stared and stared. The gasp came twice again, and
+      then his voice seemed to tear itself loose from some power that was
+      holding it back.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Th&mdash;at!&rdquo; he cried. &ldquo;It is&mdash;it&mdash;is Miles Hugo!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The last words were almost a shout, and he shook as if he would have
+      fallen. But T. Tembarom put his hand on his shoulder and held him,
+      breathing fast himself. Gee! if it wasn't like a thing in a play!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Page at the court of Charles the Second,&rdquo; he rattled off. &ldquo;Died of
+      smallpox when he was nineteen. Miles Hugo! Miles Hugo! You hold on to that
+      for all your worth. And hold on to me. I'll keep you steady. Say it
+      again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Miles Hugo.&rdquo; The poor majestic-looking fellow almost sobbed it. &ldquo;Where am
+      I? What is the name of this place?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's Temple Barholm in the county of Lancashire, England. Hold on to
+      that, too&mdash;like thunder!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Strangeways held the young man's arm with hands that clutched. He dragged
+      at him. His nightmare held him yet; Tembarom saw it, but flashes of light
+      were blinding him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who&rdquo;&mdash;he pleaded in a shaking and hollow whisper&mdash;&ldquo;are you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Here was a stumper! By jings! By jings! And not a minute to think it out.
+      But the answer came all right&mdash;all right!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My name's Tembarom. T. Tembarom.&rdquo; And he grinned his splendid grin from
+      sheer sense of relief. &ldquo;I'm a New Yorker&mdash;Brooklyn. I was just forked
+      in here anyhow. Don't you waste time thinking over me. You sit down here
+      and do your durndest with Miles Hugo.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0033" id="link2HCH0033">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXXIII
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Tembarom did not look as though he had slept particularly well, Miss
+      Alicia thought, when they met the next morning; but when she asked him
+      whether he had been disappointed in his last night's experiment, he
+      answered that he had not. The experiment had come out all right, but
+      Strangeways had been a good deal worked up, and had not been able to sleep
+      until daylight. Sir Ormsby Galloway was to arrive in the afternoon, and
+      he'd probably give him some-thing quieting. Had the coming downstairs
+      seemed to help him to recall anything? Miss Alicia naturally inquired.
+      Tembarom thought it had. He drove to Stone Hover and spent the morning
+      with the duke; he even lunched with him. He returned in time to receive
+      Sir Ormsby Galloway, however, and until that great personage left, they
+      were together in Mr. Strangeways' rooms.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I guess I shall get him up to London to the place where Sir Ormsby wants
+      him,&rdquo; he said rather nervously, after dinner. &ldquo;I'm not going to miss any
+      chances. If he'll go, I can get him away quietly some time when I can fix
+      it so there's no one about to worry him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She felt that he had no inclination to go much into detail. He had never
+      had the habit of entering into the details connected with his strange
+      charge. She believed it was because he felt the subject too abnormal not
+      to seem a little awesome to her sympathetic timidity. She did not ask
+      questions because she was afraid she could not ask them intelligently. In
+      fact, the knowledge that this unknown man was living through his struggle
+      with his lost past in the remote rooms of the west wing, almost as though
+      he were a secret prisoner, did seem a little awesome when one awoke in the
+      middle of the dark night and thought of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      During the passage of the next few weeks, Tembarom went up to London
+      several times. Once he seemed called there suddenly, as it was only during
+      dinner that he told her he was going to take a late train, and should
+      leave the house after she had gone to bed. She felt as though something
+      important must have happened, and hoped it was nothing disturbing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When he had said that Captain Palliser would return to visit them, her
+      private impression, despite his laugh, had been that it must surely be
+      some time before this would occur. But a little more than three weeks
+      later he appeared, preceded only half an hour by a telegram asking whether
+      he might not spend a night with them on his way farther north. He could
+      not at all understand why the telegram, which he said he had sent the day
+      before, had been delayed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A certain fatigued haggardness in his countenance caused Miss Alicia to
+      ask whether he had been ill, and he admitted that he had at least not been
+      well, as a result of long and too hurried journeys, and the strenuousness
+      of extended and profoundly serious interviews with his capitalist and
+      magnates.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No man can engineer gigantic schemes to success without feeling the
+      reaction when his load drops from his shoulders,&rdquo; he remarked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You've carried it quite through?&rdquo; inquired Tembarom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We have set on foot one of the largest, most substantially capitalized
+      companies in the European business world,&rdquo; Palliser replied, with the
+      composure which is almost indifference.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good!&rdquo; said Tembarom cheerfully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He watched his guest a good deal during the day. He was a bad color for a
+      man who had just steered clear of all shoals and reached the highest point
+      of success. He had a haggard eye as well as a haggard face. It was a
+      terrified eye when its desperate determination to hide its terrors dropped
+      from it for an instant, as a veil might drop. A certain restlessness was
+      manifest in him, and he talked more than usual. He was going to make a
+      visit in Northumberland to an elderly lady of great possessions. It was to
+      be vaguely gathered that she was somewhat interested in the great company&mdash;the
+      Cedric. She was a remarkable old person who found a certain agreeable
+      excitement in dabbling in stocks. She was rich enough to be in a position
+      to regard it as a sort of game, and he had been able on several occasions
+      to afford her entertainment. He would remain a few days, and spend his
+      time chiefly in telling her the details of the great scheme and the manner
+      in which they were to be developed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If she can play with things that way, she'll be sure to want stock in
+      it,&rdquo; Tembarom remarked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If she does, she must make up her mind quickly,&rdquo; Palliser smiled, &ldquo;or she
+      will not be able to get it. It is not easy to lay one's hands on even
+      now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Tembarom thought of certain speculators of entirely insignificant standing
+      of whom he had chanced to see and hear anecdotes in New York. Most of them
+      were youths of obscure origin who sold newspapers or blacked boots, or
+      &ldquo;swapped&rdquo; articles the value of which lay in the desire they could excite
+      in other persons to possess them. A popular method known as &ldquo;bluff&rdquo; was
+      their most trusted weapon, and even at twelve and fifteen years of age
+      Tembarom had always regarded it as singularly obvious. He always detested
+      &ldquo;bluff,&rdquo; whatsoever its disguise, and was rather mystified by its
+      ingenious faith in itself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's got badly stung,&rdquo; was his internal comment as he sucked at his pipe
+      and smiled urbanely at Palliser across the room as they sat together.
+      &ldquo;He's come here with some sort of deal on that he knows he couldn't work
+      with any one but just such a fool as he thinks I am. I guess,&rdquo; he added in
+      composed reflectiveness, &ldquo;I don't really know how big a fool I do look.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Whatsoever the deal was, he would be likely to let it be known in time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He'll get it off his chest if he's going away to-morrow,&rdquo; decided
+      Tembarom. &ldquo;If there's anything he's found out, he'll use it. If it doesn't
+      pan out as he thinks it will he'll just float away to his old lady.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He gave Palliser every chance, talking to him and encouraging him to talk,
+      even asking him to let him look over the prospectus of the new company and
+      explain details to him, as he was going to explain them to the old lady in
+      Northumberland. He opened up avenues; but for a time Palliser made no
+      attempt to stroll down them. His walk would be a stroll, Tembarom knew,
+      being familiar with his methods. His aspect would be that of a man but
+      little concerned. He would be capable of a slightly rude coldness if he
+      felt that concern on his part was in any degree counted as a factor.
+      Tembarom was aware, among other things, that innocent persons would feel
+      that it was incumbent upon them to be very careful in their treatment of
+      him. He seemed to be thinking things over before he decided upon the
+      psychological moment at which he would begin, if he began. When a man had
+      a good deal to lose or to win, Tembarom realized that he would be likely
+      to hold back until he felt something like solid ground under him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After Miss Alicia had left them for the night, perhaps he felt, as a
+      result of thinking the matter over, that he had reached a foothold of a
+      firmness at least somewhat to be depended upon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What a change you have made in that poor woman's life!&rdquo; he said, walking
+      to the side-table and helping himself to a brandy and soda. &ldquo;What a
+      change!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It struck me that a change was needed just about the time I dropped in,&rdquo;
+       answered his host.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All the same,&rdquo; suggested Palliser, tolerantly, &ldquo;you were immensely
+      generous. She wasn't entitled to expect it, you know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She didn't expect anything, not a darned thing,&rdquo; said Tembarom. &ldquo;That was
+      what hit me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Palliser smiled a cold, amiable smile. His slim, neatly fitted person
+      looked a little shrunken and less straight than was its habit, and its
+      slackness suggested itself as being part of the harry and fatigue which
+      made his face and eyes haggard under his pale, smooth hair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you purpose to provide for the future of all your indigent relatives
+      even to the third and fourth generation, my dear chap?&rdquo; he inquired.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I won't refuse till I'm asked, anyhow,&rdquo; was the answer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Asked!&rdquo; Palliser repeated. &ldquo;I'm one of them, you know, and Lady Mallowe
+      is another. There are lots of us, when we come out of our holes. If it's
+      only a matter of asking, we might all descend on you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Tembarom, smiling, wondered whether they hadn't descended already, and
+      whether the descent had so far been all that they had anticipated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Palliser strolled down his opened avenue with an incidental air which was
+      entirely creditable to his training of himself. T. Tembarom acknowledged
+      that much.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are too generous,&rdquo; said Palliser. &ldquo;You are the sort of fellow who
+      will always need all he has, and more. The way you go among the villagers!
+      You think you merely slouch about and keep it quiet, but you don't. You've
+      set an example no other landowner can expect to live up to, or intends to.
+      It's too lavish. It's pernicious, dear chap. I have heard all about the
+      cottage you are doing over for Pearson and his bride. You had better
+      invest in the Cedric.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Tembarom wanted him to go on, if there was anything in it. He made his
+      face look as he knew Palliser hoped it would look when the psychological
+      moment came. Its expression was not a deterrent; in fact, it had a
+      character not unlikely to lead an eager man, or one who was not as wholly
+      experienced as he believed he was, to rush down a steep hill into the sea,
+      after the manner of the swine in the parable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Heaven knew Palliser did not mean to rush, and was not aware when the rush
+      began; but he had reason to be so much more eager than he professed to be
+      that momentarily he swerved, despite himself, and ceased to be casual.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is an enormous opportunity,&rdquo; he said&mdash;&ldquo;timber lands in Mexico,
+      you know. If you had spent your life in England, you would realize that
+      timber has become a desperate necessity, and that the difficulties which
+      exist in the way of supplying the demand are almost insuperable. These
+      forests are virtually boundless, and the company which controls them&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's a good spiel!&rdquo; broke in Tembarom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It sounded like the crudely artless interruption of a person whose
+      perceptions left much to be desired. T. Tembarom knew what it sounded
+      like. If Palliser lost his temper, he would get over the ground faster,
+      and he wanted him to get over the ground.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm afraid I don't understand,&rdquo; he replied rather stiffly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There was a fellow I knew in New York who used to sell type-writers, and
+      he had a thing to say he used to reel off when any one looked like a
+      customer. He used to call it his 'spiel.'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Palliser's quick glance at him asked questions, and his stiffness did not
+      relax itself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is this New York chaff?&rdquo; he inquired coldly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; Tembarom said. &ldquo;You're not doing it for ten per. He was&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, not exactly,&rdquo; said Palliser. &ldquo;Neither would you be doing it for ten
+      per if you went into it.&rdquo; His voice changed. He became slightly haughty.
+      &ldquo;Perhaps it was a mistake on my part to think you might care to connect
+      yourself with it. You have not, of course, been in the position to
+      comprehend such matters.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I was what I look like, that'd stir me up and make me feel bad,&rdquo;
+       thought T. Tembarom, with cheerful comprehension of this, at least. &ldquo;I'd
+      have to rush in and try to prove to him that I was as accustomed to big
+      business as he is, and that it didn't rattle me. The way to do it that
+      would come most natural would be to show I was ready to buy as big a block
+      of stock as any other fellow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But the expression of his face did not change. He only gave a half-awkward
+      sort of laugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I guess I can learn,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Palliser felt the foothold become firmer. The bounder was interested, but,
+      after a bounder's fashion, was either nervous or imagined that a show of
+      hesitation looked shrewd. The slight hit made at his inexperience in
+      investment had irritated him and made him feel less cock-sure of himself.
+      A slightly offended manner might be the best weapon to rely upon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I thought you might care to have the thing made clear to you,&rdquo; he
+      continued indifferently. &ldquo;I meant to explain. You may take the chance or
+      leave it, as you like, of course. That is nothing to me at this stage of
+      the game. But, after all, we are as I said, relatives of a sort, and it is
+      a gigantic opportunity. Suppose we change the subject. Is that the Sunday
+      Earth I see by you on the table?&rdquo; He leaned forward to take the paper, as
+      though the subject really were dropped; but, after a seemingly nervous
+      suck or two at his pipe, Tembarom came to his assistance. It wouldn't do
+      to let him quiet down too much.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm no Van Morganbilt,&rdquo; he said hesitatingly, &ldquo;but I can see that it's a
+      big opportunity&mdash;for some one else. Let's have a look over the
+      prospectus again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Palliser paused in his unconcerned opening of the copy of the Sunday
+      Earth. His manner somewhat disgustedly implied indecision as to whether it
+      was worth while to allow oneself to be dropped and taken up by turns.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you really mean that?&rdquo; he asked with a certain chill of voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. I don't mind trying to catch on to what's doing in any big scheme.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Palliser did not lay aside his suggestion of cold semi-reluctance more
+      readily than any man who knew his business would have laid it aside. His
+      manner at the outset was quite perfect. His sole ineptitude lay in his
+      feeling a too great confidence in the exact quality of his companion's
+      type, as he summed it up. He did not calculate on the variations from all
+      type sometimes provided by circumstances.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He produced his papers without too obvious eagerness. He spread them upon
+      the table, and coolly examined them himself before beginning his
+      explanation. There was more to explain to a foreigner and one unused to
+      investment than there would be to a man who was an Englishman and familiar
+      with the methods of large companies, he said. He went into technicalities,
+      so to speak, and used rapidly and lightly some imposing words and phrases,
+      to which T. Tembarom listened attentively, but without any special air of
+      illumination. He dealt with statistics and the resulting probabilities. He
+      made apparent the existing condition of England's inability to supply an
+      enormous and unceasing demand for timber. He had acquired divers excellent
+      methods of stating his case to the party of the second part.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He made me feel as if a fellow had better hold on to a box of matches
+      like grim death, and that the time wasn't out of sight when you'd have to
+      give fifty-seven dollars and a half for a toothpick,&rdquo; Tembarom afterwards
+      said to the duke.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What Tembarom was thinking as he listened to him was that he was not
+      getting over the ground with much rapidity, and that it was time something
+      was doing. He had not watched him for weeks without learning divers of his
+      idiosyncrasies.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If he thought I wanted to know what he thinks I'd a heap rather NOT know,
+      he'd never tell me,&rdquo; he speculated. &ldquo;If he gets a bit hot in the collar,
+      he may let it out. Thing is to stir him up. He's lost his nerve a bit, and
+      he'll get mad pretty easy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He went on smoking and listening, and asking an unenlightened question now
+      and then, in a manner which was as far from being a deterrent as the
+      largely unilluminated expression of his face was.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course money is wanted,&rdquo; Palliser said at length. &ldquo;Money is always
+      wanted, and as much when a scheme is a success as when it isn't. Good
+      names, with a certain character, are wanted. The fact of your inheritance
+      is known everywhere; and the fact that you are an American is a sort of
+      guaranty of shrewdness.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is it?&rdquo; said T. Tembarom. &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; he added slowly, &ldquo;I guess Americans are
+      pretty good business men.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Palliser thought that this was evolving upon perfectly natural lines, as
+      he had anticipated it would. The fellow was flattered and pleased. You
+      could always reach an American by implying that he was one of those who
+      specially illustrate enviable national characteristics.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He went on in smooth, casual laudation:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No American takes hold of a scheme of this sort until he knows jolly well
+      what he's going to get out of it. You were shrewd enough,&rdquo; he added
+      significantly, &ldquo;about Hutchinson's affair. You `got in on the ground
+      floor' there. That was New York forethought, by Jove!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Tembarom shuffled a little in his chair, and grinned a faint, pleased
+      grin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm a man of the world, my boy&mdash;the business world,&rdquo; Palliser
+      commented, hoping that he concealed his extreme satisfaction. &ldquo;I know New
+      York, though I haven't lived there. I'm only hoping to. Your air of
+      ingenuous ignorance is the cleverest thing about you,&rdquo; which agreeable
+      implication of the fact that he had been privately observant and impressed
+      ought to have fetched the bounder if anything would.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      T. Tembarom's grin was no longer faint, but spread itself. Palliser's
+      first impression was that he had &ldquo;fetched&rdquo; him. But when he answered,
+      though the very crudeness of his words seemed merely the result of his
+      betrayal into utter tactlessness by soothed vanity, there was something&mdash;a
+      shade of something&mdash;not entirely satisfactory in his face and nasal
+      twang.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I guess,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;New York DID teach a fellow not to buy a gold
+      brick off every con man that came along.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Palliser was guilty of a mere ghost of a start. Was there something in it,
+      or was he only the gross, blundering fool he had trusted to his being? He
+      stared at him a moment, and saw that there WAS something under the words
+      and behind his professedly flattered grin&mdash;something which must be
+      treated with a high hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you mean?&rdquo; he exclaimed haughtily. &ldquo;I don't like your tone. Do
+      you take ME for what you call a `con man'?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good Lord, no!&rdquo; answered Tembarom; and he looked straight at Palliser and
+      spoke slowly. &ldquo;You're a gentleman, and you're paying me a visit. You could
+      no more try on a game to do me in my own house than&mdash;well, than I
+      could TELL you if I'd got on to you if I saw you doing it. You're a
+      gentleman.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Palliser glared back into his infuriatingly candid eyes. He was a far cry
+      from being a dullard himself; he was sharp enough to &ldquo;catch on&rdquo; to the
+      revelation that the situation was not what he had thought it, the type was
+      more complex than he had dreamed. The chap had been playing a part; he had
+      absolutely been &ldquo;jollying him along,&rdquo; after the New York fashion. He
+      became pale with humiliated rage, though he knew his only defense was to
+      control himself and profess not to see through the trick. Until he could
+      use his big lever, he added to himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I see,&rdquo; he commented acridly. &ldquo;I suppose you don't realize that your
+      figures of speech are unfortunate.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That comes of New York streets, too,&rdquo; Tembarom answered with
+      deliberation. &ldquo;But you can't live as I've lived and be dead easy&mdash;not
+      DEAD easy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Palliser had left his chair, and stood in contemptuous silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You know how a fellow hates to be thought DEAD easy&rdquo;&mdash;Tembarom
+      actually went to the insolent length of saying the words with a touch of
+      cheerful confidingness&mdash;&ldquo;when he's NOT. And I'm not. Have another
+      drink.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a pause. Palliser began to see, or thought he began to see,
+      where he stood. He had come to Temple Barholm because he had been driven
+      into a corner and had a dangerous fight before him. In anticipation of it
+      he had been following a clue for some time, though at the outset it had
+      been one of incredible slightness. Only his absolute faith in his theory
+      that every man had something to gain or lose, which he concealed
+      discreetly, had led him to it. He held a card too valuable to be used at
+      the beginning of a game. Its power might have lasted a long time, and
+      proved an influence without limit. He forbore any mental reference to
+      blackmail; the word was absurd. One used what fell into one's hands. If
+      Tembarom had followed his lead with any degree of docility, he would have
+      felt it wiser to save his ammunition until further pressure was necessary.
+      But behind his ridiculous rawness, his foolish jocularity, and his
+      professedly candid good humor, had been hidden the Yankee trickster who
+      was fool enough to think he could play his game through. Well, he could
+      not.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      During the few moments' pause he saw the situation as by a photographic
+      flashlight. He leaned over the table and supplied himself with a fresh
+      brandy and soda from the tray of siphons and decanters. He gave himself
+      time to take the glass up in his hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; he answered, &ldquo;you are not `dead easy.' That's why I am going to
+      broach another subject to you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Tembarom was refilling his pipe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Go ahead,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who, by the way, is Mr. Strangeways?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He was deliberate and entirely unemotional. So was T. Tembarom when, with
+      match applied to his tobacco, he replied between puffs as he lighted it:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You can search me. You can search him, too, for that matter. He doesn't
+      know who he is himself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bad luck for him!&rdquo; remarked Palliser, and allowed a slight pause again.
+      After it he added, &ldquo;Did it ever strike you it might be good luck for
+      somebody else?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Somebody else?&rdquo; Tembarom puffed more slowly, perhaps because his pipe was
+      lighted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Palliser took some brandy in his soda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There are men, you know,&rdquo; he suggested, &ldquo;who can be spared by their
+      relatives. I have some myself, by Jove!&rdquo; he added with a laugh. &ldquo;You keep
+      him rather dark, don't you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He doesn't like to see people.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Does he object to people seeing him? I saw him once myself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When you threw the gravel at his window?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Palliser stared contemptuously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What are you talking about? I did not throw stones at his window,&rdquo; he
+      lied. &ldquo;I'm not a school-boy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's so,&rdquo; Tembarom admitted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I saw him, nevertheless. And I can tell you he gave me rather a start.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Palliser half laughed again. He did not mean to go too quickly; he would
+      let the thing get on Tembarom's nerves gradually.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I'm hanged if I didn't take him for a man who is dead.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Enough to give any fellow a jolt,&rdquo; Tembarom admitted again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It gave me a `jolt.' Good word, that. But it would give you a bigger one,
+      my dear fellow, if he was the man he looked like.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why?&rdquo; Tembarom asked laconically.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He looked like Jem Temple Barholm.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He saw Tembarom start. There could be no denying it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You thought that? Honest?&rdquo; he said sharply, as if for a moment he had
+      lost his head. &ldquo;You thought that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't be nervous. Perhaps I couldn't have sworn to it. I did not see him
+      very close.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      T. Tembarom puffed rapidly at his pipe, and only, ejaculated:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course he's dead. If he wasn't,&rdquo;&mdash;with a shrug of his shoulders,&mdash;&ldquo;Lady
+      Joan Fayre would be Lady Joan Temple Barholm, and the pair would be
+      bringing up an interesting family here.&rdquo; He looked about the room, and
+      then, as if suddenly recalling the fact, added, &ldquo;By George! you'd be
+      selling newspapers, or making them&mdash;which was it?&mdash;in New York!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was by no means unpleasing to see that he had made his hit there. T.
+      Tembarom swung about and walked across the room with a suddenly perturbed
+      expression.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Say,&rdquo; he put it to him, coming back, &ldquo;are you in earnest, or are you just
+      saying it to give me a jolt?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Palliser studied him. The American sharpness was not always so keen as it
+      sometimes seemed. His face would have betrayed his uneasiness to the
+      dullest onlooker.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have you any objection to my seeing him in his own room?&rdquo; Palliser
+      inquired.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It does him harm to see people,&rdquo; Tembarom said, with nervous brusqueness.
+      &ldquo;It worries him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Palliser smiled a quiet but far from agreeable smile. He enjoyed what he
+      put into it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Quite so; best to keep him quiet,&rdquo; he returned. &ldquo;Do you know what my
+      advice would be? Put him in a comfortable sanatorium. A lot of stupid
+      investigations would end in nothing, of course, but they'd be a frightful
+      bore.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He thought it extraordinarily stupid in T. Tembarom to come nearer to him
+      with an anxious eagerness entirely unconcealed, if he really knew what he
+      was doing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you sure that if you saw him close you'd KNOW, so that you could
+      swear to him?&rdquo; he demanded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You're extremely nervous, aren't you?&rdquo; Palliser watched him with smiling
+      coolness. &ldquo;Of course Jem Temple Barholm is dead; but I've no doubt that if
+      I saw this man of yours, I could swear he had remained dead&mdash;if I
+      were asked.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you knew him well, you could make me sure. You could swear one way or
+      another. I want to be SURE,&rdquo; said Tembarom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So should I in your place; couldn't be too sure. Well, since you ask me,
+      I COULD swear. I knew him well enough. He was one of my most intimate
+      enemies. What do you say to letting me see him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I would if I could,&rdquo; Tembarom replied, as if thinking it over. &ldquo;I would
+      if I could.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Palliser treated him to the far from pleasing smile again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But it's quite impossible at present?&rdquo; he suggested. &ldquo;Excitement is not
+      good for him, and all that sort of thing. You want time to think it over.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Tembarom's slowly uttered answer, spoken as if he were still considering
+      the matter, was far from being the one he had expected.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I want time; but that's not the reason you can't see him right now. You
+      can't see him because he's not here. He's gone.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then it was Palliser who started, taken totally unaware in a manner which
+      disgusted him altogether. He had to pull himself up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's gone!&rdquo; he repeated. &ldquo;You are quicker than I thought. You've got him
+      safely away, have you? Well, I told you a comfortable sanatorium would be
+      a good idea.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, you did.&rdquo; T. Tembarom hesitated, seeming to be thinking it over
+      again. &ldquo;That's so.&rdquo; He laid his pipe aside because it had gone out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He suddenly sat down at the table, putting his elbows on it and his face
+      in his hands, with a harried effect of wanting to think it over in a sort
+      of withdrawal from his immediate surroundings. This was as it should be.
+      His Yankee readiness had deserted him altogether.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By Jove! you are nervous!&rdquo; Palliser commented. &ldquo;It's not surprising,
+      though. I can sympathize with you.&rdquo; With a markedly casual air he himself
+      sat down and drew his documents toward him. &ldquo;Let us talk of something
+      else,&rdquo; he said. He preferred to be casual and incidental, if he were
+      allowed. It was always better to suggest things and let them sink in until
+      people saw the advantage of considering them and you. To manage a business
+      matter without open argument or too frank a display of weapons was at once
+      more comfortable and in better taste.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are making a great mistake in not going into this,&rdquo; he suggested
+      amiably. &ldquo;You could go in now as you went into Hutchinson's affair, `on
+      the ground floor.' That's a good enough phrase, too. Twenty thousand
+      pounds would make you a million. You Americans understand nothing less
+      than millions.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But T. Tembarom did not take him up. He muttered in a worried way from
+      behind his shading hands, &ldquo;We'll talk about that later.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why not talk about it now, before anything can interfere?&rdquo; Palliser
+      persisted politely, almost gently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tembarom sprang up, restless and excited. He had plainly been planning
+      fast in his temporary seclusion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm thinking of what you said about Lady Joan,&rdquo; he burst forth. &ldquo;Say,
+      she's gone through all this Jem Temple Barholm thing once; it about half
+      killed her. If any one raised false hopes for her, she'd go through it all
+      again. Once is enough for any woman.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His effect at professing heat and strong feeling made a spark of amusement
+      show itself in Palliser's eye. It struck him as being peculiarly American
+      in its affectation of sentiment and chivalry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I see,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;It's Lady Joan you're disturbed about. You want to
+      spare her another shock, I see. You are a considerate fellow, as well as a
+      man of business.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't want her to begin to hope if&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very good taste on your part.&rdquo; Palliser's polite approval was admirable,
+      but he tapped lightly on the paper after expressing it. &ldquo;I don't want to
+      seem to press you about this, but don't you feel inclined to consider it?
+      I can assure you that an investment of this sort would be a good thing to
+      depend on if the unexpected happened. If you gave me your check now, it
+      would be Cedric stock to-morrow, and quite safe. Suppose you&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&mdash;I don't believe you were right&mdash;about what you thought.&rdquo; The
+      sharp-featured face was changing from pale to red. &ldquo;You'd have to be able
+      to swear to it, anyhow, and I don't believe you can.&rdquo; He looked at
+      Palliser in eager and anxious uncertainty. &ldquo;If you could,&rdquo; he dragged out,
+      &ldquo;I shouldn't have a check-book. Where would you be then?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should be in comfortable circumstances, dear chap, and so would you if
+      you gave me the money to-night, while you possess a check-book. It would
+      be only a sort of temporary loan in any case, whatever turned up. The
+      investment would quadruple itself. But there is no time to be lost.
+      Understand that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      T. Tembarom broke out into a sort of boyish resentment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't believe he did look like him, anyhow,&rdquo; he cried. &ldquo;I believe it's
+      all a bluff.&rdquo; His crude-sounding young swagger had a touch of final
+      desperation in it as he turned on Palliser. &ldquo;I'm dead sure it's a bluff.
+      What a fool I was not to think of that! You want to bluff me into going
+      into this Cedric thing. You could no more swear he was like him than&mdash;than
+      I could.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The outright, presumptuous, bold stripping bare of his phrases infuriated
+      Palliser too suddenly and too much. He stepped up to him and looked into
+      his eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bluff you, you young bounder!&rdquo; he flung out at him. &ldquo;You're losing your
+      head. You're not in New York streets here. You are talking to a gentleman.
+      No,&rdquo; he said furiously, &ldquo;I couldn't swear that he was like him, but what I
+      can swear in any court of justice is that the man I saw at the window was
+      Jem Temple Barholm, and no other man on earth.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      When he had said it, he saw the astonishing dolt change his expression
+      utterly again, as if in a flash. He stood up, putting his hands in his
+      pockets. His face changed, his voice changed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Fine!&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;First-rate! That's what I wanted to get on to.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0034" id="link2HCH0034">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXXIV
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      After this climax the interview was not so long as it was interesting. Two
+      men as far apart as the poles, as remote from each other in mind and body,
+      in training and education or lack of it, in desires and intentions, in
+      points of view and trend of being, as nature and circumstances could make
+      them, talked in a language foreign to each other of a wildly strange
+      thing. Palliser's arguments and points of aspect were less unknown to T.
+      Tembarom than his own were to Palliser. He had seen something very like
+      them before, though they had developed in different surroundings and had
+      been differently expressed. The colloquialism &ldquo;You're not doing that for
+      your health&rdquo; can be made to cover much ground in the way of the stripping
+      bare of motives for action. This was what, in excellent and well-chosen
+      English, Captain Palliser frankly said to his host. Of nothing which T.
+      Tembarom said to him in his own statement did he believe one word or
+      syllable. The statement in question was not long or detailed. It was, of
+      course, Palliser saw, a ridiculously impudent flinging together of a
+      farrago of nonsense, transparent in its effort beyond belief. Before he
+      had listened five minutes with the distinctly &ldquo;nasty&rdquo; smile, he burst out
+      laughing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is a good `spiel,' my dear chap,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;It's as good a `spiel'
+      as your typewriter friend used to rattle off when he thought he saw a
+      customer; but I'm not a customer.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Tembarom looked at him interestedly for about ten seconds. His hands were
+      thrust into his trousers pockets, as was his almost invariable custom.
+      Absorption and speculation, even emotion and excitement, were usually
+      expressed in this unconventional manner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You don't believe a darned word of it,&rdquo; was his sole observation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not a darned word,&rdquo; Palliser smiled. &ldquo;You are trying a `bluff,' which
+      doesn't do credit to your usual sharpness. It's a bluff that is actually
+      silly. It makes you look like an ass.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, it's true,&rdquo; said Tembarom; &ldquo;it's true.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Palliser laughed again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I only said it made you look like an ass,&rdquo; he remarked. &ldquo;I don't profess
+      to understand you altogether, because you are a new species. Your
+      combination of ignorance and sharpness isn't easy to calculate on. But
+      there is one thing I have found out, and that is, that when you want to
+      play a particular sharp trick you are willing to let people take you for a
+      fool. I'll own you've deceived me once or twice, even when I suspected
+      you. I've heard that's one of the most successful methods used in the
+      American business world. That's why I only say you look like an ass. You
+      are an ass in some respects; but you are letting yourself look like one
+      now for some shrewd end. You either think you'll slip out of danger by it
+      when I make this discovery public, or you think you'll somehow trick me
+      into keeping my mouth shut.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I needn't trick you into keeping your mouth shut,&rdquo; Tembarom suggested.
+      &ldquo;There's a straightway to do that, ain't there?&rdquo; And he indelicately waved
+      his hand toward the documents pertaining to the Cedric Company.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was stupid as well as gross, in his hearer's opinion. If he had known
+      what was good for him he would have been clever enough to ignore the
+      practical presentation of his case made half an hour or so earlier.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, there is not,&rdquo; Palliser replied, with serene mendacity. &ldquo;No
+      suggestion of that sort has been made. My business proposition was given
+      out on an entirely different basis. You, of course, choose to put your
+      personal construction upon it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Gee whiz!&rdquo; ejaculated T. Tembarom. &ldquo;I was 'way off, wasn't I?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I told you that professing to be an ass wouldn't be good enough in this
+      case. Don't go on with it,&rdquo; said Palliser, sharply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You're throwing bouquets. Let a fellow be natural,&rdquo; said Tembarom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is bluff, too,&rdquo; Palliser replied more sharply still. &ldquo;I am not taken
+      in by it, bold as it is. Ever since you came here, you have been playing
+      this game. It was your fool's grin and guffaw and pretense of good nature
+      that first made me suspect you of having something up your sleeve. You
+      were too unembarrassed and candid.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So you began to look out,&rdquo; Tembarom said, considering him curiously,
+      &ldquo;just because of that.&rdquo; Then suddenly he laughed outright, the fool's
+      guffaw.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It somehow gave Palliser a sort of puzzled shock. It was so hearty that it
+      remotely suggested that he appeared more secure than seemed possible. He
+      tried to reply to him with a languid contempt of manner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You think you have some tremendously sharp `deal' in your hand,&rdquo; he said,
+      &ldquo;but you had better remember you are in England where facts are like
+      sledge-hammers. You can't dodge from under them as you can in America. I
+      dare say you won't answer me, but I should like to ask you what you
+      propose to do.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't know what I'm going to do any more than you do,&rdquo; was the
+      unilluminating answer. &ldquo;I don't mind telling you that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And what do you think he will do?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've got to wait till I find out. I'm doing it. That was what I told you.
+      What are you going to do?&rdquo; he added casually.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm going to Lincoln's Inn Fields to have an interview with Palford &amp;
+      Grimby.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's a good enough move,&rdquo; commented Tembarom, &ldquo;if you think you can
+      prove what you say. You've got to prove things, you know. I couldn't, so I
+      lay low and waited, just like I told you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course, of course,&rdquo; Palliser himself almost grinned in his derision.
+      &ldquo;You have only been waiting.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When you've got to prove a thing, and haven't much to go on, you've got
+      to wait,&rdquo; said T. Tembarom&mdash;&ldquo;to wait and keep your mouth shut,
+      whatever happens, and to let yourself be taken for a fool or a horse-thief
+      isn't as gilt-edged a job as it seems. But proof's what it's best to have
+      before you ring up the curtain. You'd have to have it yourself. So would
+      Palford &amp; Grimby before it'd be stone-cold safe to rush things and
+      accuse a man of a penitentiary offense.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He took his unconventional half-seat on the edge of the table, with one
+      foot on the floor and the other one lightly swinging.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Palford &amp; Grimby are clever old ducks, and they know that much. Thing
+      they'd know best would be that to set a raft of lies going about a man
+      who's got money enough to defend himself, and to make them pay big damages
+      for it afterward, would be pretty bum business. I guess they know all
+      about what proof stands for. They may have to wait; so may you, same as I
+      have.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Palliser realized that he was in the position of a man striking at an
+      adversary whose construction was of India-rubber. He struck home, but left
+      no bruise and drew no blood, which was an irritating thing. He lost his
+      temper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Proof!&rdquo; he jerked out. &ldquo;There will be proof enough, and when it is made
+      public, you will not control the money you threaten to use.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When you get proof, just you let me hear about it,&rdquo; T. Tembarom said.
+      &ldquo;And all the money I'm threatening on shall go where it belongs, and I'll
+      go back to New York and sell papers if I have to. It won't come as hard as
+      you think.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The flippant insolence with which he brazened out his pretense that he had
+      not lied, that his ridiculous romance was actual and simple truth,
+      suggested dangerous readiness of device and secret knowledge of power
+      which could be adroitly used.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are merely marking time,&rdquo; said Palliser, rising, with cold
+      determination to be juggled with no longer. &ldquo;You have hidden him away
+      where you think you can do as you please with a man who is an invalid.
+      That is your dodge. You've got him hidden somewhere, and his friends had
+      better get at him before it is too late.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm not answering questions this evening, and I'm not giving addresses,
+      though there are no witnesses to take them down. If he's hidden away, he's
+      where he won't be disturbed,&rdquo; was T. Tembarom's rejoinder. &ldquo;You may lay
+      your bottom dollar on that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Palliser walked toward the door without speaking. He had almost reached it
+      when he whirled about involuntarily, arrested by a shout of laughter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Say,&rdquo; announced Tembarom, &ldquo;you mayn't know it, but this lay-out would
+      make a first-rate turn in a vaudeville. You think I'm lying, I look like
+      I'm lying, I guess every word I say sounds like I'm lying. To a fellow
+      like you, I guess it couldn't help but sound that way. And I'm not lying.
+      That's where the joke comes in. I'm not lying. I've not told you all I
+      know because it's none of your business and wouldn't help; but what I have
+      told you is the stone-cold truth.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He was keeping it up to the very end with a desperate determination not to
+      let go his hold of his pose until he had made his private shrewd deal,
+      whatsoever it was. At least, so it struck Palliser, who merely said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I 'm leaving the house by the first train to-morrow morning.&rdquo; He fixed a
+      cold gray eye on the fool's grin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Six forty-five,&rdquo; said T. Tembarom. &ldquo;I'll order the carriage. I might go
+      up myself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The door closed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tembarom was looking cheerful enough when he went into his bedroom. He had
+      become used to its size and had learned to feel that it was a good sort of
+      place. It had the hall bedroom at Mrs. Bowse's boarding-house &ldquo;beaten to a
+      frazzle.&rdquo; There was about everything in it that any man could hatch up an
+      idea he'd like to have. He had slept luxuriously on the splendid carved
+      bed through long nights, he had lain awake and thought out things on it,
+      he had lain and watched the fire-light flickering on the ceiling, as he
+      thought about Ann and made plans, and &ldquo;fixed up&rdquo; the Harlem flat which
+      could be run on fifteen per. He had picked out the pieces of furniture
+      from the Sunday Earth advertisement sheet, and had set them in their
+      places. He always saw the six-dollar mahogany-stained table set for
+      supper, with Ann at one end and himself at the other. He had grown
+      actually fond of the old room because of the silence and comfort of it,
+      which tended to give reality to his dreams. Pearson, who had ceased to
+      look anxious, and who had acquired fresh accomplishments in the form of an
+      entirely new set of duties, was waiting, and handed him a telegram.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This just arrived, sir,&rdquo; he explained. &ldquo;James brought it here because he
+      thought you had come up, and I didn't send it down because I heard you on
+      the stairs.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's right. Thank you, Pearson,&rdquo; his master said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He tore the yellow envelop, and read the message. In a moment Pearson knew
+      it was not an ordinary message, and therefore remained more than
+      ordinarily impassive of expression. He did not even ask of himself what it
+      might convey.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Temple Barholm stood still a few seconds, with the look of a man who
+      must think and think rapidly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is the next train to London, Pearson?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is one at twelve thirty-six, sir,&rdquo; he answered. &ldquo;It's the last till
+      six in the morning. You have to change at Crowley.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You're always ready, Pearson,&rdquo; returned Mr. Temple Barholm. &ldquo;I want to
+      get that train.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Pearson was always ready. Before the last word was quite spoken he had
+      turned and opened the bedroom door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll order the dog-cart; that's quickest, sir,&rdquo; he said. He was out of
+      the room and in again almost immediately. Then he was at the wardrobe and
+      taking out what Mr. Temple Barholm called his &ldquo;grip,&rdquo; but what Pearson
+      knew as a Gladstone bag. It was always kept ready packed for unexpected
+      emergencies of travel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Temple Barholm sat at the table and drew pen and paper toward him. He
+      looked excited; he looked more troubled than Pearson had seen him look
+      before.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The wire's from Sir Ormsby Galloway, Pearson,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's about Mr. Strangeways. He's done what I used to be always watching
+      out against: he's disappeared.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Disappeared, sir!&rdquo; cried Pearson, and almost dropped the Gladstone bag.
+      &ldquo;I beg pardon, sir. I know there's no time to lose.&rdquo; He steadied the bag
+      and went on with his task without even turning round.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His master was in some difficulty. He began to write, and after dashing
+      off a few words, stopped, and tore them up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; he muttered, &ldquo;that won't do. There's no time to explain.&rdquo; Then he
+      began again, but tore up his next lines also.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That says too much and not enough. It'd frighten the life out of her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He wrote again, and ended by folding the sheet and putting it into an
+      envelop.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This is a message for Miss Alicia,&rdquo; he said to Pearson. &ldquo;Give it to her
+      in the morning. I don't want her to worry because I had to go in a hurry.
+      Tell her everything's going to be all right; but you needn't mention that
+      anything's happened to Mr. Strangeways.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, sir,&rdquo; answered Pearson.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Temple Barholm was already moving about the room, doing odd things for
+      himself rapidly, and he went on speaking.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I want you and Rose to know,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;that whatever happens, you are
+      both fixed all right&mdash;both of you. I've seen to that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you, sir,&rdquo; Pearson faltered, made uneasy by something new in his
+      tone. &ldquo;You said whatever happened, sir&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Whatever old thing happens,&rdquo; his master took him up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not to you, sir. Oh, I hope, sir, that nothing&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Temple Barholm put a cheerful hand on his shoulder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing's going to happen that'll hurt any one. Things may change, that's
+      all. You and Rose are all right, Miss Alicia's all right, I'm all right.
+      Come along. Got to catch that train.&rdquo;'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In this manner he took his departure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Alicia had from necessity acquired the habit of early rising at
+      Rowcroft vicarage, and as the next morning was bright, she was clipping
+      roses on a terrace before breakfast when Pearson brought her the note.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. Temple Barholm received a telegram from London last night, ma'am,&rdquo; he
+      explained, &ldquo;and he was obliged to take the midnight train. He hadn't time
+      to do any more than leave a few lines for you, but he asked me to tell you
+      that nothing disturbing had occurred. He specially mentioned that
+      everything was all right.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But how very sudden!&rdquo; exclaimed Miss Alicia, opening her note and
+      beginning to read it. Plainly it had been written hurriedly indeed. It
+      read as though he had been in such haste that he hadn't had time to be
+      clear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dear little Miss Alicia:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I've got to light out of here as quick as I can make it. I can't even stop
+      to tell you why. There's just one thing&mdash;don't get rattled, Miss
+      Alicia. Whatever any one says or does, just don't let yourself get
+      rattled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yours affectionately,
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      T. TEMBAROM.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pearson,&rdquo; Miss Alicia exclaimed, again looking up, &ldquo;are you sure
+      everything is all right?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That was what he said, ma'am. `All right,' ma'am.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you, Pearson. I am glad to hear it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She walked to and fro in the sunshine, reading the note and rereading it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course if he said it was all right, it was all right,&rdquo; she murmured.
+      &ldquo;It is only the phrasing that makes me slightly nervous. Why should he ask
+      me not to get rattled?&rdquo; The term was by this time as familiar to her as
+      any in Dr. Johnson's dictionary. &ldquo;Of course he knows I do get rattled much
+      too easily; but why should I be in danger of getting rattled now if
+      nothing has happened?&rdquo; She gave a very small start as she remembered
+      something. &ldquo;Could it be that Captain Palliser&mdash;But how could he?
+      Though I do not like Captain Palliser.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Captain Palliser, her distaste for whom at the moment quite agitated her,
+      was this morning an early riser also, and as she turned in her walk she
+      found him coming toward her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I find I am obliged to take an early train to London this morning,&rdquo; he
+      said, after their exchange of greetings. &ldquo;It is quite unexpected. I spoke
+      to Mr. Temple Barholm about it last night.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Perhaps the unexpectedness, perhaps a certain suggestion of coincidence,
+      caused Miss Alicia's side ringlets to appear momentarily tremulous.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then perhaps we had better go in to breakfast at once,&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is Mr. Temple Barholm down?&rdquo; he inquired as they seated themselves at the
+      breakfast-table.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He is not here,&rdquo; she answered. &ldquo;He, too, was called away unexpectedly. He
+      went to London by the midnight train.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She had never been so aware of her unchristian lack of liking for Captain
+      Palliser as she was when he paused a moment before he made any comment.
+      His pause was as marked as a start, and the smile he indulged in was, she
+      felt, most singularly disagreeable. It was a smile of the order which
+      conceals an unpleasant explanation of itself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh,&rdquo; he remarked, &ldquo;he has gone first, has he?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; she answered, pouring out his coffee for him. &ldquo;He evidently had
+      business of importance.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They were quite alone, and she was not one of the women one need disturb
+      oneself about. She had been browbeaten into hypersensitive timidity early
+      in life, and did not know how to resent cleverly managed polite bullying.
+      She would always feel herself at fault if she was tempted to criticize any
+      one. She was innocent and nervous enough to betray herself to any extent,
+      because she would feel it rude to refuse to answer questions, howsoever
+      far they exceeded the limits of polite curiosity. He had learned a good
+      deal from her in the past. Why not try what could be startled out of her
+      now? Thus Captain Palliser said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I dare say you feel a little anxious at such an extraordinarily sudden
+      departure,&rdquo; he suggested amiably. &ldquo;Bolting off in the middle of the night
+      was sudden, if he did not explain himself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He had no time to explain,&rdquo; she answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That makes it appear all the more sudden. But no doubt he left you a
+      message. I saw you were reading a note when I joined you on the terrace.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lightly casual as he chose to make the words sound, they were an audacity
+      he would have known better than to allow himself with any one but a timid
+      early-Victorian spinster whose politeness was hypersensitive in its
+      quality.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He particularly desired that I should not be anxious,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;He is
+      always considerate.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He would, of course, have explained everything if he had not been so
+      hurried?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course, if it had been necessary,&rdquo; answered Miss Alicia, nervously
+      sipping her tea.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Naturally,&rdquo; said Captain Palliser. &ldquo;His note no doubt mentioned that he
+      went away on business connected with his friend Mr. Strangeways?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was no question of the fact that she was startled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He had not time enough,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;He could only write a few lines. Mr.
+      Strangeways?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We had a long talk about him last night. He told me a remarkable story,&rdquo;
+       Captain Palliser went on. &ldquo;I suppose you are quite familiar with all the
+      details of it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know how he found him in New York, and I know how generous he has been
+      to him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have you been told nothing more?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There was nothing more to tell. If there was anything, I am sure he had
+      some good reason for not telling me,&rdquo; said Miss Alicia, loyally. &ldquo;His
+      reasons are always good.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Palliser's air of losing a shade or so of discretion as a result of
+      astonishment was really well done.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you mean to say that he has not even hinted that ever since he arrived
+      at Temple Barholm he has strongly suspected Strangeways' identity&mdash;that
+      he has even known who he is?&rdquo; he exclaimed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Alicia's small hands clung to the table-cloth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He has not known at all. He has been most anxious to discover. He has
+      used every endeavor,&rdquo; she brought out with some difficulty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You say he has been trying to find out?&rdquo; Palliser interposed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He has been more than anxious,&rdquo; she protested. &ldquo;He has been to London
+      again and again; he has gone to great expense; he has even seen people
+      from Scotland Yard. I have sometimes almost thought he was assuming more
+      responsibility than was just to himself. In the case of a relative or an
+      old friend, but for an entire stranger&mdash;Oh, really, I ought not to
+      seem to criticize. I do not presume to criticize his wonderful generosity
+      and determination and goodness. No one should presume to question him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If he knows that you feel like this&mdash;&rdquo; Palliser began.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He knows all that I feel,&rdquo; Miss Alicia took him up with a pretty, rising
+      spirit. &ldquo;He knows that I am full of unspeakable gratitude to him for his
+      beautiful kindness to me; he knows that I admire and respect and love him
+      in a way I could never express, and that I would do anything in the world
+      he could wish me to do.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Naturally,&rdquo; said Captain Palliser. &ldquo;I was only about to express my
+      surprise that since he is aware of all this he has not told you who he has
+      proved Strangeways to be. It is a little odd, you know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think &ldquo;&mdash;Miss Alicia was even gently firm in her reply&mdash;&ldquo;that
+      you are a little mistaken in believing Mr. Temple Barholm has proved Mr.
+      Strangeways to be anybody. When he has proof, he will no doubt think
+      proper to tell me about it. Until then I should prefer&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Palliser laughed as he finished her sentence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not to know. I was not going to betray him, Miss Alicia. He evidently has
+      one of his excellent reasons for keeping things to himself. I may mention,
+      however, that it is not so much he who has proof as I myself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You!&rdquo; How could she help quite starting in her seat when his gray eyes
+      fixed themselves on her with such a touch of finely amused malice?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I offered him the proof last night, and it rather upset him,&rdquo; he said.
+      &ldquo;He thought no one knew but himself, and he was not inclined to tell the
+      world. He was upset because I said I had seen the man and could swear to
+      his identity. That was why he went away so hurriedly. He no doubt went to
+      see Strangeways and talk it over.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;See Mr. Strangeways? But Mr. Strangeways&mdash;&rdquo; Miss Alicia rose and
+      rang the bell.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tell Pearson I wish to see him at once,&rdquo; she said to the footman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Palliser took in her mood without comment. He had no objection to being
+      present when she made inquiries of Pearson.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I hear the wheels of the dog-cart,&rdquo; he remarked. &ldquo;You see, I must catch
+      my train.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Pearson stood at the door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is not Mr. Strangeways in his room, Pearson?&rdquo; Miss Alicia asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. Temple Barholm took him to London when he last went, ma'am,&rdquo; answered
+      Pearson. &ldquo;You remember he went at night. The doctor thought it best.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He did not tell you that, either?&rdquo; said Palliser, casually.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The dog-cart is at the door, sir,&rdquo; announced Pearson.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Alicia's hand was unsteady when the departing guest took it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't be disturbed,&rdquo; he said considerately, &ldquo;but a most singular thing
+      has happened. When I asked so many questions about Temple Barholm's Man
+      with the Iron Mask I asked them for curious reasons. That must be my
+      apology. You will hear all about it later, probably from Palford &amp;
+      Grimby.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      When he had left the room Miss Alicia stood upon the hearth-rug as the
+      dog-cart drove away, and she was pale. Her simple and easily disturbed
+      brain was in a whirl. She could scarcely remember what she had heard, and
+      could not in the least comprehend what it had seemed intended to imply,
+      except that there had been concealed in the suggestions some disparagement
+      of her best beloved.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Singular as it was that Pearson should return without being summoned, when
+      she turned and found that he mysteriously stood inside the threshold
+      again, as if she had called him, she felt a great sense of relief.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pearson,&rdquo; she faltered, &ldquo;I am rather upset by certain things which
+      Captain Palliser has said. I am afraid I do not understand.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She looked at him helplessly, not knowing what more to say. She wished
+      extremely that she could think of something definite.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The masterly finish of Pearson's reply lay in its neatly restrained hint
+      of unobtrusively perceptive sympathy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, Miss. I was afraid so. Which is why I took the liberty of stepping
+      into the room again. I myself do not understand, but of course I do not
+      expect to. If I may be so bold as to say it, Miss, whatever we don't
+      understand, we both understand Mr. Temple Barholm. My instructions were to
+      remind you, Miss, that everything would be all right.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Alicia took up her letter from the table where she had laid it down.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you, Pearson,&rdquo; she said, her forehead beginning to clear itself a
+      little. &ldquo;Of course, of course. I ought not to&mdash;He told me not to&mdash;get
+      rattled,&rdquo; she added with plaintive ingenuousness, &ldquo;and I ought not to,
+      above all things.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, Miss. It is most important that you should not.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0035" id="link2HCH0035">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXXV
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The story of the adventures, experiences, and journeyings of Mr. Joseph
+      Hutchinson, his daughter, and the invention, if related in detail, would
+      prove reading of interest; but as this is merely a study of the manner in
+      which the untrained characteristics and varied limitations of one man
+      adjusted or failed to adjust themselves to incongruous surroundings and
+      totally unprepared-for circumstances, such details, whatsoever their
+      potential picturesqueness, can be touched upon but lightly. No new idea of
+      value to the world of practical requirements is presented to the public at
+      large without the waking of many sleeping dogs, and the stirring of many
+      snapping fish, floating with open ears and eyes in many pools. An
+      uneducated, blustering, obstinate man of one idea, having resentfully
+      borne discouragement and wounded egotism for years, and suddenly
+      confronting immense promise of success, is not unlikely to be prey easily
+      harpooned. Joseph Hutchinson's rebound from despair to high and
+      well-founded hope made of him exactly what such a man is always made by
+      such rebound. The testimony to his genius and judgment which
+      acknowledgment of the value of his work implied was naturally, in his
+      opinion, only a proper tribute which the public had been a bull-headed
+      fool not to lay at his feet years before. So much time lost, and so much
+      money for it, as well as for him, and served 'em all damned well right, he
+      said. If Temple Barholm hadn't come into his money, and hadn't had more
+      sense than the rest of them, where would they all have been? Perhaps
+      they'd never have had the benefit of the thing he'd been telling them
+      about for years. He prided himself immensely on the possession of a
+      business shrewdness which was an absolute defense against any desire on
+      the part of the iniquitous to overreach him. He believed it to be a
+      peculiarly Lancashire characteristic, and kept it in view constantly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lancashire's not easy to do,&rdquo; he would say hilariously, &ldquo;Them that can do
+      a Lancashire chap has got to look out that they get up early in the
+      morning and don't go to bed till late.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Smooth-mannered and astute men of business who knew how to make a man talk
+      were given diffuse and loud-voiced explanations of his methods and
+      long-acknowledged merits and characteristics. His life, his morals, and
+      his training, or rather lack of it, were laid before them as examples of
+      what a man might work himself up to if &ldquo;he had it in him.&rdquo; Education
+      didn't do it. He had never been to naught but a village school, where he'd
+      picked up precious little but the three R's. It had to be born in a man.
+      Look at him! His invention promised to bring him in a fortune like a
+      duke's, if he managed it right and kept his eyes open for sharpers. This
+      company and that company were after him, but Lancashire didn't snap up
+      things without going into 'em, and under 'em, and through 'em, for the
+      matter of that.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The well-mannered gentlemen of business stimulated him greatly by their
+      appreciative attention. He sometimes lost his head a trifle and almost
+      bullied them, but they did not seem to mind it. Their apparently old-time
+      knowledge of and respect for Lancashire business sagacity seemed
+      invariably a marked thing. Men of genius and powerful character combined
+      with practical shrewdness of outlook they intimated, were of enormous
+      value to the business world. They were to be counted upon as important
+      factors. They could see and deal with both sides of a proposal as those of
+      weaker mind could not.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That they can,&rdquo; Hutchinson would admit, rolling about in his chair and
+      thrusting his hands in his pockets. &ldquo;They've got some bottom to stand on.&rdquo;
+       And he would feel amenable to reason.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Little Ann found her duties and responsibilities increasing daily. Many
+      persons seemed to think it necessary to come and talk business, and father
+      had so much to think of and reason out, so that he could be sure that he
+      didn't make any mistakes. In a quiet, remote, and darkened corner of her
+      mind, in which were stored all such things as it was well to say little or
+      nothing about, there was discreetly kept for reference the secretly
+      acquired knowledge that father did not know so much about business ways
+      and business people as he thought he did. Mother had learned this somewhat
+      important fact, and had secluded it in her own private mental store-room
+      with much affectionate delicacy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Father's a great man and a good man, Ann love,&rdquo; she had confided to her,
+      choosing an occasion when her husband was a hundred miles away, &ldquo;and he IS
+      right-down Lancashire in his clever way of seeing through people that
+      think themselves sharp; but when a man is a genius and noble-minded he
+      sometimes can't see the right people's faults and wickedness. He thinks
+      they mean as honest as he does. And there's times when he may get taken in
+      if some one, perhaps not half as clever as he is, doesn't look after him.
+      When the invention's taken up, and everybody's running after him to try to
+      cheat him out of his rights, if I'm not there, Ann, you must just keep
+      with him and watch every minute. I've seen these sharp, tricky ones
+      right-down flinch and quail when there was a nice, quiet-behaved woman in
+      the room, and she just fixed her eye steady and clear-like on them and
+      showed she'd took in every word and was like to remember. You know what I
+      mean, Ann; you've got that look in your own eye.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She had. The various persons who interviewed Mr. Hutchinson became
+      familiar with the fact that he had an unusual intimacy with and affection
+      for his daughter. She was present on all occasions. If she had not been
+      such a quiet and entirely unobtrusive little thing, she might have been an
+      obstacle to freedom of expression. But she seemed a childish,
+      unsophisticated creature, who always had a book with her when she waited
+      in an office, and a trifle of sewing to occupy herself with when she was
+      at home. At first she so obliterated herself that she was scarcely
+      noticed; but in course of time it became observed by some that she was
+      curiously pretty. The face usually bent over her book or work was tinted
+      like a flower, and she had quite magnificent red hair. A stout old
+      financier first remarked her eyes. He found one day that she had quietly
+      laid her book on her lap, and that they were resting upon him like
+      unflinching crystals as he talked to her father. Their serenity made him
+      feel annoyed and uncomfortable. It was a sort of recording serenity. He
+      felt as though she would so clearly remember every word he had said that
+      she would be able to write it down when she went home; and he did not care
+      to have it written down. So he began to wander somewhat in his argument,
+      and did not reach his conclusions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was glad, Father, to see how you managed that gentleman this
+      afternoon,&rdquo; Little Ann said that night when Hutchinson had settled himself
+      with his pipe after an excellent dinner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Eh?&rdquo; he exclaimed. &ldquo;Eh?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The one,&rdquo; she exclaimed, &ldquo;that thought he was so sure he was going to
+      persuade you to sign that paper. I do wonder he could think you'd listen
+      to such a poor offer, and tie up so much. Why, even I could see he was
+      trying to take advantage, and I know nothing in the world about business.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The financier in question had been a brilliant and laudatory
+      conversationalist, and had so soothed and exhilarated Mr. Hutchinson that
+      such perils had beset him as his most lurid imaginings could never have
+      conceived in his darkest moments of believing that the entire universe had
+      ceased all other occupation to engage in that of defrauding him of his
+      rights and dues. He had been so uplifted by the admiration of his genius
+      so properly exhibited, and the fluency with which his future fortunes had
+      been described, that he had been huffed when the arguments seemed to
+      dwindle away. Little Ann startled him, but it was not he who would show
+      signs of dismay at the totally unexpected expression of adverse opinion.
+      He had got into the habit of always listening, though inadvertently, as it
+      were, to Ann as he had inadvertently listened to her mother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Rosenthal?&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Are you talking about him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I am,&rdquo; Little Ann answeered, smiling approvingly over her bit of
+      sewing. &ldquo;Father, I wish you'd try and teach me some of the things you know
+      about business. I've learned a little by just listening to you talk; but I
+      should so like to feel as if I could follow you when you argue. I do so
+      enjoy hearing you argue. It's just an education.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Women are not up to much at business,&rdquo; reflected Hutchinson. &ldquo;If you'd
+      been a boy, I'd have trained you same as I've trained myself. You're a
+      sharp little thing, Ann, but you're a woman. Not but what a woman's the
+      best thing on earth,&rdquo; he added almost severely in his conviction&mdash;&ldquo;the
+      best thing on earth in her place. I don't know what I'd ever have done
+      without you, Ann, in the bad times.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He loved her, blundering old egotist, just as he had loved her mother. Ann
+      always knew it, and her own love for him warmed all the world about them
+      both. She got up and went to him to kiss him, and pat him, and stuff a
+      cushion behind his stout back.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And now the good times have come,&rdquo; she said, bestowing on him two or
+      three special little pats which were caresses of her own invention, &ldquo;and
+      people see what you are and always have been, as they ought to have seen
+      long ago, I don't want to feel as if I couldn't keep up with you and
+      understand your plans. Perhaps I've got a little bit of your cleverness,
+      and you might teach me to use it in small ways. I've got a good memory you
+      know, Father love, and I might recollect things people say and make bits
+      of notes of them to save you trouble. And I can calculate. I once got a
+      copy of Bunyan's `Pilgrim's Progress' for a prize at the village school
+      just for sums.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The bald but unacknowledged fact that Mr. Hutchinson had never exhibited
+      gifts likely to entitle him to receive a prize for &ldquo;sums&rdquo; caused this
+      suggestion to be one of some practical value. When business men talked to
+      him of per cents., and tenth shares or net receipts, and expected him to
+      comprehend their proportions upon the spot without recourse to pencil and
+      paper, he felt himself grow hot and nervous and red, and was secretly
+      terrified lest the party of the second part should detect that he was
+      tossed upon seas of horrible uncertainty. T. Tembarom in the same
+      situation would probably have said, &ldquo;This is the place where T. T. sits
+      down a while to take breath and count things up on his fingers. I am not a
+      sharp on arithmetic, and I need time&mdash;lots of it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Hutchinson's way was to bluster irritatedly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Aye, aye, I see that, of course, plain enough. I see that.&rdquo; And feel
+      himself breaking into a cold perspiration. &ldquo;Eh, this English climate is a
+      damp un,&rdquo; he would add when it became necessary to mop his red forehead
+      somewhat with his big clean handkerchief.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Therefore he found it easy to receive Little Ann's proposition with favor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There's summat i' that,&rdquo; he acknowledged graciously, dropping into
+      Lancashire. &ldquo;That's one of the little things a woman can do if she's sharp
+      at figures. Your mother taught me that much. She always said women ought
+      to look after the bits of things as was too small for a man to bother
+      with.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Men have the big things to look after. That's enough for anybody,&rdquo; said
+      Little Ann. &ldquo;And they ought to leave something for women to do. If you'll
+      just let me keep notes for you and remember things and answer your
+      letters, and just make calculations you're too busy to attend to, I should
+      feel right-down happy, Father.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Eh!&rdquo; he said relievedly, &ldquo;tha art like thy mother.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That would make me happy if there was nothing else to do it,&rdquo; said Ann,
+      smoothing his shoulder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You're her girl,&rdquo; he said, warmed and supported.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I'm her girl, and I'm yours. Now, isn't there some little thing I
+      could begin with? Would you mind telling me if I was right in what I
+      thought you thought about Mr. Rosenthal's offer?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What did you think I thought about it?&rdquo; He was able to put affectionate
+      condescension into the question.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She went to her work-basket and took out a sheet of paper. She came back
+      and sat cozily on the arm of his chair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I had to put it all down when I came home,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I wanted to make
+      sure I hadn't forgotten. I do hope I didn't make mistakes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She gave it to him to look at, and as he settled himself down to its
+      careful examination, she kept her blue eyes upon him. She herself did not
+      know that it was a wonderful little document in its neatly jotted down
+      notes of the exact detail most important to his interests.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There were figures, there were calculations of profits, there were records
+      of the gist of his replies, there were things Hutchinson himself could not
+      possibly have fished out of the jumbled rag-bag of his uncertain
+      recollections.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did I say that?&rdquo; he exclaimed once.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, Father love, and I could see it upset him. I was watching his face
+      because it wasn't a face I took to.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Joseph Hutchinson began to chuckle&mdash;the chuckle of a relieved and
+      gratified stout man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tha kept thy eyes open, Little Ann,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;And the way tha's put it
+      down is a credit to thee. And I'll lay a sovereign that tha made no
+      mistakes in what tha thought I was thinking.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He was a little anxious to hear what it had been. The memorandum had
+      brought him up with a slight shock, because it showed him that he had not
+      remembered certain points, and had passed over others which were of
+      dangerous importance. Ann slipped her warm arm about his neck, as she
+      nearly always did when she sat on the arm of his chair and talked things
+      over with him. She had never thought, in fact she was not even aware, that
+      her soft little instincts made her treat him as the big, good, conceited,
+      blundering child nature had created him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What I was seeing all the time was the way you were taking in his trick
+      of putting whole lots of things in that didn't really matter, and leaving
+      out things that did,&rdquo; she explained. &ldquo;He kept talking about what the
+      invention would make in England, and how it would make it, and adding up
+      figures and per cents. and royalties until my head was buzzing inside. And
+      when he thought he'd got your mind fixed on England so that you'd almost
+      forget there was any other country to think of, he read out the agreement
+      that said `All rights,' and he was silly enough to think he could get you
+      to sign it without reading it over and over yourself, and showing it to a
+      clever lawyer that would know that as many tricks can be played by things
+      being left out of a paper as by things being put in.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Small beads of moisture broke out on the bald part of Joseph Hutchinson's
+      head. He had been first so flattered and exhilarated by the quoting of
+      large figures, and then so flustrated and embarrassed by his inability to
+      calculate and follow argument, and again so soothed and elated and
+      thrilled by his own importance in the scheme and the honors which his
+      position in certain companies would heap upon him, that an abyss had
+      yawned before him of which he had been wholly unaware. He was not unaware
+      of it now. He was a vainglorious, ignorant man, whose life had been spent
+      in common work done under the supervision of those who knew what he did
+      not know. He had fed himself upon the comforting belief that he had
+      learned all the tricks of any trade. He had been openly boastful of his
+      astuteness and experience, and yet, as Ann's soft little voice went on,
+      and she praised his cleverness in seeing one point after another, he began
+      to quake within himself before the dawning realization that he had seen
+      none of them, that he had been carried along exactly as Rosenthal had
+      intended that he should be, and that if luck had not intervened, he had
+      been on the brink of signing his name to an agreement that would have
+      implied a score of concessions he would have bellowed like a bull at the
+      thought of making if he had known what he was doing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Aye, lass,&rdquo; he gulped out when he could speak&mdash;&ldquo;aye, lass, tha wert
+      right enow. I'm glad tha wert there and heard it, and saw what I was
+      thinking. I didn't say much. I let the chap have rope enow to hang himself
+      with. When he comes back I'll give him a bit o' my mind as'll startle him.
+      It was right-down clever of thee to see just what I had i' my head about
+      all that there gab about things as didn't matter, an' the leavin' out them
+      as did&mdash;thinking I wouldn't notice. Many's the time I've said, `It is
+      na so much what's put into a contract as what's left out.' I'll warrant
+      tha'st heard me say it thysen.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I dare say I have,&rdquo; answered Ann, &ldquo;and I dare say that was why it came
+      into my mind.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That was it,&rdquo; he answered. &ldquo;Thy mother was always tellin' me of things
+      I'd said that I'd clean forgot myself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He was beginning to recover his balance and self-respect. It would have
+      been so like a Lancashire chap to have seen and dealt shrewdly with a
+      business schemer who tried to outwit him that he was gradually convinced
+      that he had thought all that had been suggested, and had comported himself
+      with triumphant though silent astuteness. He even began to rub his hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll show him,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;I'll send him off with a flea in his ear.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you'll help me, I'll study out the things I've written down on this
+      paper,&rdquo; Ann said, &ldquo;and then I'll write down for you just the things you
+      make up your mind to say. It will be such a good lesson for me, if you
+      don't mind, Father. It won't be much to write it out the way you'll say
+      it. You know how you always feel that in business the fewer words the
+      better, and that, however much a person deserves it, calling names and
+      showing you're angry is only wasting time. One of the cleverest things you
+      ever thought was that a thief doesn't mind being called one if he's got
+      what he wanted out of you; he'll only laugh to see you in a rage when you
+      can't help yourself. And if he hasn't got what he wanted, it's only waste
+      of strength to work yourself up. It's you being what you are that makes
+      you know that temper isn't business.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said Hutchinson, drawing a long and deep breath, &ldquo;I was almost hot
+      enough to have forgot that, and I'm glad you've reminded me. We'll go over
+      that paper now, Ann. I'd like to give you your lesson while we've got a
+      bit o' time to ourselves and what I've said is fresh in your mind. The
+      trick is always to get at things while they're fresh in your mind.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The little daughter with the red hair was present during Rosenthal's next
+      interview with the owner of the invention. The fellow, he told himself,
+      had been thinking matters over, had perhaps consulted a lawyer; and having
+      had time for reflection, he did not present a mass of mere inflated and
+      blundering vanity as a target for adroit aim. He seemed a trifle sulky,
+      but he did not talk about himself diffusely, and lose his head when he was
+      smoothed the right way. He had a set of curiously concise notes to which
+      he referred, and he stuck to his points with a bulldog obstinacy which was
+      not to be shaken. Something had set him on a new tack. The tricks which
+      could be used only with a totally ignorant and readily flattered and
+      influenced business amateur were no longer in order. This was baffling and
+      irritating.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The worst feature of the situation was that the daughter did not read a
+      book, as had seemed her habit at other times. She sat with a tablet and
+      pencil on her knee, and, still as unobtrusively as ever, jotted down
+      notes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Put that down, Ann,&rdquo; her father said to her more than once. &ldquo;There's no
+      objections to having things written down, I suppose?&rdquo; he put it bluntly to
+      Rosenthal. &ldquo;I've got to have notes made when I'm doing business. Memory's
+      all well enough, but black and white's better. No one can go back of black
+      and white. Notes save time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was but one attitude possible. No man of business could resent the
+      recording of his considered words, but the tablet and pencil and the
+      quietly bent red head were extraordinary obstacles to the fluidity of
+      eloquence. Rosenthal found his arguments less ready and his methods
+      modifying themselves. The outlook narrowed itself. When he returned to his
+      office and talked the situation over with his partner, he sat and bit his
+      nails in restless irritation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ridiculous as it seems, outrageously ridiculous, I've an idea,&rdquo; he said,
+      &ldquo;I've more than an idea that we have to count with the girl.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Girl? What girl?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Daughter. Well-behaved, quiet bit of a thing, who sits in a corner and
+      listens while she pretends to sew or read. I'm certain of it. She's taken
+      to making notes now, and Hutchinson's turned stubborn. You need not laugh,
+      Lewis. She's in it. We've got to count with that girl, little female mouse
+      as she looks.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This view, which was first taken by Rosenthal and passed on to his
+      partner, was in course of time passed on to others and gradually accepted,
+      sometimes reluctantly and with much private protest, sometimes with
+      amusement. The well-behaved daughter went with Hutchinson wheresoever his
+      affairs called him. She was changeless in the unobtrusiveness of her
+      demeanor, which was always that of a dutiful and obedient young person who
+      attended her parent because he might desire her humble little assistance
+      in small matters.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She's my secretary,&rdquo; Hutchinson began to explain, with a touch of
+      swagger. &ldquo;I've got to have a secretary, and I'd rather trust my private
+      business to my own daughter than to any one else. It's safe with her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was so safe with her steady demureness that Hutchinson found himself
+      becoming steady himself. The &ldquo;lessons&rdquo; he gave to Little Ann, and the
+      notes made as a result, always ostensibly for her own security and
+      instruction, began to form a singularly firm foundation for statement and
+      argument. He began to tell himself that his memory was improving. Facts
+      were no longer jumbled together in his mind. He could better follow a line
+      of logical reasoning. He less often grew red and hot and flustered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's the thing I've said so often&mdash;that temper's got naught to do
+      wi' business, and only upsets a man when he wants all his wits about him.
+      It's the truest thing I ever worked out,&rdquo; he not infrequently
+      congratulated himself. &ldquo;If a chap can keep his temper, he'll be like to
+      keep his head and drive his bargain. I see it plainer every day o' my
+      life.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0036" id="link2HCH0036">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXXVI
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      It was in the course of the &ldquo;lessons&rdquo; that he realized that he had always
+      argued that the best way to do business was to do it face to face with
+      people. To stay in England, and let another chap make your bargains for
+      you in France or Germany or some other outlandish place, where frog-eating
+      foreigners ran loose, was a fool's trick. He'd said it often enough. &ldquo;Get
+      your eye on 'em, and let them know you've got it on them, and they'd soon
+      find out they were dealing with Lancashire, and not with foreign knaves
+      and nincompoops.&rdquo; So, when it became necessary to deal with France, Little
+      Ann packed him up neatly, so to speak, and in the role of obedient
+      secretarial companion took him to that country, having for weeks
+      beforehand mentally confronted the endless complications attending the
+      step. She knew, in the first place, what the effect of the French language
+      would be upon his temper: that it would present itself to him as a wall
+      deliberately built by the entire nation as a means of concealing a deep
+      duplicity the sole object of which was the baffling, thwarting, and
+      undoing of Englishmen, from whom it wished to wrest their honest rights.
+      Apoplexy becoming imminent, as a result of his impotent rage during their
+      first few days in Paris, she paid a private visit to a traveler's agency,
+      and after careful inquiry discovered that it was not impossible to secure
+      the attendance and service of a well-mannered young man who spoke most of
+      the languages employed by most of the inhabitants of the globe. She even
+      found that she might choose from a number of such persons, and she
+      therefore selected with great care.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One that's got a good temper, and isn't easy irritated,&rdquo; she said to
+      herself, in summing up the aspirants, &ldquo;but not one that's easy-tempered
+      because he's silly. He must have plenty of common sense as well as be
+      willing to do what he's told.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      When her father discovered that he himself had been considering the
+      desirability of engaging the services of such a person, and had, indeed
+      already, in a way, expressed his intention of sending her to &ldquo;the agency
+      chap&rdquo; to look him up, she was greatly relieved.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can try to teach him what you've taught me, Father,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;and of
+      course he'll learn just by being with you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The assistant engaged was a hungry young student who had for weeks,
+      through ill luck, been endeavoring to return with some courage the gaze of
+      starvation, which had been staring him in the face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His name was Dudevant, and with desperate struggles he had educated
+      himself highly, having cherished literary ambitions from his infancy. At
+      this juncture it had become imperative that he should, for a few months at
+      least, obtain food. Ann had chosen well by instinct. His speech had told
+      her that he was intelligent, his eyes had told her that he would do
+      anything on earth to earn his living.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From the time of his advent, Joseph Hutchinson had become calmer and had
+      ceased to be in peril of apoplectic seizure. Foreign nations became less
+      iniquitous and dangerous, foreign languages were less of a barrier, easier
+      to understand. A pleasing impression that through great facility he had
+      gained a fair practical knowledge of French, German, and Italian,
+      supported and exhilarated him immensely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's right-down wonderful how a chap gets to understand these fellows'
+      lingo after he's listened to it a bit,&rdquo; he announced to Ann. &ldquo;I wouldn't
+      have believed it of myself that I could see into it as quick as I have. I
+      couldn't say as I understand everything they say just when they're saying
+      it; but I understand it right enough when I've had time to translate like.
+      If foreigners didn't talk so fast and run their words one into another,
+      and jabber as if their mouths was full of puddin', it'd be easier for them
+      as is English. Now, there's `wee' and `nong.' I know 'em whenever I hear
+      'em, and that's a good bit of help.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; answered Ann, &ldquo;of course that's the chief thing you want to know in
+      business, whether a person is going to say `yes' or `no.'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He began to say &ldquo;wee&rdquo; and &ldquo;nong&rdquo; at meals, and once broke forth &ldquo;Passy mor
+      le burr&rdquo; in a tone so casually Parisian that Ann was frightened, because
+      she did not understand immediately, and also because she saw looming up
+      before her a future made perilous by the sudden interjection of unexpected
+      foreign phrases it would be incumbent upon her and Dudevant to comprehend
+      instantaneously without invidious hesitation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't you understand? Pass the butter. Don't you understand a bit o'
+      French like that?&rdquo; he exclaimed irritatedly. &ldquo;Buy yourself one o' these
+      books full of easy sentences and learn some of 'em, lass. You oughtn't to
+      be travelin' about with your father in foreign countries and learnin'
+      nothin'. It's not every lass that's gettin' your advantages.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Ann had not mentioned the fact that she spent most of her rare leisure
+      moments in profound study of phrase-books and grammars, which she kept in
+      her trunk and gave her attention to before she got up in the morning,
+      after she went to her room at night, and usually while she was dressing.
+      You can keep a book open before you when you are brushing your hair.
+      Dudevant gave her a lesson or so whenever time allowed. She was as quick
+      to learn as her father thought he was, and she was desperately determined.
+      It was really not long before she understood much more than &ldquo;wee and nong&rdquo;
+       when she was present at a business interview.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are a wonderful young lady,&rdquo; Dudevant said, with that well-known
+      yearning in his eyes. &ldquo;You are most wonderful.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She's just a wonder,&rdquo; Mrs. Bowse and her boarders had said. And the
+      respectful yearning in the young Frenchman's eyes and voice were well
+      known to her because she had seen it often before, and remembered it, in
+      Jem Bowles and Julius Steinberger. That this young man had without an hour
+      of delay fallen abjectly in love with her was a circumstance with which
+      she dealt after her own inimitably kind and undeleterious method, which in
+      itself was an education to any amorous youth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can understand all you tell me,&rdquo; she said when he reached the point of
+      confiding his hard past to her. &ldquo;I can understand it because I knew some
+      one who had to fight for himself just that way, only perhaps it was harder
+      because he wasn't educated as you are.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did he&mdash;confide in you?&rdquo; Dudevant ventured, with delicate
+      hesitation. &ldquo;You are so kind I am sure he did, Mademoiselle.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He told me about it because he knew I wanted to hear,&rdquo; she answered. &ldquo;I
+      was very fond of him,&rdquo; she added, and her kind gravity was quite unshaded
+      by any embarrassment. &ldquo;I was right-down fond of him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His emotion rendered him for a moment indiscreet, to her immediate
+      realization and regret, as was evident by his breaking off in the midst of
+      his question.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And now&mdash;are you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I always shall be, Mr. Dudevant.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His adoration naturally only deepened itself as all hope at once receded,
+      as it could not but recede before the absolute pellucid truth of her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;However much he likes me, he will get over it in time. People do, when
+      they know how things stand,&rdquo; she was thinking, with maternal sympathy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It did him no bitter harm to help her with her efforts at learning what
+      she most needed, and he found her intelligence and modest power of
+      concentration remarkable. A singularly clear knowledge of her own
+      specialized requirements was a practical background to them both. She had
+      no desire to shine; she was merely steadily bent on acquiring as
+      immediately as possible a comprehension of nouns, verbs, and phrases that
+      would be useful to her father. The manner in which she applied herself,
+      and assimilated what it was her quietly fixed intention to assimilate,
+      bespoke her possession of a brain the powers of which being concentrated
+      on large affairs might have accomplished almost startling results. There
+      was, however, nothing startling in her intentions, and ambition did not
+      touch her. Yet, as she went with Hutchinson from one country to another,
+      more than one man of affairs had it borne in upon him that her young
+      slimness and her silence represented an unanticipated knowledge of points
+      under discussion which might wisely be considered as a factor in all
+      decisions for or against. To realize that a soft-cheeked, child-eyed girl
+      was an element to regard privately in discussions connected with the sale
+      of, or the royalties paid on, a valuable patent appeared in some minds to
+      be a situation not without flavor. She was the kind of little person a man
+      naturally made love to, and a girl who was made love to in a clever manner
+      frequently became amenable to reason, and might be persuaded to use her
+      influence in the direction most desired. But such male financiers as began
+      with this idea discovered that they had been led into errors of judgment
+      through lack of familiarity with the variations of type. One personable
+      young man of title, who had just been disappointed in a desirable marriage
+      with a fortune, being made aware that the invention was likely to arrive
+      at amazing results, was sufficiently rash to approach Mr. Hutchinson with
+      formal proposals. Having a truly British respect for the lofty in place,
+      and not being sufficiently familiar with titled personages to discriminate
+      swiftly between the large and the small, Joseph Hutchinson was somewhat
+      unduly elated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The chap's a count, lass,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Tha'u'd go back to Manchester a
+      countess.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've heard they're nearly all counts in these countries,&rdquo; commented Ann.
+      &ldquo;And there's countesses that have to do their own washing, in a manner of
+      speaking. You send him to me, Father.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      When the young man came, and compared the fine little nose of Miss
+      Hutchinson with the large and bony structure dominating the countenance of
+      the German heiress he had lost, also when he gazed into the clearness of
+      the infantile blue eyes, his spirits rose. He felt himself en veine; he
+      was equal to attacking the situation. He felt that he approached it with
+      alluring and chivalric delicacy. He almost believed all that he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the pellucid blueness of the gaze that met his was confusingly
+      unstirred by any shade of suitable timidity or emotion. There was
+      something in the lovely, sedate little creature, something so undisturbed
+      and matter of fact, that it frightened him, because he suddenly felt like
+      a fool whose folly had been found out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's downright silly,&rdquo; remarked Little Ann, not allowing him to escape
+      from her glance, which unhesitatingly summed up him and his situation.
+      &ldquo;And you know it is. You don't know anything about me, and you wouldn't
+      like me if you did. And I shouldn't like you. We're too different. Please
+      go away, and don't say anything more about it. I shouldn't have patience
+      to talk it over.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Father,&rdquo; she said that night, &ldquo;if ever I get married at all, there's only
+      one person I'm going to marry. You know that.&rdquo; And she would say no more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By the time they returned to England, the placing of the invention in
+      divers countries had been arranged in a manner which gave assurance of a
+      fortune for its owners on a foundation not likely to have established
+      itself in more adverse circumstances. Mr. Hutchinson had really driven
+      some admirable bargains, and had secured advantages which to his last hour
+      he would believe could have been achieved only by Lancashire shrewdness
+      and Lancashire ability to &ldquo;see as far through a mile-stone as most chaps,
+      an' a bit farther.&rdquo; The way in which he had never allowed himself to be
+      &ldquo;done&rdquo; caused him at times to chuckle himself almost purple with
+      self-congratulation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They got to know what they was dealing with, them chaps. They was sharp,
+      but Joe was a bit sharper,&rdquo; he would say.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They found letters waiting for them when they reached London.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There's one fro' thy grandmother,&rdquo; Hutchinson said, in dealing out the
+      package. &ldquo;She's written to thee pretty steady for an old un.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This was true. Letters from her had followed them from one place to
+      another. This was a thick one in an envelop of good size.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Aren't tha going to read it?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not till you've had your dinner, Father. You've had a long day of it with
+      that channel at the end. I want to see you comfortable with your pipe.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The hotel was a good one, and the dinner was good. Joseph Hutchinson
+      enjoyed it with the appetite of a robust man who has had time to get over
+      a not too pleasant crossing. When he had settled down into a stout
+      easy-chair with the pipe, he drew a long and comfortable breath as he
+      looked about the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Eh, Ann, lass,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;thy mother 'd be fine an' set up if she could
+      see aw this. Us having the best that's to be had, an' knowin' we can have
+      it to the end of our lives, that's what it's come to, tha knows. No more
+      third-class railway-carriages for you and me. No more `commercial' an'
+      `temperance' hotels. Th' first cut's what we can have&mdash;th' upper cut.
+      Eh, eh, but it's a good day for a man when he's begun to be appreciated as
+      he should be.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's a good day for those that love him,&rdquo; said Little Ann. &ldquo;And I dare
+      say mother knows every bit about it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I dare say she does,&rdquo; admitted Hutchinson, with tender lenience. &ldquo;She was
+      one o' them as believed that way. And I never knowed her to be wrong in
+      aught else, so I'm ready to give in as she was reet about that. Good lass
+      she was, good lass.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He had fallen into a contented and utterly comfortable doze in his chair
+      when Ann sat down to read her grandmother's letter. The old woman always
+      wrote at length, giving many details and recording village events with
+      shrewd realistic touches. Throughout their journeyings, Ann had been
+      followed by a record of the estate and neighborhood of Temple Barholm
+      which had lacked nothing of atmosphere. She had known what the new lord of
+      the manor did, what people said, what the attitude of the gentry had
+      become; that the visit of the Countess of Mallowe and her daughter had
+      extended itself until curiosity and amusement had ceased to comment, and
+      passively awaited results. She had heard of Miss Alicia and her
+      reincarnation, and knew much of the story of the Duke of Stone, whose
+      reputation as a &ldquo;dommed clever owd chap&rdquo; had earned for him a sort of awed
+      popularity. There had been many &ldquo;ladies.&rdquo; The new Temple Barholm had
+      boldly sought them out and faced them in their strongholds with the manner
+      of one who would confront the worst and who revealed no tendency to
+      flinch. The one at Stone Hover with the &ldquo;pretty color&rdquo; and the one with
+      the dimples had appeared frequently upon the scene. Then there had been
+      Lady Joan Fayre, who had lived at his elbow, sitting at his table, driving
+      in his carriages with the air of cold aloofness which the cottagers &ldquo;could
+      na abide an' had no patience wi'.&rdquo; She had sometimes sat and wondered and
+      wondered about things, and sometimes had flushed daisy-red instead of
+      daisy-pink; and sometimes she had turned rather pale and closed her soft
+      mouth firmly. But, though she had written twice a week to her grandmother,
+      she had recorded principally the successes and complexities of the
+      invention, and had asked very few questions. Old Mrs. Hutchinson would
+      tell her all she must know, and her choice of revelation would be made
+      with a far-sightedness which needed no stimulus of questioning. The letter
+      she had found awaiting her had been long on its way, having missed her at
+      point after point and followed her at last to London. It looked and felt
+      thick and solid in its envelop. Little Ann opened it, stirred by the
+      suggestion of quickened pulse-beats with which she had become familiar. As
+      she bent over it she looked sweetly flushed and warmed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Joseph Hutchinson's doze had almost deepened into sleep when he was
+      awakened by the touch of her hand on his shoulder. She was standing by
+      him, holding some sheets of her grandmother's letter, and several other
+      sheets were lying on the table. Something had occurred which had changed
+      her quiet look.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Has aught happened to your grandmother?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, Father, but this letter that's been following me from one place to
+      another has got some queer news in it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What's up, lass? Tha looks as if summat was up.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The thing that's happened has given me a great deal to think of,&rdquo; was her
+      answer. &ldquo;It's about Mr. Temple Barholm and Mr. Strangeways.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He became wide-awake at once, sitting up and turning in his chair in testy
+      anxiety.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, now,&rdquo; he exclaimed, &ldquo;I hope that cracked chap's not gone out an' out
+      mad an' done some mischief. I towd Temple Barholm it was a foolish thing
+      to do, taking all that trouble about him. Has he set fire to th' house or
+      has he knocked th' poor lad on th' head?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, he hasn't, Father. He's disappeared, and Mr. Temple Barholm's
+      disappeared, too.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Disappeared?&rdquo; Hutchinson almost shouted. &ldquo;What for, i' the Lord's name?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nobody knows for certain, and people are talking wild. The village is all
+      upset, and all sorts of silly things are being said.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What sort o' things?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You know what servants at big houses are&mdash;how they hear bits of talk
+      and make much of it,&rdquo; she explained. &ldquo;They've been curious and chattering
+      among themselves about Mr. Strangeways from the first. It was Burrill that
+      said he believed he was some relation that was being hid away for some
+      good reason. One night Mr. Temple Barholm and Captain Palliser were having
+      a long talk together, and Burrill was about&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Aye, he'd be about if he thought there was a chance of him hearing summat
+      as was none of his business,&rdquo; jerked out Hutchinson, irately.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They were talking about Mr. Strangeways, and Burrill heard Captain
+      Palliser getting angry; and as he stepped near the door he heard him say
+      out loud that he could swear in any court of justice that the man he had
+      seen at the west room window&mdash;it's a startling thing, Father&mdash;was
+      Mr. James Temple Barholm.&rdquo; For the moment her face was pale.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hereupon Hutchinson sprang up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What!&rdquo; His second shout was louder than his first. &ldquo;Th' liar! Th' chap's
+      dead, an' he knows it. Th' dommed mischief-makin' liar!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her eyes were clear and speculatively thoughtful, notwithstanding her lack
+      of color.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There have been people that have been thought dead that have come back to
+      their friends alive. It's happened many a time,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;It wouldn't be
+      so strange for a man that had no friends to be lost in a wild, far-off
+      place where there was neither law nor order, and where every man was
+      fighting for his own life and the gold he was mad after. Particularly a
+      man that was shamed and desperate and wanted to hide himself. And, most of
+      all, it would be easy, if he was like Mr. Strangeways, and couldn't
+      remember, and had lost himself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As her father listened, the angry redness of his countenance moderated its
+      hue. His eyes gradually began to question and his under jaw fell slightly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Si' thee, lass,&rdquo; he broke out huskily, &ldquo;does that mean to say tha
+      believes it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's not often you can believe what you don't know,&rdquo; she answered. &ldquo;I
+      don't know anything about it. There's just one thing I believe, because I
+      know it. I believe what grandmother does. Read that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She handed him the final sheet of old Mrs. Hutchinson's letter. It was
+      written with very black ink and in an astonishingly bold and clear hand.
+      It was easy to read the sentences with which she ended.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There's a lot said. There's always more saying than doing. But it's
+      right-down funny to see how the lad has made hard and fast friends just
+      going about in his queer way, and no one knowing how he did it. I like him
+      myself. He's one of those you needn't ask questions about. If there's
+      anything said that isn't to his credit, it's not true. There's no ifs,
+      buts, or ands about that, Ann.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Little Ann herself read the words as her father read them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's the thing I believe, because I know it,&rdquo; was all she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's the thing I'd swear to mysel',&rdquo; her father answered bluffly. &ldquo;But,
+      by Judd&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She gave him a little push and spoke to him in homely Lancashire phrasing,
+      and with some soft unsteadiness of voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sit thee down, Father love,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;and let me sit on thy knee.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He sat down with emotional readiness, and she sat on his stout knee like a
+      child. It was a thing she did in tender or troubled moments as much in
+      these days as she had done when she was six or seven. Her little lightness
+      and soft young ways made it the most natural thing in the world, as well
+      as the prettiest. She had always sat on his knee in the hours when he had
+      been most discouraged over the invention. She had known it made him feel
+      as though he were taking care of her, and as though she depended utterly
+      on him to steady the foundations of her world. What could such a little
+      bit of a lass do without &ldquo;a father&rdquo;?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's upset thee, lass,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;It's upset thee.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He saw her slim hands curl themselves into small, firm fists as they
+      rested on her lap.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can't bear to think that ill can be said of him, even by a wastrel like
+      Captain Palliser,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;He's MINE.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It made him fumble caressingly at her big knot of soft red hair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thine, is he?&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Thine! Eh, but tha did say that just like thy
+      mother would ha' said it; tha brings the heart i' my throat now and again.
+      That chap's i' luck, I can tell him&mdash;same as I was once.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's mine now, whatever happens,&rdquo; she went on, with a firmness which no
+      skeptic would have squandered time in the folly of hoping to shake. &ldquo;He's
+      done what I told him to do, and it's ME he wants. He's found out for
+      himself, and so have I. He can have me the minute he wants me&mdash;the
+      very minute.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He can?&rdquo; said Hutchinson. &ldquo;That settles it. I believe tha'd rather take
+      him when he was i' trouble than when he was out of it. Same as tha'd
+      rather take him i' a flat in Harlem on fifteen dollar a week than on
+      fifteen hundred.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, Father, I would. It'd give me more to do for him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Eh, eh,&rdquo; he grunted tenderly, &ldquo;thy mother again. I used to tell her as
+      the only thing she had agen me was that I never got i' jail so she could
+      get me out an' stand up for me after it. There's only one thing worrits me
+      a bit: I wish the lad hadn't gone away.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've thought that out, though I've not had much time to reason about
+      things,&rdquo; said Little Ann. &ldquo;If he's gone away, he's gone to get something;
+      and whatever it happens to be, he'll be likely to bring it back with him,
+      Father.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0037" id="link2HCH0037">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXXVII
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Old Mrs. Hutchinson's letter had supplied much detail, but when her son
+      and grand-daughter arrived in the village of Temple Barholm they heard
+      much more, the greater part of it not in the least to be relied upon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The most of it's lies, as folks enjoys theirsels pretendin' to believe,&rdquo;
+       the grand-mother commented. &ldquo;It's servants'-hall talk and cottage gossip,
+      and plenty made itself up out o' beer drunk in th' tap-room at th' Wool
+      Park. In a place where naught much happens, people get into th' way 'o
+      springin' on a bit o' news, and shakin' and worryin' it like a terrier
+      does a rat. It's nature. That lad's given 'em lots to talk about ever
+      since he coom. He's been a blessin' to 'em. If he'd been gentry, he'd not
+      ha' been nigh as lively. Th' village lads tries to talk through their
+      noses like him. Little Tummas Hibblethwaite does it i' broad Lancashire.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The only facts fairly authenticated were that the mysterious stranger had
+      been taken away very late one night, some time before the interview
+      between Mr. Temple Barholm and Captain Palliser, of which Burrill knew so
+      much because he had &ldquo;happened to be about.&rdquo; When a domestic magnate of
+      Burrill's type &ldquo;happens to be about&rdquo; at a crisis, he is not unlikely to
+      hear a great deal. Burrill, it was believed, knew much more than he
+      deigned to make public. The entire truth was that Captain Palliser
+      himself, in one of his hasty appearances in the neighborhood of Temple
+      Barholm, had bestowed a few words of cold caution on him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't talk too much,&rdquo; he had said. &ldquo;Proof is required before talk is
+      safe. The American was sharp enough to say that to me himself. He was
+      sharp enough, too, to keep his man hidden. I was the only person that saw
+      him who could have recognized him, and I saw him by chance. Palford &amp;
+      Grimby require proof. We are in search of it. Servants will talk; but if
+      you don't want to run the risk of getting yourself into trouble, don't
+      make absolute statements.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This had been a disappointment to Burrill, who had seen himself developing
+      in magnitude; but he was a timid man, and therefore felt it wise to convey
+      his knowledge merely through the conviction carried by a dignified silence
+      after his first indiscreet revelation of having &ldquo;happened to be about&rdquo; had
+      been made. It would have been some solace to him to intimate to Miss
+      Alicia by his bearing and the manner of his services that she had been
+      discovered, so to speak, in the character of a sort of accomplice; that
+      her position was a perilously uncertain one, which would probably end in
+      utter downfall, leaving her in her old and proper place as an elderly,
+      insignificant, and unattractive poor relation, without a feature to
+      recommend her. But being, as before remarked, a timid man, and recalling
+      the interview between himself and his employer held outside the
+      dining-room door, and having also a disturbing memory of the sharp, cool,
+      boyish eye and the tone of the casual remark that he had &ldquo;a head on his
+      shoulders&rdquo; and that it was &ldquo;up to him to make the others understand,&rdquo; it
+      seemed as well to restrain his inclinations until the proof Palford &amp;
+      Grimby required was forthcoming.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was perhaps the moderate and precautionary attitude of Palford &amp;
+      Grimby, during their first somewhat startled though reserved interview
+      with Captain Palliser, which had prevented the vaguely wild rumors from
+      being regarded as more than villagers' exaggerated talk among themselves.
+      The &ldquo;gentry,&rdquo; indeed, knew much less of the cottagers than the cottagers
+      knew of the gentry; consequently events furnishing much excitement among
+      the village people not infrequently remained unheard of by those in the
+      class above them. A story less incredible might have been more considered;
+      but the highly colored reasons given for the absence of the owner of
+      Temple Barholm would, if heard of, have been more than likely to be
+      received and passed over with a smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The manner of Mr. Palford and also of Mr. Grimby during the deliberately
+      unmelodramatic and carefully connected relation of Captain Palliser's
+      singular story, was that of professional gentlemen who for reasons of good
+      breeding were engaged in restraining outward expression of conviction that
+      they were listening to utter nonsense. Palliser himself was aware of this,
+      and upon the whole did not wonder at it in entirely unimaginative persons
+      of extremely sober lives. In fact, he had begun by giving them some
+      warning as to what they might expect in the way of unusualness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You will, no doubt, think what I am about to tell you absurd and
+      incredible,&rdquo; he had prefaced his statements. &ldquo;I thought the same myself
+      when my first suspicions were aroused. I was, in fact, inclined to laugh
+      at my own idea until one link connected itself with another.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Neither Mr. Grimby nor Mr. Palford was inclined to laugh. On the contrary,
+      they were extremely grave, and continued to find it necessary to restrain
+      their united tendency to indicate facially that the thing must be
+      nonsense. It transcended all bounds, as it were. The delicacy with which
+      they managed to convey this did them much credit. This delicacy was
+      equaled by the moderation with which Captain Palliser drew their attention
+      to the fact that it was not the thing likely-to-happen on which were
+      founded the celebrated criminal cases of legal history; it was the
+      incredible and almost impossible events, the ordinarily unbelievable
+      duplicities, moral obliquities and coincidences, which made them what they
+      were and attracted the attention of the world. This, Mr. Palford and his
+      partner were obviously obliged to admit. What they did not admit was that
+      such things never having occurred in one's own world, they had been
+      mentally relegated to the world of newspaper and criminal record as things
+      that could not happen to oneself. Mr. Palford cleared his throat in a
+      seriously cautionary way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This is, of course, a matter suggesting too serious an accusation not to
+      be approached in the most conservative manner,&rdquo; he remarked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Most serious consequences have resulted in cases implying libelous
+      assertions which have been made rashly,&rdquo; added Mr. Grimby. &ldquo;As Mr. Temple
+      Barholm intimated to you, a man of almost unlimited means has command of
+      resources which it might not be easy to contend with if he had reason to
+      feel himself injured.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The fact that Captain Palliser had in a bitterly frustrated moment allowed
+      himself to be goaded into losing his temper, and &ldquo;giving away&rdquo; to Tembarom
+      the discovery on which he had felt that he could rely as a lever, did not
+      argue that a like weakness would lead him into more dangerous
+      indiscretion. He had always regarded himself as a careful man whose
+      defenses were well built about him at such crises in his career as
+      rendered entrenchment necessary. There would, of course, be some pleasure
+      in following the matter up and getting more than even with a man who had
+      been insolent to him; but a more practical feature of the case was that
+      if, through his alert observation and shrewd aid, Jem Temple Barholm was
+      restored to his much-to-be-envied place in the world, a far from unnatural
+      result would be that he might feel suitable gratitude and indebted-ness to
+      the man who, not from actual personal liking but from a mere sense of
+      justice, had rescued him. As for the fears of Messrs. Palford &amp;
+      Grimby, he had put himself on record with Burrill by commanding him to
+      hold his tongue and stating clearly that proof was both necessary and
+      lacking. No man could be regarded as taking risks whose attitude was so
+      wholly conservative and non-accusing. Servants will gossip. A superior who
+      reproves such gossip holds an unattackable position. In the private room
+      of Palford &amp; Grimby, however, he could confidently express his
+      opinions without risk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The recognition of a man lost sight of for years, and seen only for a
+      moment through a window, is not substantial evidence,&rdquo; Mr. Grimby had
+      proceeded. &ldquo;The incident was startling, but not greatly to be relied
+      upon.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I knew him.&rdquo; Palliser was slightly grim in his air of finality. &ldquo;He was a
+      man most men either liked or hated. I didn't like him. I detested a trick
+      he had of staring at you under his drooping lids. By the way, do you
+      remember the portrait of Miles Hugo which was so like him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Palford remembered having heard that there was a certain portrait in
+      the gallery which Mr. James Temple Barholm had been said to resemble. He
+      had no distinct recollection of the ancestor it represented.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was a certain youngster who was a page in the court of Charles the
+      Second and who died young. Miles Hugo Charles James was his name. He is my
+      strongest clue. The American seemed rather keen the first time we talked
+      together. He was equally keen about Jem Temple Barholm. He wanted to know
+      what he looked like, and whether it was true that he was like the
+      portrait.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Indeed!&rdquo; exclaimed Palford and Grimby, simultaneously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It struck me that there was something more than mere curiosity in his
+      manner,&rdquo; Palliser enlarged. &ldquo;I couldn't make him out then. Later, I began
+      to see that he was remarkably anxious to keep every one from Strangeways.
+      It was a sort of Man in the Iron Mask affair. Strangeways was apparently
+      not only too excitable to be looked at or spoken to, but too excitable to
+      be spoken of. He wouldn't talk about him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is exceedingly curious,&rdquo; remarked Mr. Palford, but it was not in
+      response to Palliser. A few moments before he had suddenly looked
+      thoughtful. He wore now the aspect of a man trying to recall something as
+      Palliser continued.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One day, after I had been to look at a sunset through a particular window
+      in the wing where Strangeways was kept, I passed the door of his
+      sitting-room, and heard the American arguing with him. He was evidently
+      telling him he was to be taken elsewhere, and the poor devil was
+      terrified. I heard him beg him for God's sake not to send him away. There
+      was panic in his voice. In connection with the fact that he has got him
+      away secretly&mdash;at midnight-it's an ugly thing to recall.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It would seem to have significance.&rdquo; Grimby said it uneasily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It set me thinking and looking into things,&rdquo; Palliser went on. &ldquo;Pearson
+      was secretive, but the head man, Burrill, made casual enlightening
+      remarks. I gathered some curious details, which might or might not have
+      meant a good deal. When Strangeways suddenly appeared at his window one
+      evening a number of things fitted themselves together. My theory is that
+      the American&mdash;Tembarom, as he used to call himself&mdash;may not have
+      been certain of the identity at first, but he wouldn't have brought
+      Strangeways with him if he had not had some reason to suspect who he was.
+      He daren't lose sight of him, and he wanted time to make sure and to lay
+      his plans. The portrait of Miles Hugo was a clue which alarmed him, and no
+      doubt he has been following it. If he found it led to nothing, he could
+      easily turn Strangeways over to the public charge and let him be put into
+      a lunatic asylum. If he found it led to a revelation which would make him
+      a pauper again, it would be easy to dispose of him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come! Come! Captain Palliser! We mustn't go too far!&rdquo; ejaculated Mr.
+      Grimby, alarmedly. It shocked him to think of the firm being dragged into
+      a case dealing with capital crime and possible hangmen! That was not its
+      line of the profession.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Captain Palliser's slight laugh contained no hint of being shocked by any
+      possibilities whatever.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There are extremely private asylums and so-called sanatoriums where the
+      discipline is strict, and no questions are asked. One sometimes reads in
+      the papers of cases in which mild-mannered keepers in defending themselves
+      against the attacks of violent patients are obliged to use force&mdash;with
+      disastrous results. It is in such places that our investigations should
+      begin.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dear me! Dear me!&rdquo; Mr. Grimby broke out. &ldquo;Isn't that going rather far?
+      You surely don't think&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. Tembarom's chief characteristic was that he was a practical and
+      direct person. He would do what he had to do in exactly that businesslike
+      manner. The inquiries I have been making have been as to the whereabouts
+      of places in which a superfluous relative might be placed without
+      attracting attention.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is really astute, but&mdash;but&mdash;what do you think, Palford?&rdquo;
+       Mr. Grimby turned to his partner, still wearing the shocked and disturbed
+      expression.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have been recalling to mind a circumstance which probably bears upon
+      the case,&rdquo; said Mr. Palford. &ldquo;Captain Palliser's mention of the portrait
+      reminded me of it. I remember now that on Mr. Temple Barholm's first visit
+      to the picture-gallery he seemed much attracted by the portrait of Miles
+      Hugo. He stopped and examined it curiously. He said he felt as if he had
+      seen it before. He turned to it once or twice; and finally remarked that
+      he might have seen some one like it at a great fancy-dress ball which had
+      taken place in New York.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Had he been invited to the ball?&rdquo; laughed Palliser.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I did not gather that,&rdquo; replied Mr. Palford gravely. &ldquo;He had apparently
+      watched the arriving guests from some railings near by&mdash;or perhaps it
+      was a lamp-post&mdash;with other news-boys.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He recognized the likeness to Strangeways, no doubt, and it gave him what
+      he calls a 'jolt,'&rdquo; said Captain Palliser. &ldquo;He must have experienced a
+      number of jolts during the last few months.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Palford &amp; Grimby's view of the matter continued to be marked by
+      extreme distaste for the whole situation and its disturbing and irritating
+      possibilities. The coming of the American heir to the estate of Temple
+      Barholm had been trying to the verge of extreme painfulness; but,
+      sufficient time having lapsed and their client having troubled them but
+      little, they had outlived the shock of his first appearance and settled
+      once more into the calm of their accustomed atmosphere and routine. That
+      he should suddenly reappear upon their dignified horizon as a probable
+      melodramatic criminal was a fault of taste and a lack of consideration
+      beyond expression. To be dragged-into vulgar detective work, to be
+      referred to in news-papers in a connection which would lead to confusing
+      the firm with the representatives of such branches of the profession as
+      dealt with persons who had committed acts for which in vulgar parlance
+      they might possibly &ldquo;swing,&rdquo; if their legal defenders did not &ldquo;get them
+      off,&rdquo; to a firm whose sole affairs had been the dealing with noble and
+      ancient estates, with advising and supporting personages of stately name,
+      and with private and weighty family confidences. If the worst came to the
+      worst, the affair would surely end in the most glaring and odious
+      notoriety: in head-lines and daily reports even in London, in appalling
+      pictures of every one concerned in every New York newspaper, even in
+      baffled struggles to keep abominable woodcuts of themselves&mdash;Mr.
+      Edward James Palford and Mr. James Matthew Grimby&mdash;from being
+      published in sensational journalistic sheets! Professional duty demanded
+      that the situation should be dealt with, that investigation should be
+      entered into, that the most serious even if conservative steps should be
+      taken at once. With regard to the accepted report of Mr. James Temple
+      Barholm's tragic death, it could not be denied that Captain Palliser's
+      view of the naturalness of the origin of the mistake that had been made
+      had a logical air.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In a region full of rioting derelicts crazed with the lawless excitement
+      of their dash after gold,&rdquo; he had said, &ldquo;identities and names are easily
+      lost. Temple Barholm himself was a derelict and in a desperate state. He
+      was in no mood to speak of himself or try to make friends. He no doubt
+      came and went to such work as he did scarcely speaking to any one. A mass
+      of earth and debris of all sorts suddenly gives way, burying half-a-dozen
+      men. Two or three are dug out dead, the others not reached. There was no
+      time to spare to dig for dead men. Some one had seen Temple Barholm near
+      the place; he was seen no more. Ergo, he was buried with the rest. At that
+      time, those who knew him in England felt it was the best thing that could
+      have happened to him. It would have been if his valet had not confessed
+      his trick, and old Temple Barholm had not died. My theory is that he may
+      have left the place days before the accident without being missed. His
+      mental torment caused some mental illness, it does not matter what. He
+      lost his memory and wandered about&mdash;the Lord knows how or where he
+      lived; he probably never knew himself. The American picked him up and
+      found that he had money. For reasons of his own, he professed to take care
+      of him. He must have come on some clue just when he heard of his new
+      fortune. He was naturally panic-stricken; it must have been a big blow at
+      that particular moment. He was sharp enough to see what it might mean, and
+      held on to the poor chap like grim death, and has been holding on ever
+      since.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We must begin to take steps,&rdquo; decided Palford &amp; Grimby. &ldquo;We must of
+      course take steps at once, but we must begin with discretion.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      After grave private discussion, they began to take the steps in question
+      and with the caution that it seemed necessary to observe until they felt
+      solid ground under their feet. Captain Palliser was willing to assist
+      them. He had been going into the matter himself. He went down to the
+      neighborhood of Temple Barholm and quietly looked up data which might
+      prove illuminating when regarded from one point or another. It was on the
+      first of these occasions that he saw and warned Burrill. It was from
+      Burrill he heard of Tummas Hibblethwaite.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There's an impident little vagabond in the village, sir,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;that
+      Mr. Temple Barholm used to go and see and take New York newspapers to. A
+      cripple the lad is, and he's got a kind of craze for talking about Mr.
+      James Temple Barholm. He had a map of the place where he was said to be
+      killed. If I may presume to mention it, sir,&rdquo; he added with great dignity,
+      &ldquo;it is my opinion that the two had a good deal of talk together on the
+      subject.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I dare say,&rdquo; Captain Palliser admitted indifferently, and made no further
+      inquiry or remark.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He sauntered into the Hibblethwaite cottage, however, late the next
+      afternoon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tummas was in a bad temper, for reasons quite sufficient for himself, and
+      he regarded him sourly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What has tha coom for?&rdquo; he demanded. &ldquo;I did na ask thee.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't be cheeky!&rdquo; said Captain Palliser. &ldquo;I will give you a sovereign if
+      you'll let me see the map you and Mr. Temple Barholm used to look at and
+      talk so much about.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He laid the sovereign down on the small table by Tummas's sofa, but Tummas
+      did not pick it up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know who tha art. Tha'rt Palliser, an' tha wast th' one as said as him
+      as was killed in th' Klondike had coom back alive.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You've been listening to that servants' story, have you?&rdquo; remarked
+      Palliser. &ldquo;You had better be careful as to what you say. I suppose you
+      never heard of libel suits. Where would you find yourself if you were
+      called upon to pay Mr. Temple Barholm ten thousand pounds' damages? You'd
+      be obliged to sell your atlas.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Burrill towd as he heard thee say tha'd swear in court as it was th' one
+      as was killed as tha'd seen.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's Burrill's story, not mine. And Burrill had better keep his mouth
+      shut,&rdquo; said Palliser. &ldquo;If it were true, how would you like it? I've heard
+      you were interested in 'th' one as was killed.'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Tummas's eyes burned troublously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've got reet down taken wi' th' other un,&rdquo; he answered. &ldquo;He's noan
+      gentry, but he's th' reet mak'. I&mdash;I dunnot believe as him as was
+      killed has coom back.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Neither do I,&rdquo; Palliser answered, with amiable tolerance. &ldquo;The American
+      gentleman had better come back himself and disprove it. When you used to
+      talk about the Klondike, he never said anything to make you feel as if he
+      doubted that the other man was dead?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not him,&rdquo; answered Tummas.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Eh! Tummas, what art tha talkin' about?&rdquo; exclaimed Mrs. Hibblethwaite,
+      who was mending at the other end of the room. &ldquo;I heerd him say mysel,
+      `Suppose th' story hadn't been true an' he was alive somewhere now, it'd
+      make a big change, would na' it?' An' he laughed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I never heerd him,&rdquo; said Tummas, in stout denial.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tha's losin' tha moind,&rdquo; commented his mother. &ldquo;As soon as I heerd th'
+      talk about him runnin' away an' takin' th' mad gentleman wi' him I
+      remembered it. An' I remembered as he sat still after it and said nowt for
+      a minute or so, same as if he was thinkin' things over. Theer was summat a
+      bit queer about it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I never heerd him,&rdquo; Tummas asserted, obstinately, and shut his mouth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He were as ready to talk about th' poor gentleman as met with th'
+      accident as tha wert thysel', Tummas,&rdquo; Mrs. Hibblethwaite proceeded, moved
+      by the opportunity offered for presenting her views on the exciting topic.
+      &ldquo;He'd ax thee aw sorts o' questions about what tha'd found out wi' pumpin'
+      foak. He'd ax me questions now an' agen about what he was loike to look
+      at, an' how tall he wur. Onct he axed me if I remembered what soart o'
+      chin he had an' how he spoke.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It wur to set thee goin' an' please me,&rdquo; volunteered Tummas, grudgingly.
+      &ldquo;He did it same as he'd look at th' map to please me an' tell me tales
+      about th' news-lads i' New York.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It had not seemed improbable that a village cripple tied to a sofa would
+      be ready enough to relate all he knew, and perhaps so much more that it
+      would be necessary to use discretion in selecting statements of value. To
+      drop in and give him a sovereign and let him talk had appeared simple.
+      Lads of his class liked to be listened to, enjoyed enlarging upon and
+      rendering dramatic such material as had fallen into their hands. But
+      Tummas was an eccentric, and instinct led him to close like an oyster
+      before a remote sense of subtly approaching attack. It was his mother, not
+      he, who had provided information; but it was not sufficiently specialized
+      to be worth much.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What did tha say he'd run away fur?&rdquo; Tummas said to his parent later.
+      &ldquo;He's not one o' th' runnin' away soart.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He has probably been called away by business,&rdquo; remarked Captain Palliser,
+      as he rose to go after a few minutes' casual talk with Mrs. Hibblethwaite.
+      &ldquo;It was a mistake not to leave an address behind him. Your mother is
+      mistaken in saying that he took the mad gentleman with him. He had him
+      removed late at night some time before he went himself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tak tha sov'rin',&rdquo; said Tummas, as Palliser moved away. &ldquo;I did na show
+      thee th' atlas. Tha did na want to see it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will leave the sovereign for your mother,&rdquo; said Palliser. &ldquo;I'm sorry
+      you are not in a better humor.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His interest in the atlas had indeed been limited to his idea that it
+      would lead to subjects of talk which might cast illuminating side-lights
+      and possibly open up avenues and vistas. Tummas, however, having
+      instinctively found him displeasing, he had gained but little.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Avenues and vistas were necessary&mdash;avenues through which the steps of
+      Palford and Grimby might wander, vistas which they might explore with
+      hesitating, investigating glances. So far, the scene remained
+      unpromisingly blank. The American Temple Barholm had simply disappeared,
+      as had his mysterious charge. Steps likely to lead to definite results can
+      scarcely be taken hopefully in the case of a person who has seemed
+      temporarily to cease to exist. You cannot interrogate him, you cannot
+      demand information, whatsoever the foundations upon which rest your
+      accusations, if such accusation can be launched only into thin air and the
+      fact that there is nobody to reply to&mdash;to acknowledge or indignantly
+      refute them&mdash;is in itself a serious barrier to accomplishment. It was
+      also true that only a few weeks had elapsed since the accused had, so to
+      speak, dematerialized. It was also impossible to calculate upon what an
+      American of his class and peculiarities would be likely to do in any
+      circumstances whatever.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In private conference, Palford and Grimby frankly admitted to each other
+      that they would almost have preferred that Captain Palliser should have
+      kept his remarkable suspicions to himself, for the time being at least.
+      Yet when they had admitted this they were confronted by the disturbing
+      possibility&mdash;suggested by Palliser&mdash;that actual crime had been
+      or might be committed. They had heard unpleasant stories of private
+      lunatic asylums and their like. Things to shudder at might be going on at
+      the very moment they spoke to each other. Under this possibility, no
+      supineness would be excusable. Efforts to trace the missing man must at
+      least be made. Efforts were made, but with no result. Painful as it was to
+      reflect on the subject of the asylums, careful private inquiry was made,
+      information was quietly collected, there were even visits to gruesomely
+      quiet places on various polite pretexts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If a longer period of time had elapsed,&rdquo; Mr. Palford remarked several
+      times, with some stiffness of manner, &ldquo;we should feel that we had more
+      solid foundation for our premises.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perfectly right,&rdquo; Captain Palliser agreed with him, &ldquo;but it is lapse of
+      time which may mean life or death to Jem Temple Barholm; so it's perhaps
+      as well to be on the safe side and go on quietly following small clues. I
+      dare say you would feel more comfortable yourselves.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Both Mr. Palford and Mr. Grimby, having made an appointment with Miss
+      Alicia, arrived one afternoon at Temple Barholm to talk to her privately,
+      thereby casting her into a state of agonized anxiety which reduced her to
+      pallor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Our visit is merely one of inquiry, Miss Temple Barholm,&rdquo; Mr. Palford
+      began. &ldquo;There is perhaps nothing alarming in our client's absence.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In the note which he left me he asked me to&mdash;feel no anxiety,&rdquo; Miss
+      Alicia said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He left you a note of explanation? I wish we had known this earlier!&rdquo; Mr.
+      Palford's tone had the note of relieved exclamation. Perhaps there was an
+      entirely simple solution of the painful difficulty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But his hope had been too sanguine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was not a note of explanation, exactly. He went away too suddenly to
+      have time to explain.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The two men looked at each other disturbedly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He had not mentioned to you his intention of going?&rdquo; asked Mr. Grimby.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I feel sure he did not know he was going when he said good-night. He
+      remained with Captain Palliser talking for some time.&rdquo; Miss Alicia's eyes
+      held wavering and anxious question as she looked from one to the other.
+      She wondered how much more than herself her visitors knew. &ldquo;He found a
+      telegram when he went to his room. It contained most disquieting news
+      about Mr. Strangeways. He&mdash;he had got away from the place where&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Got away!&rdquo; Mr. Palford was again exclamatory. &ldquo;Was he in some institution
+      where he was kept under restraint?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Alicia was wholly unable to explain to herself why some quality in
+      his manner filled her with sudden distress.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I think not! Surely not! Surely nothing of that sort was necessary.
+      He was very quiet always, and he was getting better every day. But it was
+      important that he should be watched over. He was no doubt under the care
+      of a physician in some quiet sanatorium.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Some quiet sanatorium!&rdquo; Mr. Palford's disturbance of mind was manifest.
+      &ldquo;But you did not know where?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No. Indeed, Mr. Temple Barholm talked very little of Mr. Strangeways. I
+      believe he knew that it distressed me to feel that I could be of no real
+      assistance as&mdash;as the case was so peculiar.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Each perturbed solicitor looked again with rapid question at the other.
+      Miss Alicia saw the exchange of glances and, so to speak, broke down under
+      the pressure of their unconcealed anxiety. The last few weeks with their
+      suggestion of accusation too vague to be met had been too much for her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am afraid&mdash;I feel sure you know something I do not,&rdquo; she began. &ldquo;I
+      am most anxious and unhappy. I have not liked to ask questions, because
+      that would have seemed to imply a doubt of Mr. Temple Barholm. I have even
+      remained at home because I did not wish to hear things I could not
+      understand. I do not know what has been said. Pearson, in whom I have the
+      greatest confidence, felt that Mr. Temple Barholm would prefer that I
+      should wait until he returned.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you think he will return?&rdquo; said Mr. Grimby, amazedly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; the gentle creature ejaculated. &ldquo;Can you possibly think he will not?
+      Why? Why?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Palford had shared his partner's amazement. It was obvious that she
+      was as ignorant as a babe of the details of Palliser's extraordinary
+      story. In her affectionate consideration for Temple Barholm she had
+      actually shut herself up lest she should hear anything said against him
+      which she could not refute. She stood innocently obedient to his wishes,
+      like the boy upon the burning deck, awaiting his return and his version of
+      whatsoever he had been accused of. There was something delicately heroic
+      in the little, slender old thing, with her troubled eyes and her cap and
+      her quivering sideringlets.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You,&rdquo; she appealed, &ldquo;are his legal advisers, and will be able to tell me
+      if there is anything he would wish me to know. I could not allow myself to
+      listen to villagers or servants; but I may ask you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We are far from knowing as much as we desire to know,&rdquo; Mr. Palford
+      replied.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We came here, in fact,&rdquo; added Grimby, &ldquo;to ask questions of you, Miss
+      Temple Barholm.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The fact that Miss Temple Barholm has not allowed herself to be
+      prejudiced by village gossip, which is invariably largely unreliable, will
+      make her an excellent witness,&rdquo; Mr. Palford said to his partner, with a
+      deliberation which held suggestive significance. Each man, in fact, had
+      suddenly realized that her ignorance would leave her absolutely unbiased
+      in her answers to any questions they might put, and that it was much
+      better in cross-examining an emotional elderly lady that such should be
+      the case.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Witness!&rdquo; Miss Alicia found the word alarming. Mr. Palford's bow was
+      apologetically palliative.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A mere figure of speech, madam,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I really know so little every one else doesn't know.&rdquo; Miss Alicia's
+      protest had a touch of bewilderment in it. What could they wish to ask
+      her?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But, as we understand it, your relations with Mr. Temple Barholm were
+      most affectionate and confidential.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We were very fond of each other,&rdquo; she answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For that reason he no doubt talked to you more freely than to other
+      people,&rdquo; Mr. Grimby put it. &ldquo;Perhaps, Palford, it would be as well to
+      explain to Miss Temple Barholm that a curious feature of this matter is
+      that it&mdash;in a way&mdash;involves certain points concerning the late
+      Mr. Temple Barholm.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Alicia uttered a pathetic exclamation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Poor Jem&mdash;who died so cruelly!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Palford bent his head in acquiescence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps you can tell me what the present Mr. Temple Barholm knew of him&mdash;how
+      much he knew?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I told him the whole story the first time we took tea together,&rdquo; Miss
+      Alicia replied; and, between her recollection of that strangely happy
+      afternoon and her wonder at its connection with the present moment, she
+      began to feel timid and uncertain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How did it seem to impress him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She remembered it all so well&mdash;his queer, dear New York way of
+      expressing his warm-hearted indignation at the cruelty of what had
+      happened.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, he was very much excited. He was so sorry for him. He wanted to know
+      everything about him. He asked me what he looked like.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; said Palford. &ldquo;He wanted to know that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He was so full of sympathy,&rdquo; she replied, her explanation gaining warmth.
+      &ldquo;When I told him that the picture of Miles Hugo in the gallery was said to
+      look like Jem as a boy, he wanted very much to see it. Afterward we went
+      and saw it together. I shall always remember how he stood and looked at
+      it. Most young men would not have cared. But he always had such a touching
+      interest in poor Jem.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You mean that he asked questions about him&mdash;about his death, and so
+      forth?&rdquo; was Mr. Palford's inquiry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;About all that concerned him. He was interested especially in his looks
+      and manner of speaking and personality, so to speak. And in the awful
+      accident which ended his life, though he would not let me talk about that
+      after he had asked his first questions.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What kind of questions?&rdquo; suggested Grimby.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Only about what was known of the time and place, and how the sad story
+      reached England. It used to touch me to think that the only person who
+      seemed to care was the one who&mdash;might have been expected to be almost
+      glad the tragic thing had happened. But he was not.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Palford watched Mr. Grimby, and Mr. Grimby gave more than one dubious
+      and distressed glance at Palford.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;His interest was evident,&rdquo; remarked Palford, thoughtfully. &ldquo;And unusual
+      under the circumstances.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      For a moment he hesitated, then put another question: &ldquo;Did he ever seem&mdash;I
+      should say, do you remember any occasion when he appeared to think that&mdash;there
+      might be any reason to doubt that Mr. James Temple Barholm was one of the
+      men who died in the Klondike?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He felt that through this wild questioning they had at least reached a
+      certain testimony supporting Captain Palliser's views; and his interest
+      reluctantly increased. It was reluctant because there could be no shadow
+      of a question that this innocent spinster lady told the absolute truth;
+      and, this being the case, one seemed to be dragged to the verge of depths
+      which must inevitably be explored. Miss Alicia's expression was that of
+      one who conscientiously searched memory.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not remember that he really expressed doubt,&rdquo; she answered,
+      carefully. &ldquo;Not exactly that, but&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But what?&rdquo; prompted Palford as she hesitated. &ldquo;Please try to recall
+      exactly what he said. It is most important.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The fact that his manner was almost eager, and that eagerness was not his
+      habit, made her catch her breath and look more questioning and puzzled
+      than before.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One day he came to my sitting-room when he seemed rather excited,&rdquo; she
+      explained. &ldquo;He had been with Mr. Strangeways, who had been worse than
+      usual. Perhaps he wanted to distract himself and forget about it. He asked
+      me questions and talked about poor Jem for about an hour. And at last he
+      said, `Do you suppose there's any sort of chance that it mightn't be true&mdash;that
+      story that came from the Klondike?' He said it so thoughtfully that I was
+      startled and said, `Do you think there could be such a chance&mdash;do
+      you?' And he drew a long breath and answered, `You want to be sure about
+      things like that; you've got to be sure.' I was a little excited, so he
+      changed the subject very soon afterward, and I never felt quite certain of
+      what he was really thinking. You see what he said was not so much an
+      expression of doubt as a sort of question.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A touch of the lofty condemnatory made Mr. Palford impressive.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am compelled to admit that I fear that it was a question of which he
+      had already guessed the answer,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At this point Miss Alicia clasped her hands quite tightly together upon
+      her knees.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you please,&rdquo; she exclaimed, &ldquo;I must ask you to make things a little
+      clear to me. What dreadful thing has happened? I will regard any
+      communication as a most sacred confidence.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think we may as well, Palford?&rdquo; Mr. Grimby suggested to his partner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; Palford acquiesced. He felt the difficulty of a blank explanation.
+      &ldquo;We are involved in a most trying position,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;We feel that great
+      discretion must be used until we have reached more definite certainty. An
+      extraordinary&mdash;in fact, a startling thing has occurred. We are
+      beginning, as a result of cumulative evidence, to feel that there was
+      reason to believe that the Klondike story was to be doubted&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That poor Jem&mdash;!&rdquo; cried Miss Alicia.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One begins to be gravely uncertain as to whether he has not been in this
+      house for months, whether he was not the mysterious Mr. Strangeways!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Jem! Jem!&rdquo; gasped poor little Miss Temple Barholm, quite white with
+      shock.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And if he was the mysterious Strangeways,&rdquo; Mr. Grimby assisted to shorten
+      the matter, &ldquo;the American Temple Barholm apparently knew the fact, brought
+      him here for that reason, and for the same reason kept him secreted and
+      under restraint.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No! No!&rdquo; cried Miss Alicia. &ldquo;Never! Never! I beg you not to say such a
+      thing. Excuse me&mdash;I cannot listen! It would be wrong&mdash;ungrateful.
+      Excuse me!&rdquo; She got up from her seat, trembling with actual anger in her
+      sense of outrage. It was a remarkable thing to see the small, elderly
+      creature angry, but this remarkable thing had happened. It was as though
+      she were a mother defending her young.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I loved poor Jem and I love Temple, and, though I am only a woman who
+      never has been the least clever, I know them both. I know neither of them
+      could lie or do a wicked, cunning thing. Temple is the soul of honor.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was quite an inspirational outburst. She had never before in her life
+      said so much at one time. Of course tears began to stream down her face,
+      while Mr. Palford and Mr. Grimby gazed at her in great embarrassment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If Mr. Strangeways was poor Jem come back alive, Temple did not know&mdash;he
+      never knew. All he did for him was done for kindness' sake. I&mdash;I&mdash;&rdquo;
+       It was inevitable that she should stammer before going to this length of
+      violence, and that the words should burst from her: &ldquo;I would swear it!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was really a shock to both Palford and Grimby. That a lady of Miss
+      Temple Barholm's age and training should volunteer to swear to a thing was
+      almost alarming. It was also in rather unpleasing taste.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Captain Palliser obliged Mr. Temple Temple Barholm to confess that he had
+      known for some time,&rdquo; Mr. Palford said with cold regret. &ldquo;He also informed
+      him that he should communicate with us without delay.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Captain Palliser is a bad man.&rdquo; Miss Alicia choked back a gasp to make
+      the protest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was after their interview that Mr. Temple Barholm almost immediately
+      left the house.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Without any explanation whatever,&rdquo; added Grimby.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He left a few lines for me,&rdquo; defended Miss Alicia.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We have not seen them.&rdquo; Mr. Palford was still as well as cold. Poor
+      little Miss Alicia took them out of her pocket with an unsteady hand. They
+      were always with her, and she could not on such a challenge seem afraid to
+      allow them to be read. Mr. Palford took them from her with a slight bow of
+      thanks. He adjusted his glasses and read aloud, with pauses between
+      phrases which seemed somewhat to puzzle him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dear little Miss Alicia:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've got to light out of here as quick as I can make it. I can't even
+      stop to tell you why. There's just one thing&mdash;don't get rattled, Miss
+      Alicia. Whatever any one says or does, don't get rattled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yours affectionately,
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      &ldquo;T. TEMBAROM.&rdquo;
+     </h3>
+    <p>
+      There was a silence, Mr. Palford passed the paper to his partner, who gave
+      it careful study. Afterward he refolded it and handed it back to Miss
+      Alicia.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In a court of law,&rdquo; was Mr. Palford's sole remark, &ldquo;it would not be
+      regarded as evidence for the defendant.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Alicia's tears were still streaming, but she held her ringleted head
+      well up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I cannot stay! I beg your pardon, I do indeed!&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;But I must
+      leave you. You see,&rdquo; she added, with her fine little touch of dignity, &ldquo;as
+      yet this house is still Mr. Temple Barholm's home, and I am the grateful
+      recipient of his bounty. Burrill will attend you and make you quite
+      comfortable.&rdquo; With an obeisance which was like a slight curtsey, she
+      turned and fled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In less than an hour she walked up the neat bricked path, and old Mrs.
+      Hutchinson, looking out, saw her through the tiers of flower-pots in the
+      window. Hutchinson himself was in London, but Ann was reading at the other
+      side of the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here's poor little owd Miss Temple Barholm aw in a flutter,&rdquo; remarked her
+      grandmother. &ldquo;Tha's got some work cut out for thee if tha's going to quiet
+      her. Oppen th' door, lass.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Ann opened the door, and stood by it with calm though welcoming dimples.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Miss Hutchinson &ldquo;&mdash;Miss Alicia began all at once to realize that
+      they did not know each other, and that she had flown to the refuge of her
+      youth without being at all aware of what she was about to say. &ldquo;Oh! Little
+      Ann!&rdquo; she broke down with frank tears. &ldquo;My poor boy! My poor boy!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Little Ann drew her inside and closed the door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There, Miss Temple Barholm,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;There now Just come in and sit
+      down. I'll get you a good cup of tea. You need one.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0038" id="link2HCH0038">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXXVIII
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The Duke of Stone had been sufficiently occupied with one of his slighter
+      attacks of rheumatic gout to have been, so to speak, out of the running in
+      the past weeks. His indisposition had not condemned him to the usual
+      dullness, however. He had suffered less pain than was customary, and Mrs.
+      Braddle had been more than usually interesting in conversation on those
+      occasions when, in making him very comfortable in one way or another, she
+      felt that a measure of entertainment would add to his well-being. His
+      epicurean habit of mind tended toward causing him to find a subtle
+      pleasure in the hearing of various versions of any story whatever. His
+      intimacy with T. Tembarom had furnished forth many an agreeable mental
+      repast for him. He had had T. Tembarom's version of himself, the version
+      of the county, the version of the uneducated class, and his own version.
+      All of these had had varying shades of their own. He had found a cynically
+      fine flavor in Palliser's version, which he had gathered through talk and
+      processes of exclusion and inclusion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is a good deal to be said for it,&rdquo; he summed it up. &ldquo;It's plausible
+      on ordinary sophisticated grounds. T. Tembarom would say, `It looks sort
+      of that way.&rdquo;'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As Mrs. Braddle had done what she could in the matter of expounding her
+      views of the uncertainties of the village attitude, he had listened with
+      stimulating interest. Mrs. Braddle's version on the passing of T. Tembarom
+      stood out picturesquely against the background of the version which was
+      his own&mdash;the one founded on the singular facts he had shared
+      knowledge of with the chief character in the episode. He had not, like
+      Miss Alicia, received a communication from Tembarom. This seemed to him
+      one of the attractive features of the incident. It provided opportunity
+      for speculation. Some wild development had called the youngster away in a
+      rattling hurry. Of what had happened since his departure he knew no more
+      than the villagers knew. What had happened for some months before his
+      going he had watched with the feeling of an intelligently observant
+      spectator at a play. He had been provided with varied emotions by the
+      fantastic drama. He had smiled; he had found himself moved once or twice,
+      and he had felt a good deal of the thrill of curious uncertainty as to
+      what the curtain would rise and fall on. The situation was such that it
+      was impossible to guess. Results could seem only to float in the air. One
+      thing might happen; so might another, so might a dozen more. What he
+      wished really to attain was some degree of certainty as to what was likely
+      to occur in any case to the American Temple Barholm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He felt, the first time he drove over to call on Miss Alicia, that his
+      indisposition and confinement to his own house had robbed him of
+      something. They had deprived him of the opportunity to observe shades of
+      development and to hear the expressing of views of the situation as it
+      stood. He drove over with views of his own and with anticipations. He had
+      reason to know that he would encounter in the dear lady indications of the
+      feeling that she had reached a crisis. There was a sense of this crisis
+      impending as one mounted the terrace steps and entered the hall. The
+      men-servants endeavored to wipe from their countenances any expression
+      denoting even a vague knowledge of it. He recognized their laudable
+      determination to do so. Burrill was monumental in the unconsciousness of
+      his outward bearing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Alicia, sitting waiting on Fate in the library, wore precisely the
+      aspect he had known she would wear. She had been lying awake at night and
+      she had of course wept at intervals, since she belonged to the period the
+      popular female view of which had been that only the unfeeling did not so
+      relieve themselves in crises of the affections. Her eyelids were rather
+      pink and her nice little face was tired.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is very, very kind of you to come,&rdquo; she said, when they shook hands.
+      &ldquo;I wonder &ldquo;&mdash;her hesitance was touching in its obvious appeal to him
+      not to take the wrong side,&mdash;&ldquo;I wonder if you know how deeply
+      troubled I have been?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You see, I have had a touch of my abominable gout, and my treasure of a
+      Braddle has been nursing me and gossiping,&rdquo; he answered. &ldquo;So, of course I
+      know a great deal. None of it true, I dare say. I felt I must come and see
+      you, however.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He looked so neat and entirely within the boundaries of finished and
+      well-dressed modernity and every-day occurrence, in his perfectly fitting
+      clothes, beautifully shining boots, and delicate fawn gaiters, that she
+      felt a sort of support in his mere aspect. The mind connected such almost
+      dapper freshness and excellent taste only with unexaggerated incidents and
+      a behavior which almost placed the stamp of absurdity upon the improbable
+      in circumstance. The vision of disorderly and illegal possibilities seemed
+      actually to fade into an unreality.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If Mr. Palford and Mr. Grimby knew him as I know him&mdash;as&mdash;as
+      you know him&mdash;&rdquo; she added with a faint hopefulness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, if they knew him as we know him that would make a different matter
+      of it,&rdquo; admitted the duke, amiably. But, thought Miss Alicia, he might
+      only have put it that way through consideration for her feelings, and
+      because he was an extremely polished man who could not easily reveal to a
+      lady a disagreeable truth. He did not speak with the note of natural
+      indignation which she thought she must have detected if he had felt as she
+      felt herself. He was of course a man whose manner had always the finish of
+      composure. He did not seem disturbed or even very curious&mdash;only kind
+      and most polite.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If we only knew where he was!&rdquo; she began again. &ldquo;If we only knew where
+      Mr. Strangeways was!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My impression is that Messrs. Palford &amp; Grimby will probably find
+      them both before long,&rdquo; he consoled her. &ldquo;They are no doubt exciting
+      themselves unnecessarily.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He was not agitated at all; she felt it would have been kinder if he had
+      been a little agitated. He was really not the kind of person whose
+      feelings appeared very deep, being given to a light and graceful cynicism
+      of speech which delighted people; so perhaps it was not natural that he
+      should express any particular emotion even in a case affecting a friend&mdash;surely
+      he had been Temple's friend. But if he had seemed a little distressed, or
+      doubtful or annoyed, she would have felt that she understood better his
+      attitude. As it was, he might almost have been on the other side&mdash;a
+      believer or a disbeliever&mdash;or merely a person looking on to see what
+      would happen. When they sat down, his glance seemed to include her with an
+      interest which was sympathetic but rather as if she were a child whom he
+      would like to pacify. This seemed especially so when she felt she must
+      make clear to him the nature of the crisis which was pending, as he had
+      felt when he entered the house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You perhaps do not know&rdquo;&mdash;the appeal which had shown itself in her
+      eyes was in her voice&mdash;&ldquo;that the solicitors have decided, after a
+      great deal of serious discussion and private inquiry in London, that the
+      time has come when they must take open steps.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In the matter of investigation?&rdquo; he inquired.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They are coming here this afternoon with Captain Palliser to&mdash;to
+      question the servants, and some of the villagers. They will question me,&rdquo;
+       alarmedly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They would be sure to do that,&rdquo;&mdash;he really seemed quite to envelop
+      her with kindness&mdash;&ldquo;but I beg of you not to be alarmed. Nothing you
+      could have to say could possibly do harm to Temple Barholm.&rdquo; He knew it
+      was her fear of this contingency which terrified her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You do feel sure of that?&rdquo; she burst forth, relievedly. &ldquo;You do&mdash;because
+      you know him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do. Let us be calm, dear lady. Let us be calm.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will! I will!&rdquo; she protested. &ldquo;But Captain Palliser has arranged that a
+      lady should come here&mdash;a lady who disliked poor Temple very much. She
+      was most unjust to him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lady Joan Fayre?&rdquo; he suggested, and then paused with a remote smile as if
+      lending himself for the moment to some humor he alone detected in the
+      situation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She will not injure his cause, I think I can assure you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She insisted on misunderstanding him. I am so afraid&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The appearance of Pearson at the door interrupted her and caused her to
+      rise from her seat. The neat young man was pale and spoke in a nervously
+      lowered voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I beg pardon, Miss. I beg your Grace's pardon for intruding, but&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Alicia moved toward him in such a manner that he himself seemed to
+      feel that he might advance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is it, Pearson? Have you anything special to say?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I hope I am not taking too great a liberty, Miss, but I did come in for a
+      purpose, knowing that his Grace was with you and thinking you might both
+      kindly advise me. It is about Mr. Temple Barholm, your Grace&mdash;&rdquo;
+       addressing him as if in involuntary recognition of the fact that he might
+      possibly prove the greater support.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Our Mr. Temple Barholm, Pearson? We are being told there are two of
+      them.&rdquo; The duke's delicate emphasis on the possessive pronoun was
+      delightful, and it so moved and encouraged sensitive little Pearson that
+      he was emboldened to answer with modest firmness:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&mdash;ours. Thank you, your Grace.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You feel him yours too, Pearson?&rdquo; a shade more delightfully still.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&mdash;I take the liberty, your Grace, of being deeply attached to him,
+      and more than grateful.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What did you want to ask advice about?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The family solicitors. Captain Palliser and Lady Joan Fayre and Mr. and
+      Miss Hutchinson are to be here shortly, and I have been told I am to be
+      questioned. What I want to know, your Grace, is&mdash;&rdquo; He paused, and
+      looked no longer pale but painfully red as he gathered himself together
+      for his anxious outburst&mdash;&ldquo;Must I speak the truth?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Alicia started alarmedly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The duke looked down at the delicate fawn gaiters covering his fine
+      instep. His fleeting smile was not this time an external one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you not wish to speak the truth, Pearson?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Pearson's manner could have been described only as one of obstinate
+      frankness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, your Grace. I do not! Your Grace may misunderstand me&mdash;but I do
+      not!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His Grace tapped the gaiters with the slight ebony cane he held in his
+      hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is this &ldquo;&mdash;he put it with impartial curiosity&mdash;&ldquo;because the
+      truth might be detrimental to our Mr. Temple Barholm?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you please, your Grace,&rdquo; Pearson made a firm step forward, &ldquo;what is
+      the truth?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is what Messrs. Palford &amp; Grimby seem determined to find out.
+      Probably only our Mr. Temple Barholm can tell them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your Grace, what I'm thinking of is that if I tell the truth it may seem
+      to prove something that's not the truth.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What kinds of things, Pearson?&rdquo; still impartially.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can be plain with your Grace. Things like this: I was with Mr. Temple
+      Barholm and Mr. Strangeways a great deal. They'll ask me about what I
+      heard. They'll ask me if Mr. Strangeways was willing to go away to the
+      doctor; if he had to be persuaded and argued with. Well, he had and he
+      hadn't, your Grace. At first, just the mention of it would upset him so
+      that Mr. Temple Barholm would have to stop talking about it and quiet him
+      down. But when he improved&mdash;and he did improve wonderfully, your
+      Grace&mdash;he got into the way of sitting and thinking it over and
+      listening quite quiet. But if I'm asked suddenly&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What you are afraid of is that you may be asked point-blank questions
+      without warning?&rdquo; his Grace put it with the perspicacity of experience.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's why I should be grateful for advice. Must I tell the truth, your
+      Grace, when it will make them believe things I'd swear are lies&mdash;I'd
+      swear it, your Grace.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So would I, Pearson.&rdquo; His serene lightness was of the most baffling, but
+      curiously supporting, order. &ldquo;This being the case, my advice would be not
+      to go into detail. Let us tell white lies&mdash;all of us&mdash;without a
+      shadow of hesitancy. Miss Temple Barholm, even you must do your best.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will try&mdash;indeed, I will try!&rdquo; And the Duke felt her tremulously
+      ardent assent actually delicious.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There! we'll consider that settled, Pearson,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you, your Grace. Thank you, Miss,&rdquo; Pearson's relieved gratitude
+      verged on the devout. He turned to go, and as he did so his attention was
+      arrested by an approach he remarked through a window.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. and Miss Hutchinson are arriving now, Miss,&rdquo; he announced, hastily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They are to be brought in here,&rdquo; said Miss Alicia.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The duke quietly left his seat and went to look through the window with
+      frank and unembarrassed interest in the approach. He went, in fact, to
+      look at Little Ann, and as he watched her walk up the avenue, her father
+      lumbering beside her, he evidently found her aspect sufficiently
+      arresting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; he exclaimed softly, and paused. &ldquo;What a lot of very nice red hair,&rdquo;
+       he said next. And then, &ldquo;No wonder! No wonder!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That, I should say,&rdquo; he remarked as Miss Alicia drew near, &ldquo;is what I
+      once heard a bad young man call `a deserving case.'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He was conscious that she might have been privately a little shocked by
+      such aged flippancy, but she was at the moment perturbed by something
+      else.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The fact is that I have never spoken to Hutchinson,&rdquo; she fluttered.
+      &ldquo;These changes are very confusing. I suppose I ought to say Mr.
+      Hutchinson, now that he is such a successful person, and Temple&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Without a shadow of a doubt!&rdquo; The duke seemed struck by the happiness of
+      the idea. &ldquo;They will make him a peer presently. He may address me as
+      'Stone' at any moment. One must learn to adjust one's self with agility.
+      `The old order changeth.' Ah! she is smiling at him and I see the
+      dimples.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Alicia made a clean breast of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I went to her&mdash;I could not help it!&rdquo; she confessed. &ldquo;I was in such
+      distress and dare not speak to anybody. Temple had told me that she was so
+      wonderful. He said she always understood and knew what to do.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did she in this case?&rdquo; he asked, smiling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Alicia's manner was that of one who could express the extent of her
+      admiration only in disconnected phrases.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She was like a little rock. Such a quiet, firm way! Such calm certainty!
+      Oh, the comfort she has been to me! I begged her to come here to-day. I
+      did not know her father had returned.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No doubt he will have testimony to give which will be of the greatest
+      assistance,&rdquo; the duke said most encouragingly. &ldquo;Perhaps he will be a sort
+      of rock.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&mdash;I don't in the least know what he will be!&rdquo; sighed Miss Alicia,
+      evidently uncertain in her views.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But when the father and daughter were announced she felt that his Grace
+      was really enchanting in the happy facility of his manner. He at least
+      adjusted himself with agility. Hutchinson was of course lumbering. Lacking
+      the support of T. Tembarom's presence and incongruity, he himself was the
+      incongruous feature. He would have been obliged to bluster by way of
+      sustaining himself, even if he had only found himself being presented to
+      Miss Alicia; but when it was revealed to him that he was also confronted
+      with the greatest personage of the neighborhood, he became as hot and red
+      as he had become during certain fateful business interviews. More so,
+      indeed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Th' other chaps hadn't been dukes;&rdquo; and to Hutchinson the old order had
+      not yet so changed that a duke was not an awkwardly impressive person to
+      face unexpectedly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The duke's manner of shaking hands with him, however, was even touched
+      with an amiable suggestion of appreciation of the value of a man of
+      genius. He had heard of the invention, in fact knew some quite technical
+      things about it. He realized its importance. He had congratulations for
+      the inventor and the world of inventions so greatly benefited.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lancashire must be proud of your success, Mr. Hutchinson.&rdquo; How agreeably
+      and with what ease he said it!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Aye, it's a success now, your Grace,&rdquo; Hutchinson answered, &ldquo;but I might
+      have waited a good bit longer if it hadn't been for that lad an' his bold
+      backing of me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. Temple Barholm?&rdquo; said the duke.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Aye. He's got th' way of making folks see things that they can't see even
+      when they're hitting them in th' eyes. I'd that lost heart I could never
+      have done it myself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But now it is done,&rdquo; smiled his Grace. &ldquo;Delightful!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've got there&mdash;same as they say in New York&mdash;I've got there,&rdquo;
+       said Hutchinson.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He sat down in response to Miss Alicia's invitation. His unease was
+      wonderfully dispelled. He felt himself a person of sufficient importance
+      to address even a duke as man to man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What's all this romancin' talk about th' other Temple Barholm comin'
+      back, an' our lad knowin' an' hidin' him away? An' Palliser an' th'
+      lawyers an' th' police bein' after 'em both?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have heard the whole story?&rdquo; from the duke.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've heard naught else since I come back.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Grandmother knew a great deal before we came home,&rdquo; said Little Ann.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The duke turned his attention to her with an engaged smile. His look, his
+      bow, his bearing, in the moment of their being presented to each other,
+      had seemed to Miss Alicia the most perfect thing. His fine eye had not
+      obviously wandered while he talked to her father, but it had in fact been
+      taking her in with an inclusiveness not likely to miss agreeable points of
+      detail.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is her opinion, may I ask?&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;What does she say?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Grandmother is very set in her ways, your Grace.&rdquo; The limpidity of her
+      blue eye and a flickering dimple added much to the quaint
+      comprehensiveness of her answer. &ldquo;She says the world's that full of fools
+      that if they were all killed the Lord would have to begin again with a new
+      Adam and Eve.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She has entire faith in Mr. Temple Barholm&mdash;as you have,&rdquo; put
+      forward his Grace.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mine's not faith exactly. I know him,&rdquo; Little Ann answered, her tone as
+      limpid as her eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There's more than her has faith in him,&rdquo; broke forth Hutchinson. &ldquo;Danged
+      if I don't like th' way them village chaps are taking it. They're ready to
+      fight over it. Since they've found out what it's come to, an' about th'
+      lawyers comin' down, they're talkin' about gettin' up a kind o'
+      demonstration.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Delightful!&rdquo; ejaculated his Grace again. He leaned forward. &ldquo;Quite what I
+      should have expected. There's a good deal of beer drunk, I suppose.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Plenty o' beer, but it'll do no harm.&rdquo; Hutchinson began to chuckle.
+      &ldquo;They're talkin' o' gettin' out th' fife an' drum band an' marchin' round
+      th' village with a calico banner with `Vote for T. Tembarom' painted on
+      it, to show what they think of him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The duke chuckled also.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wonder how he's managed it?&rdquo; he laughed. &ldquo;They wouldn't do it for any
+      of the rest of us, you know, though I've no doubt we're quite as
+      deserving. I am, I know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Hutchinson stopped laughing and turned on Miss Alicia.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What's that young woman comin' down here for?&rdquo; he inquired.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lady Joan was engaged to Mr. James Temple Barholm,&rdquo; Miss Alicia answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Eh! Eh!&rdquo; Hutchinson jerked out. &ldquo;That'll turn her into a wildcat, I'll
+      warrant. She'll do all th' harm she can. I'm much obliged to you for
+      lettin' us come, ma'am. I want to be where I can stand by him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Father,&rdquo; said Little Ann, &ldquo;what you have got to remember is that you
+      mustn't fly into a passion. You know you've always said it never did any
+      good, and it only sends the blood to your head.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are not nervous, Miss Hutchinson?&rdquo; the duke suggested.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;About Mr. Temple Barholm? I couldn't be, your Grace. If I was to see two
+      policemen bringing him in handcuffed I shouldn't be nervous. I should know
+      the handcuffs didn't belong to him, and the policemen would look
+      right-down silly to me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Alicia fluttered over to fold her in her arms.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do let me kiss you,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Do let me, Little Ann!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Little Ann had risen at once to meet her embrace. She put a hand on her
+      arm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We don't know anything about this really,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;We've only heard
+      what people say. We haven't heard what he says. I'm going to wait.&rdquo; They
+      were all looking at her,&mdash;the duke with such marked interest that she
+      turned toward him as she ended. &ldquo;And if I had to wait until I was as old
+      as grandmother I'd wait&mdash;and nothing would change my mind.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And I've been lying awake at night!&rdquo; softly wailed Miss Alicia.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0039" id="link2HCH0039">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXXIX
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      It was Mr. Hutchinson who, having an eye on the window, first announced an
+      arriving carriage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Some of 'em's comin' from the station,&rdquo; he remarked. &ldquo;There's no young
+      woman with 'em, that I can see from here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I thought I heard wheels.&rdquo; Miss Alicia went to look out, agitatedly. &ldquo;It
+      is the gentlemen. Perhaps Lady Joan&mdash;&rdquo; she turned desperately to the
+      duke. &ldquo;I don't know what to say to Lady Joan. I don't know what she will
+      say to me. I don't know what she is coming for, Little Ann, do keep near
+      me!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a pretty thing to see Little Ann stroke her hand and soothe her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't be frightened, Miss Temple Barholm. All you've got to do is to
+      answer questions,&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I might say things that would be wrong&mdash;things that would harm
+      him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, you mightn't, Miss Temple Barholm. He's not done anything that could
+      bring harm on him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Duke of Stone, who had seated himself in T. Tembarom's favorite chair,
+      which occupied a point of vantage, seemed to Mr. Palford and Mr. Grimby
+      when they entered the room to wear the aspect of a sort of presidiary
+      audience. The sight of his erect head and clear-cut, ivory-tinted old
+      face, with its alert, while wholly unbiased, expression, somewhat startled
+      them both. They had indeed not expected to see him, and did not know why
+      he had chosen to come. His presence might mean any one of several things,
+      and the fact that he enjoyed a reputation for quite alarming astuteness of
+      a brilliant kind presented elements of probable embarrassment. If he
+      thought that they had allowed themselves to be led upon a wild-goose
+      chase, he would express his opinions with trying readiness of phrase.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His manner of greeting them, however, expressed no more than a lightly
+      agreeable detachment from any view whatsoever. Captain Palliser felt this
+      curiously, though he could not have said what he would have expected from
+      him if he had known it would be his whim to appear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How do you do? How d' you do?&rdquo; His Grace shook hands with the amiable
+      ease which scarcely commits a man even to casual interest, after which he
+      took his seat again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How d' do, Miss Hutchinson?&rdquo; said Palliser. &ldquo;How d' do, Mr. Hutchinson?
+      Mr. Palford will be glad to find you here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Palford shook hands with correct civility.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am, indeed,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;It was in your room in New York that I first saw
+      Mr. Temple Temple Barholm.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Aye, it was,&rdquo; responded Hutchinson, dryly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I thought Lady Joan was coming,&rdquo; Miss Alicia said to Palliser.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She will be here presently. She came down in our train, but not with us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What&mdash;what is she coming for?&rdquo; faltered Miss Alicia.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; put in the duke, &ldquo;what, by the way, is she coming for?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wrote and asked her to come,&rdquo; was Palliser's reply. &ldquo;I have reason to
+      believe she may be able to recall something of value to the inquiry which
+      is being made.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's interesting,&rdquo; said his Grace, but with no air of participating
+      particularly. &ldquo;She doesn't like him, though, does she? Wouldn't do to put
+      her on the jury.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He did not wait for any reply, but turned to Mr. Palford.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All this is delightfully portentous. Do you know it reminds me of a scene
+      in one of those numerous plays where the wrong man has murdered somebody&mdash;or
+      hasn't murdered somebody&mdash;and the whole company must be
+      cross-examined because the curtain cannot be brought down until the right
+      man is unmasked. Do let us come into this, Mr. Palford; what we know seems
+      so inadequate.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Palford and Mr. Grimby each felt that there lurked in this manner a
+      possibility that they were being regarded lightly. All the objections to
+      their situation loomed annoyingly large.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is, of course, an extraordinary story,&rdquo; Mr. Palford said, &ldquo;but if we
+      are not mistaken in our deductions, we may find ourselves involved in a
+      cause celebre which will set all England talking.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am not mistaken,&rdquo; Palliser presented the comment with a short and dry
+      laugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tha seems pretty cock-sure!&rdquo; Hutchinson thrust in.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am. No one knew Jem Temple Barbolm better than I did in the past. We
+      were intimate&mdash;enemies.&rdquo; And he laughed again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tha says tha'll swear th' chap tha saw through th' window was him?&rdquo; said
+      Hutchinson.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'd swear it,&rdquo; with composure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The duke was reflecting. He was again tapping with his cane the gaiter
+      covering his slender, shining boot.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If Mr. Temple Temple Barholm had remained here his actions would have
+      seemed less suspicious?&rdquo; he suggested.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was Palliser who replied.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Or if he hadn't whisked the other man away. He lost his head and played
+      the fool.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He didn't lose his head, that chap. It's screwed on th' right way&mdash;his
+      head is,&rdquo; grunted Hutchinson.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The curious fellow has a number of friends,&rdquo; the duke remarked to Palford
+      and Grimby, in his impartial tone. &ldquo;I am hoping you are not thinking of
+      cross-examining me. I have always been convinced that under
+      cross-examination I could be induced to innocently give evidence
+      condemnatory to both sides of any case whatever. But would you mind
+      telling me what the exact evidence is so far?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Palford had been opening a budget of papers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is evidence which is cumulative, your Grace,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Mr. Temple
+      Temple Barholm's position would have been a far less suspicious one&mdash;as
+      you yourself suggested&mdash;if he had remained, or if he hadn't secretly
+      removed Mr.&mdash;Mr. Strangeways.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The last was Captain Palliser's suggestion, I believe,&rdquo; smiled the duke.
+      &ldquo;Did he remove him secretly? How secretly, for instance?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;At night,&rdquo; answered Palliser. &ldquo;Miss Temple Barholm herself did not know
+      when it happened. Did you?&rdquo; turning to Miss Alicia, who at once flushed
+      and paled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He knew that I was rather nervous where Mr. Strangeways was concerned. I
+      am sorry to say he found that out almost at once. He even told me several
+      times that I must not think of him&mdash;that I need hear nothing about
+      him.&rdquo; She turned to the duke, her air of appeal plainly representing a
+      feeling that he would understand her confession. &ldquo;I scarcely like to say
+      it, but wrong as it was I couldn't help feeling that it was like having a&mdash;a
+      lunatic in the house. I was afraid he might be more&mdash;ill&mdash;than
+      Temple realized, and that he might some time become violent. I never
+      admitted so much of course, but I was.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You see, she was not told,&rdquo; Palliser summed it up succinctly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Evidently,&rdquo; the duke admitted. &ldquo;I see your point.&rdquo; But he seemed to
+      disengage himself from all sense of admitting implications with entire
+      calmness, as he turned again to Mr. Palford and his papers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You were saying that the exact evidence was&mdash;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Palford referred to a sheet of notes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&mdash;whether before or shortly after his arrival here is not at all
+      certain&mdash;Mr. Temple Temple Barholm began strongly to suspect the
+      identity of the person then known as Strangeways&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Palliser again emitted the short and dry laugh, and both the duke and Mr.
+      Palford looked at him inquiringly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He had `got on to' it before he brought him,&rdquo; he answered their glances.
+      &ldquo;Be sure of that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then why did he bring him?&rdquo; the duke suggested lightly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, well,&rdquo; taking his cue from the duke, and assuming casual lightness
+      also, &ldquo;he was obliged to come himself, and was jolly well convinced that
+      he had better keep his hand on the man, also his eye. It was a good-enough
+      idea. He couldn't leave a thing like that wandering about the States. He
+      could play benefactor safely in a house of the size of this until he was
+      ready for action.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The duke gave a moment to considering the matter&mdash;still detachedly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is, on the whole, not unlikely that something of the sort might
+      suggest itself to the criminal mind,&rdquo; he said. And his glance at Mr.
+      Palford intimated that he might resume his statement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We have secured proof that he applied himself to secret investigation. He
+      is known to have employed Scotland Yard to make certain inquiries
+      concerning the man said to have been killed in the Klondike. Having
+      evidently reached more than suspicion he began to endeavor to persuade Mr.
+      Strangeways to let him take him to London. This apparently took some time.
+      The mere suggestion of removal threw the invalid into a state of painful
+      excitement&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did Pearson tell you that?&rdquo; the duke inquired.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Captain Palliser himself in passing the door of the room one day heard
+      certain expressions of terrified pleading,&rdquo; was Mr. Palford's explanation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I heard enough,&rdquo; Palliser took it up carelessly, &ldquo;to make it worth while
+      to question Pearson&mdash;who must have heard a great deal more. Pearson
+      was ordered to hold his tongue from the first, but he will have to tell
+      the truth when he is asked.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The duke did not appear to resent his view.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pearson would be likely to know what went on,&rdquo; he remarked. &ldquo;He's an
+      intelligent little fellow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The fact remains that in spite of his distress and reluctance Mr.
+      Strangeways was removed privately, and there our knowledge ends. He has
+      not been seen since&mdash;and a few hours after, Captain Palliser
+      expressed his conviction, that the person he had seen through the West
+      Room window was Mr. James Temple Barholm, Mr. Temple Temple Barholm left
+      the house taking a midnight train, and leaving no clue as to his
+      where-abouts or intentions.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Disappeared!&rdquo; said the duke. &ldquo;Where has he been looked for?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The countenance of both Mr. Palford and his party expressed a certain
+      degree of hesitance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Principally in asylums and so-called sanatoriums,&rdquo; Mr. Grimby admitted
+      with a hint of reluctance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Places where the curiosity of outsiders is not encouraged,&rdquo; said Palliser
+      languidly. &ldquo;And where if a patient dies in a fit of mania there are always
+      respectable witnesses to explain that his case was hopeless from the
+      first.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Hutchinson had been breathing hard occasionally as he sat and
+      listened, and now he sprang up uttering a sound dangerously near a violent
+      snort.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Art tha accusin' that lad o' bein' black villain enough to be ready to do
+      bloody murder?&rdquo; he cried out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He was in a very tight place, Hutchinson,&rdquo; Palliser shrugged his
+      shoulders as he said it. &ldquo;But one makes suggestions at this stage&mdash;not
+      accusations.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      That Hutchinson had lost his head was apparent to his daughter at least.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tha'd be in a tight place, my fine chap, if I had my way,&rdquo; he flung forth
+      irately. &ldquo;I'd like to get thy head under my arm.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The roll of approaching wheels reached Miss Alicia.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There's another carriage,&rdquo; was her agitated exclamation. &ldquo;Oh, dear! It
+      must be Lady Joan!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Little Ann left her seat to make her father return to his.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Father, you'd better sit down,&rdquo; she said, gently pushing him in the right
+      direction. &ldquo;When you can't prove a thing's a lie, it's just as well to
+      keep quiet until you can.&rdquo; And she kept quiet herself, though she turned
+      and stood before Palliser and spoke with clear deliberateness. &ldquo;What you
+      pretend to believe is not true, Captain Palliser. It's just not true,&rdquo; she
+      gave to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They were facing and looking at each other when Burrill announced Lady
+      Joan Fayre. She entered rather quickly and looked round the room with a
+      sweeping glance, taking them all in. She went to the duke first, and they
+      shook hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am glad you are here!&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I would not have been out of it, my dear young lady,&rdquo; he answered, &ldquo;`for
+      a farm' That's a quotation.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know,&rdquo; she replied, giving her hand to Miss Alicia, and taking in
+      Palliser and the solicitors with a bow which was little more than a nod.
+      Then she saw Little Ann, and walked over to her to shake hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am glad you are here. I rather felt you would be,&rdquo; was her greeting. &ldquo;I
+      am glad to see you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Whether tha 'rt glad to see me or not I'm glad I'm here,&rdquo; said Hutchinson
+      bluntly. &ldquo;I've just been speaking a bit o' my mind.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, Father love!&rdquo; Little Ann put her hand on his arm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Joan looked him over. Her hungry eyes were more hungry than ever. She
+      looked like a creature in a fever and worn by it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think I am glad you are here too,&rdquo; she answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Palliser sauntered over to her. He had approved the duke's air of being at
+      once detached and inquiring, and he did not intend to wear the aspect of
+      the personage who plays the unpleasant part of the pursuer and avenger.
+      What he said was:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was good of you to come, Lady Joan.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did you think I would stay away?&rdquo; was her answer. &ldquo;But I will tell you
+      that I don't believe it is true.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You think that it is too good to be true?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her hot eyes had records in them it would have been impossible for him to
+      read or understand. She had been so torn; she had passed through such
+      hours since she had been told this wild thing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pardon my not telling you what I think,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Nothing matters,
+      after all, if he is alive!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Except that we must find him,&rdquo; said Palliser.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If he is in the same world with me I shall find him,&rdquo; fiercely. Then she
+      turned again to Ann. &ldquo;You are the girl T. Tembarom loves?&rdquo; she put it to
+      her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, my lady.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If he was lost, and you knew he was on the earth with you, don't you know
+      that you would find him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should know he'd come back to me,&rdquo; Little Ann answered her. &ldquo;That's
+      what&mdash;&rdquo; her small face looked very fine as in her second of
+      hesitation a spirited flush ran over it, &ldquo;that's what your man will do,&rdquo;
+       quite firmly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was amazing to see how the bitter face changed, as if one word had
+      brought back a passionate softening memory.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My man!&rdquo; Her voice mellowed until it was deep and low. &ldquo;Did you call T.
+      Tembarom that, too? Oh, I understand you! Keep near me while I talk to
+      these people.&rdquo; She made her sit down by her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know every detail of your letters.&rdquo; She addressed Palliser as well as
+      Palford &amp; Grimby, sweeping all details aside. &ldquo;What is it you want to
+      ask me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This is our position, your ladyship,&rdquo; Mr. Palford fumbled a little with
+      his papers in speaking. &ldquo;Mr. Temple Temple Barholm and the person known as
+      Mr. Strangeways have been searched for so far without result. In the
+      meantime we realize that the more evidence we obtain that Mr. Temple
+      Temple Barholm identified Strangeways and acted from motive, the more
+      solid the foundation upon which Captain Palliser's conviction rests. Up to
+      this point we have only his statement which he is prepared to make on
+      oath. Fortunately, however, he on one occasion overheard something said to
+      you which he believes will be corroborative evidence.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What did you overhear?&rdquo; she inquired of Palliser.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her tone was not pacific considering that, logically, she must be on the
+      side of the investigators. But it was her habit, as Captain Palliser
+      remembered, to seem to put most people on the defensive. He meant to look
+      as uninvolved as the duke, but it was not quite within his power. His
+      manner was sufficiently deliberate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One evening, before you left for London, I was returning from the
+      billiard-room, and heard you engaged in animated conversation with&mdash;our
+      host. My attention was arrested, first because&mdash;&rdquo; a sketch of a smile
+      ill-concealed itself, &ldquo;you usually scarcely deigned to speak to him, and
+      secondly because I heard Jem Temple Barholm's name.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you&mdash;?&rdquo; neither eyes nor manner omitted the word listened.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the slight lift of his shoulders was indifferent enough.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I listened deliberately. I was convinced that the fellow was a criminal
+      impostor, and I wanted evidence.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! come now,&rdquo; remarked the duke amiably. &ldquo;Now we are getting on. Did you
+      gain any?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I thought so. Merely of the cumulative order, of course,&rdquo; Palliser
+      answered with moderation. &ldquo;Those were early days. He asked you,&rdquo; turning
+      to Lady Joan again, &ldquo;if you knew any one&mdash;any one&mdash;who had any
+      sort of a photograph of Jem. You had one and you showed it to him!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She was quite silent for a moment. The hour came back to her&mdash;the
+      extraordinary hour when he had stood in his lounging fashion before her,
+      and through some odd, uncivilized but absolutely human force of his own
+      had made her listen to him&mdash;and had gone on talking in his nasal
+      voice until with one common, crude, grotesque phrase he had turned her
+      hideous world upside down&mdash;changed the whole face of it&mdash;sent
+      the stone wall rising before her crumbling into dust, and seemed somehow
+      to set her free. For the moment he had lifted a load from her the nature
+      of which she did not think he could understand&mdash;a load of hatred and
+      silence. She had clutched his hand, she had passionately wept on it, she
+      could have kissed it. He had told her she could come back and not be
+      afraid. As the strange episode rose before her detail by detail, she
+      literally stared at Palliser.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You did, didn't you?&rdquo; he inquired.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; she answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her mind was in a riot, because in the midst of things which must be true,
+      something was false. But with the memory of a myriad subtle duplicities in
+      her brain, she had never seen anything which could have approached a thing
+      like that. He had made her feel more human than any one in the world had
+      ever made her feel&mdash;but Jem. He had been able to do it because he was
+      human himself&mdash;human. &ldquo;I'm friendly,&rdquo; he had said with his boy's
+      laugh&mdash;&ldquo;just friendly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I saw him start, though you did not,&rdquo; Palliser continued. &ldquo;He stood and
+      studied the locket intently.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She remembered perfectly. He had examined it so closely that he had
+      unconsciously knit his brows.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He said something in a rather low voice,&rdquo; Palliser took it up. &ldquo;I could
+      not quite catch it all. It was something about `knowing the face again.' I
+      can see you remember, Lady Joan. Can you repeat the exact words?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He did not understand the struggle he saw in her face. It would have been
+      impossible for him to understand it. What she felt was that if she lost
+      hold on her strange belief in the honesty of this one decent thing she had
+      seen and felt so close to her that it cleared the air she breathed, it
+      would be as if she had fallen into a bottomless abyss. Without knowing why
+      she did it, she got up from her chair as if she were a witness in a court.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I can,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Yes, I can; but I wish to make a statement for
+      myself. Whether Jem Temple Barholm is alive or dead, Captain Palliser, T.
+      Tembarom has done him no harm.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The duke sat up delicately alert. He had evidently found her worth looking
+      at and listening to from the outset.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hear! Hear!&rdquo; he said pleasantly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What were the exact words?&rdquo; suggested Palliser.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Alicia who had been weeping on Little Ann's shoulder&mdash;almost on
+      her lap&mdash;lifted her head to listen. Hutchinson set his jaw and
+      grunted, and Mr. Palford cleared his throat mechanically.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He said,&rdquo; and no one better than herself realized how ominously
+      &ldquo;cumulative&rdquo; the words sounded, &ldquo;that a man would know a face like that
+      again&mdash;wherever he saw it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wherever he saw it!&rdquo; ejaculated Mr. Grimby.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There ensued a moment of entire pause. It was inevitable. Having reached
+      this point a taking of breath was necessary. Even the duke ceased to
+      appear entirely detached. As Mr. Palford turned to his papers again there
+      was perhaps a slight feeling of awkwardness in the air. Miss Alicia had
+      dropped, terror smitten, into new tears.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The slight awkwardness was, on the whole, rather added to by T. Tembarom&mdash;as
+      if serenely introduced by the hand of drama itself&mdash;opening the door
+      and walking into the room. He came in with a matter-of-fact, but rather
+      obstinate, air, and stopped in their midst, looking round at them as if
+      collectedly taking them all in.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hutchinson sprang to his feet with a kind of roar, his big hands plunging
+      deep into his trousers pockets.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here he is! Danged if he isn't!&rdquo; he bellowed. &ldquo;Now, lad, tha let 'em have
+      it!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      What he was to let them have did not ensue, because his attitude was not
+      one of assault.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Say, you are all here, ain't you!&rdquo; he remarked obviously. &ldquo;Good
+      business!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Alicia got up from the sofa and came trembling toward him as one
+      approaches one risen from the dead, and he made a big stride toward her
+      and took her in his arms, patting her shoulder in reproachful consolation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Say, you haven't done what I told you&mdash;have you?&rdquo; he soothed.
+      &ldquo;You've let yourself get rattled.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I knew it wasn't true,&rdquo; she sobbed. &ldquo;I knew it wasn't.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course you did, but you got rattled all the same.&rdquo; And he patted her
+      again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The duke came forward with a delightfully easy and&mdash;could it be
+      almost jocose?&mdash;air of bearing himself. Palford and Grimby remarked
+      it with pained dismay. He was so unswerving in his readiness as he shook
+      hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How well done of you!&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;How well arranged! But I'm afraid you
+      didn't arrange it at all. It has merely happened. Where did you come
+      from?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;From America; got back yesterday.&rdquo; T. Tembarom's hand-shake was a robust
+      hearty greeting. &ldquo;It's all right.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;From America!&rdquo; The united voices of the solicitors exclaimed it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Joseph Hutchinson broke into a huge guffaw, and he stamped in exultation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm danged if he has na' been to America!&rdquo; he cried out. &ldquo;To America!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; Miss Alicia gasped hysterically, &ldquo;they go backward and forward to
+      America like&mdash;like lightning!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Little Ann had not risen at his entrance, but sat still with her hands
+      clasped tightly on her lap. Her face had somehow the effect of a flower
+      gradually breaking into extraordinary bloom. Their eyes had once met and
+      then she remained, her soul in hers which were upon him, as she drank in
+      every word he uttered. Her time had not yet come.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Joan had remained standing by the chair, which a few moments before
+      her manner had seemed to transform into something like a witness stand in
+      a court of justice. Her hungry eyes had grown hungrier each second, and
+      her breath came and went quickly. The very face she had looked up at on
+      her last talk with T. Tembarom&mdash;the oddly human face&mdash;turned on
+      her as he came to her. It was just as it had been that night&mdash;just as
+      commonly uncommon and believable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Say, Lady Joan! You didn't believe all that guff, did you&mdash;You
+      didn't?&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No&mdash;no&mdash;no! I couldn't!&rdquo; she cried fiercely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He saw she was shaking with suspense, and he pushed her gently into a
+      chair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You'd better sit down a minute. You're about all in,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She might have been a woman with an ague as she caught his arm, shaking it
+      because her hands themselves so shook.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is it true?&rdquo; was her low cry. &ldquo;Is he alive&mdash;is he alive?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, he's alive.&rdquo; And as he answered he drew close and so placed himself
+      before her that he shielded her from the others in the room. He seemed to
+      manage to shut them out, so that when she dropped her face on her arms
+      against the chair-back her shuddering, silent sobbing was hidden decently.
+      It was not only his body which did it, but some protecting power which was
+      almost physically visible. She felt it spread before her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, he's alive,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;and he's all right&mdash;though it's been a
+      long time coming, by gee!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's alive.&rdquo; They all heard it. For a man of Palliser's make to stand
+      silent in the midst of mysterious slowly accumulating convictions that
+      some one&mdash;perilously of his own rarely inept type&mdash;was on the
+      verge of feeling appallingly like a fool&mdash;was momentarily
+      unendurable. And nothing had been explained, after all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is this what you call `bluff' in New York?&rdquo; he demanded. &ldquo;You've got a
+      lot to explain. You admit that Jem Temple Barholm is alive?&rdquo; and realized
+      his asinine error before the words were fully spoken.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The realization was the result of the square-shouldered swing with which
+      T. Tembarom turned round, and the expression of his eyes as they ran over
+      him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Admit!&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Admit hell! He's up-stairs,&rdquo; with a slight jerk of his
+      head in the direction of the ceiling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The duke alone did not gasp. He laughed slightly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We've just got here. He came down from London with me, and Sir Ormsby
+      Galloway.&rdquo; And he said it not to Palliser but to Palford and Grimby.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Sir Ormsby Galloway?&rdquo; It was an ejaculation from Mr. Palford himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      T. Tembarom stood square and gave his explanation to the lot of them, so
+      to speak, without distinction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's the big nerve specialist. I've had him looking after the case from
+      the first&mdash;before I began to suspect anything. I took orders, and
+      orders were to keep him quiet and not let any fool butt in and excite him.
+      That's what I've been giving my mind to. The great stunt was to get him to
+      go and stay at Sir Ormsby's place.&rdquo; He stopped a moment and suddenly
+      flared forth as if he had had about enough of it. He almost shouted at
+      them in exasperation. &ldquo;All I'm going to tell you is that for about six
+      months I've been trying to prove that Jem Temple Barholm was Jem Temple
+      Barholm, and the hardest thing I had to do was to get him so that he could
+      prove it himself.&rdquo; He strode over to the hearth and rang a bell. &ldquo;It's not
+      my place to give orders here now,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;but Jem commissioned me to
+      see this thing through. Sir Ormsby'll tell you all you want to hear.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He turned and spoke solely to the duke.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This is what happened,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I dare say you'll laugh when you hear
+      it. I almost laughed myself. What does Jem do, when he thinks things over,
+      but get some fool notion in his head about not coming back here and
+      pushing me out. And he lights out and leaves the country&mdash;leaves it&mdash;to
+      get time to think it over some more.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The duke did not laugh. He merely smiled&mdash;a smile which had a shade
+      of curious self-questioning in it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Romantic and emotional&mdash;and quite ridiculous,&rdquo; he commented slowly.
+      &ldquo;He'd have awakened to that when he had thought it out `some more.' The
+      thing couldn't be done.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Burrill had presented himself in answer to the bell, and awaited orders.
+      His Grace called Tembarom's attention to him, and Tembarom included
+      Palliser with Palford and Grimby when he gave his gesture of instruction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Take these gentlemen to Sir Ormsby Galloway, and then ask Mr. Temple
+      Barholm if he'll come down-stairs,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is possible that Captain Palliser felt himself more irritatingly
+      infolded in the swathing realization that some one was in a ridiculous
+      position, and it is certain that Mr. Palford felt it necessary to preserve
+      an outwardly flawless dignity as the duke surprisingly left his chair and
+      joined them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let me go, too,&rdquo; he suggested; &ldquo;I may be able to assist in throwing
+      light.&rdquo; His including movement in Miss Alicia's direction was delightfully
+      gracious and friendly. It was inclusive of Mr. Hutchinson also.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will you come with us, Miss Temple Barholm?&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;And you too, Mr.
+      Hutchinson. We shall go over it all in its most interesting detail, and
+      you must be eager about it. I am myself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His happy and entirely correct idea was that the impending entrance of Mr.
+      James Temple Barholm would &ldquo;come off&rdquo; better in the absence of audience.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hutchinson almost bounced from his chair in his readiness. Miss Alicia
+      looked at Tembarom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, Miss Alicia,&rdquo; he answered her inquiring glance. &ldquo;You go, too. You'll
+      get it all over quicker.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rigid propriety forbade that Mr. Palford should express annoyance, but the
+      effort to restrain the expression of it was in his countenance. Was it
+      possible that the American habit of being jocular had actually held its
+      own in a matter as serious as this? And could even the most cynical and
+      light-minded of ducal personages have been involved in its unworthy
+      frivolities? But no one looked jocular&mdash;Tembarom's jaw was set in its
+      hard line, and the duke, taking up the broad ribbon of his rimless monocle
+      to fix the glass in his eye, wore the expression of a man whose sense of
+      humor was temporarily in abeyance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are we to understand that your Grace&mdash;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said his Grace a trifle curtly, &ldquo;I have known about it for some
+      time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But why was nobody told?&rdquo; put in Palliser.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why should people be told? There was nothing sufficiently definite to
+      tell. It was a waiting game.&rdquo; His Grace wasted no words. &ldquo;I was told. Mr.
+      Temple Barholm did not know England or English methods. His idea&mdash;perhaps
+      a mistaken one&mdash;was that an English duke ought to be able to advise
+      him. He came to me and made a clean breast of it. He goes straight at
+      things, that young fellow. Makes what he calls a `bee line.' Oh! I've been
+      in it&mdash;I 've been in it, I assure you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was as they crossed the hall that his Grace slightly laughed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It struck me as a sort of wild-goose chase at first. He had only a ghost
+      of a clue&mdash;a mere resemblance to a portrait. But he believed in it,
+      and he had an instinct.&rdquo; He laughed again. &ldquo;The dullest and most
+      unmelodramatic neighborhood in England has been taking part in a melodrama&mdash;but
+      there has been no villain in it&mdash;only a matter-of-fact young man,
+      working out a queer thing in his own queer, matter-of-fact way.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      When the door closed behind them, Tembarom went to Lady Joan. She had
+      risen and was standing before the window, her back to the room. She looked
+      tall and straight and tensely braced when she turned round, but there was
+      endurance, not fierceness in her eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did he leave the country knowing I was here&mdash;waiting?&rdquo; she asked.
+      Her voice was low and fatigued. She had remembered that years had passed,
+      and that it was perhaps after all only human that long anguish should blot
+      things out, and dull a hopeless man's memory.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; answered Tembarom sharply. &ldquo;He didn't. You weren't in it then. He
+      believed you'd married that Duke of Merthshire fellow. This is the way it
+      was: Let me tell it to you quick. A letter that had been wandering round
+      came to him the night before the cave-in, when they thought he was killed.
+      It told him old Temple Barholm was dead. He started out before daylight,
+      and you can bet he was strung up till he was near crazy with excitement.
+      He believed that if he was in England with plenty of money he could track
+      down that cardsharp lie. He believed you'd help him. Somewhere, while he
+      was traveling he came across an old paper with a lot of dope about your
+      being engaged.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Joan remembered well how her mother had worked to set the story afloat&mdash;how
+      they had gone through the most awful of their scenes&mdash;almost raving
+      at each other, shut up together in the boudoir in Hill Street.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's all he remembers, except that he thought some one had hit him a
+      crack on the head. Nothing had hit him. He'd had too much to stand up
+      under and something gave way in his brain. He doesn't know what happened
+      after that. He'd wake up sometimes just enough to know he was wandering
+      about trying to get home. It's been the limit to try to track him. If he'd
+      not come to himself we could never have been quite sure. That's why I
+      stuck at it. But he DID come to himself. All of a sudden. Sir Ormsby will
+      tell you that's what nearly always happens. They wake up all of a sudden.
+      It's all right; it's all right. I used to promise him it would be&mdash;when
+      I wasn't sure that I wasn't lying.&rdquo; And for the first time he broke into
+      the friendly grin&mdash;but it was more valiant than spontaneous. He
+      wanted her to know that it was &ldquo;all right.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; she cried, &ldquo;oh! you&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She stopped because the door was opening.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's Jem,&rdquo; he said sharply. &ldquo;Ann, let's go.&rdquo; And that instant Little Ann
+      was near him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No! no! don't go,&rdquo; cried Lady Joan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jem Temple Barholm came in through the doorway. Life and sound and breath
+      stopped for a second, and then the two whirled into each other's arms as
+      if a storm had swept them there.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Jem!&rdquo; she wailed. &ldquo;Oh, Jem! My man! Where have you been?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've been in hell, Joan&mdash;in hell!&rdquo; he answered, choking,&mdash;&ldquo;and
+      this wonderful fellow has dragged me out of it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Tembarom would have none of it. He could not stand it. This sort of
+      thing filled up his throat and put him at an overwhelming disadvantage. He
+      just laid a hand on Jem Temple Barholm's shoulder and gave him an
+      awkwardly friendly push.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Say, cut me out of it!&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;You get busy,&rdquo; his voice rather
+      breaking. &ldquo;You've got a lot to say to her. It was up to me before;&mdash;now,
+      it's up to you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Little Ann went with him into the next room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The room they went into was a smaller one, quiet, and its oriel windows
+      much overshadowed by trees. By the time they stood together in the center
+      of it Tembarom had swallowed something twice or thrice, and had recovered
+      himself. Even his old smile had come back as he took one of her hands in
+      each of his, and holding them wide apart stood and looked down at her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;God bless you, Little Ann,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I just knew I should find you here.
+      I'd have bet my last dollar on it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The hands he held were trembling just a little, and the dimples quivered
+      in and out. But her eyes were steady, and a lovely increasing intensity
+      glowed in them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You went after him and brought him back. He was all wrought up, and he
+      needed some one with good common sense to stop him in time to make him
+      think straight before he did anything silly,&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I says to him,&rdquo; T. Tembarom made the matter clear; &ldquo;`Say, you've left
+      something behind that belongs to you! Comeback and get it.' I meant Lady
+      Joan. And I says, `Good Lord, man, you're acting like a fellow in a play.
+      That place doesn't belong to me. It belongs to you. If it was mine, fair
+      and square, Little Willie'd hang on to it. There'd be no noble sacrifice
+      in his. You get a brace on.'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When they were talking in that silly way about you, and saying you'd run
+      away,&rdquo; said Little Ann, her face uplifted adoringly as she talked, &ldquo;I said
+      to father, `If he's gone, he's gone to get something. And he'll be likely
+      to bring it back.'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He almost dropped her hands and caught her to him then. But he saved
+      himself in time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now this great change has come,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;everything will be different.
+      The men you'll know will look like the pictures in the advertisements at
+      the backs of magazines&mdash;those fellows with chins and smooth hair. I
+      shall look like a chauffeur among them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But she did not blench in the least, though she remembered whose words he
+      was quoting. The intense and lovely femininity in her eyes only increased.
+      She came closer to him, and so because of his height had to look up more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You will always make jokes&mdash;but I don't care. I don't care for
+      anything but you,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I love your jokes; I love everything about
+      you: I love your eyes&mdash;and your voice&mdash;and your laugh. I love
+      your very clothes.&rdquo; Her voice quivered as her dimples did. &ldquo;These last
+      months I've sometimes felt as if I should die of loving you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a wonderful thing&mdash;wonderful. His eyes&mdash;his whole young
+      being had kindled as he looked down drinking in every word.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is that the kind of quiet little thing you are?&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, it is,&rdquo; she answered firmly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you're satisfied&mdash;you know, who it is I want?&mdash;You're ready
+      to do what you said you would that last night at Mrs. Bowse's?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you think?&rdquo; she said in her clear little voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He caught her then in a strong, hearty, young, joyous clutch.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You come to me, Little Ann. You come right to me,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0040" id="link2HCH0040">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XL
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Many an honest penny was turned, with the assistance of the romantic
+      Temple Barholm case, by writers of paragraphs for newspapers published in
+      the United States. It was not merely a romance which belonged to England
+      but was excitingly linked to America by the fact that its hero regarded
+      himself as an American, and had passed through all the picturesque
+      episodes of a most desirably struggling youth in the very streets of New
+      York itself, and had &ldquo;worked his way up&rdquo; to the proud position of society
+      reporter &ldquo;on&rdquo; a huge Sunday paper. It was generally considered to redound
+      largely to his credit that refusing &ldquo;in spite of all temptations to belong
+      to other nations,&rdquo; he had been born in Brooklyn, that he had worn ragged
+      clothes and shoes with holes in them, that he had blacked other people's
+      shoes, run errands, and sold newspapers there. If he had been a mere
+      English young man, one recounting of his romance would have disposed of
+      him; but as he was presented to the newspaper public every characteristic
+      lent itself to elaboration. He was, in fact, flaringly anecdotal. As a
+      newly elected President who has made boots or driven a canal-boat in his
+      unconsidered youth endears himself indescribably to both paragraph reader
+      and paragraph purveyor, so did T. Tembarom endear himself. For weeks, he
+      was a perennial fount. What quite credible story cannot be related of a
+      hungry lad who is wildly flung by chance into immense fortune and the laps
+      of dukes, so to speak? The feeblest imagination must be stirred by the
+      high color of such an episode, and stimulated to superb effort. Until the
+      public had become sated with reading anecdotes depicting the extent of his
+      early privations, and dwelling on illustrations which presented
+      lumber-yards in which he had slept, and the facades of tumble-down
+      tenements in which he had first beheld the light of day, he was a modest
+      source of income. Any lumber-yard or any tenement sufficiently dilapidated
+      would serve as a model; and the fact that in the shifting architectural
+      life of New York the actual original scenes of the incidents had been
+      demolished and built upon by new apartment-houses, or new railroad
+      stations, or new factories seventy-five stories high, was an unobstructing
+      triviality. Accounts of his manner of conducting himself in European
+      courts to which he had supposedly been bidden, of his immense popularity
+      in glittering circles, of his finely democratic bearing when confronted by
+      emperors surrounded by their guilty splendors, were the joy of remote
+      villages and towns. A thrifty and young minor novelist hastily
+      incorporated him in a serial, and syndicated it upon the spot under the
+      title of &ldquo;Living or Dead.&rdquo; Among its especial public it was a success of
+      such a nature as betrayed its author into as hastily writing a second
+      romance, which not being rendered stimulating by a foundation of fact
+      failed to repeat his triumph.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      T. Tembarom, reading in the library at Temple Barholm the first newspapers
+      sent from New York, smiled widely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You see they've got to say something, Jem,&rdquo; he explained. &ldquo;It's too big a
+      scoop to be passed over. Something's got to be turned in. And it means
+      money to the fellows, too. It's good copy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Suppose,&rdquo; suggested Jem, watching him with interest, &ldquo;you were to write
+      the facts yourself and pass them on to some decent chap who'd be glad to
+      get them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Glad!&rdquo; Tembarom flushed with delight. &ldquo;Any chap would be'way up in the
+      air at the chance. It's the best kind of stuff. Wouldn't you mind? Are you
+      sure you wouldn't?&rdquo; He was the warhorse snuffing battle from afar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jem Temple Barholm laughed outright at the gleam in his eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I shouldn't care a hang, dear fellow. And the fact that I objected
+      would not stop the story.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, it wouldn't, by gee! Say, I'll get Ann to help me, and we'll send it
+      to the man who took my place on the Earth. It'll mean board and boots to
+      him for a month if he works it right. And it'll be doing a good turn to
+      Galton, too. I shall be glad to see old Galton when I go back.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are quite sure you want to go back?&rdquo; inquired Jem. A certain glow of
+      feeling was always in his eyes when he turned them on T. Tembarom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Go back! I should smile! Of course I shall go back. I've got to get busy
+      for Hutchinson and I've got to get busy for myself. I guess there'll be
+      work to do that'll take me half over the world; but I'm going back first.
+      Ann's going with me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But there was no reference to a return to New York when the Sunday Earth
+      and other widely circulated weekly sheets gave prominence to the marriage
+      of Mr. Temple Temple Barholm and Miss Hutchinson, only child and heiress
+      of Mr. Joseph Hutchinson, the celebrated inventor. From a newspaper point
+      of view, the wedding had been rather unfairly quiet, and it was necessary
+      to fill space with a revival of the renowned story, with pictures of bride
+      and bridegroom, and of Temple Barholm surrounded by ancestral oaks. A
+      thriving business would have been done by the reporters if an ocean
+      greyhound had landed the pair at the dock some morning, and snap-shots
+      could have been taken as they crossed the gangway, and wearing apparel
+      described. But hope of such fortune was swept away by the closing
+      paragraph, which stated that Mr. and Mrs. Temple Barholm would &ldquo;spend the
+      next two months in motoring through Italy and Spain in their 90 h.p.
+      Panhard.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was T. Tembarom who sent this last item privately to Galton.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's not true,&rdquo; his letter added, &ldquo;but what I'm going to do is nobody's
+      business but mine and my wife's, and this will suit people just as well.&rdquo;
+       And then he confided to Galton the thing which was the truth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The St. Francesca apartment-house was a very new one, situated on a corner
+      of an as yet sparsely built but rapidly spreading avenue above the &ldquo;100th
+      Streets&rdquo;&mdash;many numbers above them. There was a frankly unfinished air
+      about the neighborhood, but here and there a &ldquo;store&rdquo; had broken forth and
+      valiantly displayed necessities, and even articles verging upon the
+      economically ornamental. It was plainly imperative that the idea should be
+      suggested that there were on the spot sources of supply not requiring the
+      immediate employment of the services of the elevated railroad in the
+      achievement of purchase, and also that enterprise rightly encouraged might
+      develop into being equal to all demands. Here and there an exceedingly
+      fresh and clean &ldquo;market store,&rdquo; brilliant with the highly colored labels
+      adorning tinned soups and meats and edibles in glass jars, alluringly
+      presented itself to the passer-by. The elevated railroad perched upon iron
+      supports, and with iron stairways so tall that they looked almost
+      perilous, was a prominent feature of the landscape. There were stretches
+      of waste ground, and high backgrounds of bits of country and woodland to
+      be seen. The rush of New York traffic had not yet reached the streets, and
+      the avenue was of an agreeable suburban cleanliness and calm. People who
+      lived in upper stories could pride themselves on having &ldquo;views of the
+      river.&rdquo; These they laid stress upon when it was hinted that they &ldquo;lived a
+      long way uptown.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The St. Francesca was built of light-brown stone and decorated with much
+      ornate molding. It was fourteen stories high, and was supplied with
+      ornamental fire-escapes. It was &ldquo;no slouch of a building.&rdquo; Everything
+      decorative which could be done for it had been done. The entrance was
+      almost imposing, and a generous lavishness in the way of cement mosaic
+      flooring and new and thick red carpet struck the eye at once. The
+      grill-work of the elevator was of fresh, bright blackness, picked out with
+      gold, and the colored elevator-boy wore a blue livery with brass buttons.
+      Persons of limited means who were willing to discard the excitements of
+      &ldquo;downtown&rdquo; got a good deal for their money, and frequently found
+      themselves secretly surprised and uplifted by the atmosphere of luxury
+      which greeted them when they entered their red-carpeted hall. It was
+      wonderful, they said, congratulating one another privately, how much
+      comfort and style you got in a New York apartment-house after you passed
+      the &ldquo;150ths.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      On a certain afternoon T. Tembarom, with his hat on the back of his head
+      and his arms full of parcels, having leaped off the &ldquo;L&rdquo; when it stopped at
+      the nearest station, darted up and down the iron stairways until he
+      reached the ground, and then hurried across the avenue to the St.
+      Francesca. He made long strides, and two or three times grinned as if
+      thinking of something highly amusing; and once or twice he began to
+      whistle and checked himself. He looked approvingly at the tall building
+      and its solidly balustraded entrance-steps as he approached it, and when
+      he entered the red-carpeted hall he gave greeting to a small mulatto boy
+      in livery.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hello, Tom! How's everything?&rdquo; he inquired, hilariously. &ldquo;You taking good
+      care of this building? Let any more eight-room apartments? You've got to
+      keep right on the job, you know. Can't have you loafing because you've got
+      those brass buttons.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The small page showed his teeth in gleeful appreciation of their friendly
+      intimacy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yassir. That's so,&rdquo; he answered. &ldquo;Mis' Barom she's waitin' for you. Them
+      carpets is come, sir. Tracy's wagon brought 'em 'bout an hour ago. I told
+      her I'd help her lay 'em if she wanted me to, but she said you was comin'
+      with the hammer an' tacks. 'Twarn't that she thought I was too little. It
+      was jest that there wasn't no tacks. I tol' her jest call me in any time
+      to do anythin' she want done, an' she said she would.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She'll do it,&rdquo; said T. Tembarom. &ldquo;You just keep on tap. I'm just counting
+      on you and Light here,&rdquo; taking in the elevator-boy as he stepped into the
+      elevator, &ldquo;to look after her when I'm out.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The elevator-boy grinned also, and the elevator shot up the shaft, the
+      numbers of the floors passing almost too rapidly to be distinguished. The
+      elevator was new and so was the boy, and it was the pride of his soul to
+      land each passenger at his own particular floor, as if he had been
+      propelled upward from a catapult. But he did not go too rapidly for this
+      passenger, at least, though a paper parcel or so was dropped in the
+      transit and had to be picked up when he stopped at floor fourteen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The red carpets were on the corridor there also, and fresh paint and paper
+      were on the walls. A few yards from the elevator he stopped at a door and
+      opened it with a latch-key, beaming with inordinate delight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The door opened into a narrow corridor leading into a small apartment, the
+      furniture of which was not yet set in order. A roll of carpet and some
+      mats stood in a corner, chairs and tables with burlaps round their legs
+      waited here and there, a cot with a mattress on it, evidently to be
+      transformed into a &ldquo;couch,&rdquo; held packages of bafflingly irregular shapes
+      and sizes. In the tiny kitchen new pots and pans and kettles, some still
+      wrapped in paper, tilted themselves at various angles on the gleaming new
+      range or on the closed lids of the doll-sized stationary wash-tubs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Little Ann had been very busy, and some of the things were unpacked. She
+      had been sweeping and mopping floors and polishing up remote corners, and
+      she had on a big white pinafore-apron with long sleeves, which transformed
+      her into a sort of small female chorister. She came into the narrow
+      corridor with a broom in her hand, her periwinkle-blue gaze as thrilled as
+      an excited child's when it attacks the arrangement of its first doll's
+      house. Her hair was a little ruffled where it showed below the white
+      kerchief she had tied over her head. The warm, daisy pinkness of her
+      cheeks was amazing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hello!&rdquo; called out Tembarom at sight of her. &ldquo;Are you there yet? I don't
+      believe it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I'm here,&rdquo; she answered, dimpling at him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not you!&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;You couldn't be! You've melted away. Let's see.&rdquo; And
+      he slid his parcels down on the cot and lifted her up in the air as if she
+      had been a baby. &ldquo;How can I tell, anyhow?&rdquo; he laughed out. &ldquo;You don't
+      weigh anything, and when a fellow squeezes you he's got to look out what
+      he's doing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He did not seem to &ldquo;look out&rdquo; particularly when he caught her to him in a
+      hug into which she appeared charmingly to melt. She made herself part of
+      it, with soft arms which went at once round his neck and held him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Say!&rdquo; he broke forth when he set her down. &ldquo;Do you think I'm not glad to
+      get back?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I don't, Tem,&rdquo; she answered, &ldquo;I know how glad you are by the way I'm
+      glad myself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You know just everything!&rdquo; he ejaculated, looking her over, &ldquo;just every
+      darned thing&mdash;God bless you! But don't you melt away, will you?
+      That's what I'm afraid of. I'll do any old thing on earth if you'll just
+      stay.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      That was his great joke,&mdash;though she knew it was not so great a joke
+      as it seemed,&mdash;that he would not believe that she was real, and
+      believed that she might disappear at any moment. They had been married
+      three weeks, and she still knew when she saw him pause to look at her that
+      he would suddenly seize and hold her fast, trying to laugh, sometimes not
+      with entire success.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you know how long it was? Do you know how far away that big place was
+      from everything in the world?&rdquo; he had said once. &ldquo;And me holding on and
+      gritting my teeth? And not a soul to open my mouth to! The old duke was
+      the only one who understood, anyhow. He'd been there.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll stay,&rdquo; she answered now, standing before him as he sat down on the
+      end of the &ldquo;couch.&rdquo; She put a firm, warm-palmed little hand on each side
+      of his face, and held it between them as she looked deep into his eyes.
+      &ldquo;You look at me, Tem&mdash;and see.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I believe it now,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;but I shan't in fifteen minutes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We're both right-down silly,&rdquo; she said, her soft, cosy laugh breaking
+      out. &ldquo;Look round this room and see what we've got to do. Let's begin this
+      minute. Did you get the groceries?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He sprang up and began to go over his packages triumphantly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tea, coffee, sugar, pepper, salt, beefsteak,&rdquo; he called out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We can't have beefsteak often,&rdquo; she said, soberly, &ldquo;if we're going to do
+      it on fifteen a week.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good Lord, no!&rdquo; he gave back to her, hilariously. &ldquo;But this is a Fifth
+      Avenue feed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let's take them into the kitchen and put them into the cupboard, and
+      untie the pots and pans.&rdquo; She was suddenly quite absorbed and
+      businesslike. &ldquo;We must make the room tidy and tack down the carpet, and
+      then cook the dinner.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He followed her and obeyed her like an enraptured boy. The wonder of her
+      was that, despite its unarranged air, the tiny place was already cleared
+      and set for action. She had done it all before she had swept out the
+      undiscovered corners. Everything was near the spot to which it belonged.
+      There was nothing to move or drag out of the way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I got it all ready to put straight,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;but I wanted you to
+      finish it with me. It wouldn't have seemed right if I'd done it without
+      you. It wouldn't have been as much OURS.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then came active service. She was like a small general commanding an army
+      of one. They put things on shelves; they hung things on hooks; they found
+      places in which things belonged; they set chairs and tables straight; and
+      then, after dusting and polishing them, set them at a more imposing angle;
+      they unrolled the little green carpet and tacked down its corners; and
+      transformed the cot into a &ldquo;couch&rdquo; by covering it with what Tracy's knew
+      as a &ldquo;throw&rdquo; and adorning one end of it with cotton-stuffed cushions. They
+      hung little photogravures on the walls and strung up some curtains before
+      the good-sized window, which looked down from an enormous height at the
+      top of four-storied houses, and took in beyond them the river and the
+      shore beyond. Because there was no fireplace Tembarom knocked up a shelf,
+      and, covering it with a scarf (from Tracy's), set up some inoffensive
+      ornaments on it and flanked them with photographs of Jem Temple Barholm,
+      Lady Joan in court dress, Miss Alicia in her prettiest cap, and the great
+      house with its huge terrace and the griffins.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ain't she a looker?&rdquo; Tembarom said of Lady Joan. &ldquo;And ain't Jem a looker,
+      too? Gee! they're a pair. Jem thinks this honeymoon stunt of ours is the
+      best thing he ever heard of&mdash;us fixing ourselves up here just like we
+      would have done if nothing had ever happened, and we'd HAD to do it on
+      fifteen per. Say,&rdquo; throwing an arm about her, &ldquo;are you getting as much fun
+      out of it as if we HAD to, as if I might lose my job any minute, and we
+      might get fired out of here because we couldn't pay the rent? I believe
+      you'd rather like to think I might ring you into some sort of trouble, so
+      that you could help me to get you out of it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's nonsense,&rdquo; she answered, with a sweet, untruthful little face. &ldquo;I
+      shouldn't be very sensible if I wasn't glad you COULDN'T lose your job.
+      Father and I are your job now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He laughed aloud. This was the innocent, fantastic truth of it. They had
+      chosen to do this thing&mdash;to spend their honey-moon in this particular
+      way, and there was no reason why they should not. The little dream which
+      had been of such unattainable proportions in the days of Mrs. Bowse's
+      boarding-house could be realized to its fullest. No one in the St.
+      Francesca apartments knew that the young honey-mooners in the five-roomed
+      apartment were other than Mr. and Mrs. T. Barholm, as recorded on the
+      tablet of names in the entrance. Hutchinson knew, and Miss Alicia knew,
+      and Jem Temple Barholm, and Lady Joan. The Duke of Stone knew, and thought
+      the old-fashionedness of the idea quite the last touch of modernity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did you see any one who knew you when you were out?&rdquo; Little Ann asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, and if I had they wouldn't have believed they'd seen me, because the
+      papers told them that Mr. and Mrs. Temple Barholm are spending their
+      honeymoon motoring through Spain in their ninety-horse-power Panhard.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let's go and get dinner,&rdquo; said Little Ann.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They went into the doll's-house kitchen and cooked the dinner. Little Ann
+      broiled steak and fried potato chips, and T. Tembarom produced a wonderful
+      custard pie he had bought at a confectioner's. He set the table, and put a
+      bunch of yellow daisies in the middle of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We couldn't do it every day on fifteen per week,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;If we wanted
+      flowers we should have to grow them in old tomato-cans.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Little Ann took off her chorister's-gown apron and her kerchief, and
+      patted and touched up her hair. She was pink to her ears, and had several
+      new dimples; and when she sat down opposite him, as she had sat that first
+      night at Mrs. Bowse's boarding-house supper, Tembarom stared at her and
+      caught his breath.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You ARE there?&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;ain't you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I am,&rdquo; she answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When they had cleared the table and washed the dishes, and had left the
+      toy kitchen spick and span, the ten million lights in New York were
+      lighted and casting their glow above the city. Tembarom sat down on the
+      Adams chair before the window and took Little Ann on his knee. She was of
+      the build which settles comfortably and with ease into soft curves whose
+      nearness is a caress. Looked down at from the fourteenth story of the St.
+      Francesca apartments, the lights strung themselves along lines of streets,
+      crossing and recrossing one another; they glowed and blazed against masses
+      of buildings, and they hung at enormous heights in mid-air here and there,
+      apparently without any support. Everywhere was the glow and dazzle of
+      their brilliancy of light, with the distant bee hum of a nearing elevated
+      train, at intervals gradually deepening into a roar. The river looked
+      miles below them, and craft with sparks or blaze of light went slowly or
+      swiftly to and fro.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's like a dream,&rdquo; said Little Ann, after a long silence. &ldquo;And we are up
+      here like birds in a nest.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He gave her a closer grip.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Miss Alicia once said that when I was almost down and out,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;It
+      gave me a jolt. She said a place like this would be like a nest. Wherever
+      we go,&mdash;and we'll have to go to lots of places and live in lots of
+      different ways,&mdash;we'll keep this place, and some time we'll bring her
+      here and let her try it. I've just got to show her New York.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, let us keep it,&rdquo; said Little Ann, drowsily, &ldquo;just for a nest.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was another silence, and the lights on the river far below still
+      twinkled or blazed as they drifted to and fro.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are there, ain't you?&rdquo; said Tembarom in a half-whisper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes&mdash;I am,&rdquo; murmured Little Ann.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But she had had a busy day, and when he looked down at her, she hung
+      softly against his shoulder, fast asleep.
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 6em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of T. Tembarom, by Frances Hodgson Burnett
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of T. Tembarom, by Frances Hodgson Burnett
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: T. Tembarom
+
+Author: Frances Hodgson Burnett
+
+
+Release Date: February, 2001  [Etext #2514]
+The actual date this file first posted = 03/10/01
+Last Updated: April 10, 2013
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK T. TEMBAROM ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+T. TEMBAROM
+
+By Frances Hodgson Burnett
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I:
+
+
+The boys at the Brooklyn public school which he attended did not know
+what the "T." stood for. He would never tell them. All he said in reply
+to questions was: "It don't stand for nothin'. You've gotter have
+a' 'nitial, ain't you?" His name was, in fact, an almost inevitable
+school-boy modification of one felt to be absurd and pretentious. His
+Christian name was Temple, which became "Temp." His surname was Barom,
+so he was at once "Temp Barom." In the natural tendency to avoid
+waste of time it was pronounced as one word, and the letter p being
+superfluous and cumbersome, it easily settled itself into "Tembarom,"
+and there remained. By much less inevitable processes have surnames
+evolved themselves as centuries rolled by. Tembarom liked it, and soon
+almost forgot he had ever been called anything else.
+
+His education really began when he was ten years old. At that time
+his mother died of pneumonia, contracted by going out to sew, at
+seventy-five cents a day, in shoes almost entirely without soles, when
+the remains of a blizzard were melting in the streets. As, after her
+funeral, there remained only twenty-five cents in the shabby bureau
+which was one of the few articles furnishing the room in the tenement in
+which they lived together, Tembarom sleeping on a cot, the world spread
+itself before him as a place to explore in search of at least one meal
+a day. There was nothing to do but to explore it to the best of his
+ten-year-old ability.
+
+His father had died two years before his mother, and Tembarom had
+vaguely felt it a relief. He had been a resentful, domestically
+tyrannical immigrant Englishman, who held in contempt every American
+trait and institution. He had come over to better himself, detesting
+England and the English because there was "no chance for a man there,"
+and, transferring his dislikes and resentments from one country to
+another, had met with no better luck than he had left behind him.
+This he felt to be the fault of America, and his family, which was
+represented solely by Tembarom and his mother, heard a good deal about
+it, and also, rather contradictorily, a good deal about the advantages
+and superiority of England, to which in the course of six months he
+became gloomily loyal. It was necessary, in fact, for him to have
+something with which to compare the United States unfavorably. The
+effect he produced on Tembarom was that of causing him, when he entered
+the public school round the corner, to conceal with determination
+verging on duplicity the humiliating fact that if he had not been born
+in Brooklyn he might have been born in England. England was not popular
+among the boys in the school. History had represented the country to
+them in all its tyrannical rapacity and bloodthirsty oppression of the
+humble free-born. The manly and admirable attitude was to say, "Give me
+liberty or give me death"--and there was the Fourth of July.
+
+Though Tembarom and his mother had been poor enough while his father
+lived, when he died the returns from his irregular odd jobs no longer
+came in to supplement his wife's sewing, and add an occasional day or
+two of fuller meals, in consequence of which they were oftener than ever
+hungry and cold, and in desperate trouble about the rent of their room.
+Tembarom, who was a wiry, enterprising little fellow, sometimes found an
+odd job himself. He carried notes and parcels when any one would trust
+him with them, he split old boxes into kindling-wood, more than once he
+"minded" a baby when its mother left its perambulator outside a store.
+But at eight or nine years of age one's pay is in proportion to one's
+size. Tembarom, however, had neither his father's bitter eye nor his
+mother's discouraged one. Something different from either had been
+reincarnated in him from some more cheerful past. He had an alluring
+grin instead--a grin which curled up his mouth and showed his sound,
+healthy, young teeth,--a lot of them,--and people liked to see them.
+
+At the beginning of the world it is only recently reasonable to suppose
+human beings were made with healthy bodies and healthy minds. That of
+course was the original scheme of the race. It would not have been
+worth while to create a lot of things aimlessly ill made. A journeyman
+carpenter would not waste his time in doing it, if he knew any better.
+Given the power to make a man, even an amateur would make him as
+straight as he could, inside and out. Decent vanity would compel him to
+do it. He would be ashamed to show the thing and admit he had done it,
+much less people a world with millions of like proofs of incompetence.
+Logically considered, the race was built straight and clean and healthy
+and happy. How, since then, it has developed in multitudinous less sane
+directions, and lost its normal straightness and proportions, I am,
+singularly enough, not entirely competent to explain with any degree of
+satisfactory detail. But it cannot be truthfully denied that this has
+rather generally happened. There are human beings who are not beautiful,
+there are those who are not healthy, there are those who hate people and
+things with much waste of physical and mental energy, there are people
+who are not unwilling to do others an ill turn by word or deed, and
+there are those who do not believe that the original scheme of the race
+was ever a decent one.
+
+This is all abnormal and unintelligent, even the not being beautiful,
+and sometimes one finds oneself called upon passionately to resist
+a temptation to listen to an internal hint that the whole thing is
+aimless. Upon this tendency one may as well put one's foot firmly, as it
+leads nowhere. At such times it is supporting to call to mind a certain
+undeniable fact which ought to loom up much larger in our philosophical
+calculations. No one has ever made a collection of statistics regarding
+the enormous number of perfectly sane, kind, friendly, decent creatures
+who form a large proportion of any mass of human beings anywhere and
+everywhere--people who are not vicious or cruel or depraved, not as a
+result of continual self-control, but simply because they do not want to
+be, because it is more natural and agreeable to be exactly the opposite
+things; people who do not tell lies because they could not do it with
+any pleasure, and would, on the contrary, find the exertion an annoyance
+and a bore; people whose manners and morals are good because their
+natural preference lies in that direction. There are millions of them
+who in most essays on life and living are virtually ignored because
+they do none of the things which call forth eloquent condemnation or
+brilliant cynicism. It has not yet become the fashion to record them.
+When one reads a daily newspaper filled with dramatic elaborations
+of crimes and unpleasantness, one sometimes wishes attention might be
+called to them--to their numbers, to their decencies, to their normal
+lack of any desire to do violence and their equally normal disposition
+to lend a hand. One is inclined to feel that the majority of persons do
+not believe in their existence. But if an accident occurs in the street,
+there are always several of them who appear to spring out of the earth
+to give human sympathy and assistance; if a national calamity, physical
+or social, takes place, the world suddenly seems full of them. They are
+the thousands of Browns, Joneses, and Robinsons who, massed
+together, send food to famine-stricken countries, sustenance to
+earthquake-devastated regions, aid to wounded soldiers or miners or
+flood-swept homelessness. They are the ones who have happened naturally
+to continue to grow straight and carry out the First Intention. They
+really form the majority; if they did not, the people of the earth would
+have eaten one another alive centuries ago. But though this is surely
+true, a happy cynicism totally disbelieves in their existence. When a
+combination of circumstances sufficiently dramatic brings one of them
+into prominence, he is either called an angel or a fool. He is neither.
+He is only a human creature who is normal.
+
+After this manner Tembarom was wholly normal. He liked work and rejoiced
+in good cheer, when he found it, however attenuated its form. He was a
+good companion, and even at ten years old a practical person. He took
+his loose coppers from the old bureau drawer, and remembering that he
+had several times helped Jake Hutchins to sell his newspapers, he went
+forth into the world to find and consult him as to the investment of his
+capital.
+
+"Where are you goin', Tem?" a woman who lived in the next room said when
+she met him on the stairs. "What you goin' to do?"
+
+"I'm goin' to sell newspapers if I can get some with this," he replied,
+opening his hand to show her the extent of his resources.
+
+She was almost as poor as he was, but not quite. She looked him over
+curiously for a moment, and then fumbled in her pocket. She drew out two
+ten-cent pieces and considered them, hesitating. Then she looked again
+at him. That normal expression in his nice ten-year-old eyes had its
+suggestive effect.
+
+"You take this," she said, handing him the two pieces. "It'll help you
+to start."
+
+"I'll bring it back, ma'am," said Tem. "Thank you, Mis' Hullingworth."
+
+In about two weeks' time he did bring it back. That was the beginning.
+He lived through all the experiences a small boy waif and stray would be
+likely to come in contact with. The abnormal class treated him ill, and
+the normal class treated him well. He managed to get enough food to eat
+to keep him from starvation. Sometimes he slept under a roof and much
+oftener out-of-doors. He preferred to sleep out-of-doors more than half
+of the year, and the rest of the time he did what he could. He saw and
+learned many strange things, but was not undermined by vice because he
+unconsciously preferred decency. He sold newspapers and annexed any old
+job which appeared on the horizon. The education the New York streets
+gave him was a liberal one. He became accustomed to heat and cold and
+wet weather, but having sound lungs and a tough little body combined
+with the normal tendencies already mentioned, he suffered no more
+physical deterioration than a young Indian would suffer. After selling
+newspapers for two years he got a place as "boy" in a small store. The
+advance signified by steady employment was inspiring to his energies. He
+forged ahead, and got a better job and better pay as he grew older. By
+the time he was fifteen he shared a small bedroom with another boy.
+In whatsoever quarter he lived, friends seemed sporadic. Other boy's
+congregated about him. He did not know he had any effect at all, but
+his effect, in fact, was rather like that of a fire in winter or a cool
+breeze in summer. It was natural to gather where it prevailed.
+
+There came a time when he went to a night class to learn stenography.
+Great excitement had been aroused among the boys he knew best by a
+rumor that there were "fellows" who could earn a hundred dollars a week
+"writing short." Boyhood could not resist the florid splendor of the
+idea. Four of them entered the class confidently looking forward to
+becoming the recipients of four hundred a month in the course of six
+weeks. One by one they dropped off, until only Tembarom remained, slowly
+forging ahead. He had never meant anything else but to get on in the
+world--to get as far as he could. He kept at his "short," and by the
+time he was nineteen it helped him to a place in a newspaper office.
+He took dictation from a nervous and harried editor, who, when he
+was driven to frenzy by overwork and incompetencies, found that the
+long-legged, clean youth with the grin never added fuel to the flame
+of his wrath. He was a common young man, who was not marked by special
+brilliancy of intelligence, but he had a clear head and a good temper,
+and a queer aptitude for being able to see himself in the other man's
+shoes--his difficulties and moods. This ended in his being tried with
+bits of new work now and then. In an emergency he was once sent out to
+report the details of a fire. What he brought back was usable, and his
+elation when he found he had actually "made good" was ingenuous enough
+to spur Galton, the editor, into trying him again.
+
+To Tembarom this was a magnificent experience. The literary suggestion
+implied by being "on a newspaper" was more than he had hoped for. If you
+have sold newspapers, and slept in a barrel or behind a pile of lumber
+in a wood-yard, to report a fire in a street-car shed seems a flight of
+literature. He applied himself to the careful study of newspapers--their
+points of view, their style of phrasing. He believed them to be perfect.
+To attain ease in expressing himself in their elevated language he felt
+to be the summit of lofty ambition. He had no doubts of the exaltation
+of his ideal. His respect and confidence almost made Galton cry at
+times, because they recalled to him days when he had been nineteen and
+had regarded New York journalists with reverence. He liked Tembarom more
+and more. It actually soothed him to have him about, and he fell into
+giving him one absurd little chance after another. When he brought in
+"stuff" which bore too evident marks of utter ignorance, he actually
+touched it up and used it, giving him an enlightening, ironical hint or
+so. Tembarom always took the hints with gratitude. He had no mistaken
+ideas of his own powers. Galton loomed up before him a sort of god, and
+though the editor was a man with a keen, though wearied, brain and a
+sense of humor, the situation was one naturally productive of harmonious
+relations. He was of the many who unknowingly came in out of the cold
+and stood in the glow of Tembarom's warm fire, or took refuge from the
+heat in his cool breeze. He did not know of the private, arduous study
+of journalistic style, and it was not unpleasing to see that the nice
+young cub was gradually improving. Through pure modest fear or ridicule,
+Tembarom kept to himself his vaulting ambition. He practised reports of
+fires, weddings, and accidents in his hall bedroom.
+
+A hall bedroom in a third-rate boarding-house is not a cheerful place,
+but when Tembarom vaguely felt this, he recalled the nights spent in
+empty trucks and behind lumber-piles, and thought he was getting spoiled
+by luxury. He told himself that he was a fellow who always had luck.
+He did not know, neither did any one else, that his luck would have
+followed him if he had lived in a coal-hole. It was the concomitant
+of his normal build and outlook on life. Mrs. Bowse, his hard-worked
+landlady, began by being calmed down by his mere bearing when he came
+to apply for his room and board. She had a touch of grippe, and had
+just emerged from a heated affray with a dirty cook, and was inclined to
+battle when he presented himself. In a few minutes she was inclined to
+battle no longer. She let him have the room. Cantankerous restrictions
+did not ruffle him.
+
+"Of course what you say GOES," he said, giving her his friendly grin.
+"Any one that takes boarders has GOT to be careful. You're in for a bad
+cold, ain't you?"
+
+"I've got grippe again, that's what I've got," she almost snapped.
+
+"Did you ever try Payson's 'G. Destroyer'? G stands for grippe, you
+know. Catchy name, ain't it? They say the man that invented it got ten
+thousand dollars for it. 'G. Destroyer.' You feel like you have to find
+out what it means when you see it up on a boarding. I'm just over grippe
+myself, and I've got half a bottle in my pocket. You carry it about with
+you, and swallow one every half-hour. You just try it. It set me right
+in no time."
+
+He took the bottle out of his waistcoat pocket and handed it to her. She
+took it and turned it over.
+
+"You're awful good-natured,"--She hesitated,--"but I ain't going to take
+your medicine. I ought to go and get some for myself. How much does it
+cost?"
+
+"It's on the bottle; but it's having to get it for yourself that's the
+matter. You won't have time, and you'll forget it."
+
+"That's true enough," said Mrs. Bowse, looking at him sharply. "I guess
+you know something about boarding-houses."
+
+"I guess I know something about trying to earn three meals a day--or two
+of them. It's no merry jest, whichever way you do it."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+When he took possession of his hall bedroom the next day and came down
+to his first meal, all the boarders looked at him interestedly. They had
+heard of the G. Destroyer from Mrs. Bowse, whose grippe had disappeared.
+Jim Bowles and Julius Steinberger looked at him because they were about
+his own age, and shared a hall bedroom on his floor; the young woman
+from the notion counter in a down-town department store looked at him
+because she was a young woman; the rest of the company looked at him
+because a young man in a hall bedroom might or might not be noisy
+or objectionable, and the incident of the G. Destroyer sounded
+good-natured. Mr. Joseph Hutchinson, the stout and discontented
+Englishman from Manchester, looked him over because the mere fact that
+he was a new-comer had placed him by his own rash act in the position of
+a target for criticism. Mr. Hutchinson had come to New York because he
+had been told that he could find backers among profuse and innumerable
+multi-millionaires for the invention which had been the haunting vision
+of his uninspiring life. He had not been met with the careless
+rapture which had been described to him, and he was becoming violently
+antagonistic to American capital and pessimistic in his views of
+American institutions. Like Tembarom's father, he was the resentful
+Englishman.
+
+"I don't think much o' that chap," he said in what he considered an
+undertone to his daughter, who sat beside him and tried to manage that
+he should not be infuriated by waiting for butter and bread and second
+helpings. A fine, healthy old feudal feeling that servants should be
+roared at if they did not "look sharp" when he wanted anything was one
+of his salient characteristics.
+
+"Wait a bit, Father; we don't know anything about him yet," Ann
+Hutchinson murmured quietly, hoping that his words had been lost in the
+clatter of knives and forks and dishes.
+
+As Tembarom had taken his seat, he had found that, when he looked across
+the table, he looked directly at Miss Hutchinson; and before the meal
+ended he felt that he was in great good luck to be placed opposite an
+object of such singular interest. He knew nothing about "types," but if
+he had been of those who do, he would probably have said to himself that
+she was of a type apart. As it was, he merely felt that she was of a
+kind one kept looking at whether one ought to or not. She was a little
+thing of that exceedingly light slimness of build which makes a girl a
+childish feather-weight. Few girls retain it after fourteen or fifteen.
+A wind might supposably have blown her away, but one knew it would not,
+because she was firm and steady on her small feet. Ordinary strength
+could have lifted her with one hand, and would have been tempted to do
+it. She had a slim, round throat, and the English daisy face it upheld
+caused it to suggest to the mind the stem of a flower. The roundness of
+her cheek, in and out of which totally unexpected dimples flickered,
+and the forget-me-not blueness of her eyes, which were large and rather
+round also, made her look like a nice baby of singularly serious and
+observing mind. She looked at one as certain awe-inspiring things in
+perambulators look at one--with a far and clear silence of gaze which
+passes beyond earthly obstacles and reserves a benign patience with
+follies. Tembarom felt interestedly that one really might quail before
+it, if one had anything of an inferior quality to hide. And yet it was
+not a critical gaze at all. She wore a black dress with a bit of white
+collar, and she had so much soft, red hair that he could not help
+recalling one or two women who owned the same quantity and seemed able
+to carry it only as a sort of untidy bundle. Hers looked entirely under
+control, and yet was such a wonder of burnished fullness that it tempted
+the hand to reach out and touch it. It became Tembarom's task during the
+meal to keep his eyes from turning too often toward it and its owner.
+
+If she had been a girl who took things hard, she might have taken her
+father very hard indeed. But opinions and feelings being solely a matter
+of points of view, she was very fond of him, and, regarding him as
+a sacred charge and duty, took care of him as though she had been a
+reverentially inclined mother taking care of a boisterous son. When his
+roar was heard, her calm little voice always fell quietly on indignant
+ears the moment it ceased. It was her part in life to act as a
+palliative: her mother, whose well-trained attitude toward the ruling
+domestic male was of the early Victorian order, had lived and died one.
+A nicer, warmer little woman had never existed. Joseph Hutchinson had
+adored and depended on her as much as he had harried her. When he had
+charged about like a mad bull because he could not button his collar, or
+find the pipe he had mislaid in his own pocket, she had never said more
+than "Now, Mr. Hutchinson," or done more than leave her sewing to button
+the collar with soothing fingers, and suggest quietly that sometimes he
+DID chance to carry his pipe about with him. She was of the class which
+used to call its husband by a respectful surname. When she died she left
+him as a sort of legacy to her daughter, spending the last weeks of her
+life in explaining affectionately all that "Father" needed to keep him
+quiet and make him comfortable.
+
+Little Ann had never forgotten a detail, and had even improved upon
+some of them, as she happened to be cleverer than her mother, and had,
+indeed, a far-seeing and clear young mind of her own. She had been
+called "Little Ann" all her life. This had held in the first place
+because her mother's name had been Ann also, and after her mother's
+death the diminutive had not fallen away from her. People felt it
+belonged to her not because she was especially little, though she was a
+small, light person, but because there was an affectionate humor in the
+sound of it.
+
+Despite her hard needs, Mrs. Bowse would have faced the chance of losing
+two boarders rather than have kept Mr. Joseph Hutchinson but for Little
+Ann. As it was, she kept them both, and in the course of three months
+the girl was Little Ann to almost every one in the house. Her normalness
+took the form of an instinct which amounted to genius for seeing what
+people ought to have, and in some occult way filling in bare or trying
+places.
+
+"She's just a wonder, that girl," Mrs. Bowse said to one boarder after
+another.
+
+"She's just a wonder," Jim Bowles and Julius Steinberger murmured to
+each other in rueful confidence, as they tilted their chairs against
+the wall of their hall bedroom and smoked. Each of the shabby and
+poverty-stricken young men had of course fallen hopelessly in love with
+her at once. This was merely human and inevitable, but realizing in
+the course of a few weeks that she was too busy taking care of her
+irritable, boisterous old Manchester father, and everybody else, to have
+time to be made love to even by young men who could buy new boots when
+the old ones had ceased to be water-tight, they were obliged to resign
+themselves to the, after all, comforting fact that she became a mother
+to them, not a sister. She mended their socks and sewed buttons on for
+them with a firm frankness which could not be persuaded into meaning
+anything more sentimental than a fixed habit of repairing anything which
+needed it, and which, while at first bewildering in its serenity, ended
+by reducing the two youths to a dust of devotion.
+
+"She's a wonder, she is," they sighed when at every weekend they found
+their forlorn and scanty washing resting tidily on their bed.
+
+In the course of a week, more or less, Tembarom's feeling for her would
+have been exactly that of his two hall-bedroom neighbors, but that his
+nature, though a practical one, was not inclined to any supine degree of
+resignation. He was a sensible youth, however, and gave no trouble. Even
+Joseph Hutchinson, who of course resented furiously any "nonsense" of
+which his daughter and possession was the object, became sufficiently
+mollified by his good spirits and ready good nature to refrain from open
+conversational assault.
+
+"I don't mind that chap as much as I did at first," he admitted
+reluctantly to Little Ann one evening after a good dinner and a
+comfortable pipe. "He's not such a fool as he looks."
+
+Tembarom was given, as Little Ann was, to seeing what people wanted. He
+knew when to pass the mustard and other straying condiments. He picked
+up things which dropped inconveniently, he did not interrupt the remarks
+of his elders and betters, and several times when he chanced to be
+in the hall, and saw Mr. Hutchinson, in irritable, stout Englishman
+fashion, struggling into his overcoat, he sprang forward with a light,
+friendly air and helped him. 'He did not do it with ostentatious
+politeness or with the manner of active youth giving generous aid to
+elderly avoirdupois. He did it as though it occurred to him as a natural
+result of being on the spot.
+
+It took Mrs. Bowse and her boarding-house less than a week definitely
+to like him. Every night when he sat down to dinner he brought news with
+him-news and jokes and new slang. Newspaper-office anecdote and talk
+gave a journalistic air to the gathering when he was present, and there
+was novelty in it. Soon every one was intimate with him, and interested
+in what he was doing. Galton's good-natured patronage of him was a thing
+to which no one was indifferent. It was felt to be the right thing in
+the right place. When he came home at night it became the custom to ask
+him questions as to the bits of luck which befell him. He became
+"T. T." instead of Mr. Tembarom, except to Joseph Hutchinson and his
+'daughter. Hutchinson called him Tembarom, but Little Ann said "Mr.
+Tembarom" with quaint frequency when she spoke to him.
+
+"Landed anything to-day, T. T.?" some one would ask almost every
+evening, and the interest in his relation of the day's adventures
+increased from week to week. Little Ann never asked questions and seldom
+made comments, but she always listened attentively. She had gathered,
+and guessed from what she had gathered, a rather definite idea of what
+his hard young life had been. He did not tell pathetic stories about
+himself, but he and Jim Bowles and Julius Steinberger had become fast
+friends, and the genial smoking of cheap tobacco in hall bedrooms tends
+to frankness of relation, and the various ways in which each had found
+himself "up against it" in the course of their brief years supplied
+material for anecdotal talk.
+
+"But it's bound to be easier from now on," he would say. "I've got the
+'short' down pretty fine--not fine enough to make big money, but enough
+to hold down a job with Galton. He's mighty good to me. If I knew more,
+I believe he'd give me a column to take care of--Up-town Society column
+perhaps. A fellow named Biker's got it. Twenty per. Goes on a bust twice
+a month, the fool. Gee! I wish I had his job!"
+
+Mrs. Bowse's house was provided with a parlor in which her boarders
+could sit in the evening when so inclined. It was a fearsome room,
+which, when the dark, high-ceilinged hall was entered, revealed depths
+of dingy gloom which appeared splashed in spots with incongruous
+brilliancy of color. This effect was produced by richly framed
+department-store chromo lithographs on the walls, aided by lurid
+cushion-covers, or "tidies" representing Indian maidens or chieftains
+in full war paint, or clusters of poppies of great boldness of hue.
+They had either been Christmas gifts bestowed upon Mrs. Bowse or
+department-store bargains of her own selection, purchased with thrifty
+intent. The red-and-green plush upholstered walnut chairs arid sofa had
+been acquired by her when the bankruptcy of a neighboring boarding-house
+brought them within her means. They were no longer very red or very
+green, and the cheerfully hopeful design of the tidies and cushions had
+been to conceal worn places and stains. The mantelpiece was adorned by a
+black-walnut-and-gold-framed mirror, and innumerable vases of the ornate
+ninety-eight-cents order. The centerpiece held a large and extremely
+soiled spray of artificial wistaria. The end of the room was rendered
+attractive by a tent-like cozy-corner built of savage weapons and
+Oriental cotton stuffs long ago become stringy and almost leprous in
+hue. The proprietor of the bankrupt boarding-house had been "artistic."
+But Mrs. Bowse was a good-enough soul whose boarders liked her and her
+house, and when the gas was lighted and some one played "rag-time" on
+the second-hand pianola, they liked the parlor.
+
+Little Ann did not often appear in it, but now and then she came down
+with her bit of sewing,--she always had a "bit of sewing,"--and she sat
+in the cozy-corner listening to the talk or letting some one confide
+troubles to her. Sometimes it was the New England widow, Mrs. Peck, who
+looked like a spinster school-ma'am, but who had a married son with a
+nice wife who lived in Harlem and drank heavily. She used to consult
+with Little Ann as to the possible wisdom of putting a drink deterrent
+privately in his tea. Sometimes it was Mr. Jakes, a depressed little
+man whose wife had left him, for no special reason he could discover.
+Oftenest perhaps it was Julius Steinberger or Jim Bowles who did
+their ingenuous best to present themselves to her as energetic, if not
+successful, young business men, not wholly unworthy of attention and
+always breathing daily increasing devotion. Sometimes it was Tembarom,
+of whom her opinion had never been expressed, but who seemed to have
+made friends with her. She liked to hear about the newspaper office and
+Mr. Galton, and never was uninterested in his hopes of "making good."
+She seemed to him the wisest and most direct and composed person he had
+ever known. She spoke with the broad, flat, friendly Manchester accent,
+and when she let drop a suggestion, it carried a delightfully sober
+conviction with it, because what she said was generally a revelation of
+logical mental argument concerning details she had gathered through her
+little way of listening and saying nothing whatever.
+
+"If Mr. Biker drinks, he won't keep his place," she said to Tembarom one
+night. "Perhaps you might get it yourself, if you persevere."
+
+Tembarom reddened a little. He really reddened through joyous
+excitement.
+
+"Say, I didn't know you knew a thing about that," he answered. "You're
+a regular wonder. You scarcely ever say anything, but the way you get on
+to things gets me."
+
+"Perhaps if I talked more I shouldn't notice as much," she said, turning
+her bit of sewing round and examining it. "I never was much of a talker.
+Father's a good talker, and Mother and me got into the way of listening.
+You do if you live with a good talker."
+
+Tembarom looked at the girl with a male gentleness, endeavoring to
+subdue open expression of the fact that he was convinced that she was as
+thoroughly aware of her father's salient characteristics as she was of
+other things.
+
+"You do," said Tembarom. Then picking up her scissors, which had dropped
+from her lap, and politely returning them, he added anxiously: "To think
+of you remembering Biker! I wonder, if I ever did get his job, if I
+could hold it down?"
+
+"Yes," decided Little Ann; "you could. I've noticed you're that kind of
+person, Mr. Tembarom."
+
+"Have you?" he said elatedly. "Say, honest Injun?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I shall be getting stuck on myself if you encourage me like that,"
+he said, and then, his face falling, he added, "Biker graduated at
+Princeton."
+
+"I don't know much about society," Little Ann remarked,--"I never saw
+any either up-town or down-town or in the country,--but I shouldn't
+think you'd have to have a college education to write the things you see
+about it in the newspaper paragraphs."
+
+Tembarom grinned.
+
+"They're not real high-brow stuff, are they," he said. "'There was
+a brilliant gathering on Tuesday evening at the house of Mr. Jacob
+Sturtburger at 79 Two Hundredth Street on the occasion of the marriage
+of his daughter Miss Rachel Sturtburger to Mr. Eichenstein. The bride
+was attired in white peau de cygne trimmed with duchess lace.'"
+
+Little Ann took him up. "I don't know what peau de cygne is, and I
+daresay the bride doesn't. I've never been to anything but a village
+school, but I could make up paragraphs like that myself."
+
+"That's the up-town kind," said Tembarom. "The down-town ones wear
+their mothers' point-lace wedding-veils some-times, but they're not much
+different. Say, I believe I could do it if I had luck."
+
+"So do I," returned Little Ann.
+
+Tembarom looked down at the carpet, thinking the thing over. Ann went on
+sewing.
+
+"That's the way with you," he said presently: "you put things into a
+fellow's head. You've given me a regular boost, Little Ann."
+
+It is not unlikely that but for the sensible conviction in her voice he
+would have felt less bold when, two weeks later, Biker, having gone upon
+a "bust" too prolonged, was dismissed with-out benefit of clergy, and
+Galton desperately turned to Tembarom with anxious question in his eye.
+
+"Do you think you could take this job?" he said.
+
+Tembarom's heart, as he believed at the time, jumped into his throat.
+
+"What do you think, Mr. Galton?" he asked.
+
+"It isn't a thing to think about," was Galton's answer. "It's a thing I
+must be sure of."
+
+"Well," said Tembarom, "if you give it to me, I'll put up a mighty hard
+fight before I fall down."
+
+Galton considered him, scrutinizing keenly his tough, long-built body,
+his sharp, eager, boyish face, and especially his companionable grin.
+
+"We'll let it go at that," he decided. "You'll make friends up in
+Harlem, and you won't find it hard to pick up news. We can at least try
+it."
+
+Tembarom's heart jumped into his throat again, and he swallowed it once
+more. He was glad he was not holding his hat in his hand because he knew
+he would have forgotten himself and thrown it up into the air.
+
+"Thank you, Mr. Galton," he said, flushing tremendously. "I'd like to
+tell you how I appreciate your trusting me, but I don't know how. Thank
+you, sir."
+
+When he appeared in Mrs. Bowse's dining-room that evening there was a
+glow of elation about him and a swing in his entry which attracted all
+eyes at once. For some unknown reason everybody looked at him, and,
+meeting his eyes, detected the presence of some new exultation.
+
+"Landed anything, T. T.?" Jim Bowles cried out. "You look it."
+
+"Sure I look it," Tembarom answered, taking his napkin out of its
+ring with an unconscious flourish. "I've landed the up-town society
+page--landed it, by gee!"
+
+A good-humored chorus of ejaculatory congratulation broke forth all
+round the table.
+
+"Good business!" "Three cheers for T. T.!" "Glad of it!" "Here's luck!"
+said one after another.
+
+They were all pleased, and it was generally felt that Galton had shown
+sense and done the right thing again. Even Mr. Hutchinson rolled about
+in his chair and grunted his approval.
+
+After dinner Tembarom, Jim Bowles, and Julius Steinberger went
+upstairs stairs together and filled the hall bedroom with clouds of
+tobacco-smoke, tilting their chairs against the wall, smoking their
+pipes furiously, flushed and talkative, working themselves up with the
+exhilarated plannings of youth. Jim Bowles and Julius had been down on
+their luck for several weeks, and that "good old T. T." should come in
+with this fairy-story was an actual stimulus. If you have never in your
+life been able to earn more than will pay for your food and lodging,
+twenty dollars looms up large. It might be the beginning of anything.
+
+"First thing is to get on to the way to do it," argued Tembarom. "I
+don't know the first thing. I've got to think it out. I couldn't ask
+Biker. He wouldn't tell me, anyhow."
+
+"He's pretty mad, I guess," said Steinberger.
+
+"Mad as hops," Tembarom answered. "As I was coming down-stairs from
+Galton's room he was standing in the hall talking to Miss Dooley, and
+he said: `That Tembarom fellow's going to do it! He doesn't know how to
+spell. I should like to see his stuff come in.' He said it loud, because
+he wanted me to hear it, and he sort of laughed through his nose."
+
+"Say, T. T., can you spell?" Jim inquired thoughtfully.
+
+"Spell? Me? No," Tembarom owned with unshaken good cheer. "What I've got
+to do is to get a tame dictionary and keep it chained to the leg of my
+table. Those words with two m's or two l's in them get me right down on
+the mat. But the thing that looks biggest to me is how to find out where
+the news is, and the name of the fellow that'll put me on to it. You
+can't go up a man's front steps and ring the bell and ask him if he's
+going to be married or buried or have a pink tea."
+
+"Wasn't that a knock at the door?" said Steinberger.
+
+It was a knock, and Tembarom jumped up and threw the door open, thinking
+Mrs. Bowse might have come on some household errand. But it was Little
+Ann Hutchinson instead of Mrs. Bowse, and there was a threaded needle
+stuck into the front of her dress, and she had on a thimble.
+
+"I want Mr. Bowles's new socks," she said maternally. "I promised I'd
+mark them for him."
+
+Bowles and Steinberger sprang from their chairs, and came forward in the
+usual comfortable glow of pleasure at sight of her.
+
+"What do you think of that for all the comforts of a home?" said
+Tembarom. "As if it wasn't enough for a man to have new socks without
+having marks put on them! What are your old socks made of anyhow--solid
+gold? Burglars ain't going to break in and steal them."
+
+"They won't when I've marked them, Mr. Tembarom," answered Little Ann,
+looking up at him with sober, round, for-get-me-not blue eyes, but with
+a deep dimple breaking out near her lip; "but all three pairs would not
+come home from the wash if I didn't."
+
+"Three pairs!" ejaculated Tembarom. "He's got three pairs of socks! New?
+That's what's been the matter with him for the last week. Don't you mark
+them for him, Little Ann. 'Tain't good for a man to have everything."
+
+"Here they are," said Jim, bringing them forward. "Twenty-five marked
+down to ten at Tracy's. Are they pretty good?"
+
+Little Ann looked them over with the practised eye of a connoisseur of
+bargains.
+
+"They'd be about a shilling in Manchester shops," she decided, "and they
+might be put down to sixpence. They're good enough to take care of."
+
+She was not the young woman who is ready for prolonged lively
+conversation in halls and at bedroom doors, and she had turned away with
+the new socks in her hand when Tembarom, suddenly inspired, darted after
+her.
+
+"Say, I've just thought of something," he exclaimed eagerly. "It's
+something I want to ask you."
+
+"What is it?"
+
+"It's about the society-page lay-out." He hesitated. "I wonder if it'd
+be rushing you too much if--say," he suddenly broke off, and standing
+with his hands in his pockets, looked down at her with anxious
+admiration, "I believe you just know about everything."
+
+"No, I don't, Mr. Tembarom; but I'm very glad about the page.
+Everybody's glad."
+
+One of the chief difficulties Tembarom found facing him when he talked
+to Little Ann was the difficulty of resisting an awful temptation to
+take hold of her--to clutch her to his healthy, tumultuous young breast
+and hold her there firmly. He was half ashamed of himself when he
+realized it, but he knew that his venial weakness was shared by Jim
+Bowles and Steinberger and probably others. She was so slim and light
+and soft, and the serious frankness of her eyes and the quaint air of
+being a sort of grown-up child of astonishing intelligence produced an
+effect it was necessary to combat with.
+
+"What I wanted to say," he put it to her, "was that I believe if you'd
+just let me talk this thing out to you it'd do me good. I believe you'd
+help me to get somewhere. I've got to fix up a scheme for getting next
+the people who have things happening to them that I can make society
+stuff out of, you know. Biker didn't make a hit of it, but, gee! I've
+just got to. I've got to."
+
+"Yes," answered Little Ann, her eyes fixed on him thoughtfully; "you've
+got to, Mr. Tembarom."
+
+"There's not a soul in the parlor. Would you mind coming down and
+sitting there while I talk at you and try to work things out? You could
+go on with your marking."
+
+She thought it over a minute.
+
+"I'll do it if Father can spare me," she made up her mind. "I'll go and
+ask him."
+
+She went to ask him, and returned in two or three minutes with her small
+sewing-basket in her hand.
+
+"He can spare me," she said. "He's reading his paper, and doesn't want
+to talk."
+
+They went down-stairs together and found the room empty. Tembarom turned
+up the lowered gas, and Little Ann sat down in the cozy-corner with her
+work-basket on her knee. Tembarom drew up a chair and sat down opposite
+to her. She threaded a needle and took up one of Jim's new socks.
+
+"Now," she said.
+
+"It's like this," he explained. "The page is a new deal, anyhow. There
+didn't used to be an up-town society column at all. It was all Fifth
+Avenue and the four hundred; but ours isn't a fashionable paper, and
+their four hundred ain't going to buy it to read their names in it.
+They'd rather pay to keep out of it. Uptown's growing like smoke, and
+there's lots of people up that way that'd like their friends to read
+about their weddings and receptions, and would buy a dozen copies to
+send away when their names were in. There's no end of women and girls
+that'd like to see their clothes described and let their friends read
+the descriptions. They'd buy the paper, too, you bet. It'll be a big
+circulation-increaser. It's Galton's idea, and he gave the job to Biker
+because he thought an educated fellow could get hold of people. But
+somehow he couldn't. Seems as if they didn't like him. He kept getting
+turned down. The page has been mighty poor--no pictures of brides or
+anything. Galton's been sick over it. He'd been sure it'd make a hit.
+Then Biker's always drinking more or less, and he's got the swell head,
+anyhow. I believe that's the reason he couldn't make good with the
+up-towners."
+
+"Perhaps he was too well educated, Mr. Tembarom," said Little Ann. She
+was marking a letter J in red cotton, and her outward attention was
+apparently wholly fixed on her work.
+
+"Say, now," Tembarom broke out, "there's where you come in. You go on
+working as if there was nothing but that sock in New York, but I guess
+you've just hit the dot. Perhaps that was it. He wanted to do Fifth
+Avenue work anyway, and he didn't go at Harlem right. He put on
+Princeton airs when he asked questions. Gee! a fellow can't put on any
+kind of airs when he's the one that's got to ask."
+
+"You'll get on better," remarked Little Ann. "You've got a friendly way
+and you've a lot of sense. I've noticed it."
+
+Her head was bent over the red J and she still looked at it and not at
+Tembarom. This was not coyness, but simple, calm absorption. If she had
+not been making the J, she would have sat with her hands folded in her
+lap, and gazed at the young man with undisturbed attention.
+
+"Have you?" said Tembarom, gratefully. "That gives me another
+boost, Little Ann. What a man seems to need most is just plain
+twenty-cents-a-yard sense. Not that I ever thought I had the dollar
+kind. I'm not putting on airs."
+
+"Mr. Galton knows the kind you have. I suppose that's why he gave you
+the page." The words, spoken in the shrewd-sounding Manchester accent,
+were neither flattering nor unflattering; they were merely impartial.
+
+"Well, now I've got it, I can't fall down," said Tembarom. "I've got
+to find out for myself how to get next to the people I want to talk to.
+I've got to find out who to get next to."
+
+Little Ann put in the final red stitch of the letter J and laid the sock
+neatly folded on the basket.
+
+"I've just been thinking something, Mr. Tembarom," she said. "Who makes
+the wedding-cakes?"
+
+He gave a delighted start.
+
+"Gee!" he broke out, "the wedding-cakes!"
+
+"Yes," Little Ann proceeded, "they'd have to have wedding-cakes, and
+perhaps if you went to the shops where they're sold and could make
+friends with the people, they'd tell you whom they were selling them to,
+and you could get the addresses and go and find out things."
+
+Tembarom, glowing with admiring enthusiasm, thrust out his hand.
+
+"Little Ann, shake!" he said. "You've given me the whole show, just
+like I thought you would. You're just the limit."
+
+"Well, a wedding-cake's the next thing after the bride," she answered.
+
+Her practical little head had given him the practical lead. The mere
+wedding-cake opened up vistas. Confectioners supplied not only weddings,
+but refreshments for receptions and dances. Dances suggested the "halls"
+in which they were held. You could get information at such places. Then
+there were the churches, and the florists who decorated festal scenes.
+Tembarom's excitement grew as he talked. One plan led to another; vistas
+opened on all sides. It all began to look so easy that he could not
+understand how Biker could possibly have gone into such a land of
+promise, and returned embittered and empty-handed.
+
+"He thought too much of himself and too little of other people," Little
+Ann summed him up in her unsevere, reasonable voice. "That's so silly."
+
+Tembarom tried not to look at her affectionately, but his voice was
+affectionate as well as admiring, despite him.
+
+"The way you get on to a thing just in three words!" he said. "Daniel
+Webster ain't in it."
+
+"I dare say if you let the people in the shops know that you come from a
+newspaper, it'll be a help," she went on with ingenuous worldly wisdom.
+"They'll think it'll be a kind of advertisement. And so it will. You get
+some neat cards printed with your name and Sunday Earth on them."
+
+"Gee!" Tembarom ejaculated, slapping his knee, "there's another! You
+think of every darned thing, don't you?"
+
+She stopped a moment to look at him.
+
+"You'd have thought of it all yourself after a bit," she said. She was
+not of those unseemly women whose intention it is manifestly to instruct
+the superior man. She had been born in a small Manchester street
+and trained by her mother, whose own training had evolved through
+affectionately discreet conjugal management of Mr. Hutchinson.
+
+"Never you let a man feel set down when you want him to see a thing
+reasonable, Ann," she had said. "You never get on with them if you do.
+They can't stand it. The Almighty seemed to make 'em that way. They've
+always been masters, and it don't hurt any woman to let 'em be, if she
+can help 'em to think reasonable. Just you make a man feel comfortable
+in his mind and push him the reasonable way. But never you shove him,
+Ann. If you do, he'll just get all upset-like. Me and your father have
+been right-down happy together, but we never should have been if I
+hadn't thought that out before we was married two weeks. Perhaps it's
+the Almighty's will, though I never was as sure of the Almighty's way of
+thinking as some are."
+
+Of course Tembarom felt soothed and encouraged, though he belonged
+to the male development which is not automatically infuriated at a
+suspicion of female readiness of logic.
+
+"Well, I might have got on to it in time," he answered, still trying
+not to look affectionate, "but I've no time to spare. Gee! but I'm glad
+you're here!"
+
+"I sha'n't be here very long." There was a shade of patient regret in
+her voice. "Father's got tired of trying America. He's been disappointed
+too often. He's going back to England."
+
+"Back to England!" Tembarom cried out forlornly, "Oh Lord! What shall we
+all do without you, Ann?"
+
+"You'll do as you did before we came," said Little Ann.
+
+"No, we sha'n't. We can't. I can't anyhow." He actually got up from
+his chair and began to walk about, with his hands thrust deep in his
+pockets.
+
+Little Ann began to put her first stitches into a red B. No human being
+could have told what she thought.
+
+"We mustn't waste time talking about that," she said. "Let us talk about
+the page. There are dressmakers, you know. If you could make friends
+with a dressmaker or two they'd tell you what the wedding things were
+really made of. Women do like their clothes to be described right."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+His work upon the page began the following week. When the first morning
+of his campaign opened with a tumultuous blizzard, Jim Bowles and Julius
+Steinberger privately sympathized with him as they dressed in company,
+but they heard him whistling in his own hall bedroom as he put on his
+clothes, and to none of the three did it occur that time could be lost
+because the weather was inhuman. Blinding snow was being whirled through
+the air by a wind which had bellowed across the bay, and torn its way
+howling through the streets, maltreating people as it went, snatching
+their breath out of them, and leaving them gaspingly clutching at hats
+and bending their bodies before it. Street-cars went by loaded from
+front to back platform, and were forced from want of room to whizz
+heartlessly by groups waiting anxiously at street corners.
+
+Tembarom saw two or three of them pass in this way, leaving the waiting
+ones desperately huddled together behind them. He braced himself and
+whistled louder as he buttoned his celluloid collar.
+
+"I'm going to get up to Harlem all the same," he said. "The 'L' will be
+just as jammed, but there'll be a place somewhere, and I'll get it."
+
+His clothes were the outwardly decent ones of a young man who
+must perforce seek cheap clothing-stores, and to whom a ten-dollar
+"hand-me-down" is a source of exultant rejoicing. With the aid of great
+care and a straight, well-formed young body, he managed to make the
+best of them; but they were not to be counted upon for warmth even in
+ordinarily cold weather. His overcoat was a specious covering, and was
+not infrequently odorous of naphtha.
+
+"You've got to know something about first aid to the wounded if you live
+on ten per," he had said once to Little Ann. "A suit of clothes gets to
+be an emergency-case mighty often if it lasts three years."
+
+"Going up to Harlem to-day, T. T.?" his neighbor at table asked him as
+he sat down to breakfast.
+
+"Right there," he answered. "I've ordered the limousine round, with the
+foot-warmer and fur rugs."
+
+"I guess a day wouldn't really matter much," said Mrs. Bowse,
+good-naturedly. "Perhaps it might be better to-morrow."
+
+"And perhaps it mightn't," said Tembarom, eating "break-fast-food" with
+a cheerful appetite. "What you can't be stone-cold sure of to-morrow you
+drive a nail in to-day."
+
+He ate a tremendous breakfast as a discreet precautionary measure.
+The dark dining-room was warm, and the food was substantial. It was
+comfortable in its way.
+
+"You'd better hold the hall door pretty tight when you go out, and don't
+open it far," said Mrs. Bowse as he got up to go. "There's wind enough
+to upset things."
+
+Tembarom went out in the hall, and put on his insufficient overcoat. He
+buttoned it across his chest, and turned its collar up to his ears. Then
+he bent down to turn up the bottoms of his trousers.
+
+"A pair of arctics would be all to the merry right here," he said,
+and then he stood upright and saw Little Ann coming down the staircase
+holding in her hand a particularly ugly tar-tan-plaid woolen neck-scarf
+of the kind known in England as a "comforter."
+
+"If you are going out in this kind of weather," she said in her serene,
+decided little voice, "you'd better wrap this comforter right round your
+neck, Mr. Tembarom. It's one of Father's, and he can spare it because
+he's got another, and, besides, he's not going out."
+
+Tembarom took it with a sudden emotional perception of the fact that he
+was being taken care of in an abnormally luxurious manner.
+
+"Now, I appreciate that," he said. "The thing about you. Little Ann, is
+that you never make a wrong guess about what a fellow needs, do you?"
+
+"I'm too used to taking care of Father not to see things," she answered.
+
+"What you get on to is how to take care of the whole world--initials
+on a fellow's socks and mufflers round his neck." His eyes looked
+remarkably bright.
+
+"If a person were taking care of the whole world, he'd have a lot to
+do," was her sedate reception of the remark. "You'd better put that
+twice round your neck, Mr. Tembarom."
+
+She put up her hand to draw the end of the scarf over his shoulder,
+and Tembarom stood still at once, as though he were a little boy being
+dressed for school. He looked down at her round cheek, and watched one
+of the unexpected dimples reveal itself in a place where dimples are not
+usually anticipated. It was coming out because she was smiling a small,
+observing smile. It was an almost exciting thing to look at, and he
+stood very still indeed. A fellow who did not own two pairs of boots
+would be a fool not to keep quiet.
+
+"You haven't told me I oughtn't to go out till the blizzard lets up," he
+said presently.
+
+"No, I haven't, Mr. Tembarom," she answered. "You're one of the kind
+that mean to do a thing when they've made up their minds. It'll be a
+nice bit of money if you can keep the page."
+
+"Galton said he'd give me a chance to try to make good," said Tembarom.
+"And if it's the hit he thinks it ought to be, he'll raise me ten.
+Thirty per. Vanastorbilts won't be in it. I think I'll get married," he
+added, showing all his attractive teeth at once.
+
+"I wouldn't do that," she said. "It wouldn't be enough to depend on. New
+York's an expensive place."
+
+She drew back and looked him over. "That'll keep you much warmer," she
+decided. "Now you can go. I've been looking in the telephone-book for
+confectioners, and I've written down these addresses." She handed him a
+slip of paper.
+
+Tembarom caught his breath.
+
+"Hully gee!" he exclaimed, "there never were TWO of you made! One used
+up all there was of it. How am I going to thank you, anyhow!"
+
+"I do hope you'll be able to keep the page," she said. "I do that, Mr.
+Tembarom."
+
+If there had been a touch of coquetry in her earnest, sober, round,
+little face she would have been less distractingly alluring, but there
+was no shade of anything but a sort of softly motherly anxiety in the
+dropped note of her voice, and it was almost more than flesh and blood
+at twenty-five could stand. Tembarom made a hasty, involuntary
+move toward her, but it was only a slight one, and it was scarcely
+perceptible before he had himself in hand and hurriedly twisted his
+muffler tighter, showing his teeth again cheerily.
+
+"You keep on hoping it all day without a let-up," he said. "And tell Mr.
+Hutchinson I'm obliged to him, please. Get out of the way, Little Ann,
+while I go out. The wind might blow you and the hat-stand upstairs."
+
+He opened the door and dashed down the high steps into the full blast
+of the blizzard. He waited at the street corner while three overcrowded
+cars whizzed past him, ignoring his signals because there was not an
+inch of space left in them for another passenger. Then he fought his
+way across two or three blocks to the nearest "L" station. He managed to
+wedge himself into a train there, and then at least he was on his way.
+He was thinking hard and fast, but through all his planning the warm hug
+of the tartan comforter round his neck kept Little Ann near him. He had
+been very thankful for the additional warmth as the whirling snow and
+wind had wrought their will with him while he waited for the cars at the
+street corner. On the "L" train he saw her serious eyes and heard the
+motherly drop in her voice as she said, "I do hope you'll be able to
+keep the page. I do that, Mr. Tembarom." It made him shut his hands hard
+as they hung in his overcoat pockets for warmth, and it made him shut
+his sound teeth strongly.
+
+"Gee! I've got to!" his thoughts said for him. "If I make it, perhaps
+my luck will have started. When a man's luck gets started, every darned
+thing's to the good."
+
+The "L" had dropped most of its crowd when it reached the up-town
+station among the hundredth streets which was his destination. He
+tightened his comforter, tucked the ends firmly into the front of his
+overcoat, and started out along the platform past the office, and down
+the steep, iron steps, already perilous with freezing snow. He had to
+stop to get his breath when he reached the street, but he did not stop
+long. He charged forth again along the pavement, looking closely at the
+shop-windows. There were naturally but few passers-by, and the shops
+were not important-looking; but they were open, and he could see
+that the insides of them looked comfortable in contrast with the
+blizzard-ruled street. He could not see both sides of the street as he
+walked up one side of the block without coming upon a confectioner's.
+He crossed at the corner and turned back on the other side. Presently
+he saw that a light van was standing before one place, backed up against
+the sidewalk to receive parcels, its shuddering horse holding its head
+down and bracing itself with its forelegs against the wind. At any rate,
+something was going on there, and he hurried forward to find out what
+it was. The air was so thick with myriads of madly flying bits of snow,
+which seemed whirled in all directions in the air, that he could not
+see anything definite even a few yards away. When he reached the van
+he found that he had also reached his confectioner. The sign over the
+window read "M. Munsberg, Confectionery. Cakes. Ice-Cream. Weddings,
+Balls and Receptions."
+
+"Made a start, anyhow," said Tembarom.
+
+He turned into the store, opening the door carefully, and thereby barely
+escaping being blown violently against a stout, excited, middle-aged
+little Jew who was bending over a box he was packing. This was evidently
+Mr. Munsberg, who was extremely busy, and even the modified shock upset
+his temper.
+
+"Vhere you goin'?" he cried out. "Can't you look vhere you're goin'?"
+
+Tembarom knew this was not a good beginning, but his natural mental
+habit of vividly seeing the other man's point of view helped him after
+its usual custom. His nice grin showed itself.
+
+"I wasn't going; I was coming," he said. "Beg pardon. The wind's blowing
+a hundred miles an hour."
+
+A good-looking young woman, who was probably Mrs. Munsberg, was packing
+a smaller box behind the counter. Tembarom lifted his hat, and she liked
+it.
+
+"He didn't do it a bit fresh," she said later. "Kind o' nice." She spoke
+to him with professional politeness.
+
+"Is there anything you want?" she asked.
+
+Tembarom glanced at the boxes and packages standing about and at
+Munsberg, who had bent over his packing again. Here was an occasion for
+practical tact.
+
+"I've blown in at the wrong time," he said. "You're busy getting things
+out on time. I'll just wait.. Gee! I'm glad to be inside. I want to
+speak to Mr. Munsberg."
+
+Mr. Munsberg jerked himself upright irascibly, and broke forth in the
+accent of the New York German Jew.
+
+"If you comin' in here to try to sell somedings, young man, joost you
+let that same vind vat blew you in blow you right out pretty quick. I'm
+not buyin' nodings. I'm busy."
+
+"I'm not selling a darned thing," answered Tembarom, with undismayed
+cheer.
+
+"You vant someding?" jerked out Munsberg.
+
+"Yes, I want something," Tembarom answered, "but it's nothing any one
+has to pay for. I'm only a newspaper man." He felt a glow of pride as he
+said the words. He was a newspaper man even now. "Don't let me stop you
+a minute. I'm in luck to get inside anywhere and sit down. Let me wait."
+
+Mrs. Munsberg read the Sunday papers and revered them. She also knew
+the value of advertisement. She caught her husband's eye and hurriedly
+winked at him.
+
+"It's awful outside. 'T won't do harm if he waits--if he ain't no
+agent," she put in.
+
+"See," said Tembarom, handing over one of the cards which had been
+Little Ann's businesslike inspiration.
+
+"T. Tembarom. New York Sunday Earth," read Munsberg, rather grudgingly.
+He looked at T. Tembarom, and T. Tembarom looked back at him. The normal
+human friendliness in the sharp boyish face did it.
+
+"Vell," he said, making another jerk toward a chair, "if you ain't no
+agent, you can vait."
+
+"Thank you," said Tembarom, and sat down. He had made another start,
+anyhow.
+
+After this the packing went on fast and furious. A youth appeared
+from the back of the store, and ran here and there as he was ordered.
+Munsberg and his wife filled wooden and cardboard boxes with small cakes
+and larger ones, with sandwiches and salads, candies and crystallized
+fruits. Into the larger box was placed a huge cake with an icing temple
+on the top of it, with silver doves adorning it outside and in. There
+was no mistaking the poetic significance of that cake. Outside the
+blizzard whirled clouds of snow-particles through the air, and the van
+horse kept his head down and his forelegs braced. His driver had long
+since tried to cover him with a blanket which the wind continually
+tore loose from its fastenings, and flapped about the creature's sides.
+Inside the store grew hot. There was hurried moving about, banging
+of doors, excited voices, irascible orders given and countermanded.
+Tembarom found out in five minutes that the refreshments were for a
+wedding reception to be held at a place known as "The Hall," and the
+goods must be sent out in time to be ready for the preparations for the
+wedding supper that night.
+
+"If I knew how to handle it, I could get stuff for a column just sitting
+here," he thought. He kept both eyes and ears open. He was sharp enough
+to realize that the mere sense of familiarity with detail which he was
+gaining was material in itself. Once or twice he got up and lent a hand
+with a box in his casual way, and once or twice he saw that he could
+lift some-thing down or up for Mrs. Munsberg, who was a little woman.
+The natural casualness of his way of jumping up to do the things
+prevented any suspicion of officiousness, and also prevented his waiting
+figure from beginning to wear the air of a superfluous object in the
+way. He waited a long time, and circumstances so favored him as to give
+him a chance or so. More than once exactly the right moment presented
+itself when he could interject an apposite remark. Twice he made
+Munsberg laugh, and twice Mrs. Munsberg voluntarily addressed him.
+
+At last the boxes and parcels ware all carried out and stored in the
+van, after strugglings with the opening and shutting of doors, and
+battlings with outside weather.
+
+When this was all over, Munsberg came back into the store, knocking his
+hands together and out of breath.
+
+"Dot's all right," he said. "It'll all be there plenty time. Vouldn't
+have fell down on that order for tventy-vive dollars. Dot temple on the
+cake was splendid. Joseph he done it fine."
+
+"He never done nothin' no finer," Mrs. Munsberg said. "It looked as good
+as anything on Fift' Avenoo."
+
+Both were relieved and pleased with themselves, their store, and their
+cake-decorator. Munsberg spoke to Tembarom in the manner of a man who,
+having done a good thing, does not mind talking about it.
+
+"Dot was a big order," he remarked.
+
+"I should smile," answered Tembarom. "I'd like to know whose going to
+get outside all that good stuff. That wedding-cake took the tart away
+from anything I've ever seen. Which of the four hundred's going to eat
+it?"
+
+"De man vot ordered dot cake," Munsberg swaggered, "he's not got to
+vorry along on vun million nor two. He owns de biggest brewery in New
+York, I guess in America. He's Schwartz of Schwartz & Kapfer."
+
+"Well, he 's got it to burn!" said Tembarom.
+
+"He's a mighty good man," went on Munsberg. "He's mighty fond of his
+own people. He made his first money in Harlem, and he had a big fight
+to get it; but his own people vas good to him, an' he's never forgot
+it. He's built a fine house here, an' his girls is fine girls. De vun's
+goin' to be married to-night her name's Rachel, an' she's goin' to marry
+a nice feller, Louis Levy. Levy built the big entertainment-hall vhere
+the reception's goin' to be. It's decorated vith two thousand dollars'
+worth of bride roses an' lilies of de valley an' smilax. All de up-town
+places vas bought out, an' den Schwartz vent down Fift' Avenoo."
+
+The right moment had plainly arrived.
+
+"Say, Mr. Munsberg," Tembarom broke forth, "you're giving me just what
+I wanted to ask you for. I'm the new up-town society reporter for the
+Sunday Earth, and I came in here to see if you wouldn't help me to get a
+show at finding out who was going to have weddings and society doings. I
+didn't know just how to start."
+
+Munsberg gave a sort of grunt. He looked less amiable.
+
+"I s'pose you're used to nothin' but Fift' Avenoo," he said.
+
+Tembarom grinned exactly at the right time again. Not only his good
+teeth grinned, but his eyes grinned also, if the figure may be used.
+
+"Fifth Avenue!" he laughed. "There's been no Fifth Avenue in mine. I'm
+not used to anything, but you may bet your life I'm going to get used
+to Harlem, if you people'll let me. I've just got this job, and I'm dead
+stuck on it. I want to make it go."
+
+"He's mighty different from Biker," said Mrs. Munsberg in an undertone.
+
+"Vhere's dod oder feller?" inquired Munsberg. "He vas a dam fool, dot
+oder feller, half corned most de time, an' puttin' on Clarence airs. No
+one was goin' to give him nothin'. He made folks mad at de start."
+
+"I've got his job," said Tembarom, "and if I can't make it go, the
+page will be given up. It'll be my fault if that happens, not Harlem's.
+There's society enough up-town to make a first-class page, and I shall
+be sick if I can't get on to it."
+
+He had begun to know his people. Munsberg was a good-natured, swaggering
+little Hebrew.
+
+That the young fellow should make a clean breast of it and claim no
+down-town superiority, and that he should also have the business insight
+to realize that he might obtain valuable society items from such a
+representative confectioner as M. Munsberg, was a situation to incite
+amiable sentiments.
+
+"Vell, you didn't come to de wrong place," he said. "All de biggest
+things comes to me, an' I don't mind tellin' you about 'em. 'T ain't
+goin' to do no harm. Weddings an' things dey ought to be wrote up,
+anyhow, if dey're done right. It's good for business. Vy don't dey have
+no pictures of de supper-tables? Dot'd be good."
+
+"There's lots of receptions and weddings this month," said Mrs.
+Munsberg, becoming agreeably excited. "And there's plenty handsome young
+girls that'd like their pictures published.
+
+"None of them have been in Sunday papers before, and they'd like it. The
+four Schwartz girls would make grand pictures. They dress splendid, and
+their bridesmaids dresses came from the biggest place in Fift' Avenoo."
+
+"Say," exclaimed Tembarom, rising from his chair, "I'm in luck. Luck
+struck me the minute I turned in here. If you'll tell me where Schwartz
+lives, and where the hall is, and the church, and just anything else
+I can use, I'll go out and whoop up a page to beat the band." He was
+glowing with exultation. "I know I can do it. You've started me off."
+
+Munsberg and his wife began to warm. It was almost as though they had
+charge of the society page themselves. There was something stimulating
+in the idea. There was a suggestion of social importance in it. They
+knew a number of people who would be pleased with the prospect of being
+in the Sunday Earth. They were of a race which holds together, and they
+gave not only the names and addresses of prospective entertainers, but
+those of florists and owners of halls where parties were given.
+
+Mrs. Munsberg gave the name of a dressmaker of whom she shrewdly guessed
+that she would be amiably ready to talk to a society-page reporter.
+
+"That Biker feller," she said, "got things down all wrong. He called
+fine white satin 'white nun's-veiling,' and he left out things. Never
+said nothing about Miss Lewishon's diamond ring what her grandpa gave
+her for a wedding-present. An' it cost two hundred and fifty."
+
+"Well, I'm a pretty big fool myself," said Tembarom, "but I should have
+known better than that."
+
+When he opened the door to go, Mrs. Munsberg called after him:
+
+"When you get through, you come back here and tell us what you done.
+I'll give you a cup of hot coffee."
+
+He returned to Mrs. Bowse's boarding-house so late that night that even
+Steinberger and Bowles had ended their day. The gas in the hall was
+turned down to a glimmering point, and the house was silent for the
+night. Even a cat who stole to him and rubbed herself against his leg
+miauwed in a sort of abortive whisper, opening her mouth wide, but
+emitting no sound. When he went cautiously up the staircase he carried
+his damp overcoat with him, and hung it in company with the tartan
+muffler close to the heater in the upper hall. Then he laid on his
+bedside table a package of papers and photographs.
+
+After he had undressed, he dropped heavily into bed, exhausted, but
+elate.
+
+"I'm dog-tired," he said, "but I guess I've got it going." And almost
+before the last word had uttered itself he fell into the deep sleep of
+worn-out youth.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+Mrs. Bowse's boarding-house began to be even better pleased with him
+than before. He had stories to tell, festivities to describe, and
+cheerful incidents to recount. The boarders assisted vicariously at
+weddings and wedding receptions, afternoon teas and dances, given in
+halls. "Up-town" seemed to them largely given to entertainment and
+hilarity of an enviably prodigal sort. Mrs. Bowse's guests were not
+of the class which entertains or is entertained, and the details
+of banquets and ball-dresses and money-spending were not uncheering
+material for conversation. Such topics suggested the presence and
+dispensing of a good deal of desirable specie, which in floating about
+might somehow reach those who needed it most. The impression was that
+T. Tembarom was having "a good time." It was not his way to relate any
+incidents which were not of a cheering or laughter-inspiring nature. He
+said nothing of the times when his luck was bad, when he made blunders,
+and, approaching the wrong people, was met roughly or grudgingly, and
+found no resource left but to beat a retreat. He made no mention of his
+experiences in the blizzard, which continued, and at times nearly beat
+breath and life out of him as he fought his way through it. Especially
+he told no story of the morning when, after having labored furiously
+over the writing of his "stuff" until long after midnight, he had taken
+it to Galton, and seen his face fall as he looked over it. To battle all
+day with a blizzard and occasional brutal discouragements, and to sit
+up half the night tensely absorbed in concentrating one's whole mental
+equipment upon the doing of unaccustomed work has its effect. As he
+waited, Tembarom unconsciously shifted from one foot to another, and had
+actually to swallow a sort of lump in his throat.
+
+"I guess it won't do," he said rather uncertainly as Galton laid a sheet
+down.
+
+Galton was worn out himself and harried by his nerves.
+
+"No, it won't," he said; and then as he saw Tembarom move to the other
+foot he added, "Not as it is."
+
+Tembarom braced himself and cleared his throat.
+
+"If," he ventured--"well, you've been mighty easy on me, Mr
+Galton--and this is a big chance for a fellow like me. If it's too big
+a chance--why--that's all. But if it's anything I could change and it
+wouldn't be too much trouble to tell me--"
+
+"There's no time to rewrite it," answered Galton. "It must be handed in
+to-morrow. It's too flowery. Too many adjectives. I've no time to give
+you--" He snatched up a blue pencil and began to slash at the paper
+with it. "Look here--and here--cut out that balderdash--cut this--and
+this--oh,--" throwing the pencil down,--"you'd have to cut it all out.
+There's no time." He fell back in his chair with a hopeless movement,
+and rubbed his forehead nervously with the back of his hand. Ten people
+more or less were waiting to speak to him; he was worn out with the rush
+of work. He believed in the page, and did not want to give up his idea;
+but he didn't know a man to hand it to other than this untrained, eager
+ignoramus whom he had a queer personal liking for. He was no business of
+his, a mere stenographer in his office with whom he could be expected
+to have no relations, and yet a curious sort of friendliness verging on
+intimacy had developed between them.
+
+"There'd be time if you thought it wouldn't do any harm to give me
+another chance," said Tembarom. "I can sit up all night. I guess I've
+caught on to what you DON'T want. I've put in too many fool words. I got
+them out of other papers, but I don't know how to use them. I guess I've
+caught on. Would it do any harm if you gave me till to-morrow?"
+
+"No, it wouldn't," said Galton, desperately. "If you can't do it,
+there's no time to find another man, and the page must be cut out. It's
+been no good so far. It won't be missed. Take it along."
+
+As he pushed back the papers, he saw the photographs, and picked one up.
+
+"That bride's a good-looking girl. Who are these others? Bridesmaids?
+You've got a lot of stuff here. Biker couldn't get anything." He
+glanced up at the young fellow's rather pale face. "I thought you'd make
+friends. How did you get all this?"
+
+"I beat the streets till I found it," said Tembarom. "I had luck right
+away. I went into a confectionery store where they make wedding-cakes.
+A good-natured little Dutchman and his wife kept it, and I talked to
+them--"
+
+"Got next?" said Galton, grinning a little.
+
+"They gave me addresses, and told me a whole lot of things. I got into
+the Schwartz wedding reception, and they treated me mighty well. A good
+many of them were willing to talk. I told them what a big thing the page
+was going to be, and I--well, I said the more they helped me the finer
+it would turn out. I said it seemed a shame there shouldn't be an
+up-town page when such swell entertainments were given. I've got a lot
+of stuff there."
+
+Galton laughed.
+
+"You'd get it," he said. "If you knew how to handle it, you'd make it a
+hit. Well, take it along. If it isn't right tomorrow, it's done for."
+
+Tembarom didn't tell stories or laugh at dinner that evening. He said
+he had a headache. After dinner he bolted upstairs after Little Ann, and
+caught her before she mounted to her upper floor.
+
+"Will you come and save my life again?" he said. "I'm in the tightest
+place I ever was in in my life."
+
+"I'll do anything I can, Mr. Tembarom," she answered, and as his face
+had grown flushed by this time she looked anxious. "You look downright
+feverish."
+
+"I've got chills as well as fever," he said. "It's the page. It seems
+like I was going to fall down on it."
+
+She turned back at once.
+
+"No you won't, Mr. Tembarom," she said "I'm just right-down sure you
+won't."
+
+They went down to the parlor again, and though there were people in it,
+they found a corner apart, and in less than ten minutes he had told her
+what had happened.
+
+She took the manuscript he handed to her.
+
+"If I was well educated, I should know how to help you," she said, "but
+I've only been to a common Manchester school. I don't know anything
+about elegant language. What are these?" pointing to the blue-pencil
+marks.
+
+Tembarom explained, and she studied the blue slashes with serious
+attention.
+
+"Well," she said in a few minutes, laying the manuscript down, "I should
+have cut those words out myself if--if you'd asked me which to take
+away. They're too showy, Mr. Tembarom."
+
+Tembarom whipped a pencil out of his pocket and held it out.
+
+"Say," he put it to her, "would you take this and draw it through a few
+of the other showy ones?"
+
+"I should feel as if I was taking too much upon myself," she said. "I
+don't know anything about it."
+
+"You know a darned sight more than I do," Tembarom argued. "I didn't
+know they were showy. I thought they were the kind you had to put in
+newspaper stuff."
+
+She held the sheets of paper on her knee, and bent her head over them.
+Tembarom watched her dimples flash in and out as she worked away like a
+child correcting an exercise. Presently he saw she was quite absorbed.
+Sometimes she stopped and thought, pressing her lips together; sometimes
+she changed a letter. There was no lightness in her manner. A badly
+mutilated stocking would have claimed her attention in the same way.
+
+"I think I'd put 'house' there instead of 'mansion' if I were you," she
+suggested once.
+
+"Put in a whole block of houses if you like," he answered gratefully.
+"Whatever you say goes. I believe Galton would say the same thing."
+
+She went over sheet after sheet, and though she knew nothing about it,
+she cut out just what Galton would have cut out. She put the papers
+together at last and gave them back to Tembarom, getting up from her
+seat.
+
+"I must go back to father now," she said. "I promised to make him a good
+cup of coffee over the little oil-stove. If you'll come and knock at the
+door I'll give you one. It will help you to keep fresh while you work."
+
+Tembarom did not go to bed at all that night, and he looked rather
+fagged the next morning when he handed back the "stuff" entirely
+rewritten. He swallowed several times quite hard as he waited for the
+final verdict.
+
+"You did catch on to what I didn't want," Galton said at last. "You will
+catch on still more as you get used to the work. And you did get the
+'stuff'."
+
+"That--you mean--that goes?" Tembarom stammered.
+
+"Yes, it goes," answered Galton. "You can turn it in. We'll try the page
+for a month."
+
+"Gee! Thank the Lord!" said Tembarom, and then he laughed an excited
+boyish laugh, and the blood came back to his face. He had a whole month
+before him, and if he had caught on as soon as this, a month would teach
+him a lot.
+
+He'd work like a dog.
+
+He worked like a healthy young man impelled by a huge enthusiasm,
+and seeing ahead of him something he had had no practical reason for
+aspiring to. He went out in all weathers and stayed out to all hours.
+Whatsoever rebuffs or difficulties he met with he never was even on the
+verge of losing his nerve. He actually enjoyed himself tremendously at
+times. He made friends; people began to like to see him. The Munsbergs
+regarded him as an inspiration of their own.
+
+"He seen my name over de store and come in here first time he vas sent
+up dis vay to look for t'ings to write," Mr. Munsberg always explained.
+"Ve vas awful busy--time of the Schwartz vedding, an' dere vas dat
+blizzard. He owned up he vas new, an' vanted some vun vhat knew to tell
+him vhat vas goin' on. 'Course I could do it. Me an' my vife give him
+addresses an' a lot of items. He vorked 'em up good. Dot up-town page
+is gettin' first-rate. He says he don' know vhat he'd have done if he
+hadn't turned up here dot day."
+
+Tembarom, having "caught on" to his fault of style, applied himself with
+vigor to elimination. He kept his tame dictionary chained to the leg of
+his table--an old kitchen table which Mrs. Bowse scrubbed and put into
+his hall bedroom, overcrowding it greatly. He turned to Little Ann at
+moments of desperate uncertainty, but he was man enough to do his work
+himself. In glorious moments when he was rather sure that Galton was far
+from unsatisfied with his progress, and Ann had looked more than usually
+distracting in her aloof and sober alluringness,--it was her entire
+aloofness which so stirred his blood,--he sometimes stopped scribbling
+and lost his head for a minute or so, wondering if a fellow ever COULD
+"get away with it" to the extent of making enough to--but he always
+pulled himself up in time.
+
+"Nice fool I look, thinking that way!" he would say to himself. "She'd
+throw me down hard if she knew. But, my Lord! ain't she just a peach!"
+
+It was in the last week of the month of trial which was to decide the
+permanency of the page that he came upon the man Mrs. Bowse's boarders
+called his "Freak." He never called him a "freak" himself even at the
+first. Even his somewhat undeveloped mind felt itself confronted at
+the outset with something too abnormal and serious, something with a
+suggestion of the weird and tragic in it.
+
+In this wise it came about:
+
+The week had begun with another blizzard, which after the second day had
+suddenly changed its mind, and turned into sleet and rain which filled
+the streets with melted snow, and made walking a fearsome thing.
+Tembarom had plenty of walking to do. This week's page was his great
+effort, and was to be a "dandy." Galton must be shown what pertinacity
+could do.
+
+"I'm going to get into it up to my neck, and then strike out," he said
+at breakfast on Monday morning.
+
+Thursday was his most strenuous day. The weather had decided to change
+again, and gusts of sleet were being driven about, which added cold to
+sloppiness. He had found it difficult to get hold of some details he
+specially wanted. Two important and extremely good-looking brides had
+refused to see him because Biker had enraged them in his day. He had
+slighted the description of their dresses at a dance where they had been
+the observed of all observers, and had worn things brought from Paris.
+Tembarom had gone from house to house. He had even searched out
+aunts whose favor he had won professionally. He had appealed to his
+dressmaker, whose affection he had by that time fully gained. She was
+doing work in the brides' houses, and could make it clear that he would
+not call peau de cygne "Surah silk," nor duchess lace "Baby Irish."
+But the young ladies enjoyed being besought by a society page. It was
+something to discuss with one's bridesmaids and friends, to protest that
+"those interviewers" give a person no peace. "If you don't want to be in
+the papers, they'll put you in whether you like it or not, however often
+you refuse them." They kept Tembarom running about, they raised faint
+hopes, and then went out when he called, leaving no messages, but
+allowing the servant to hint that if he went up to Two Hundred and
+Seventy-fifth Street he might chance to find them.
+
+"All right," said Tembarom to the girl, delighting her by lifting his
+hat genially as he turned to go down the steps. "I'll just keep going.
+The Sunday Earth can't come out without those photographs in it. I
+should lose my job."
+
+When at last he ran the brides to cover it was not at Two Hundred and
+Seventy-fifth Street, but in their own home, to which they had finally
+returned. They had heard from the servant-girl about what the young
+gentleman from the Sunday Earth had said, and they were mollified by
+his proper appreciation of values. Tembarom's dressmaker friend also
+proffered information.
+
+"I know him myself," she said, "and he's a real nice gentle-manlike
+young man. He's not a bit like Biker. He doesn't think he knows
+everything. He came to me from Mrs. Munsberg, just to ask me the names
+of fashionable materials. He said it was more important than a man knew
+till he found out" Miss Stuntz chuckled.
+
+"He asked me to lend him some bits of samples so he could learn them
+off by heart, and know them when he saw them. He's got a pleasant laugh;
+shows his teeth, and they're real pretty and white; and he just laughed
+like a boy and said: 'These samples are my alphabet, Miss Stuntz. I'm
+going to learn to read words of three syllables in them.'"
+
+When late in the evening Tembarom, being let out of the house after his
+interview, turned down the steps again, he carried with him all he had
+wanted--information and photographs, even added picturesque details. He
+was prepared to hand in a fuller and better page than he had ever handed
+in before. He was in as elated a frame of mind as a young man can
+be when he is used up with tramping the streets, and running after
+street-cars, to stand up in them and hang by a strap. He had been
+wearing a new pair of boots, one of which rubbed his heel and had ended
+by raising a blister worthy of attention. To reach the nearest "L"
+station he must walk across town, through several deserted streets in
+the first stages of being built up, their vacant lots surrounded by high
+board fencing covered with huge advertising posters. The hall bedroom,
+with the gas turned up and the cheap, red-cotton comfort on the bed,
+made an alluring picture as he faced the sleety wind.
+
+"If I cut across to the avenue and catch the 'L,' I'm bound to get there
+sometime, anyhow," he said as he braced himself and set out on his way.
+
+The blister on his heel had given him a good deal of trouble, and he was
+obliged to stop a moment to ease it, and he limped when he began to walk
+again. But he limped as fast as he could, while the sleety rain beat
+in his face, across one street, down another for a block or so, across
+another, the melting snow soaking even the new boots as he splashed
+through it. He bent his head, however, and limped steadily. At this end
+of the city many of the streets were only scantily built up, and he was
+passing through one at the corner of which was a big vacant lot. At the
+other corner a row of cheap houses which had only reached their second
+story waited among piles of bricks and frozen mortar for the return
+of the workmen the blizzard had dispersed. It was a desolate-enough
+thoroughfare, and not a soul was in sight. The vacant lot was fenced
+in with high boarding plastered over with flaring sheets advertising
+whiskies, sauces, and theatrical ventures. A huge picture of a
+dramatically interrupted wedding ceremony done in reds and yellows,
+and announcing in large letters that Mr. Isaac Simonson presented Miss
+Evangeline St. Clair in "Rent Asunder," occupied several yards of the
+boarding. As he reached it, the heel of Tembarom's boot pressed, as
+it seemed to him, a red-hot coal on the flesh. He had rubbed off the
+blister. He was obliged to stop a moment again.
+
+"Gee whizz!" he exclaimed through his teeth, "I shall have to take my
+boot off and try to fix it."
+
+To accomplish this he leaned against the boarding and Miss Evangeline
+St. Clair being "Rent Asunder" in the midst of the wedding service. He
+cautiously removed his boot, and finding a hole in his sock in the place
+where the blister had rubbed off, he managed to protect the raw spot by
+pulling the sock over it. Then he drew on his boot again.
+
+"That'll be better," he said, with a long breath.
+
+As he stood on his feet again he started involuntarily. This was not
+because the blister had hurt him, but because he had heard behind him a
+startling sound.
+
+"What's that?" broke from him. "What's that?"
+
+He turned and listened, feeling his heart give a quick thump. In the
+darkness of the utterly empty street the thing was unnatural enough
+to make any man jump. He had heard it between two gusts of wind, and
+through another he heard it again--an uncanny, awful sobbing, broken by
+a hopeless wail of words.
+
+"I can't remember! I can't--remember! O my God!"
+
+And it was not a woman's voice or a child's; it was a man's, and there
+was an eerie sort of misery in it which made Tembarom feel rather sick.
+He had never heard a man sobbing before. He belonged to a class which
+had no time for sobs. This sounded ghastly.
+
+"Good Lord!" he said, "the fellow's crying! A man!"
+
+The sound came directly behind him. There was not a human being in
+sight. Even policemen do not loiter in empty streets.
+
+"Hello!" he cried. "Where are you?"
+
+But the low, horrible sound went on, and no answer came. His physical
+sense of the presence of the blister was blotted out by the abnormal
+thrill of the moment. One had to find out about a thing like that one
+just had to. One could not go on and leave it behind uninvestigated in
+the dark and emptiness of a street no one was likely to pass through. He
+listened more intently. Yes, it was just behind him.
+
+"He's in the lot behind the fence," he said. "How did he get there?"
+
+He began to walk along the boarding to find a gap. A few yards farther
+on he came upon a broken place in the inclosure--a place where boards
+had sagged until they fell down, or had perhaps been pulled down by boys
+who wanted to get inside. He went through it, and found lie was in the
+usual vacant lot long given up to rubbish. When he stood still a moment
+he heard the sobbing again, and followed the sound to the place behind
+the boarding against which he had supported himself when he took off his
+boot.
+
+A man was lying on the ground with his arms flung out. The street lamp
+outside the boarding cast light enough to reveal him. Tembarom felt as
+though he had suddenly found himself taking part in a melodrama,--"The
+Streets of New York," for choice,--though no melodrama had ever given him
+this slightly shaky feeling. But when a fellow looked up against it as
+hard as this, what you had to do was to hold your nerve and make him
+feel he was going to be helped. The normal human thing spoke loud in
+him.
+
+"Hello, old man!" he said with cheerful awkwardness. "What's hit you?"
+
+The man started and scrambled to his feet as though he were frightened.
+He was wet, unshaven, white and shuddering, piteous to look at. He
+stared with wild eyes, his chest heaving.
+
+"What's up?" said Tembarom.
+
+The man's breath caught itself.
+
+"I don't remember." There was a touch of horror in his voice, though he
+was evidently making an effort to control him-self. "I can't--I can't
+remember." "What's your name? You remember that?" Tembarom put it to
+him.
+
+"N-n-no!" agonizingly. "If I could! If I could!"
+
+"How did you get in here?"
+
+"I came in because I saw a policeman. He wouldn't understand. He would
+have stopped me. I must not be stopped. I MUST not."
+
+"Where were you going?" asked Tembarom, not knowing what else to say.
+
+"Home! My God! man, home!" and he fell to shuddering again. He put
+his arm against the boarding and dropped his head against it. The low,
+hideous sobbing tore him again.
+
+T. Tembarom could not stand it. In his newsboy days he had never been
+able to stand starved dogs and homeless cats. Mrs. Bowse was taking care
+of a wretched dog for him at the present moment. He had not wanted the
+poor brute,--he was not particularly fond of dogs,--but it had followed
+him home, and after he had given it a bone or so, it had licked its
+chops and turned up its eyes at him with such abject appeal that he had
+not been able to turn it into the streets again. He was unsentimental,
+but ruled by primitive emotions. Also he had a sudden recollection of a
+night when as a little fellow he had gone into a vacant lot and cried
+as like this as a child could. It was a bad night when some "tough"
+big boys had turned him out of a warm corner in a shed, and he had had
+nowhere to go, and being a friendly little fellow, the unfriendliness
+had hit him hard. The boys had not seen him crying, but he remembered
+it. He drew near, and put his hand on the shaking shoulder.
+
+"Say, don't do that," he said. "I'll help you to remember."
+
+He scarcely knew why he said it. There was something in the situation
+and in the man himself which was compelling. He was not of the tramp
+order. His wet clothes had been decent, and his broken, terrified voice
+was neither coarse nor nasal. He lifted his head and caught Tembarom's
+arm, clutching it with desperate fingers.
+
+"Could you?" he poured forth the words. "Could you? I'm not quite mad.
+Something happened. If I could be quiet! Don't let them stop me! My God!
+my God! my God! I can't say it. It's not far away, but it won't come
+back. You're a good fellow; if you're human, help me! help me! help me!"
+He clung to Tembarom with hands which shook; his eyes were more abject
+than the starved dog's; he choked, and awful tears rolled down his
+cheeks. "Only help me," he cried--"just help, help, help--for a while.
+Perhaps not long. It would come back." He made a horrible effort.
+"Listen! My name--I am--I am--it's--"
+
+He was down on the ground again, groveling. His efforts had failed.
+Tembarom, overwrought himself, caught at him and dragged him up.
+
+"Make a fight," he said. "You can't lie down like that. You've got to
+put up a fight. It'll come back. I tell you it will. You've had a clip
+on the head or something. Let me call an ambulance and take you to the
+hospital."
+
+The next moment he was sorry he had said the words, the man's terror was
+so ill to behold. He grew livid with it, and uttered a low animal cry.
+
+"Don't drop dead over it," said Tembarom, rather losing his head. "I
+won't do it, though what in thunder I'm going to do with you I don't
+know. You can't stay here."
+
+"For God's sake!" said the man. "For God's sake!" He put his shaking
+hand on Tembarom again, and looked at him with a bewildered scrutiny.
+"I'm not afraid of you," he said; "I don't know why. There's something
+all right about you. If you'll stand by me--you'd stand by a man, I'd
+swear. Take me somewhere quiet. Let me get warm and think."
+
+"The less you think now the better," answered Tembarom. "You want a bed
+and a bath and a night's rest. I guess I've let myself in for it. You
+brush off and brace yourself and come with me."
+
+There was the hall bedroom and the red-cotton comfort for one night
+at least, and Mrs. Bowse was a soft-hearted woman. If she'd heard the
+fellow sobbing behind the fence, she'd have been in a worse fix than he
+was. Women were kinder-hearted than men, anyhow. The way the fellow's
+voice sounded when he said, "Help me, help me, help me!" sounded as
+though he was in hell. "Made me feel as if I was bracing up a chap that
+was going to be electrocuted," he thought, feeling sickish again. "I've
+not got backbone enough to face that sort of thing. Got to take him
+somewhere."
+
+They were walking toward the "L" together, and he was wondering what he
+should say to Mrs. Bowse when he saw his companion fumbling under his
+coat at the back as though he was in search of something. His hands
+being unsteady, it took him some moments to get at what he wanted.
+He evidently had a belt or a hidden pocket. He got something out and
+stopped under a street light to show it to Tembarom. His hands still
+shook when he held them out, and his look was a curious, puzzled,
+questioning one. What he passed over to Tembarom was a roll of
+money. Tembarom rather lost his breath as he saw the number on two
+five-hundred-dollar bills, and of several hundreds, besides twenties,
+tens, and fives.
+
+"Take it--keep it," he said. "It will pay."
+
+"Hully gee!" cried Tembarom, aghast. "Don't go giving away your whole
+pile to the first fellow you meet. I don't want it."
+
+"Take it." The stranger put his hand on his shoulder, the abject look in
+his eyes harrowingly like the starved dog's again.
+
+"There's something all right about you. You'll help me."
+
+"If I don't take it for you, some one will knock you upon the head for
+it." Tembarom hesitated, but the next instant he stuffed it all in his
+pocket, incited thereto by the sound of a whizzing roar.
+
+"There's the 'L' coming," he cried; "run for all you're worth." And they
+fled up the street and up the steps, and caught it without a second to
+spare.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+At about the time Tembarom made his rush to catch the "L" Joseph
+Hutchinson was passing through one of his periodical fits of infuriated
+discouragement. Little Ann knew they would occur every two or three
+days, and she did not wonder at them. Also she knew that if she merely
+sat still and listened as she sewed, she would be doing exactly what
+her mother would have done and what her father would find a sort of
+irritated comfort in. There was no use in citing people's villainies and
+calling them names unless you had an audience who would seem to agree to
+the justice of your accusations.
+
+So Mr. Hutchinson charged up and down the room, his face red, and his
+hands thrust in his coat pockets. He was giving his opinions of America
+and Americans, and he spoke with his broadest Manchester accent,
+and threw in now and then a word or so of Lancashire dialect to add
+roughness and strength, the angrier a Manchester man being, the broader
+and therefore the more forcible his accent. "Tha" is somehow a great
+deal more bitter or humorous or affectionate than the mere ordinary
+"You" or "Yours."
+
+"'Merica," he bellowed--"dang 'Merica! I says--an' dang 'Mericans. Goin'
+about th' world braggin' an' boastin' about their sharpness an' their
+open-'andedness. 'Go to 'Merica,' folks'll tell you, 'with an invention,
+and there's dozens of millionaires ready to put money in it.' Fools!"
+
+"Now, Father,"--Little Ann's voice was as maternal as her mother's had
+been,--"now, Father, love, don't work yourself up into a passion. You
+know it's not good for you."
+
+"I don't need to work myself up into one. I'm in one. A man sells
+everything he owns to get to 'Merica, an' when he gets there what does
+he find? He canna' get near a millionaire. He's pushed here an scuffled
+there, an' told this chap can't see him, an' that chap isn't interested,
+an' he must wait his chance to catch this one. An' he waits an' waits,
+an' goes up in elevators an' stands on one leg in lobbies, till he's
+broke' down an' sick of it, an' has to go home to England steerage."
+
+Little Ann looked up from her sewing. He had been walking furiously for
+half an hour, and had been tired to begin with. She had heard his voice
+break roughly as he said the last words. He threw himself astride a
+chair and, crossing his arms on the back of it, dropped his head on
+them. Her mother never allowed this. Her idea was that women were made
+to tide over such moments for the weaker sex. Far had it been from the
+mind of Mrs. Hutchinson to call it weaker. "But there's times, Ann, when
+just for a bit they're just like children. They need comforting without
+being let to know they are being comforted. You know how it is when your
+back aches, and some one just slips a pillow under it in the right place
+without saying anything. That's what women can do if they've got heads.
+It needs a head."
+
+Little Ann got up and went to the chair. She began to run her fingers
+caressingly through the thick, grizzled hair.
+
+"There, Father, love, there!" she said. "We are going back to England,
+at any rate, aren't we? And grandmother will be so glad to have us with
+her in her cottage. And America's only one place."
+
+"I tried it first, dang it!" jerked out Hutchinson. "Every one told me
+to do it." He quoted again with derisive scorn: "'You go to 'Merica.
+'Merica's the place for a chap like you. 'Merica's the place for
+inventions.' Liars!"
+
+Little Ann went on rubbing the grizzled head lovingly.
+
+"Well, now we're going back to try England. You never did really try
+England. And you know how beautiful it'll be in the country, with the
+primroses in bloom and the young lambs in the fields." The caressing
+hand grew even softer. "And you're not going to forget how mother
+believed in the invention; you can't do that."
+
+Hutchinson lifted his head and looked at her.
+
+"Eh, Ann," he said, "you are a comfortable little body. You've got a way
+with you just like your poor mother had. You always say the right thing
+to help a chap pull himself together. Your mother did believe in it,
+didn't she?"
+
+She had, indeed, believed in it, though her faith was founded more upon
+confidence in "Mr. Hutchinson" than in any profound knowledge of the
+mechanical appliance his inspiration would supply. She knew it had
+something important to do with locomotive engines, and she knew that if
+railroad magnates would condescend to consider it, her husband was sure
+that fortune would flow in. She had lived with the "invention," as it
+was respectfully called, for years.
+
+"That she did," answered Little Ann. "And before she died she said to
+me: 'Little Ann,' she said, 'there's one thing you must never let your
+father do. You must never let him begin not to believe in his invention.
+Your father's a clever man, and it's a clever invention, and it'll make
+his fortune yet. You must remind him how I believed in it and how sure I
+was.'"
+
+Hutchinson rubbed his hands thoughtfully. He had heard this before, but
+it did him good to hear it again.
+
+"She said that, did she?" he found vague comfort in saying. "She said
+that?"
+
+"Yes, she did, Father. It was the very day before she died."
+
+"Well, she never said anything she hadn't thought out," he said in
+slow retrospection. "And she had a good head of her own. Eh, she was
+a wonderful woman, she was, for sticking to things. That was th'
+Lancashire in her. Lancashire folks knows their own minds."
+
+"Mother knew hers," said Ann. "And she always said you knew yours. Come
+and sit in your own chair, Father, and have your paper."
+
+She had tided him past the worst currents without letting him slip into
+them.
+
+"I like folks that knows their own minds," he said as he sat down and
+took his paper from her. "You know yours, Ann; and there's that Tembarom
+chap. He knows his. I've been noticing that chap." There was a certain
+pleasure in using a tone of amiable patronage. "He's got a way with him
+that's worth money to him in business, if he only knew it."
+
+"I don't think he knows he's got a way," Little Ann said. "His way is
+just him."
+
+"He just gets over people with it, like he got over me. I was ready
+to knock his head off first time he spoke to me. I was ready to knock
+anybody's head off that day. I'd just had that letter from Hadman.
+He made me sick wi' the way he pottered an' played the fool about the
+invention. He believed in it right enough, but he hadn't the courage
+of a mouse. He wasn't goin' to be the first one to risk his money. Him,
+with all he has! He's the very chap to be able to set it goin'. If I
+could have got some one else to put up brass, it'd have started him.
+It's want o' backbone, that's the matter wi' Hadman an' his lot."
+
+"Some of these days some of them 're going to get their eyes open,"
+said Little Ann, "and then the others will be sorry. Mr. Tembarom says
+they'll fall over themselves to get in on the ground floor."
+
+Hutchinson chuckled.
+
+"That's New York," he said. "He's a rum chap. But he thinks a good bit
+of the invention. I've talked it over with him, because I've wanted to
+talk, and the one thing I've noticed about Tembarom is that he can keep
+his mouth shut."
+
+"But he talks a good deal," said Ann.
+
+"That's the best of it. You'd think he was telling all he knows, and
+he's not by a fat lot. He tells you what you'll like to hear, and he's
+not sly; but he can keep a shut mouth. That's Lancashire. Some folks
+can't do it even when they want to."
+
+"His father came from England."
+
+"That's where the lad's sense comes from. Perhaps he's Lancashire. He
+had a lot of good ideas about the way to get at Hadman."
+
+A knock at the door broke in upon them. Mrs. Bowse presented herself,
+wearing a novel expression on her face. It was at once puzzled and not
+altogether disagreeably excited.
+
+"I wish you would come down into the dining-room, Little Ann." She
+hesitated. "Mr. Tembaron's brought home such a queer man. He picked
+him up ill in the street. He wants me to let him stay with him for
+the night, anyhow. I don't think he's crazy, but I guess he's lost
+his memory. Queerest thing I ever saw. He doesn't know his name or
+anything."
+
+"See here," broke out Hutchinson, dropping his hands and his paper
+on his knee, "I'm not going to have Ann goin' down stairs to quiet
+lunatics."
+
+"He's as quiet as a child," Mrs. Bowse protested. "There's something
+pitiful about him, he seems so frightened. He's drenched to the skin."
+
+"Call an ambulance and send him to the hospital," advised Hutchinson.
+
+"That's what Mr. Tembarom says he can't do. It frightens him to death
+to speak of it. He just clings to Mr. Tembarom sort of awful, as if he
+thinks he'll save his life. But that isn't all," she added in an amazed
+tone; "he's given Mr. Tembarom more than two thousand dollars."
+
+"What!" shouted Hutchinson, bounding to his feet quite unconsciously.
+
+"What!" exclaimed Little Ann.
+
+"Just you come and look at it," answered Mrs. Bowse, nodding her head.
+"There's over two thousand dollars in bills spread out on the table in
+the dining-room this minute. He had it in a belt pocket, and he dragged
+it out in the street and would make Mr. Tembarom take it. Do come and
+tell us what to do."
+
+"I'd get him to take off his wet clothes and get into bed, and drink
+some hot spirits and water first," said Little Ann. "Wouldn't you, Mrs.
+Bowse?"
+
+Hutchinson got up, newspaper in hand.
+
+"I say, I'd like to go down and have a look at that chap myself," he
+announced.
+
+"If he's so frightened, perhaps--" Little Ann hesitated.
+
+"That's it," put in Mrs. Bowse. "He's so nervous it'd make him worse to
+see another man. You'd better wait, Mr. Hutchinson."
+
+Hutchinson sat down rather grumpily, and Mrs. Bowse and Little Ann went
+down the stairs together.
+
+"I feel real nervous myself," said Mrs. Bowse, "it's so queer. But he's
+not crazy. He's quiet enough."
+
+As they neared the bottom of the staircase Little Ann could see over
+the balustrade into the dining-room. The strange man was sitting by the
+table, his disordered, black-haired head on his arm. He looked like
+an exhausted thing. Tembarom was sitting by him, and was talking in an
+encouraging voice. He had laid a hand on one of the stranger's. On the
+table beside them was spread a number of bills which had evidently just
+been counted.
+
+"Here's the ladies," said Tembarom.
+
+The stranger lifted his head and, having looked, rose and stood upright,
+waiting. It was the involuntary, mechanical action of a man who had been
+trained among gentlemen.
+
+"It's Mrs. Bowse again, and she's brought Miss Hutchinson down with
+her. Miss Hutchinson always knows what to do," explained Tembarom in his
+friendly voice.
+
+The man bowed, and his bewildered eyes fixed themselves on Little Ann.
+
+"Thank you," he said. "It's very kind of you. I--I am--in great
+trouble."
+
+Little Ann went to him and smiled her motherly smile at him.
+
+"You're very wet," she said. "You'll take a bad cold if you're not
+careful. Mrs. Bowse thinks you ought to go right to bed and have
+something hot to drink."
+
+"It seems a long time since I was in bed," he answered her.
+
+"I'm very tired. Thank you." He drew a weary, sighing breath, but he
+didn't move his eyes from the girl's face. Perhaps the cessation of
+action in certain cells of his brain had increased action in others.
+He looked as though he were seeing something in Little Ann's face which
+might not have revealed itself so clearly to the more normal gaze.
+
+He moved slightly nearer to her. He was a tall man, and had to look down
+at her.
+
+"What is your name?" he asked anxiously. "Names trouble me."
+
+It was Ann who drew a little nearer to him now. She had to look up, and
+the soft, absorbed kindness in her eyes might, Tembarom thought, have
+soothed a raging lion, it was so intent on its purpose.
+
+"My name is Ann Hutchinson; but never you mind about it now," she said.
+"I'll tell it to you again. Let Mr. Tembarom take you up-stairs to bed.
+You'll be better in the morning." And because his hollow eyes rested on
+her so fixedly she put her hand on his wet sleeve.
+
+"You're wet through," she said. "That won't do."
+
+He looked down at her hand and then at her face again.
+
+"Help me," he pleaded, "just help me. I don't know what's happened. Have
+I gone mad?"
+
+"No," she answered; "not a bit. It'll all come right after a while;
+you'll see."
+
+"Will it, will it?" he begged, and then suddenly his eyes were full of
+tears. It was a strange thing to see him in his bewildered misery try
+to pull himself together, and bite his shaking lips as though he vaguely
+remembered that he was a man. "I beg pardon," he faltered: "I suppose
+I'm ill."
+
+"I don't know where to put him," Mrs. Bowse was saying half aside; "I've
+not got a room empty."
+
+"Put him in my bed and give me a shake-down on the floor," said
+Tembarom. "That'll be all right. He doesn't want me to leave him,
+anyhow."
+
+He turned to the money on the table.
+
+"Say," he said to his guest, "there's two thousand five hundred dollars
+here. We've counted it to make sure. That's quite some money. And it's
+yours--"
+
+The stranger looked disturbed and made a nervous gesture.
+
+"Don't, don't!" he broke in. "Keep it. Some one took the rest. This was
+hidden. It will pay."
+
+"You see he isn't real' out of his mind," Mrs. Bowse murmured feelingly.
+
+"No, not real' out of it," said Tembarom. "Say,"--as an inspiration
+occurred to him,--"I guess maybe Miss Hutchinson will keep it. Will you,
+Little Ann? You can give it to him when he wants it."
+
+"It's a good bit of money," said Little Ann, soberly; "but I can put it
+in a bank and pay Mrs. Bowse his board every week. Yes, I'll take it.
+Now he must go to bed. It's a comfortable little room," she said to the
+stranger, "and Mrs. Bowse will make you a hot milk-punch. That'll be
+nourishing."
+
+"Thank you," murmured the man, still keeping his yearning eyes on her.
+"Thank you."
+
+So he was taken up to the fourth floor and put into Tembarom's bed. The
+hot milk-punch seemed to take the chill out of him, and when, by lying
+on his pillow and gazing at the shakedown on the floor as long as he
+could keep his eyes open, he had convinced himself that Tembarom was
+going to stay with him, he fell asleep.
+
+Little Ann went back to her father carrying a roll of bills in her
+hands. It was a roll of such size that Hutchinson started up in his
+chair and stared at the sight of it.
+
+"Is that the money?" he exclaimed. "What are you going to do with it?
+What have you found out, lass?"
+
+"Yes, this is it," she answered. "Mr. Tembarom asked me to take care of
+it. I'm going to put it in the bank. But we haven't found out anything."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+His was the opening incident of the series of extraordinary and
+altogether incongruous events which took place afterwards, as it
+appeared to T. Tembarom, like scenes in a play in which he had become
+involved in a manner which one might be inclined to regard humorously
+and make jokes about, because it was a thousand miles away from anything
+like real life. That was the way it struck him. The events referred to,
+it was true, were things one now and then read about in newspapers, but
+while the world realized that they were actual occurrences, one rather
+regarded them, when their parallels were reproduced in books and plays,
+as belonging alone to the world of pure and highly romantic fiction.
+
+"I guess the reason why it seems that way," he summed it up to
+Hutchinson and Little Ann, after the worst had come to the worst, "is
+because we've not only never known any one it's happened to, but we've
+never known any one that's known any one it's happened to. I've got to
+own up that it makes me feel as if the fellows'd just yell right out
+laughing when they heard it."
+
+The stranger's money had been safely deposited in a bank, and the
+stranger himself still occupied Tembarom's bedroom. He slept a great
+deal and was very quiet. With great difficulty Little Ann had persuaded
+him to let a doctor see him, and the doctor had been much interested
+in his case. He had expected to find some signs of his having received
+accidentally or otherwise a blow upon the head, but on examination
+he found no scar or wound. The condition he was in was frequently the
+result of concussion of the brain, sometimes of prolonged nervous strain
+or harrowing mental shock. Such cases occurred not infrequently. Quiet
+and entire freedom from excitement would do more for such a condition
+than anything else. If he was afraid of strangers, by all means keep
+them from him. Tembarom had been quite right in letting him think he
+would help him to remember, and that somehow he would in the end reach
+the place he had evidently set out to go to. Nothing must be allowed to
+excite him. It was well he had had money on his person and that he had
+fallen into friendly hands. A city hospital would not have been likely
+to help him greatly. The restraint of its necessary discipline might
+have alarmed him.
+
+So long as he was persuaded that Tembarom was not going to desert
+him, he was comparatively calm, though sunk in a piteous and tormented
+melancholy. His worst hours were when he sat alone in the hall bedroom,
+with his face buried in his hands. He would so sit without moving or
+speaking, and Little Ann discovered that at these times he was trying
+to remember. Sometimes he would suddenly rise and walk about the little
+room, muttering, with woe in his eyes. Ann, who saw how hard this was
+for him, found also that to attempt to check or distract him was even
+worse. When, sitting in her father's room, which was on the other side
+of the wall, she heard his fretted, hurried pacing feet, her face lost
+its dimpled cheerfulness. She wondered if her mother would not have
+discovered some way of clearing the black cloud distracting his brain.
+Nothing would induce him to go down to the boarders' dining-room for
+his meals, and the sight of a servant alarmed him so that it was Ann
+who took him the scant food he would eat. As the time of her return to
+England with her father drew near, she wondered what Mr. Tembarom would
+do without her services. It was she who suggested that they must have
+a name for him, and the name of a part of Manchester had provided one.
+There was a place called Strangeways, and one night when, in talking
+to her father, she referred to it in Tembarom's presence, he suddenly
+seized upon it.
+
+"Strangeways," he said. "That'd make a good-enough name for him. Let's
+call him Mr. Strangeways. I don't like the way the fellows have of
+calling him 'the Freak.'"
+
+So the name had been adopted, and soon became an established fact.
+
+"The way I feel about him," Tembarom said, "is that the fellow's not
+a bit of a joke. What I see is that he's up against about the toughest
+proposition I've ever known. Gee! that fellow's not crazy. He's worse.
+If he was out-and-out dippy and didn't know it, he'd be all right.
+Likely as not he'd be thinking he was the Pope of Rome or Anna Held.
+What knocks him out is that he's just right enough to know he's wrong,
+and to be trying to get back. He reminds me of one of those chaps the
+papers tell about sometimes--fellows that go to work in livery-stables
+for ten years and call themselves Bill Jones, and then wake up some
+morning and remember they're some high-browed minister of the gospel
+named the Rev. James Cadwallader."
+
+When the curtain drew up on Tembarom's amazing drama, Strangeways had
+been occupying his bed nearly three weeks, and he himself had been
+sleeping on a cot Mrs. Bowse had put up for him in his room. The
+Hutchinsons were on the point of sailing for England--steerage--on the
+steamship Transatlantic, and Tembarom was secretly torn into fragments,
+though he had done well with the page and he was daring to believe that
+at the end of the month Galton would tell him he had "made good" and the
+work would continue indefinitely.
+
+If that happened, he would be raised to "twenty-five per" and would be a
+man of means. If the Hutchinsons had not been going away, he would have
+been floating in clouds of rose color. If he could persuade Little
+Ann to take him in hand when she'd had time to "try him out," even
+Hutchinson could not utterly flout a fellow who was making his steady
+twenty-five per on a big paper, and was on such terms with his boss
+that he might get other chances. Gee! but he was a fellow that luck just
+seemed to chase, anyhow! Look at the other chaps, lots of 'em, who
+knew twice as much as he did, and had lived in decent homes and gone to
+school and done their darned best, too, and then hadn't been able to
+get there! It didn't seem fair somehow that he should run into such pure
+luck.
+
+The day arrived when Galton was to give his decision. Tembarom was going
+to hand in his page, and while he was naturally a trifle nervous, his
+nervousness would have been a hopeful and not unpleasant thing but that
+the Transatlantic sailed in two days, and in the Hutchinson's rooms
+Little Ann was packing her small trunk and her father's bigger one,
+which held more models and drawings than clothing. Hutchinson was
+redder in the face than usual, and indignant condemnation of America
+and American millionaires possessed his soul. Everybody was rather
+depressed. One boarder after another had wakened to a realization that,
+with the passing of Little Ann, Mrs. Bowse's establishment, even with
+the parlor, the cozy-corner, and the second-hand pianola to support
+it, would be a deserted-seeming thing. Mrs. Bowse felt the tone of
+low spirits about the table, and even had a horrible secret fear that
+certain of her best boarders might decide to go elsewhere, merely to
+change surroundings from which they missed something. Her eyes were a
+little red, and she made great efforts to keep things going.
+
+"I can only keep the place up when I've no empty rooms," she had said to
+Mrs. Peck, "but I'd have boarded her free if her father would have let
+her stay. But he wouldn't, and, anyway, she'd no more let him go off
+alone than she'd jump off Brooklyn Bridge."
+
+It had been arranged that partly as a farewell banquet and partly to
+celebrate Galton's decision about the page, there was to be an oyster
+stew that night in Mr. Hutchinson's room, which was distinguished as
+a bed-sitting-room. Tembarom had diplomatically suggested it to Mr.
+Hutchinson. It was to be Tembarom's oyster supper, and somehow he
+managed to convey that it was only a proper and modest tribute to Mr.
+Hutchinson himself. First-class oyster stew and pale ale were not so bad
+when properly suggested, therefore Mr. Hutchinson consented. Jim Bowles
+and Julius Steinberger were to come in to share the feast, and Mrs.
+Bowse had promised to prepare.
+
+It was not an inspiring day for Little Ann. New York had seemed a
+bewildering and far too noisy place for her when she had come to it
+directly from her grandmother's cottage in the English village, where
+she had spent her last three months before leaving England. The dark
+rooms of the five-storied boarding-house had seemed gloomy enough to
+her, and she had found it much more difficult to adjust herself to her
+surroundings than she could have been induced to admit to her father.
+At first his temper and the open contempt for American habits and
+institutions which he called "speaking his mind" had given her a
+great deal of careful steering through shoals to do. At the outset the
+boarders had resented him, and sometimes had snapped back their own
+views of England and courts. Violent and disparaging argument had
+occasionally been imminent, and Mrs. Bowse had worn an ominous look.
+Their rooms had in fact been "wanted" before their first week had come
+to an end, and Little Ann herself scarcely knew how she had tided over
+that situation. But tide it over she did, and by supernatural effort and
+watchfulness she contrived to soothe Mrs. Bowse until she had been in
+the house long enough to make friends with people and aid her father
+to realize that, if they went elsewhere, they might find only the same
+class of boarders, and there would be the cost of moving to consider.
+She had beguiled an armchair from Mrs. Bowse, and had recovered it
+herself with a remnant of crimson stuff secured from a miscellaneous
+heap at a marked-down sale at a department store. She had arranged his
+books and papers adroitly and had kept them in their places so that
+he never felt himself obliged to search for any one of them. With many
+little contrivances she had given his bed-sitting-room a look of comfort
+and established homeliness, and he had even begun to like it.
+
+"Tha't just like tha mother, Ann," he had said. "She'd make a railway
+station look as if it had been lived in."
+
+Then Tembarom had appeared, heralded by Mrs. Bowse and the G. Destroyer,
+and the first time their eyes had met across the table she had liked
+him. The liking had increased. There was that in his boyish cheer and
+his not-too-well-fed-looking face which called forth maternal interest.
+As she gradually learned what his life had been, she felt a thrilled
+anxiety to hear day by day how he was getting on. She listened for
+details, and felt it necessary to gather herself together in the face of
+a slight depression when hopes of Galton were less high than usual. His
+mending was mysteriously done, and in time he knew with amazed gratitude
+that he was being "looked after." His first thanks were so awkward, but
+so full of appreciation of unaccustomed luxury, that they almost brought
+tears to her eyes, since they so clearly illuminated the entire novelty
+of any attention whatever.
+
+"I just don't know what to say," he said, shuffling from one foot to
+another, though his nice grin was at its best. "I've never had a woman
+do anything for me since I was ten. I guess women do lots of things
+for most fellows; but, then, they're mothers and sisters and aunts. I
+appreciate it like--like thunder. I feel as if I was Rockefeller, Miss
+Ann."
+
+In a short time she had become "Little Ann" to him, as to the rest,
+and they began to know each other very well. Jim Bowles and Julius
+Steinberger had not been able to restrain themselves at first from
+making slangy, yearning love to her, but Tembarom had been different.
+He had kept himself well in hand. Yes, she had liked T. Tembarom, and
+as she packed the trunks she realized that the Atlantic Ocean was
+three thousand miles across, and when two people who had no money
+were separated by it, they were likely to remain so. Rich people could
+travel, poor people couldn't. You just stayed where things took you, and
+you mustn't be silly enough to expect things to happen in your class of
+life--things like seeing people again. Your life just went on. She kept
+herself very busy, and did not allow her thoughts any latitude. It would
+vex her father very much if he thought she had really grown fond of
+America and was rather sorry to go away. She had finished her packing
+before evening, and the trunks were labeled and set aside, some in the
+outside hall and some in the corner of the room. She had sat down with
+some mending on her lap, and Hutchinson was walking about the room with
+the restlessness of the traveler whose approaching journey will not let
+him settle himself anywhere.
+
+"I'll lay a shilling you've got everything packed and ready, and put
+just where a chap can lay his hands on it," he said.
+
+"Yes, Father. Your tweed cap's in the big pocket of your thick topcoat,
+and there's an extra pair of spectacles and your pipe and tobacco in the
+small one."
+
+"And off we go back to England same as we came!" He rubbed his head, and
+drew a big, worried sigh. "Where's them going?" he asked, pointing to
+some newly laundered clothing on a side table. "You haven't forgotten
+'em, have you?"
+
+"No, Father. It's just some of the young men's washing. I thought I'd
+take time to mend them up a bit before I went to bed."
+
+"That's like tha mother, too--taking care of everybody. What did these
+chaps do before you came?"
+
+"Sometimes they tried to sew on a button or so themselves, but oftener
+they went without. Men make poor work of sewing. It oughtn't to be
+expected of them."
+
+Hutchinson stopped and looked her and her mending over with a touch of
+curiosity.
+
+"Some of them's Tembarom's?" he asked.
+
+Little Ann held up a pair of socks.
+
+"These are. He does wear them out, poor fellow. It's tramping up and
+down the streets to save car-fare does it. He's never got a heel to his
+name. But he's going to be able to buy some new ones next week."
+
+Hutchinson began his tramp again.
+
+"He'll miss thee, Little Ann; but so'll the other lads, for that
+matter."
+
+"He'll know to-night whether Mr. Galton's going to let him keep his
+work. I do hope he will. I believe he'd begin to get on."
+
+"Well,"--Hutchinson was just a little grudging even at this
+comparatively lenient moment,--"I believe the chap'll get on myself.
+He's got pluck and he's sharp. I never saw him make a poor mouth yet."
+
+"Neither did I," answered Ann.
+
+A door leading into Tembarom's hall bedroom opened on to Hutchinson's.
+They both heard some one inside the room knock at it. Hutchinson turned
+and listened, jerking his head toward the sound.
+
+"There's that poor chap again," he said. "He's wakened and got restless.
+What's Tembarom going to do with him, I'd like to know? The money won't
+last forever."
+
+"Shall I let him in, Father? I dare say he's got restless because Mr.
+Tembarom's not come in."
+
+"Aye, we'll let him in. He won't have thee long. He can't do no harm so
+long as I'm here."
+
+Little Ann went to the door and opened it. She spoke quietly.
+
+"Do you want to come in here, Mr. Strangeways?"
+
+The man came in. He was clean, but still unshaven, and his clothes
+looked as though he had been lying down. He looked round the room
+anxiously.
+
+"Where has he gone?" he demanded in an overstrung voice. "Where is he?"
+He caught at Ann's sleeve in a sudden access of nervous fear. "What
+shall I do if he's gone?"
+
+Hutchinson moved toward him.
+
+"'Ere, 'ere," he said, "don't you go catchin' hold of ladies. What do
+you want?"
+
+"I've forgotten his name now. What shall I do if I can't remember?"
+faltered Strangeways.
+
+Little Ann patted his arm comfortingly.
+
+"There, there, now! You've not really forgotten it. It's just slipped
+your memory. You want Mr. Tembarom--Mr. T. Tembarom."
+
+"Oh, thank you, thank you. That's it. Yes, Tembarom. He said T.
+Tembarom. He said he wouldn't throw me over."
+
+Little Ann led him to a seat and made him sit down. She answered him
+with quiet decision.
+
+"Well, if he said he wouldn't, he won't. Will he, Father?"
+
+"No, he won't." There was rough good nature in Hutchinson's admission.
+He paused after it to glance at Ann. "You think a lot of that lad, don't
+you, Ann?"
+
+"Yes, I do, Father," she replied undisturbedly. "He's one you can trust,
+too. He's up-town at his work," she explained to Strangeways. "He'll be
+back before long. He's giving us a bit of a supper in here because we're
+going away."
+
+Strangeways grew nervous again.
+
+"But he won't go with you? T. Tembarom won't go?"
+
+"No, no; he's not going. He'll stay here," she said soothingly. He had
+evidently not observed the packed and labeled trunks when he came in. He
+seemed suddenly to see them now, and rose in distress.
+
+"Whose are these? You said he wasn't going?"
+
+Ann took hold of his arm and led him to the corner.
+
+"They are not Mr. Tembarom's trunks," she explained. "They are father's
+and mine. Look on the labels. Joseph Hutchinson, Liverpool. Ann
+Hutchinson, Liverpool."
+
+He looked at them closely in a puzzled way. He read a label aloud in a
+dragging voice.
+
+"Ann Hutchinson, Liverpool. What's--what's Liverpool?
+
+"Oh, come," encouraged Little Ann, "you know that. It's a place in
+England. We're going back to England."
+
+He stood and gazed fixedly before him. Then he began to rub his fingers
+across his forehead. Ann knew the straining look in his eyes. He was
+making that horrible struggle to get back somewhere through the darkness
+which shut him in. It was so painful a thing to see that even Hutchinson
+turned slightly away.
+
+"Don't!" said Little Ann, softly, and tried to draw him away.
+
+He caught his breath convulsively once or twice, and his voice dragged
+out words again, as though he were dragging them from bottomless depths.
+
+"Going--back--to--England--back to England--to England."
+
+He dropped into a chair near by, his arms thrown over its back, and
+broke, as his face fell upon them, into heavy, deadly sobbing--the
+kind of sobbing Tembarom had found it impossible to stand up against.
+Hutchinson whirled about testily.
+
+"Dang it!" he broke out, "I wish Tembarom'd turn up. What are we to do?"
+He didn't like it himself. It struck him as unseemly.
+
+But Ann went to the chair, and put her hands on the shuddering shoulder,
+bending over the soul-wrung creature, the wisdom of centuries in the
+soft, expostulatory voice which seemed to reach the very darkness he
+was lost in. It was a wisdom of which she was wholly unaware, but it had
+been born with her, and was the building of her being.
+
+"'Sh! 'S-h-h!" she said. "You mustn't do that. Mr. Tembarom wouldn't
+like you to do it. He'll be in directly. 'Sh! 'Sh, now!" And simple as
+the words were, their soothing reached him. The wildness of his sobs
+grew less.
+
+"See here," Hutchinson protested, "this won't do, my man. I won't have
+it, Ann. I'm upset myself, what with this going back and everything. I
+can't have a chap coming and crying like that there. It upsets me worse
+than ever. And you hangin' over him! It won't do."
+
+Strangeways lifted his head from his arms and looked at him.
+
+"Aye, I mean what I say," Hutchinson added fretfully.
+
+Strangeways got up from the chair. When he was not bowed or slouching it
+was to be seen that he was a tall man with square shoulders. Despite his
+unshaven, haggard face, he had a sort of presence.
+
+"I'll go back to my room," he said. "I forgot. I ought not to be here."
+
+Neither Hutchinson nor Little Ann had ever seen any one do the thing
+he did next. When Ann went with him to the door of the hall bedroom, he
+took her hand, and bowing low before her, lifted it gently to his lips.
+
+Hutchinson stared at him as he turned into the room and closed the door
+behind him.
+
+"Well, I've read of lords and ladies doin' that in books," he said, "but
+I never thought I should see a chap do it myself."
+
+Little Ann went back to her mending, looking very thoughtful.
+
+"Father," she said, after a few moments, "England made him come near to
+remembering something."
+
+"New York'll come near making me remember a lot of things when I'm
+out of it," said Mr. Hutchinson, sitting down heavily in his chair and
+rubbing his head. "Eh, dang it! dang it!"
+
+"Don't you let it, Father," advised Little Ann. "There's never any good
+in thinking things over."
+
+"You're not as cheerful yourself as you let on," he said. "You've not
+got much color to-day, my lass."
+
+She rubbed one cheek a little, trying to laugh.
+
+"I shall get it back when we go and stay with grandmother. It's just
+staying indoors so much. Mr. Tembarom won't be long now; I'll get up and
+set the table. The things are on a tray outside."
+
+As she was going out of the room, Jim Bowles and Julius Steinberger
+appeared at the door.
+
+"May we come in?" Jim asked eagerly. "We're invited to the oyster stew,
+and it's time old T. T. was here. Julius and me are just getting dippy
+waiting up-stairs to hear if he's made good with Galton."
+
+"Well, now, you sit down and be quiet a bit, or you'll be losing your
+appetites," advised Ann.
+
+"You can't lose a thing the size of mine," answered Jim, "any more than
+you could lose the Metropolitan Opera-house."
+
+Ann turned her head and paused as though she were listening. She heard
+footsteps in the lower hall.
+
+"He's coming now," she announced. "I know his step. He's tired. Don't go
+yet, you two," she added as the pair prepared to rush to meet him.
+"When any one's that tired he wants to wash his face, and talk when he's
+ready. If you'll just go back to your room I'll call you when I've set
+the table."
+
+She felt that she wanted a little more quiet during the next few minutes
+than she could have if they remained and talked at the top of elated
+voices. She had not quite realized how anxiously she had been waiting
+all day for the hour when she would hear exactly what had happened. If
+he was all right, it would be a nice thing to remember when she was in
+England. In this moderate form she expressed herself mentally. "It would
+be a nice thing to remember." She spread the cloth on the table and
+began to lay out the plates. Involuntarily she found herself stopping to
+glance at the hall bedroom door and listen rather intently.
+
+"I hope he's got it. I do that. I'm sure he has. He ought to."
+
+Hutchinson looked over at her. She was that like her mother, that lass!
+
+"You're excited, Ann," he said.
+
+"Yes, Father, I am--a bit. He's--he's washing his face now." Sounds of
+splashing water could be heard through the intervening door.
+
+Hutchinson watched her with some uneasiness.
+
+"You care a lot for that lad," he said.
+
+She did not look fluttered. Her answer was quite candid.
+
+"I said I did, Father. He's taking off his boots."
+
+"You know every sound he makes, and you're going away Saturday, and
+you'll never see him again."
+
+"That needn't stop me caring. It never did any one any harm to care for
+one of his sort."
+
+"But it can't come to anything," Hutchinson began to bluster. "It won't
+do--"
+
+"He's coming to the door, he's turning the handle," said Little Ann.
+
+Tembarom came in. He was fresh with recent face-washing, and his hair
+was damp, so that a short lock curled and stood up. He had been uptown
+making frantic efforts for hours, but he had been making them in a
+spirit of victorious relief, and he did not look tired at all.
+
+"I've got it!" he cried out the moment he entered. "I've got it, by
+jingo! The job's mine for keeps."
+
+"Galton's give it to you out and out?" Hutchinson was slightly excited
+himself.
+
+"He's in the bulliest humor you ever saw. He says I've done first-rate,
+and if I go on, he'll run me up to thirty."
+
+"Well, I'm danged glad of it, lad, that I am!" Hutchinson gave in
+handsomely. "You put backbone into it."
+
+Little Ann stood near, smiling. Her smile met Tembarom's.
+
+"I know you're glad, Little Ann," he said. "I'd never have got there but
+for you. It was up to me, after the way you started me."
+
+"You know I'm glad without me telling you," she answered. "I'm RIGHTDOWN
+glad."
+
+And it was at this moment that Mrs. Bowse came into the room.
+
+"It's too bad it's happened just now," she said, much flustered.
+"That's the way with things. The stew'll spoil, but he says it's real
+important."
+
+Tembarom caught at both her hands and shook them.
+
+"I've got it, Mrs. Bowse. Here's your society reporter! The best-looking
+boarder you've got is going to be able to pay his board steady."
+
+"I'm as glad as can be, and so will everybody be. I knew you'd get it.
+But this gentleman's been here twice to-day. He says he really must see
+you."
+
+"Let him wait," Hutchinson ordered. "What's the chap want? The stew
+won't be fit to eat."
+
+"No, it won't," answered Mrs. Bowse; "but he seems to think he's not the
+kind to be put off. He says it's more Mr. Tembarom's business than his.
+He looked real mad when I showed him into the parlor, where they were
+playing the pianola. He asked wasn't there a private room where you
+could talk."
+
+A certain flurried interest in the manner of Mrs. Bowse, a something
+not usually awakened by inopportune callers, an actual suggestion of
+the possible fact that she was not as indifferent as she was nervous,
+somewhat awakened Mr. Hutchinson's curiosity.
+
+"Look here," he volunteered, "if he's got any real business, he
+can't talk over to the tune of the pianola you can bring him up here,
+Tembarom. I'll see he don't stay long if his business isn't worth
+talkin' about. He'll see the table set for supper, and that'll hurry
+him."
+
+"Oh, gee I wish he hadn't come!" said Tembarom. "I'll just go down and
+see what he wants. No one's got any swell private business with me."
+
+"You bring him up if he has," said Hutchinson. "We'd like to hear about
+it."
+
+Tembarom ran down the stairs quickly.
+
+No one had ever wanted to see him on business before. There was
+something important-sounding about it; perhaps things were starting up
+for him in real earnest. It might be a message from Galton, though
+he could not believe that he had at this early stage reached such a
+distinction. A ghastly thought shot a bolt at him, but he shook himself
+free of it.
+
+"He's not a fellow to go back on his word, anyhow," he insisted.
+
+There were more boarders than usual in the parlor. The young woman from
+the notion counter had company; and one of her guests was playing "He
+sut'nly was Good to Me" on the pianola with loud and steady tread of
+pedal.
+
+The new arrival had evidently not thought it worth his while to commit
+himself to permanency by taking a seat. He was standing not far from the
+door with a businesslike-looking envelop in one hand and a pince-nez in
+the other, with which Tembarom saw he was rather fretfully tapping
+the envelop as he looked about him. He was plainly taking in the
+characteristics of the room, and was not leniently disposed toward them.
+His tailor was clearly an excellent one, with entirely correct ideas as
+to the cut and material which exactly befitted an elderly gentleman of
+some impressiveness in the position, whatsoever it happened to be, which
+he held. His face was not of a friendly type, and his eyes held cold
+irritation discreetly restrained by businesslike civility. Tembarom
+vaguely felt the genialities of the oyster supper assume a rather
+fourth-rate air.
+
+The caller advanced and spoke first.
+
+"Mr. Tembarom?" he inquired.
+
+"Yes," Tembarom answered, "I'm T. Tembarom."
+
+"T.," repeated the stranger, with a slightly puzzled expression. "Ah,
+yes; I see. I beg pardon."
+
+In that moment Tembarom felt that he was looked over, taken in, summed
+up, and without favor. The sharp, steady eye, however, did not seem to
+have moved from his face. At the same time it had aided him to realize
+that he was, to this well-dressed person at least, a too exhilarated
+young man wearing a ten-dollar "hand-me-down."
+
+"My name is Palford," he said concisely. "That will convey nothing to
+you. I am of the firm of Palford & Grimby of Lincoln's Inn. This is my
+card."
+
+Tembarom took the card and read that Palford & Grimby were "solicitors,"
+and he was not sure that he knew exactly what "solicitors" were.
+
+"Lincoln's Inn?" he hesitated. "That's not in New York, is it?"
+
+"No, Mr. Tembarom; in London. I come from England."
+
+"You must have had bad weather crossing," said Tembarom, with amiable
+intent. Somehow Mr. Palford presented a more unyielding surface than he
+was accustomed to. And yet his hard courtesy was quite perfect.
+
+"I have been here some weeks."
+
+"I hope you like New York. Won't you have a seat?"
+
+The young lady from the notion counter and her friends began to sing
+the chorus of "He sut'nly was Good to Me" with quite professional negro
+accent.
+
+"That's just the way May Irwin done it," one of them laughed.
+
+Mr. Palford glanced at the performers. He did not say whether he liked
+New York or not.
+
+"I asked your landlady if we could not see each other in a private
+room," he said. "It would not be possible to talk quietly here."
+
+"We shouldn't have much of a show," answered Tembarom, inwardly wishing
+he knew what was going to happen. "But there are no private rooms in the
+house. We can be quieter than this, though, if we go up stairs to Mr.
+Hutchinson's room. He said I could bring you."
+
+"That would be much better," replied Mr. Palford.
+
+Tembarom led him out of the room, up the first steep and narrow flight
+of stairs, along the narrow hall to the second, up that, down another
+hall to the third, up the third, and on to the fourth. As he led the way
+he realized again that the worn carpets, the steep narrowness, and the
+pieces of paper unfortunately stripped off the wall at intervals, were
+being rather counted against him. This man had probably never been in a
+place like this before in his life, and he didn't take to it.
+
+At the Hutchinsons' door he stopped and explained:
+
+"We were going to have an oyster stew here because the Hutchinsons are
+going away; but Mr. Hutchinson said we could come up."
+
+"Very kind of Mr. Hutchinson, I'm sure."
+
+Despite his stiffly collected bearing, Mr. Palford looked perhaps
+slightly nervous when he was handed into the bed-sitting-room, and found
+himself confronting Hutchinson and Little Ann and the table set for the
+oyster stew. It is true that he had never been in such a place in his
+life, that for many reasons he was appalled, and that he was beset by a
+fear that he might be grotesquely compelled by existing circumstances to
+accept these people's invitation, if they insisted upon his sitting down
+with them and sharing their oyster stew. One could not calculate on what
+would happen among these unknown quantities. It might be their idea of
+boarding-house politeness. And how could one offend them? God forbid
+that the situation should intensify itself in such an absurdly trying
+manner! What a bounder the unfortunate young man was! His own experience
+had not been such as to assist him to any realistic enlightenment
+regarding him, even when he had seen the society page and had learned
+that he had charge of it.
+
+"Let me make you acquainted with Mr. and Miss Hutchinson," Tembarom
+introduced. "This is Mr. Palford, Mr. Hutchinson."
+
+Hutchinson, half hidden behind his newspaper, jerked his head and
+grunted:
+
+"Glad to see you, sir."
+
+Mr. Palford bowed, and took the chair Tembarom presented.
+
+"I am much obliged to you, Mr. Hutchinson, for allowing me to come to
+your room. I have business to discuss with Mr. Tembarom, and the pianola
+was being played down-stairs--rather loudly."
+
+"They do it every night, dang 'em! Right under my bed," growled
+Hutchinson. "You're an Englishman, aren't you?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"So am I, thank God!" Hutchinson devoutly gave forth.
+
+Little Ann rose from her chair, sewing in hand.
+
+"Father'll come and sit with me in my room," she said.
+
+Hutchinson looked grumpy. He did not intend to leave the field clear
+and the stew to its fate if he could help it. He gave Ann a protesting
+frown.
+
+"I dare say Mr. Palford doesn't mind us," he said. "We're not
+strangers."
+
+"Not in the least," Palford protested. "Certainly not. If you are old
+friends, you may be able to assist us."
+
+"Well, I don't know about that," Hutchinson answered, "We've not known
+him long, but we know him pretty well. You come from London, don't you?"
+
+"Yes. From Lincoln's Inn Fields."
+
+"Law?" grunted Hutchinson.
+
+"Yes. Of the firm of Palford & Grimby."
+
+Hutchinson moved in his chair involuntarily. There was stimulation to
+curiosity in this. This chap was a regular top sawyer--clothes, way of
+pronouncing his words, manners, everything. No mistaking him--old family
+solicitor sort of chap. What on earth could he have to say to Tembarom?
+Tembarom himself had sat down and could not be said to look at his ease.
+
+"I do not intrude without the excuse of serious business," Palford
+explained to him. "A great deal of careful research and inquiry has
+finally led me here. I am compelled to believe I have followed the
+right clue, but I must ask you a few questions. Your name is not really
+Tembarom, is it?"
+
+Hutchinson looked at Tembarom sharply.
+
+"Not Tembarom? What does he mean, lad?"
+
+Tembarom's grin was at once boyish and ashamed.
+
+"Well, it is in one way," he answered, "and it isn't in another. The
+fellows at school got into the way of calling me that way,--to save
+time, I guess,--and I got to like it. They'd have guyed my real name.
+Most of them never knew it. I can't see why any one ever called a child
+by such a fool name, anyhow."
+
+"What was it exactly?"
+
+Tembarom looked almost sheepish.
+
+"It sounds like a thing in a novel. It was Temple Temple Barholm. Two
+Temples, by gee! As if one wasn't enough!"
+
+Joseph Hutchinson dropped his paper and almost started from his chair.
+His red face suddenly became so much redder that he looked a trifle
+apoplectic.
+
+"Temple Barholm does tha say?" he cried out.
+
+Mr. Palford raised his hand and checked him, but with a suggestion of
+stiff apology.
+
+"If you will kindly allow me. Did you ever hear your father refer to a
+place called Temple Barholm?" he inquired.
+
+Tembarom reflected as though sending his thoughts backward into a
+pretty thoroughly forgotten and ignored past. There had been no reason
+connected with filial affection which should have caused him to recall
+memories of his father. They had not liked each other. He had known
+that he had been resented and looked down upon as a characteristically
+American product. His father had more than once said he was a "common
+American lad," and he had known he was.
+
+"Seems to me," he said at last, "that once when he was pretty mad at his
+luck I heard him grumbling about English laws, and he said some of his
+distant relations were swell people who would never think of speaking to
+him,--perhaps didn't know he was alive,--and they lived in a big way in
+a place that was named after the family. He never saw it or them, and he
+said that was the way in England--one fellow got everything and the rest
+were paupers like himself. He'd always been poor."
+
+"Yes, the relation was a distant one. Until this investigation began the
+family knew nothing of him. The inquiry has been a tiresome one. I trust
+I am reaching the end of it. We have given nearly two years to following
+this clue."
+
+"What for?" burst forth Tembarom, sitting upright.
+
+"Because it was necessary to find either George Temple Barholm or his
+son, if he had one."
+
+"I'm his son, all right, but he died when I was eight years old,"
+Tembarom volunteered. "I don't remember much about him."
+
+"You remember that he was not an American?"
+
+"He was English. Hated it; but he wasn't fond of America."
+
+"Have you any papers belonging to him?"
+
+Tembarom hesitated again.
+
+"There's a few old letters--oh, and one of those glass photographs in
+a case. I believe it's my grandfather and grandmother, taken when they
+were married. Him on a chair, you know, and her standing with her hand
+on his shoulder."
+
+"Can you show them to me?" Palford suggested.
+
+"Sure," Tembarom answered, getting up from his seat "They're in my room.
+I turned them up yesterday among some other things."
+
+When he left them, Mr. Palford sat gently rubbing his chin. Hutchinson
+wanted to burst forth with questions, but he looked so remote and
+acidly dignified that there was a suggestion of boldness in the idea of
+intruding on his reflections. Hutchinson stared at him and breathed hard
+and short in his suspense. The stiff old chap was thinking things
+over and putting things together in his lawyer's way. He was entirely
+oblivious to his surroundings. Little Ann went on with her mending, but
+she wore her absorbed look, and it was not a result of her work.
+
+Tembarom came back with some papers in his hand. They were yellowed
+old letters, and on the top of the package there was a worn
+daguerreotype-case with broken clasp.
+
+"Here they are," he said, giving them to Palford. "I guess they'd just
+been married," opening the case. "Get on to her embroidered collar and
+big breast-pin with his picture in it. That's English enough, isn't it?
+He'd given it to her for a wedding-present. There's something in one of
+the letters about it."
+
+It was the letters to which Mr. Palford gave the most attention. He read
+them and examined post-marks and dates. When he had finished, he
+rose from his chair with a slightly portentous touch of professional
+ceremony.
+
+"Yes, those are sufficiently convincing. You are a very fortunate young
+man. Allow me to congratulate you."
+
+He did not look particularly pleased, though he extended his hand and
+shook Tembarom's politely. He was rigorously endeavoring to conceal that
+he found himself called upon to make the best of an extremely bad job.
+Hutchinson started forward, resting his hands on his knees and glaring
+with ill-suppressed excitement.
+
+"What's that for?" Tembarom said. He felt rather like a fool. He laughed
+half nervously. It seemed to be up to him to understand, and he didn't
+understand in the least.
+
+"You have, through your father's distant relationship, inherited a
+very magnificent property--the estate of Temple Barholm in Lancashire,"
+Palford began to explain, but Mr. Hutchinson sprang from his chair
+outright, crushing his paper in his hand.
+
+"Temple Barholm!" he almost shouted, "I dunnot believe thee! Why, it's
+one of th' oldest places in England and one of th' biggest. Th' Temple
+Barholms as didn't come over with th' Conqueror was there before him.
+Some of them was Saxon kings! And him--" pointing a stumpy, red finger
+disparagingly at Tembarom, aghast and incredulous--"that New York lad
+that's sold newspapers in the streets--you say he's come into it?"
+
+"Precisely." Mr. Palford spoke with some crispness of diction. Noise
+and bluster annoyed him. "That is my business here. Mr. Tembarom is,
+in fact, Mr. Temple Temple Barholm of Temple Barholm, which you seem to
+have heard of."
+
+"Heard of it! My mother was born in the village an' lives there yet. Art
+tha struck dumb, lad!" he said almost fiercely to Tembarom. "By Judd!
+Tha well may be!"
+
+Tembarom was standing holding the back of a chair. He was pale, and
+had once opened his mouth, and then gulped and shut it. Little Ann had
+dropped her sewing. His first look had leaped to her, and she had looked
+back straight into his eyes.
+
+"I'm struck something," he said, his half-laugh slightly unsteady.
+"Who'd blame me?"
+
+"You'd better sit down," said Little Ann. "Sudden things are upsetting."
+
+He did sit down. He felt rather shaky. He touched himself on his chest
+and laughed again.
+
+"Me!" he said. "T. T.! Hully gee! It's like a turn at a vaudeville."
+
+The sentiment prevailing in Hutchinson's mind seemed to verge on
+indignation.
+
+"Thee th' master of Temple Barholm!" he ejaculated. "Why, it stood for
+seventy thousand pound' a year!"
+
+"It did and it does," said Mr. Palford, curtly. He had less and less
+taste for the situation. There was neither dignity nor proper sentiment
+in it. The young man was utterly incapable of comprehending the meaning
+and proportions of the extraordinary event which had befallen him. It
+appeared to present to him the aspect of a somewhat slangy New York
+joke.
+
+"You do not seem much impressed, Mr. Temple Barholm," he said.
+
+"Oh, I'm impressed, all right," answered Tembarom, "but, say, this thing
+can't be true! You couldn't make it true if you sat up all night to do
+it."
+
+"When I go into the business details of the matter tomorrow morning
+you will realize the truth of it," said Mr. Palford. "Seventy thousand
+pounds a year--and Temple Barholm--are not unsubstantial facts."
+
+"Three hundred and fifty thousand dollars, my lad--that's what it stands
+for!" put in Mr. Hutchinson.
+
+"Well," said Tembarom, "I guess I can worry along on that if I try hard
+enough. I mayn't be able to keep myself in the way I've been used to,
+but I've got to make it do."
+
+Mr. Palford stiffened. He did not know that the garish,
+flippant-sounding joking was the kind of defense the streets of New York
+had provided Mr. Temple Barholm with in many an hour when he had been
+a half-clad newsboy with an empty stomach, and a bundle of unsold
+newspapers under his arm.
+
+"You are jocular," he said. "I find the New Yorkers are given to being
+jocular--continuously."
+
+Tembarom looked at him rather searchingly. Palford wouldn't have found
+it possible to believe that the young man knew all about his distaste
+and its near approach to disgust, that he knew quite well what he
+thought of his ten-dollar suit, his ex-newsboy's diction, and his entire
+incongruousness as a factor in any circumstances connected with dignity
+and splendor. He would certainly not have credited the fact that though
+he had not the remotest idea what sort of a place Temple Barholm was,
+and what sort of men its long line of possessors had been, he had gained
+a curious knowledge of their significance through the mental attitude
+of their legal representative when he for a moment failed to conceal his
+sense of actual revolt.
+
+"It seems sort of like a joke till you get on to it," he said. "But I
+guess it ain't such a merry jest as it seems."
+
+And then Mr. Palford did begin to observe that he had lost his color
+entirely; also that he had a rather decent, sharp-cut face, and
+extremely white and good young teeth, which he showed not unattractively
+when he smiled. And he smiled frequently, but he was not smiling now.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+In the course of the interview given to the explaining of business and
+legal detail which took place between Mr. Palford and his client the
+following morning, Tembarom's knowledge of his situation extended itself
+largely, and at the same time added in a proportionate degree to his
+sense of his own incongruity as connected with it. He sat at a table in
+Palford's private sitting-room at the respectable, old-fashioned hotel
+the solicitor had chosen--sat and listened, and answered questions and
+asked them, until his head began to feel as though it were crammed to
+bursting with extraordinary detail.
+
+It was all extraordinary to him. He had had no time for reading and no
+books to read, and therefore knew little of fiction. He was entirely
+ignorant of all romance but such as the New York papers provided. This
+was highly colored, but it did not deal with events connected with the
+possessors of vast English estates and the details of their habits and
+customs. His geographical knowledge of Great Britain was simple and
+largely incorrect. Information concerning its usual conditions and
+aspects had come to him through talk of international marriages and
+cup races, and had made but little impression upon him. He liked New
+York--its noise, its streets, its glare, its Sunday newspapers, with
+their ever-increasing number of sheets, and pictures of everything
+on earth which could be photographed. His choice, when he could allow
+himself a fifty-cent seat at the theater, naturally ran to productions
+which were farcical or cheerfully musical. He had never reached serious
+drama, perhaps because he had never had money enough to pay for entrance
+to anything like half of the "shows" the other fellows recommended. He
+was totally unprepared for the facing of any kind of drama as connected
+with himself. The worst of it was that it struck him as being of the
+nature of farce when regarded from the normal New York point of view. If
+he had somehow had the luck to come into the possession of money in ways
+which were familiar to him,--to "strike it rich" in the way of a "big
+job" or "deal,"--he would have been better able to adjust himself to
+circumstances. He might not have known how to spend his money, but he
+would have spent it in New York on New York joys. There would have
+been no foreign remoteness about the thing, howsoever fantastically
+unexpected such fortune might have been. At any rate, in New York he
+would have known the names of places and things.
+
+Through a large part of his interview with Palford his elbow rested
+on the table, and he held his chin with his hand and rubbed it
+thoughtfully. The last Temple Temple Barholm had been an eccentric and
+uncompanionable person. He had lived alone and had not married. He had
+cherished a prejudice against the man who would have succeeded him as
+next of kin if he had not died young. People had been of the opinion
+that he had disliked him merely because he did not wish to be reminded
+that some one else must some day inevitably stand in his shoes, and
+own the possessions of which he himself was arrogantly fond. There were
+always more female Temple Barholms than male ones, and the families
+were small. The relative who had emigrated to Brooklyn had been a
+comparatively unknown person. His only intercourse with the head of the
+house had been confined to a begging letter, written from America
+when his circumstances were at their worst. It was an ill-mannered and
+ill-expressed letter, which had been considered presuming, and had been
+answered chillingly with a mere five-pound note, clearly explained as
+a final charity. This begging letter, which bitterly contrasted the
+writer's poverty with his indifferent relative's luxuries, had, by a
+curious trick of chance which preserved it, quite extraordinarily turned
+up during an examination of apparently unimportant, forgotten papers,
+and had furnished a clue in the search for next of kin. The writer had
+greatly annoyed old Mr. Temple Barholm by telling him that he had called
+his son by his name--"not that there was ever likely to be anything in
+it for him." But a waif of the New York streets who was known as "Tem"
+or "Tembarom" was not a link easily attached to any chain, and the
+search had been long and rather hopeless. It had, however, at last
+reached Mrs. Bowse's boarding-house and before Mr. Palford sat Mr.
+Temple Temple Barholm, a cheap young man in cheap clothes, and speaking
+New York slang with a nasal accent. Mr. Palford, feeling him appalling
+and absolutely without the pale, was still aware that he stood in the
+position of an important client of the firm of Palford & Grimby. There
+was a section of the offices at Lincoln's Inn devoted to documents
+representing a lifetime of attention to the affairs of the Temple
+Barholm estates. It was greatly to be hoped that the crass ignorance
+and commonness of this young outsider would not cause impossible
+complications.
+
+"He knows nothing! He knows nothing!" Palford found himself forced to
+exclaim mentally not once, but a hundred times, in the course of their
+talk.
+
+There was--this revealed itself as the interview proceeded--just one
+slight palliation of his impossible benightedness: he was not the
+kind of young man who, knowing nothing, huffily protects himself by
+pretending to know everything. He was of an unreserve concerning his
+ignorance which his solicitor felt sometimes almost struck one in the
+face. Now and then it quite made one jump. He was singularly free from
+any vestige of personal vanity. He was also singularly unready to
+take offense. To the head of the firm of Palford & Grimby, who was
+not accustomed to lightness of manner, and inclined to the view that a
+person who made a joke took rather a liberty with him, his tendency to
+be jocular, even about himself and the estate of Temple Barholm, was
+irritating and somewhat disrespectful. Mr. Palford did not easily
+comprehend jokes of any sort; especially was he annoyed by cryptic
+phraseology and mammoth exaggeration. For instance, he could not in the
+least compass Mr. Temple Barholm's meaning when he casually remarked
+that something or other was "all to the merry"; or again, quite as
+though he believed that he was using reasonable English figures of
+speech, "The old fellow thought he was the only pebble on the beach." In
+using the latter expression he had been referring to the late Mr. Temple
+Barholm; but what on earth was his connection with the sea-shore and
+pebbles? When confronted with these baffling absurdities, Mr. Palford
+either said, "I beg pardon," or stiffened and remained silent.
+
+When Tembarom learned that he was the head of one of the oldest families
+in England, no aspect of the desirable dignity of his position reached
+him in the least.
+
+"Well," he remarked, "there's quite a lot of us can go back to Adam and
+Eve."
+
+When he was told that he was lord of the manor of Temple Barholm, he did
+not know what a manor was.
+
+"What's a manor, and what happens if you're lord of it?" he asked.
+
+He had not heard of William the Conqueror, and did not appear moved to
+admiration of him, though he owned that he seemed to have "put it over."
+
+"Why didn't he make a republic of it while he was about it?" he said.
+"But I guess that wasn't his kind. He didn't do all that fighting for
+his health."
+
+His interest was not alone totally dissevered from the events of past
+centuries; it was as dissevered from those of mere past years. The
+habits, customs, and points of view of five years before seemed to
+have been cast into a vast waste-paper basket as wholly unpractical in
+connection with present experiences.
+
+"A man that's going to keep up with the procession can't waste time
+thinking about yesterday. What he's got to do is to keep his eye on
+what's going to happen the week after next," he summed it up.
+
+Rather to Mr. Palford's surprise, he did not speak lightly, but with a
+sort of inner seriousness. It suggested that he had not arrived at this
+conclusion without the aid of sharp experience. Now and then one saw a
+touch of this profound practical perception in him.
+
+It was not to be denied that he was clear-headed enough where purely
+practical business detail was concerned. He was at first plainly rather
+stunned by the proportions presented to him, but his questions were
+direct and of a common-sense order not to be despised.
+
+"I don't know anything about it yet," he said once. "It's all Dutch to
+me. I can't calculate in half-crowns and pounds and half pounds, but I'm
+going to find out. I've got to."
+
+It was extraordinary and annoying to feel that one must explain
+everything; but this impossible fellow was not an actual fool on all
+points, and he did not seem to be a weakling. He might learn certain
+things in time, and at all events one was no further personally
+responsible for him and his impossibilities than the business concerns
+of his estate would oblige any legal firm to be. Clients, whether
+highly desirable or otherwise, were no more than clients. They were not
+relatives whom one must introduce to one's friends. Thus Mr. Palford,
+who was not a specially humane or sympathetic person, mentally decided.
+He saw no pathos in this raw young man, who would presently find himself
+floundering unaided in waters utterly unknown to him. There was even a
+touch of bitter amusement in the solicitor's mind as he glanced toward
+the future.
+
+He explained with detail the necessity for their immediate departure for
+the other side of the Atlantic. Certain legal formalities which must at
+once be attended to demanded their presence in England. Foreseeing this,
+on the day when he had finally felt himself secure as to the identity
+of his client he had taken the liberty of engaging optionally certain
+state-rooms on the Adriana, sailing the following Wednesday.
+
+"Subject of course to your approval," he added politely. "But it is
+imperative that we should be on the spot as early as possible." He did
+not mention that he himself was abominably tired of his sojourn on alien
+shores, and wanted to be back in London in his own chambers, with his
+own club within easy reach.
+
+Tembarom's face changed its expression. He had been looking rather
+weighted down and fatigued, and he lighted up to eagerness.
+
+"Say," he exclaimed, "why couldn't we go on the Transatlantic on
+Saturday?"
+
+"It is one of the small, cheap boats," objected Palford.
+
+"The accommodation would be most inferior."
+
+Tembarom leaned forward and touched his sleeve in hasty, boyish appeal.
+
+"I want to go on it," he said; "I want to go steerage."
+
+Palford stared at him.
+
+"You want to go on the Transatlantic! Steerage!" he ejaculated, quite
+aghast. This was a novel order of madness to reveal itself in the recent
+inheritor of a great fortune.
+
+Tembarom's appeal grew franker; it took on the note of a too crude young
+fellow's misplaced confidence.
+
+"You do this for me," he said. "I'd give a farm to go on that boat. The
+Hutchinsons are sailing on it--Mr. and Miss Hutchinson, the ones you saw
+at the house last night."
+
+"I--it is really impossible." Mr. Palford hesitated. "As to steerage, my
+dear Mr. Temple Barholm, you--you can't."
+
+Tembarom got up and stood with his hands thrust deep in his pockets. It
+seemed to be a sort of expression of his sudden hopeful excitement.
+
+"Why not" he said. "If I own about half of England and have money to
+burn, I guess I can buy a steerage passage on a nine-day steamer."
+
+"You can buy anything you like," Palford answered stiffly. "It is not a
+matter of buying. But I should not be conducting myself properly toward
+you if I allowed it. It would not be--becoming."
+
+"Becoming!" cried Tembarom, "Thunder! It's not a spring bat. I tell you
+I want to go just that way."
+
+Palford saw abnormal breakers ahead. He felt that he would be glad
+when he had landed his charge safely at Temple Barholm. Once there, his
+family solicitor was not called upon to live with him and hobnob with
+his extraordinary intimates.
+
+"As to buying," he said, still with marked lack of enthusiasm, "instead
+of taking a steerage passage on the Transatlantic yourself, you might no
+doubt secure first-class state-rooms for Mr. and Miss Hutchinson on the
+Adriana, though I seriously advise against it."
+
+Tembarom shook his head.
+
+"You don't know them," he said. "They wouldn't let me. Hutchinson's
+a queer old fellow and he's had the hardest kind of luck, but he's as
+proud as they make 'em. Me butt in and offer to pay their passage back,
+as if they were paupers, just because I've suddenly struck it rich!
+Hully gee! I guess not. A fellow that's been boosted up in the air all
+in a minute, as I have, has got to lie pretty low to keep folks from
+wanting to kick him, anyhow. Hutchinson's a darned sight smarter fellow
+than I am, and he knows it--and he's Lancashire, you bet." He stopped a
+minute and flushed. "As to Little Ann," he said--"me make that sort of a
+break with HER! Well, I should be a fool."
+
+Palford was a cold-blooded and unimaginative person, but a long legal
+experience had built up within him a certain shrewdness of perception.
+He had naturally glanced once or twice at the girl sitting still at
+her mending, and he had observed that she said very little and had a
+singularly quiet, firm little voice.
+
+"I beg pardon. You are probably right. I had very little conversation
+with either of them. Miss Hutchinson struck me as having an intelligent
+face."
+
+"She's a wonder," said Tembarom, devoutly. "She's just a wonder."
+
+"Under the circumstances," suggested Mr. Palford, "it might not be a bad
+idea to explain to her your idea of the steerage passage. An intelligent
+girl can often give excellent advice. You will probably have an
+opportunity of speaking to her tonight. Did you say they were sailing
+to-morrow?"
+
+To-morrow! That brought it so near that it gave Tembarom a shock. He
+had known that they sailed on Saturday, and now Saturday had become
+to-morrow. Things began to surge through his mind--all sorts of things
+he had no time to think of clearly, though it was true they had darted
+vaguely about in the delirious excitement of the night, during which he
+had scarcely slept at all. His face changed again, and the appeal died
+out of it. He began to look anxious and restless.
+
+"Yes, they're going to-morrow," he answered.
+
+"You see," argued Mr. Palford, with conviction, "how impossible it would
+be for us to make any arrangements in so few hours. You will excuse my
+saying," he added punctiliously, "that I could not make the voyage in
+the steerage."
+
+Tembarom laughed. He thought he saw him doing it.
+
+"That's so," he said. Then, with renewed hope, he added, "Say, I 'm
+going to try and get them to wait till Wednesday."
+
+"I do not think--" Mr. Palford began, and then felt it wiser to leave
+things as they were. "But I'm not qualified to give an opinion. I do not
+know Miss Hutchinson at all."
+
+But the statement was by no means frank. He had a private conviction
+that he did know her to a certain degree. And he did.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+There was a slight awkwardness even to Tembarom in entering the
+dining-room that evening. He had not seen his fellow boarders, as his
+restless night had made him sleep later than usual. But Mrs. Bowse had
+told him of the excitement he had caused.
+
+"They just couldn't eat," she said. "They could do nothing but talk
+and talk and ask questions; and I had waffles, too, and they got
+stone-cold."
+
+The babel of friendly outcry which broke out on his entry was made up
+of jokes, ejaculations, questions, and congratulatory outbursts from all
+sides.
+
+"Good old T. T.!" "Give him a Harvard yell! Rah! Rah! Rah!" "Lend me
+fifty-five cents?" "Where's your tiara?" "Darned glad of it!" "Make us a
+speech!"
+
+"Say, people," said Tembarom, "don't you get me rattled or I can't tell
+you anything. I'm rattled enough already."
+
+"Well, is it true?" called out Mr. Striper.
+
+"No," Tembarom answered back, sitting down. "It couldn't be; that's what
+I told Palford. I shall wake up in a minute or two and find myself in a
+hospital with a peacherino of a trained nurse smoothing 'me piller.' You
+can't fool ME with a pipe-dream like this. Palford's easier; he's not a
+New Yorker. He says it IS true, and I can't get out of it."
+
+"Whew! Great Jakes!" A long breath was exhaled all round the table.
+
+"What are you, anyhow?" cried Jim Bowles across the dishes.
+
+Tembarom rested his elbow on the edge of the table and began to check
+off his points on his fingers.
+
+"I'm this," he said: "I'm Temple Temple Barholm, Esquire, of Temple
+Barholm, Lancashire, England. At the time of the flood my folks knocked
+up a house just about where the ark landed, and I guess they've held on
+to it ever since. I don't know what business they went into, but they
+made money. Palford swears I've got three hundred and fifty thousand
+dollars a year. I wasn't going to call the man a liar; but I just missed
+it, by jings!"
+
+He was trying to "bluff it out." Somehow he felt he had to. He felt it
+more than ever when a momentary silence fell upon those who sat about
+the table. It fell when he said "three hundred and fifty thousand
+dollars a year." No one could find voice to make any remark for a few
+seconds after that.
+
+"Are you a lord--or a duke?" some one asked after breath had recovered
+itself.
+
+"No, I'm not," he replied with relief. "I just got out from under that;
+but the Lord knows how I did it."
+
+"What are you going to do first?" said Jim Bowles.
+
+"I've got to go and 'take possession.' That's what Palford calls
+it. I've been a lost heir for nearly two years, and I've got to show
+myself."
+
+Hutchinson had not joined the clamor of greeting, but had grunted
+disapproval more than once. He felt that, as an Englishman, he had a
+certain dignity to maintain. He knew something about big estates and
+their owners. He was not like these common New York chaps, who regarded
+them as Arabian Nights tales to make jokes about. He had grown up as a
+village boy in proper awe of Temple Barholm. They were ignorant fools,
+this lot. He had no patience with them. He had left the village and gone
+to work in Manchester when he was a boy of twelve, but as long as he had
+remained in his mother's cottage it had been only decent good manners
+for him to touch his forehead respectfully when a Temple Barholm, or
+a Temple Barholm guest or carriage or pony phaeton, passed him by. And
+this chap was Mr. Temple Temple Barholm himself! Lord save us!
+
+Little Ann said nothing at all; but, then, she seldom said anything
+during meal-times. When the rest of the boarders laughed, she ate her
+dinner and smiled. Several times, despite her caution, Tembarom caught
+her eye, and somehow held it a second with his. She smiled at him when
+this happened; but there was something restless and eager in his look
+which made her wish to evade it. She knew what he felt, and she knew why
+he kept up his jokes and never once spoke seriously. She knew he was
+not comfortable, and did not enjoy talking about hundreds of thousands
+a year to people who worked hard for ten or twenty "per." To-morrow
+morning was very near, she kept thinking. To-morrow night she would be
+lying in her berth in the steerage, or more probably taking care of her
+father, who would be very uncomfortable.
+
+"What will Galton do?" Mr. Striper asked.
+
+"I don't know," Tembarom answered, and he looked troubled. Three hundred
+and fifty thousand dollars a year might not be able to give aid to a
+wounded society page.
+
+"What are you going to do with your Freak?" called out Julius
+Steinberger.
+
+Tembarom actually started. As things had surged over him, he had had
+too much to think over. He had not had time to give to his strange
+responsibility; it had become one nevertheless.
+
+"Are you going to leave him behind when you go to England?"
+
+He leaned forward and put his chin on his hand.
+
+"Why, say," he said, as though he were thinking it out, "he's spoken
+about England two or three times. He's said he must go there. By jings!
+I'll take him with me, and see what'll happen."
+
+When Little Ann got up to leave the room he followed her and her father
+into the hall.
+
+"May I come up and talk it over with you?" he appealed. "I've got to
+talk to some one who knows something about it. I shall go dotty if I
+don't. It's too much like a dream."
+
+"Come on up when you're ready," answered Hutchinson. "Ann and me can
+give you a tip or two."
+
+"I'm going to be putting the last things in the trunks," said Ann, "but
+I dare say you won't mind that. The express'll be here by eight in the
+morning."
+
+"O Lord!" groaned Tembarom.
+
+When he went up to the fourth floor a little later, Hutchinson had
+fallen into a doze in his chair over his newspaper, and Ann was kneeling
+by a trunk in the hall, folding small articles tightly, and fitting them
+into corners. To Tembarom she looked even more than usual like a slight
+child thing one could snatch up in one's arms and carry about or set on
+one's knee without feeling her weight at all. An inferior gas-jet on the
+wall just above her was doing its best with the lot of soft, red hair,
+which would have been an untidy bundle if it had not been hers.
+
+Tembarom sat down on the trunk next to her.
+
+"O Little Ann!" he broke out under his breath, lest the sound of his
+voice might check Hutchinson's steady snoring. "O Little Ann!"
+
+Ann leaned back, sitting upon her small heels, and looked up at him.
+
+"You're all upset, and it's not to be wondered at, Mr. Temple Barholm,"
+she said.
+
+"Upset! You're going away to-morrow morning! And, for the Lord's sake,
+don't call me that!" he protested.
+
+"You're going away yourself next Wednesday. And you ARE Mr. Temple
+Barholm. You'll never be called anything else in England.
+
+"How am I going to stand it?" he protested again. "How could a fellow
+like me stand it! To be yanked out of good old New York, and set down in
+a place like a museum, with Central Park round it, and called Mr. Temple
+Temple Barholm instead of just 'Tem' or 'T. T.'! It's not natural."
+
+"What you must do, Mr. Temple Barholm, is to keep your head clear,
+that's all," she replied maturely.
+
+"Lord! if I'd got a head like yours!"
+
+She seemed to take him in, with a benign appreciativeness, in his
+entirety.
+
+"Well, you haven't," she admitted, though quite without disparagement,
+merely with slight reservation. "But you've got one like your own. And
+it's a good head--when you try to think steady. Yours is a man's head,
+and mine's only a woman's."
+
+"It's Little Ann Hutchinson's, by gee!" said Tembarom, with feeling.
+
+"Listen here, Mr. Tem--Temple Barholm," she went on, as nearly disturbed
+as he had ever seen her outwardly. "It's a wonderful thing that's
+happened to you. It's like a novel. That splendid place, that splendid
+name! It seems so queer to think I should ever have talked to a Mr.
+Temple Barholm as I've talked to you."
+
+He leaned forward a little as though something drew him.
+
+"But"--there was unsteady appeal in his voice--"you have liked me,
+haven't you, Little Ann?"
+
+Her own voice seemed to drop into an extra quietness that made it
+remote. She looked down at her hands on her lap.
+
+"Yes, I have liked you. I have told Father I liked you," she answered.
+
+He got up, and made an impetuous rush at his goal.
+
+"Then--say, I'm going in there to wake up Mr. Hutchinson and ask him not
+to sail to-morrow morning."
+
+"You'd better not wake him up," she answered, smiling; but he saw
+that her face changed and flushed. "It's not a good time to ask Father
+anything when he's just been waked up. And we HAVE to go. The express is
+coming at eight."
+
+"Send it away again; tell 'em you're not going. Tell 'em any old thing.
+Little Ann, what's the matter with you? Something's the matter. Have I
+made a break?"
+
+He had felt the remoteness in her even before he had heard it in her
+dropped voice. It had been vaguely there even when he sat down on the
+trunk. Actually there was a touch of reserve about her, as though she
+was keeping her little place with the self-respecting propriety of a
+girl speaking to a man not of her own world.
+
+"I dare say I've done some fool thing without knowing it. I don't know
+where I'm at, anyhow," he said woefully.
+
+"Don't look at me like that, Mr. Temple Barholm," she said--"as if I was
+unkind. I--I'm NOT."
+
+"But you're different," he implored. "I saw it the minute I came up. I
+ran up-stairs just crazy to talk to you,--yes, crazy to talk to you--and
+you--well, you were different. Why are you, if you're not mad?"
+
+Then she rose and stood holding one of her neatly rolled packages in
+her hand. Her eyes were soft and clear, and appealed maternally to his
+reason.
+
+"Because everything's different. You just think a bit," she answered.
+
+He stared at her a few seconds, and then understanding of her dawned
+upon him. He made a human young dash at her, and caught her arm.
+
+"What!" he cried out. "You mean this Temple Barholm song and dance makes
+things different? Not on your life! You're not the girl to work that
+on me, as if it was my fault. You've got to hear me speak my piece.
+Ann--you've just got to!"
+
+He had begun to tremble a little, and she herself was not steady; but
+she put a hand on his arm.
+
+"Don't say anything you've not had time to think about," she said.
+
+"I've been thinking of pretty near nothing else ever since I came here.
+Just as soon as I looked at you across the table that first day I saw my
+finish, and every day made me surer. I'd never had any comfort or taking
+care of,--I didn't know the first thing about it,--and it seemed as if
+all there was of it in the world was just in YOU."
+
+"Did you think that?" she asked falteringly.
+
+"Did I? That's how you looked to me, and it's how you look now. The way
+you go about taking care of everybody and just handing out solid little
+chunks of good sense to every darned fool that needs them, why--" There
+was a break in his voice--"why, it just knocked me out the first round."
+He held her a little away from him, so that he could yearn over her,
+though he did not know he was yearning. "See, I'd sworn I'd never ask a
+girl to marry me until I could keep her. Well, you know how it was, Ann.
+I couldn't have kept a goat, and I wasn't such a fool that I didn't know
+it. I've been pretty sick when I thought how it was; but I never worried
+you, did I?"
+
+"No, you didn't."
+
+"I just got busy. I worked like--well, I got busier than I ever was
+in my life. When I got the page SURE, I let myself go a bit, sort of
+hoping. And then this Temple Barholm thing hits me."
+
+"That's the thing you've got to think of now," said Little Ann. "I'm
+going to talk sensible to you."
+
+"Don't, Ann! Good Lord! DON'T!"
+
+"I MUST." She put her last tight roll into the trunk and tried to shut
+the lid. "Please lock this for me."
+
+He locked it, and then she seated herself on the top of it, though it
+was rather high for her, and her small feet dangled. Her eyes looked
+large and moist like a baby's, and she took out a handkerchief and
+lightly touched them.
+
+"You've made me want to cry a bit," she said, "but I'm not going to."
+
+"Are you going to tell me you don't want me?" he asked, with anxious
+eyes.
+
+"No, I'm not."
+
+"God bless you!" He was going to make a dash at her again, but pulled
+himself up because he must. "No, by jings!" he said. "I'm not going to
+till you let me."
+
+"You see, it's true your head's not like mine," she said reasonably.
+"Men's heads are mostly not like women's. They're men, of course, and
+they're superior to women, but they're what I'd call more fluttery-like.
+Women must remind them of things."
+
+"What--what kind of things?"
+
+"This kind. You see, Grandmother lives near Temple Barholm, and I know
+what it's like, and you don't. And I've seen what seventy thousand
+pounds a year means, and you haven't. And you've got to go and find out
+for yourself."
+
+"What's the matter with you coming along to help me?"
+
+"I shouldn't help you; that's it. I should hold you back. I'm nothing
+but Ann Hutchinson, and I talk Manchester--and I drop my h's."
+
+"I love to hear you drop your little h's all over the place," he burst
+forth impetuously. "I love it."
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"The girls that go to garden-parties at Temple Barholm look like those
+in the `Ladies' Pictorial', and they've got names and titles same as
+those in novels."
+
+He answered her in genuine anguish. He had never made any mistake about
+her character, and she was beginning to make him feel afraid of her in
+the midst of his adoration.
+
+"What do I want with a girl out of a magazine?" he cried. "Where should
+I hang her up?"
+
+She was not unfeeling, but unshaken and she went on:
+
+"I should look like a housemaid among them. How would you feel with a
+wife of that sort, when the other sort was about?"
+
+"I should feel like a king, that's what I should feel like," he replied
+indignantly.
+
+"I shouldn't feel like a queen. I should feel MISERABLE."
+
+She sat with her little feet dangling, and her hands folded in her lap.
+Her infantile blue eyes held him as the Ancient Mariner had been held.
+He could not get away from the clear directness of them. He did not want
+to exactly, but she frightened him more and more.
+
+"I should be ashamed," she proceeded. "I should feel as if I had taken
+an advantage. What you've got to do is to find out something no one else
+can find out for you, Mr. Temple Barholm."
+
+"How can I find it out without you? It was you who put me on to the
+wedding-cake; you can put me on to other things."
+
+"Because I've lived in the place," she answered unswervingly. "I know
+how funny it is for any one to think of me being Mrs. Temple Barholm.
+You don't."
+
+"You bet I don't," he answered; "but I'll tell you what I do know, and
+that's how funny it is that I should be Mr. Temple Barholm. I've got on
+to that all right, all right. Have you?"
+
+She looked at him with a reflection that said much. She took him in with
+a judicial summing up of which it must be owned an added respect was
+part. She had always believed he had more sense than most young men, and
+now she knew it.
+
+"When a person's clever enough to see things for himself, he's generally
+clever enough to manage them," she replied.
+
+He knelt down beside the trunk and took both her hands in his. He held
+them fast and rather hard.
+
+"Are you throwing me down for good, Little Ann?" he said. "If you are, I
+can't stand it, I won't stand it."
+
+"If you care about me like that, you'll do what I tell you," she
+interrupted, and she slipped down from the top of her trunk. "I know
+what Mother would say. She'd say, 'Ann, you give that young man a
+chance.' And I'm going to give you one. I've said all I'm going to, Mr.
+Temple Barholm."
+
+He took both her elbows and looked at her closely, feeling a somewhat
+awed conviction.
+
+"I--believe--you have," he said.
+
+And here the sound of Mr. Hutchinson's loud and stertorous breathing
+ceased, and he waked up, and came to the door to find out what Ann was
+doing.
+
+"What are you two talking about?" he asked. "People think when they
+whisper it's not going to disturb anybody, but it's worse than shouting
+in a man's ear."
+
+Tembarom walked into the room.
+
+"I've been asking Little Ann to marry me," he announced, "and she
+won't."
+
+He sat down in a chair helplessly, and let his head fall into his hands.
+
+"Eh!" exclaimed Hutchinson. He turned and looked at Ann disturbedly. "I
+thought a bit ago tha didn't deny but what tha'd took to him?"
+
+"I didn't, Father," she answered. "I don't change my mind that quick.
+I--would have been willing to say 'Yes' when you wouldn't have been
+willing to let me. I didn't know he was Mr. Temple Barholm then."
+
+Hutchinson rubbed the back of his head, reddening and rather bristling.
+
+"Dost tha think th' Temple Barholms would look down on thee?"
+
+"I should look down on myself if I took him up at his first words, when
+he's all upset with excitement, and hasn't had time to find out what
+things mean. I'm--well, I 'm too fond of him, Father."
+
+Hutchinson gave her a long, steady look.
+
+"You are?" he said.
+
+"Yes, I am."
+
+Tembarom lifted his head, and looked at her, too.
+
+"Are you?" he asked.
+
+She put her hands behind her back, and returned his look with the calm
+of ages.
+
+"I'm not going to argue about it," she answered. "Arguing's silly."
+
+His involuntary rising and standing before her was a sort of unconscious
+tribute of respect.
+
+"I know that," he owned. "I know you. That's why I take it like this.
+But I want you to tell me one thing. If this hadn't happened, if I'd
+only had twenty dollars a week, would you have taken me?"
+
+"If you'd had fifteen, and Father could have spared me, I'd have taken
+you. Fifteen dollars a week is three pounds two and sixpence, and I've
+known curates' wives that had to bring up families on less. It wouldn't
+go as far in New York as it would in the country in England, but we
+could have made it do--until you got more. I know you, too, Mr. Temple
+Barholm."
+
+He turned to her father, and saw in his florid countenance that which
+spurred him to bold disclosure.
+
+"Say," he put it to him, as man to man, "she stands there and says a
+thing like that, and she expects a fellow not to jerk her into his arms
+and squeeze the life out of her! I daren't do it, and I'm not going to
+try; but--well, you said her mother was like her, and I guess you know
+what I'm up against."
+
+Hutchinson's grunting chuckle contained implications of exultant
+tenderness and gratified paternal pride.
+
+"She's th' very spit and image of her mother," he said, "and she had th'
+sense of ten women rolled into one, and th' love of twenty. You let her
+be, and you're as safe as th' Rock of Ages."
+
+"Do you think I don't know that?" answered Tembarom, his eyes shining
+almost to moisture. "But what hits me, by thunder! is that I've lost the
+chance of seeing her work out that fifteen-dollar-a-week proposition,
+and it drives me crazy."
+
+"I should have downright liked to try it," said Little Ann, with
+speculative reflection, and while she knitted her brows in lovely
+consideration of the attractive problem, several previously unknown
+dimples declared themselves about her mouth.
+
+"Ann," Tembarom ventured, "if I go to Temple Barholm and try it a year
+and learn all about it---"
+
+"It would take more than a year," said Ann.
+
+"Don't make it two," Tembarom pleaded. "I'll sit up at night with wet
+towels round my head to learn; I'll spend fourteen hours a day with
+girls that look like the pictures in the `Ladies' Pictorial', or
+whatever it is in England; I'll give them every chance in life, if
+you'll let me off afterward. There must be another lost heir somewhere;
+let's dig him up and then come back to little old New York and be happy.
+Gee! Ann,"--letting himself go and drawing nearer to her,--"how happy we
+could be in one of those little flats in Harlem!"
+
+She was a warm little human thing, and a tender one, and when he came
+close to her, glowing with tempestuous boyish eagerness, her eyes grew
+bluer because they were suddenly wet, and she was obliged to move softly
+back.
+
+"Yes," she said; "I know those little flats. Any one could---" She
+stopped herself, because she had been going to reveal what a home a
+woman could make in rooms like the compartments in a workbox. She knew
+and saw it all. She drew back a little again, but she put out a hand and
+laid it on his sleeve.
+
+"When you've had quite time enough to find out, and know what the other
+thing means, I'll do whatever you want me to do," she said. "It won't
+matter what it is. I'll do it."
+
+"She means that," Hutchinson mumbled unsteadily, turning aside. "Same as
+her mother would have meant it. And she means it in more ways than one."
+
+And so she did. The promise included quite firmly the possibility of not
+unnatural changes in himself such as young ardor could not foresee, even
+the possibility of his new life withdrawing him entirely from the plane
+on which rapture could materialize on twenty dollars a week in a flat in
+Harlem.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+
+Type as exotic as Tembarom's was to his solicitor naturally suggested
+problems. Mr. Palford found his charge baffling because, according to
+ordinary rules, a young man so rudimentary should have presented no
+problems not perfectly easy to explain. It was herein that he was
+exotic. Mr. Palford, who was not given to subtle analysis of differences
+in character and temperament, argued privately that an English youth who
+had been brought up in the streets would have been one of two or three
+things. He would have been secretly terrified and resentful, roughly
+awkward and resentful, or boastfully delighted and given to a common
+youth's excitedly common swagger at finding himself suddenly a "swell."
+
+This special kind of youth would most assuredly have constantly thought
+of himself as a "swell" and would have lost his head altogether,
+possibly with results in the matter of conduct in public which would
+have been either maddening or crushing to the spirit of a well-bred,
+mature-minded legal gentleman temporarily thrust into the position of
+bear-leader.
+
+But Tembarom was none of these things. If he was terrified, he did
+not reveal his anguish. He was without doubt not resentful, but on the
+contrary interested and curious, though he could not be said to bear
+himself as one elated. He indulged in no frolics or extravagances. He
+saw the Hutchinsons off on their steamer, and supplied them with fruit
+and flowers and books with respectful moderation. He did not conduct
+himself as a benefactor bestowing unknown luxuries, but as a young man
+on whom unexpected luck had bestowed decent opportunities to express his
+friendship. In fact, Palford's taste approved of his attitude. He was
+evidently much under the spell of the slight girl with the Manchester
+accent and sober blue eyes, but she was neither flighty nor
+meretricious, and would have sense enough to give no trouble even when
+he naturally forgot her in the revelations of his new life. Her father
+also was plainly a respectable working-man, with a blunt Lancashire
+pride which would keep him from intruding.
+
+"You can't butt in and get fresh with a man like that," Tembarom said.
+"Money wouldn't help you. He's too independent."
+
+After the steamer had sailed away it was observable to his solicitor
+that Mr. Temple Barholm was apparently occupied every hour. He did not
+explain why he seemed to rush from one part of New York to another
+and why he seemed to be seeking interviews with persons it was plainly
+difficult to get at. He was evidently working hard to accomplish
+something or other before he left the United States, perhaps. He asked
+some astutely practical business questions; his intention seeming to be
+to gain a definite knowledge of what his future resources would be and
+of his freedom to use them as he chose.
+
+Once or twice Mr. Palford was rather alarmed by the tendency of his
+questions. Had he actually some prodigious American scheme in view? He
+seemed too young and inexperienced in the handling of large sums for
+such a possibility. But youth and inexperience and suddenly inherited
+wealth not infrequently led to rash adventures. Something which Palford
+called "very handsome" was done for Mrs. Bowse and the boarding-house.
+Mrs. Bowse was evidently not proud enough to resent being made secure
+for a few years' rent. The extraordinary page was provided for after a
+large amount of effort and expenditure of energy.
+
+"I couldn't leave Galton high and dry," Tembarom explained when he came
+in after rushing about. "I think I know a man he might try, but I've got
+to find him and put him on to things. Good Lord! nobody rushed about to
+find me and offer me the job. I hope this fellow wants it as bad as I
+did. He'll be up in the air." He discovered the whereabouts of the young
+man in question, and finding him, as the youngster almost tearfully
+declared, "about down and out," his proposition was met with the
+gratitude the relief from a prospect of something extremely like
+starvation would mentally produce. Tembarom took him to Galton after
+having talked him over in detail.
+
+"He's had an education, and you know how much I'd had when I butted into
+the page," he said. "No one but you would have let me try it. You did it
+only because you saw--you saw--"
+
+"Yes, I saw," answered Galton, who knew exactly what he had seen and
+who found his up-town social representative and his new situation as
+interesting as amusing and just touched with the pathetic element.
+Galton was a traveled man and knew England and several other countries
+well.
+
+"You saw that a fellow wanted the job as much as I did would be likely
+to put up a good fight to hold it down. I was scared out of my life when
+I started out that morning of the blizzard, but I couldn't afford to be
+scared. I guess soldiers who are scared fight like that when they see
+bayonets coming at them. You have to."
+
+"I wonder how often a man finds out that he does pretty big things
+when bayonets are coming at him," answered Galton, who was actually
+neglecting his work for a few minutes so that he might look at and talk
+to him, this New York descendant of Norman lords and Saxon kings.
+
+"Joe Bennett had been trying to live off free-lunch counters for a week
+when I found him," Tembarom explained. "You don't know what that is.
+He'll go at the page all right. I'm going to take him up-town and
+introduce him to my friends there and get them to boost him along."
+
+"You made friends," said Galton. "I knew you would."
+
+"Some of the best ever. Good-natured and open-handed. Well, you bet!
+Only trouble was they wanted you to eat and drink everything in sight,
+and they didn't quite like it when you couldn't get outside all the
+champagne they'd offer you."
+
+He broke into a big, pleased laugh.
+
+"When I went in and told Munsberg he pretty near threw a fit. Of course
+he thought I was kidding. But when I made him believe it, he was as glad
+as if he'd had luck himself. It was just fine the way people took
+it. Tell you what, it takes good luck, or bad luck, to show you how
+good-natured a lot of folks are. They'll treat Bennett and the page all
+right; you'll see."
+
+"They'll miss you," said Galton.
+
+"I shall miss them," Tembarom answered in a voice with a rather
+depressed drop in it.
+
+"I shall miss you," said Galton.
+
+Tembarom's face reddened a little.
+
+"I guess it'd seem rather fresh for me to tell you how I shall miss
+you," he said. "I said that first day that I didn't know how to tell you
+how I--well, how I felt about you giving a mutt like me that big chance.
+You never thought I didn't know how little I did know, did you?" he
+inquired almost anxiously.
+
+"That was it--that you did know and that you had the backbone and the
+good spirits to go in and win," Galton replied. "I'm a tired man, and
+good spirits and good temper seem to me about the biggest assets a man
+can bring into a thing. I shouldn't have dared do it when I was your
+age. You deserved the Victoria Cross," he added, chuckling.
+
+"What's the Victoria Cross?" asked Tembarom.
+
+"You'll find out when you go to England."
+
+"Well, I'm not supposing that you don't know about how many billion
+things I'll have to find out when I go to England."
+
+"There will be several thousand," replied Galton moderately; "but you'll
+learn about them as you go on."
+
+"Say," said Tembarom, reflectively, "doesn't it seem queer to think of
+a fellow having to keep up his spirits because he's fallen into three
+hundred and fifty thousand a year? You wouldn't think he'd have to,
+would you?"
+
+"But you find he has?" queried Galton, interestedly.
+
+Tembarom's lifted eyes were so honest that they were touching.
+
+"I don't know where I'm at," he said. "I'm going to wake up in a new
+place--like people that die. If you knew what it was like, you wouldn't
+mind it so much; but you don't know a blamed thing. It's not having seen
+a sample that rattles you."
+
+"You're fond of New York?"
+
+"Good Lord! it's all the place I know on earth, and it's just about good
+enough for me, by gee! It's kept me alive when it might have starved
+me to death. My! I've had good times here," he added, flushing with
+emotion. "Good times--when I hadn't a whole meal a day!"
+
+"You'd have good times anywhere," commented Galton, also with feeling.
+"You carry them over your shoulder, and you share them with a lot of
+other people."
+
+He certainly shared some with Joe Bennett, whom he took up-town and
+introduced right and left to his friendly patrons, who, excited by the
+atmosphere of adventure and prosperity, received him with open arms.
+To have been the choice of T. Tembarom as a mere representative of the
+EARTH would have been a great thing for Bennett, but to be the choice of
+the hero of a romance of wildest opulence was a tremendous send-off.
+He was accepted at once, and when Tembarom actually "stood for" a big
+farewell supper of his own in "The Hall," and nearly had his hand shaken
+off by congratulating acquaintances, the fact that he kept the new
+aspirant by his side, so that the waves of high popularity flowed over
+him until he sometimes lost his joyful breath, established him as a sort
+of hero himself.
+
+Mr. Palford did not know of this festivity, as he also found he was
+not told of several other things. This he counted as a feature of his
+client's exoticism. His extraordinary lack of concealment of things
+vanity forbids many from confessing combined itself with a quite
+cheerful power to keep his own counsel when he was, for reasons of his
+own, so inclined.
+
+"He can keep his mouth shut, that chap," Hutchinson had said once, and
+Mr. Palford remembered it. "Most of us can't. I've got a notion I can;
+but I don't many's the time when I should. There's a lot more in him
+than you'd think for. He's naught but a lad, but he is na half such a
+fool as he looks."
+
+He was neither hesitant nor timid, Mr. Palford observed. In an entirely
+unostentatious way he soon realized that his money gave things into
+his hands. He knew he could do most things he chose to do, and that the
+power to do them rested in these days with himself without the necessity
+of detailed explanation or appeal to others, as in the case, for
+instance, of this mysterious friend or protege whose name was
+Strangeways. Of the history of his acquaintance with him Palford knew
+nothing, and that he should choose to burden himself with a half-witted
+invalid--in these terms the solicitor described him--was simply
+in-explainable. If he had asked for advice or by his manner left
+an opening for the offering of it, he would have been most strongly
+counseled to take him to a public asylum and leave him there; but advice
+on the subject seemed the last thing he desired or anticipated, and talk
+about his friend was what he seemed least likely to indulge in. He made
+no secret of his intentions, but he frankly took charge of them as his
+own special business, and left the rest alone.
+
+"Say nothing and saw wood," Palford had once been a trifle puzzled
+by hearing him remark casually, and he remembered it later, as he
+remembered the comments of Joseph Hutchinson. Tembarom had explained
+himself to Little Ann.
+
+"You'll understand," he said. "It is like this. I guess I feel like you
+do when a dog or a cat in big trouble just looks at you as if you
+were all they had, and they know if you don't stick by them they'll be
+killed, and it just drives them crazy. It's the way they look at you
+that you can't stand. I believe something would burst in that fellow's
+brain if I left him. When he found out I was going to do it he'd just
+let out some awful kind of a yell I'd remember till I died. I dried
+right up almost as soon as I spoke of him to Palford. He couldn't see
+anything but that he was crazy and ought to be put in an asylum. Well,
+he's not. There're times when he talks to me almost sensible; only he's
+always so awful low down in his mind you're afraid to let him go on. And
+he's a little bit better than he was. It seems queer to get to like
+a man that's sort of dotty, but I tell you, Ann, because you'll
+understand--I've got to sort of like him, and want to see if I can work
+it out for him somehow. England seems to sort of stick in his mind. If
+I can't spend my money in living the way I want to live,--buying jewelry
+and clothes for the girl I'd like to see dressed like a queen--I'm going
+to do this just to please myself. I'm going to take him to England and
+keep him quiet and see what'll happen. Those big doctors ought to know
+about all there is to know, and I can pay them any old thing they want.
+By jings! isn't it the limit--to sit here and say that and know it's
+true!"
+
+Beyond the explaining of necessary detail to him and piloting him to
+England, Mr. Palford did not hold himself many degrees responsible. His
+theory of correct conduct assumed no form of altruism. He had formulated
+it even before he reached middle age. One of his fixed rules was to
+avoid the error of allowing sympathy or sentiment to hamper him with
+any unnecessary burden. Natural tendency of temperament had placed no
+obstacles in the way of his keeping this rule. To burden himself with
+the instruction or modification of this unfortunately hopeless young New
+Yorker would be unnecessary. Palford's summing up of him was that he was
+of a type with which nothing palliative could be done. There he was.
+As unavoidable circumstances forced one to take him,--commonness,
+slanginess, appalling ignorance, and all,--one could not leave him.
+Fortunately, no respectable legal firm need hold itself sponsor for a
+"next of kin" provided by fate and the wilds of America.
+
+The Temple Barholm estate had never, in Mr. Palford's generation, been
+specially agreeable to deal with. The late Mr. Temple Temple Barholm had
+been a client of eccentric and abominable temper. Interviews with him
+had been avoided as much as possible. His domineering insolence of
+bearing had at times been on the verge of precipitating unheard-of
+actions, because it was almost more than gentlemanly legal flesh and
+blood could bear. And now appeared this young man.
+
+He rushed about New York strenuously attending to business concerning
+himself and his extraordinary acquaintances, and on the day of the
+steamer's sailing he presented himself at the last moment in an
+obviously just purchased suit of horribly cut clothes. At all events,
+their cut was horrible in the eyes of Mr. Palford, who accepted no
+cut but that of a West End tailor. They were badly made things enough,
+because they were unconsidered garments that Tembarom had barely found
+time to snatch from a "ready-made" counter at the last moment. He had
+been too much "rushed" by other things to remember that he must have
+them until almost too late to get them at all. He bought them merely
+because they were clothes, and warm enough to make a voyage in. He
+possessed a monster ulster, in which, to Mr. Palford's mind, he
+looked like a flashy black-leg. He did not know it was flashy. His
+opportunities for cultivating a refined taste in the matter of wardrobe
+had been limited, and he had wasted no time in fastidious consideration
+or regrets. Palford did him some injustice in taking it for granted that
+his choice of costume was the result of deliberate bad taste. It was
+really not choice at all. He neither liked his clothes nor disliked
+them. He had been told he needed warm garments, and he had accepted the
+advice of the first salesman who took charge of him when he dropped into
+the big department store he was most familiar with because it was the
+cheapest in town. Even when it was no longer necessary to be cheap, it
+was time-saving and easy to go into a place one knew.
+
+The fact that he was as he was, and that they were the subjects of
+comment and objects of unabated interest through-out the voyage, that it
+was proper that they should be companions at table and on deck, filled
+Mr. Palford with annoyed unease.
+
+Of course every one on board was familiar with the story of the
+discovery of the lost heir. The newspapers had reveled in it, and had
+woven romances about it which might well have caused the deceased Mr.
+Temple Barholm to turn in his grave. After the first day Tembarom had
+been picked out from among the less-exciting passengers, and when he
+walked the deck, books were lowered into laps or eyes followed him over
+their edges. His steamer-chair being placed in a prominent position
+next to that of a pretty, effusive Southern woman, the mother of three
+daughters whose eyes and eyelashes attracted attention at the
+distance of a deck's length, he was without undue delay provided
+with acquaintances who were prepared to fill his every moment with
+entertainment.
+
+"The three Gazelles," as their mother playfully confided to Tembarom
+her daughters were called in Charleston, were destructively lovely.
+They were swaying reeds of grace, and being in radiant spirits at the
+prospect of "going to Europe," were companions to lure a man to any
+desperate lengths. They laughed incessantly, as though they were chimes
+of silver bells; they had magnolia-petal skins which neither wind nor
+sun blemished; they had nice young manners, and soft moods in which
+their gazelle eyes melted and glowed and their long lashes drooped.
+They could dance, they played on guitars, and they sang. They were as
+adorable as they were lovely and gay.
+
+"If a fellow was going to fall in love," Tembarom said to Palford,
+"there'd be no way out of this for him unless he climbed the rigging and
+dragged his food up in a basket till he got to Liverpool. If he didn't
+go crazy about Irene, he'd wake up raving about Honora; and if he got
+away from Honora, Adelia Louise would have him `down on the mat.'" From
+which Mr. Palford argued that the impression made by the little Miss
+Hutchinson with the Manchester accent had not yet had time to obliterate
+itself.
+
+The Gazelles were of generous Southern spirit, and did not surround
+their prize with any barrier of precautions against other young persons
+of charm. They introduced him to one girl after another, and in a day
+or two he was the center of animated circles whenever he appeard. The
+singular thing, however, was that he did not appear as often as the
+other men who were on board. He seemed to stay a great deal with
+Strangeways, who shared his suite of rooms and never came on deck.
+Sometimes the Gazelles prettily reproached him. Adelia Louise suggested
+to the others that his lack of advantages in the past had made him feel
+rather awkward and embarrassed; but Palford knew he was not embarrassed.
+He accepted his own limitations too simply to be disturbed by them.
+Palford would have been extremely bored by him if he had been of the
+type of young outsider who is anxiouus about himself and expansive in
+self-revelation and appeals for advice; but sometimes Tembarom's air of
+frankness, which was really the least expansive thing in the world and
+revealed nothing whatever, besides concealing everything it chose, made
+him feel himself almost irritatingly baffled. It would have been more
+natural if he had not been able to keep anything to himself and had
+really talked too much.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+
+The necessary business in London having been transacted, Tembarom went
+north to take possession of the home of his forefathers. It had rained
+for two days before he left London, and it rained steadily all the way
+to Lancashire, and was raining steadily when he reached Temple
+Barholm. He had never seen such rain before. It was the quiet, unmoved
+persistence of it which amazed him. As he sat in the railroad carriage
+and watched the slanting lines of its unabating downpour, he felt that
+Mr. Palford must inevitably make some remark upon it. But Mr. Palford
+continued to read his newspapers undisturbedly, as though the condition
+of atmosphere surrounding him were entirely accustomed and natural. It
+was of course necessary and proper that he should accompany his client
+to his destination, but the circumstances of the case made the whole
+situation quite abnormal. Throughout the centuries each Temple Barholm
+had succeeded to his estate in a natural and conventional manner. He had
+either been welcomed or resented by his neighbors, his tenants, and his
+family, and proper and fitting ceremonies had been observed. But here
+was an heir whom nobody knew, whose very existence nobody had even
+suspected, a young man who had been an outcast in the streets of the
+huge American city of which lurid descriptions are given. Even in
+New York he could have produced no circle other than Mrs. Bowse's
+boarding-house and the objects of interest to the up-town page, so
+he brought no one with him; for Strangeways seemed to have been
+mysteriously disposed of after their arrival in London.
+
+Never had Palford & Grimby on their hands a client who seemed so
+entirely alone. What, Mr. Palford asked himself, would he do in the
+enormity of Temple Barholm, which always struck one as being a place
+almost without limit. But that, after all, was neither here nor there.
+There he was. You cannot undertake to provide a man with relatives if he
+has none, or with acquaintances if people do not want to know him. His
+past having been so extraordinary, the neighborhood would naturally be
+rather shy of him. At first, through mere force of custom and respect
+for an old name, punctilious, if somewhat alarmed, politeness would be
+shown by most people; but after the first calls all would depend upon
+how much people could stand of the man himself.
+
+The aspect of the country on a wet winter's day was not enlivening. The
+leafless and dripping hedges looked like bundles of sticks; the huge
+trees, which in June would be majestic bowers of greenery, now held
+out great skeleton arms, which seemed to menace both earth and sky.
+Heavy-faced laborers tramped along muddy lanes; cottages with soaked
+bits of dead gardens looked like hovels; big, melancholy cart-horses,
+dragging jolting carts along the country roads, hung their heads as they
+splashed through the mire.
+
+As Tembarom had known few persons who had ever been out of America, he
+had not heard that England was beautiful, and he saw nothing which led
+him to suspect its charms. London had impressed him as gloomy, dirty,
+and behind the times despite its pretensions; the country struck him as
+"the limit." Hully gee! was he going to be expected to spend his life in
+this! Should he be obliged to spend his life in it. He'd find that out
+pretty quick, and then, if there was no hard-and-fast law against it,
+him for little old New York again, if he had to give up the whole
+thing and live on ten per. If he had been a certain kind of youth, his
+discontent would have got the better of him, and he might have talked a
+good deal to Mr. Palford and said many disparaging things.
+
+"But the man was born here," he reflected. "I guess he doesn't know
+anything else, and thinks it's all right. I've heard of English fellows
+who didn't like New York. He looks like that kind."
+
+He had supplied himself with newspapers and tried to read them. Their
+contents were as unexciting as the rain-sodden landscape. There were no
+head-lines likely to arrest any man's attention. There was a lot about
+Parliament and the Court, and one of them had a column or two about
+what lords and ladies were doing, a sort of English up-town or down-town
+page.
+
+He knew the stuff, but there was no snap in it, and there were no
+photographs or descriptions of dresses. Galton would have turned it
+down. He could never have made good if he had done no better than that.
+He grinned to himself when he read that the king had taken a drive and
+that a baby prince had the measles.
+
+"I wonder what they'd think of the Sunday Earth," he mentally inquired.
+
+He would have been much at sea if he had discovered what they
+really would have thought of it. They passed through smoke-vomiting
+manufacturing towns, where he saw many legs seemingly bearing about
+umbrellas, but few entire people; they whizzed smoothly past drenched
+suburbs, wet woodlands, and endless-looking brown moors, covered with
+dead bracken and bare and prickly gorse. He thought these last great
+desolate stretches worse than all the rest.
+
+But the railroad carriage was luxuriously upholstered and comfortable,
+though one could not walk about and stretch his legs. In the afternoon,
+Mr. Palford ordered in tea, and plainly expected him to drink two cups
+and eat thin bread and butter. He felt inclined to laugh, though the tea
+was all right, and so was the bread and butter, and he did not fail his
+companion in any respect. The inclination to laugh was aroused by the
+thought of what Jim Bowles and Julius would say if they could see old T.
+T. with nothing to do at 4:30 but put in cream and sugar, as though he
+were at a tea-party on Fifth Avenue.
+
+But, gee! this rain did give him the Willies. If he was going to be
+sorry for himself, he might begin right now. But he wasn't. He was going
+to see this thing through.
+
+The train had been continuing its smooth whir through fields, wooded
+lands, and queer, dead-and-alive little villages for some time before it
+drew up at last at a small station. Bereft by the season of its garden
+bloom and green creepers, it looked a bare and uninviting little place.
+On the two benches against the wall of the platform a number of women
+sat huddled together in the dampness. Several of them held children in
+their laps and all stared very hard, nudging one another as he descended
+from the train. A number of rustics stood about the platform, giving it
+a somewhat crowded air. It struck Tembarom that, for an out-of-the-way
+place, there seemed to be a good many travelers, and he wondered if
+they could all be going away. He did not know that they were the curious
+element among such as lived in the immediate neighborhood of the station
+and had come out merely to see him on his first appearance. Several of
+them touched their hats as he went by, and he supposed they knew Palford
+and were saluting him. Each of them was curious, but no one was in
+a particularly welcoming mood. There was, indeed, no reason for
+anticipating enthusiasm. It was, however, but human nature that the
+bucolic mind should bestir itself a little in the desire to obtain a
+view of a Temple Barholm who had earned his living by blacking boots and
+selling newspapers, unknowing that he was "one o' th' gentry."
+
+When he stepped from his first-class carriage, Tembarom found himself
+confronted by a very straight, clean-faced, and well-built young man,
+who wore a long, fawn-colored livery coat with claret facings and silver
+buttons. He touched his cockaded hat, and at once took up the Gladstone
+bags. Tembarom knew that he was a footman because he had seen something
+like him outside restaurants, theaters, and shops in New York, but he
+was not sure whether he ought to touch his own hat or not. He slightly
+lifted it from his head to show there was no ill feeling, and then
+followed him and Mr. Palford to the carriage waiting for them. It was a
+severe but sumptuous equipage, and the coachman was as well dressed
+and well built as the footman. Tembarom took his place in it with many
+mental reservations.
+
+"What are the illustrations on the doors?" he inquired.
+
+"The Temple Barholm coat of arms," Mr. Palford answered. "The people
+at the station are your tenants. Members of the family of the stout man
+with the broad hat have lived as yeoman farmers on your land for three
+hundred years."
+
+They went on their way, with more rain, more rain, more dripping hedges,
+more soaked fields, and more bare, huge-armed trees. CLOP, CLOP, CLOP,
+sounded the horses' hoofs along the road, and from his corner of the
+carriage Mr. Palford tried to make polite conversation. Faces peered out
+of the windows of the cottages, sometimes a whole family group of faces,
+all crowded together, eager to look, from the mother with a baby in her
+arms to the old man or woman, plainly grandfather or grandmother--sharp,
+childishly round, or bleared old eyes, all excited and anxious to catch
+glimpses.
+
+"They are very curious to see you," said Mr. Palford. "Those two
+laborers are touching their hats to you. It will be as well to recognize
+their salute."
+
+At a number of the cottage doors the group stood upon the threshold and
+touched foreheads or curtsied. Tembarom saluted again and again, and
+more than once his friendly grin showed itself. It made him feel queer
+to drive along, turning from side to side to acknowledge obeisances, as
+he had seen a well-known military hero acknowledge them as he drove down
+Broadway.
+
+The chief street of the village of Temple Barholm wandered almost within
+hailing distance of the great entrance to the park. The gates were
+supported by massive pillars, on which crouched huge stone griffins.
+Tembarom felt that they stared savagely over his head as he was driven
+toward them as for inspection, and in disdainful silence allowed to
+pass between them as they stood on guard, apparently with the haughtiest
+mental reservations.
+
+The park through which the long avenue rolled concealed its beauty to
+the unaccustomed eye, showing only more bare trees and sodden stretches
+of brown grass. The house itself, as it loomed up out of the thickening
+rain-mist, appalled Tembarom by its size and gloomily gray massiveness.
+Before it was spread a broad terrace of stone, guarded by more griffins
+of even more disdainful aspect than those watching over the gates. The
+stone noses held themselves rigidly in the air as the reporter of the
+up-town society page passed with Mr. Palford up a flight of steps broad
+enough to make him feel as though he were going to church. Footmen with
+powdered heads received him at the carriage door, seemed to assist him
+to move, to put one foot before the other for him, to stand in rows as
+though they were a military guard ready to take him into custody.
+
+Then he was inside, standing in an enormous hall filled with furnishings
+such as he had never seen or heard of before. Carved oak, suits of
+armor, stone urns, portraits, another flight of church steps mounting
+upward to surrounding galleries, stained-glass windows, tigers' and
+lions' heads, horns of tremendous size, strange and beautiful weapons,
+suggested to him that the dream he had been living in for weeks had
+never before been so much a dream. He had walked about as in a vision,
+but among familiar surroundings. Mrs. Bowse's boarders and his hall
+bedroom had helped him to retain some hold over actual existence. But
+here the reverently saluting villagers staring at him through windows
+as though he were General Grant, the huge, stone entrance, the drive
+of what seemed to be ten miles through the park, the gloomy mass of
+architecture looming up, the regiment of liveried men-servants, with
+respectfully lowered but excitedly curious eyes, the dark and solemn
+richness inclosing and claiming him--all this created an atmosphere
+wholly unreal. As he had not known books, its parallel had not been
+suggested to him by literature. He had literally not heard that such
+things existed. Selling newspapers and giving every moment to the
+struggle for life or living, one did not come within the range of
+splendors. He had indeed awakened in that other world of which he had
+spoken. And though he had heard that there was another world, he had had
+neither time nor opportunity to make mental pictures of it. His life so
+far had expressed itself in another language of figures. The fact that
+he had in his veins the blood of the Norman lords and Saxon kings may or
+may not have had something to do with the fact that he was not abashed,
+but bewildered. The same factor may or may not have aided him to
+preserve a certain stoic, outward composure. Who knows what remote
+influences express themselves in common acts of modern common life?
+As Cassivellaunus observed his surroundings as he followed in captive
+chains his conqueror's triumphal car through the streets of Rome, so
+the keen-eyed product of New York pavement life "took in" all about
+him. Existence had forced upon him the habit of sharp observance. The
+fundamental working law of things had expressed itself in the simple
+colloquialism, "Keep your eye skinned, and don't give yourself away." In
+what phrases the parallel of this concise advice formulated itself in
+55 B.C. no classic has yet exactly informed us, but doubtless something
+like it was said in ancient Rome. Tembarom did not give himself away,
+and he took rapid, if uncertain, inventory of people and things. He
+remarked, for instance, that Palford's manner of speaking to a servant
+was totally different from the manner he used in addressing himself. It
+was courteous, but remote, as though he spoke across an accepted chasm
+to beings of another race. There was no hint of incivility in it,
+but also no hint of any possibility that it could occur to the person
+addressed to hesitate or resent. It was a subtle thing, and Tembarom
+wondered how he did it.
+
+They were shown into a room the walls of which seemed built of books;
+the furniture was rich and grave and luxuriously comfortable. A fire
+blazed as well as glowed in a fine chimney, and a table near it was set
+with a glitter of splendid silver urn and equipage for tea.
+
+"Mrs. Butterworth was afraid you might not have been able to get tea,
+sir," said the man-servant, who did not wear livery, but whose butler's
+air of established authority was more impressive than any fawn color and
+claret enriched with silver could have encompassed.
+
+Tea again? Perhaps one was obliged to drink it at regular intervals.
+Tembarom for a moment did not awaken to the fact that the man was
+speaking to him, as the master from whom orders came. He glanced at Mr.
+Palford.
+
+"Mr. Temple Barholm had tea after we left Crowly," Mr. Palford said. "He
+will no doubt wish to go to his room at once, Burrill."
+
+"Yes, sir," said Burrill, with that note of entire absence of comment
+with which Tembarom later became familiar. "Pearson is waiting."
+
+It was not unnatural to wonder who Pearson was and why he was waiting,
+but Tembarom knew he would find out. There was a slight relief on
+realizing that tea was not imperative. He and Mr. Palford were led
+through the hall again. The carriage had rolled away, and two footmen,
+who were talking confidentially together, at once stood at attention.
+The staircase was more imposing as one mounted it than it appeared as
+one looked at it from below. Its breadth made Tembarom wish to lay
+a hand on a balustrade, which seemed a mile away. He had never
+particularly wished to touch balustrades before. At the head of the
+first flight hung an enormous piece of tapestry, its forest and hunters
+and falconers awakening Tembarom's curiosity, as it looked wholly unlike
+any picture he had ever seen in a shop-window. There were pictures
+everywhere, and none of them looked like chromos. Most of the people in
+the portraits were in fancy dress. Rumors of a New York millionaire ball
+had given him some vague idea of fancy dress. A lot of them looked like
+freaks. He caught glimpses of corridors lighted by curious, high, deep
+windows with leaded panes. It struck him that there was no end to the
+place, and that there must be rooms enough in it for a hotel.
+
+"The tapestry chamber, of course, Burrill," he heard Mr. Palford say in
+a low tone.
+
+"Yes, sir. Mr. Temple Barholm always used it."
+
+A few yards farther on a door stood open, revealing an immense room,
+rich and gloomy with tapestry-covered walls and dark oak furniture. A
+bed which looked to Tembarom incredibly big, with its carved oak canopy
+and massive posts, had a presiding personality of its own. It was
+mounted by steps, and its hangings and coverlid were of embossed velvet,
+time-softened to the perfection of purples and blues. A fire enriched
+the color of everything, and did its best to drive the shadows away.
+Deep windows opened either into the leafless boughs of close-growing
+trees or upon outspread spaces of heavily timbered park, where gaunt,
+though magnificent, bare branches menaced and defied. A slim, neat young
+man, with a rather pale face and a touch of anxiety in his expression,
+came forward at once.
+
+"This is Pearson, who will valet you," exclaimed Mr. Palford.
+
+"Thank you, sir," said Pearson in a low, respectful voice. His manner
+was correctness itself.
+
+There seemed to Mr. Palford to be really nothing else to say. He wanted,
+in fact, to get to his own apartment and have a hot bath and a rest
+before dinner.
+
+"Where am I, Burrill?" he inquired as he turned to go down the corridor.
+
+"The crimson room, sir," answered Burrill, and he closed the door of the
+tapestry chamber and shut Tembarom in alone with Pearson.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+
+For a few moments the two young men looked at each other, Pearson's gaze
+being one of respectfulness which hoped to propitiate, if propitiation
+was necessary, though Pearson greatly trusted it was not. Tembarom's was
+the gaze of hasty investigation and inquiry. He suddenly thought that
+it would have been "all to the merry" if somebody had "put him on to"
+a sort of idea of what was done to a fellow when he was "valeted." A
+valet, he had of course gathered, waited on one somehow and looked after
+one's clothes. But were there by chance other things he expected to
+do,--manicure one's nails or cut one's hair,--and how often did he do
+it, and was this the day? He was evidently there to do something, or he
+wouldn't have been waiting behind the door to pounce out the minute he
+appeared, and when the other two went away, Burrill wouldn't have closed
+the door as solemnly as though he shut the pair of them in together to
+get through some sort of performance.
+
+"Here's where T. T. begins to feel like a fool," he thought. "And here's
+where there's no way out of looking like one. I don't know a thing."
+
+But personal vanity was not so strong in him as healthy and normal good
+temper. Despite the fact that the neat correctness of Pearson's style
+and the finished expression of his neat face suggested that he was of
+a class which knew with the most finished exactness all that custom
+and propriety demanded on any occasion on which "valeting" in its most
+occult branches might be done, he was only "another fellow," after all,
+and must be human. So Tembarom smiled at him.
+
+"Hello, Pearson," he said. "How are you?"
+
+Pearson slightly started. It was the tiniest possible start, quite
+involuntary, from which he recovered instantly, to reply in a tone of
+respectful gratefulness:
+
+"Thank you, sir, very well; thank you, sir."
+
+"That's all right," answered Tembarom, a sense of relief because he'd
+"got started" increasing the friendliness of his smile. "I see you got
+my trunk open," he said, glancing at some articles of clothing neatly
+arranged upon the bed.
+
+Pearson was slightly alarmed. It occurred to him suddenly that perhaps
+it was not the custom in America to open a gentleman's box and lay out
+his clothes for him. For special reasons he was desperately anxious
+to keep his place, and above all things he felt he must avoid giving
+offense by doing things which, by being too English, might seem to cast
+shades of doubt on the entire correctness of the customs of America. He
+had known ill feeling to arise between "gentlemen's gentlemen" in the
+servants' hall in the case of slight differences in customs, contested
+with a bitterness of feeling which had made them almost an international
+question. There had naturally been a great deal of talk about the new
+Mr. Temple Barholm and what might be expected of him. When a gentleman
+was not a gentleman,--this was the form of expression in "the
+hall,"--the Lord only knew what would happen. And this one, who had, for
+all one knew, been born in a workhouse, and had been a boot-black kicked
+about in American streets,--they did not know Tembarom,--and nearly
+starved to death, and found at last in a low lodging-house, what could
+he know about decent living? And ten to one he'd be American enough to
+swagger and bluster and pretend he knew everything better than any one
+else, and lose his temper frightfully when he made mistakes, and try
+to make other people seem to blame. Set a beggar on horseback, and who
+didn't know what he was? There were chances enough and to spare that not
+one of them would be able to stand it, and that in a month's time they
+would all be looking for new places.
+
+So while Tembarom was rather afraid of Pearson and moved about in an
+awful state of uncertainty, Pearson was horribly afraid of Tembarom, and
+was, in fact, in such a condition of nervous anxiety that he was obliged
+more than once furtively to apply to his damp, pale young forehead his
+exceedingly fresh and spotless pocket-handkerchief.
+
+In the first place, there was the wardrobe. What COULD he do? How could
+he approach the subject with sufficient delicacy? Mr. Temple Barholm had
+brought with him only a steamer trunk and a Gladstone bag, the latter
+evidently bought in London, to be stuffed with hastily purchased
+handkerchiefs and shirts, worn as they came out of the shop, and as
+evidently bought without the slightest idea of the kind of linen a
+gentleman should own. What most terrified Pearson, who was of a timid
+and most delicate-minded nature, was that having the workhouse and the
+boot-blacking as a background, the new Mr. Temple Barholm COULDN'T know,
+as all this had come upon him so suddenly. And was it to be Pearson's
+calamitous duty to explain to him that he had NOTHING, that he
+apparently KNEW nothing, and that as he had no friends who knew, a mere
+common servant must educate him, if he did not wish to see him
+derided and looked down upon and actually "cut" by gentlemen that
+WERE gentlemen? All this to say nothing of Pearson's own well-earned
+reputation for knowledge of custom, intelligence, and deftness in
+turning out the objects of his care in such form as to be a reference in
+themselves when a new place was wanted. Of course sometimes there
+were even real gentlemen who were most careless and indifferent to
+appearance, and who, if left to themselves, would buy garments which
+made the blood run cold when one realized that his own character and
+hopes for the future often depended upon his latest employer's outward
+aspect. But the ulster in which Mr. Temple Barholm had presented himself
+was of a cut and material such as Pearson's most discouraged moments
+had never forced him to contemplate. The limited wardrobe in the steamer
+trunk was all new and all equally bad. There was no evening dress,
+no proper linen,--not what Pearson called "proper,"--no proper toilet
+appurtenances. What was Pearson called upon by duty to do? If he
+had only had the initiative to anticipate this, he might have asked
+permission to consult in darkest secrecy with Mr. Palford. But he had
+never dreamed of such a situation, and apparently he would be obliged
+to send his new charge down to his first dinner in the majestically
+decorous dining-room, "before all the servants," in a sort of speckled
+tweed cutaway, with a brown necktie.
+
+Tembarom, realizing without delay that Pearson did not expect to be
+talked to and being cheered by the sight of the fire, sat down before
+it in an easy-chair the like of which for luxurious comfort he had never
+known. He was, in fact, waiting for developments. Pearson would say or
+do something shortly which would give him a chance to "catch on," or
+perhaps he'd go out of the room and leave him to himself, which would be
+a thing to thank God for. Then he could wash his face and hands, brush
+his hair, and wait till the dinner-bell rang. They'd be likely to have
+one. They'd have to in a place like this.
+
+But Pearson did not go out of the room. He moved about behind him for
+a short time with footfall so almost entirely soundless that Tembarom
+became aware that, if it went on long, he should be nervous; in fact,
+he was nervous already. He wanted to know what he was doing. He could
+scarcely resist the temptation to turn his head and look; but he did
+not want to give himself away more entirely than was unavoidable, and,
+besides, instinct told him that he might frighten Pearson, who looked
+frightened enough, in a neat and well-mannered way, already. Hully gee!
+how he wished he would go out of the room!
+
+But he did not. There were gently gliding footsteps of Pearson behind
+him, quiet movements which would have seemed stealthy if they had been
+a burglar's, soft removals of articles from one part of the room to
+another, delicate brushings, and almost noiseless foldings. Now Pearson
+was near the bed, now he had opened a wardrobe, now he was looking into
+the steamer trunk, now he had stopped somewhere behind him, within a few
+yards of his chair. Why had he ceased moving? What was he looking at?
+What kept him quiet?
+
+Tembarom expected him to begin stirring mysteriously again; but he did
+not. Why did he not? There reigned in the room entire silence; no soft
+footfalls, no brushing, no folding. Was he doing nothing? Had he got
+hold of something which had given him a fit? There had been no sound of
+a fall; but perhaps even if an English valet had a fit, he'd have it so
+quietly and respectfully that one wouldn't hear it. Tembarom felt that
+he must be looking at the back of his head, and he wondered what was
+the matter with it. Was his hair cut in a way so un-English that it
+had paralyzed him? The back of his head began to creep under an
+investigation so prolonged. No sound at all, no movement. Tembarom
+stealthily took out his watch--good old Waterbury he wasn't going to
+part with--and began to watch the minute-hand. If nothing happened
+in three minutes he was going to turn round. One--two--three--and the
+silence made it seem fifteen. He returned his Waterbury to his pocket
+and turned round.
+
+Pearson was not dead. He was standing quite still and resigned, waiting.
+It was his business to wait, not to intrude or disturb, and having put
+everything in order and done all he could do, he was waiting for further
+commands--in some suspense, it must be admitted.
+
+"Hello!" exclaimed Tembarom, involuntarily.
+
+"Shall I get your bath ready, sir?" inquired Pearson. "Do you like it
+hot or cold, sir?"
+
+Tembarom drew a relieved breath. He hadn't dropped dead and he hadn't
+had a fit, and here was one of the things a man did when he valeted
+you--he got your bath ready. A hasty recollection of the much-used,
+paint-smeared tin bath on the fourth floor of Mrs. Bowse's
+boarding-house sprang up before him. Everybody had to use it in turn,
+and you waited hours for the chance to make a dash into it. No one stood
+still and waited fifteen minutes until you got good and ready to tell
+him he could go and turn on the water. Gee whizz!
+
+Being relieved himself, he relieved Pearson by telling him he might "fix
+it" for him, and that he would have hot water.
+
+"Very good, sir. Thank you, sir," said Pearson, and silently left the
+room.
+
+Then Tembarom got up from his chair and began to walk about rather
+restlessly. A new alarm seized him. Did Pearson expect to WASH him or
+to stand round and hand him soap and towels and things while he washed
+himself?
+
+If it was supposed that you hadn't the strength to turn the faucets
+yourself, it might be supposed you didn't have the energy to use a
+flesh-brush and towels. Did valeting include a kind of shampoo all over?
+
+"I couldn't stand for that," he said. "I'd have to tell him there'd been
+no Turkish baths in mine, and I'm not trained up to them. When I've got
+on to this kind of thing a bit more, I'll make him understand what I'm
+NOT in for; but I don't want to scare the life out of him right off. He
+looks like a good little fellow."
+
+But Pearson's duties as valet did not apparently include giving him
+his bath by sheer physical force. He was deft, calm, amenable. He led
+Tembarom down the corridor to the bath-room, revealed to him stores of
+sumptuous bath-robes and towels, hot-and cold-water faucets, sprays,
+and tonic essences. He forgot nothing and, having prepared all, mutely
+vanished, and returned to the bedroom to wait--and gaze in troubled
+wonder at the speckled tweed cutaway. There was an appalling
+possibility--he was aware that he was entirely ignorant of American
+customs--that tweed was the fashionable home evening wear in the States.
+Tembarom, returning from his bath much refreshed after a warm plunge and
+a cold shower, evidently felt that as a costume it was all that could be
+desired.
+
+"Will you wear--these, sir,--this evening?" Pearson suggested.
+
+It was suggestive of more than actual inquiry. If he had dared to hope
+that his manner might suggest a number of things! For instance, that
+in England gentlemen really didn't wear tweed in the evening even in
+private. That through some unforeseen circumstances his employer's
+evening-dress suit had been delayed, but would of course arrive
+to-morrow!
+
+But Tembarom, physically stimulated by hot and cold water, and relief at
+being left alone, was beginning to recover his natural buoyancy.
+
+"Yes, I'll wear 'em," he answered, snatching at his hairbrush and
+beginning to brush his damp hair. It was a wooden-backed brush that
+Pearson had found in his Gladstone bag and shudderingly laid in
+readiness on the dressing-table. "I guess they're all right, ain't
+they?"
+
+"Oh, quite right, sir, quite," Pearson ventured--"for morning wear."
+
+"Morning?" said Tembarom, brushing vigorously. "Not night?"
+
+"Black, sir," most delicately hinted Pearson, "is--more usual--in the
+evening--in England." After which he added, "So to speak," with a vague
+hope that the mollifying phrase might counteract the effect of any
+apparently implied aspersion on colors preferred in America.
+
+Tembarom ceased brushing his hair, and looked at him in good-natured
+desire for information.
+
+"Frock-coats or claw-hammer?" he asked. Despite his natural anxiety,
+and in the midst of it, Pearson could not but admit that he had an
+uncondemnatory voice and a sort of young way with him which gave one
+courage. But he was not quite sure of "claw-hammer."
+
+"Frock-coats for morning dress and afternoon wear, sir," he ventured.
+"The evening cut, as you know, is--"
+
+"Claw-hammer. Swallow-tail, I guess you say here," Tembarom ended for
+him, quite without hint of rancor, he was rejoiced to see.
+
+"Yes, sir," said Pearson.
+
+The ceremony of dressing proved a fearsome thing as it went on. Pearson
+moved about deftly and essayed to do things for the new Mr. Temple
+Barholm which the new Mr. Temple Barholm had never heard of a man not
+doing for himself. He reached for things Pearson was about to hand to
+him or hold for him. He unceremoniously achieved services for himself
+which it was part of Pearson's manifest duty to perform. They got into
+each other's way; there was even danger sometimes of their seeming to
+snatch things from each other, to Pearson's unbounded horror. Mr. Temple
+Barholm did not express any irritation whatsoever misunderstandings took
+place, but he held his mouth rather close-shut, and Pearson, not aware
+that he did this as a precaution against open grinning or shouts of
+laughter as he found himself unable to adjust himself to his attendant's
+movements, thought it possible that he was secretly annoyed and regarded
+the whole matter with disfavor. But when the dressing was at an end and
+he stood ready to go down in all his innocent ignoring of speckled tweed
+and brown necktie, he looked neither flurried nor out of humor, and
+he asked a question in a voice which was actually friendly. It was a
+question dealing with an incident which had aroused much interest in the
+servants' hall as suggesting a touch of mystery.
+
+"Mr. Strangeways came yesterday all right, didn't he?" he inquired.
+
+"Yes, sir," Pearson answered. "Mr. Hutchinson and his daughter came
+with him. They call her `Little Ann Hutchinson.' She's a sensible little
+thing, sir, and she seemed to know exactly what you'd want done to make
+him comfortable. Mrs. Butterworth put him in the west room, sir, and
+I valeted him. He was not very well when he came, but he seems better
+to-day, sir, only he's very anxious to see you."
+
+"That's all right," said Tembarom. "You show me his room. I'll go and
+see him now."
+
+And being led by Pearson, he went without delay.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+
+The chief objection to Temple Barholm in Tembarom's mind was that it
+was too big for any human use. That at least was how it struck him. The
+entrance was too big, the stairs were too wide, the rooms too broad
+and too long and too high to allow of eyes accustomed to hall bedrooms
+adjusting their vision without discomfort. The dining-room in which the
+new owner took his first meal in company with Mr. Palford, and attended
+by the large, serious man who wore no livery and three tall footmen who
+did, was of a size and stateliness which made him feel homesick for
+Mrs. Bowse's dining-room, with its two hurried, incompetent, and
+often-changed waitresses and its prevailing friendly custom of pushing
+things across the table to save time. Meals were quickly disposed of at
+Mrs. Bowse's. Everybody was due up-town or down-town, and regarded food
+as an unavoidable, because necessary, interference with more urgent
+business. At Temple Barholm one sat half the night--this was the
+impression made upon Tembarom--watching things being brought in and
+taken out of the room, carved on a huge buffet, and passed from one man
+to another; and when they were brought solemnly to you, if you turned
+them down, it seemed that the whole ceremony had to be gone through with
+again. All sorts of silver knives, forks, and spoons were given to one
+and taken away, and half a dozen sorts of glasses stood by your plate;
+and if you made a move to do anything for yourself, the man out of
+livery stopped you as though you were too big a fool to be trusted.
+The food was all right, but when you knew what anything was, and were
+inclined to welcome it as an old friend, it was given to you in some
+way that made you get rattled. With all the swell dishes, you had
+no butter-plate, and ice seemed scarce, and the dead, still way the
+servants moved about gave you a sort of feeling that you were at a
+funeral and that it wasn't decent to talk so long as the remains were
+in the room. The head-man and the foot-men seemed to get on by signs,
+though Tembarom never saw them making any; and their faces never changed
+for a moment. Once or twice he tried a joke, addressing it to Mr.
+Palford, to see what would happen. But as Mr. Palford did not seem to
+see the humor of it, and gave him the "glassy eye," and neither the
+head-man nor the footmen seemed to hear it, he thought that perhaps they
+didn't know it was a joke; and if they didn't, and they thought anything
+at all, they must think he was dippy. The dinner was a deadly, though
+sumptuous, meal, and long drawn out, when measured by meals at Mrs.
+Bowse's. He did not know, as Mr. Palford did, that it was perfect, and
+served with a finished dexterity that was also perfection.
+
+Mr. Palford, however, was himself relieved when it was at an end. He had
+sat at dinner with the late Mr. Temple Barholm in his day, and had seen
+him also served by the owners of impassive countenances; but he had been
+aware that whatsoever of secret dislike and resentment was concealed by
+them, there lay behind their immovability an acceptance of the fact
+that he represented, even in his most objectionable humors, centuries of
+accustomedness to respectful service and of knowledge of his right and
+power to claim it. The solicitor was keenly aware of the silent comments
+being made upon the tweed suit and brown necktie and on the manner in
+which their wearer boldly chose the wrong fork or erroneously made use
+of a knife or spoon. Later in the evening, in the servants' hall, the
+comment would not be silent, and there could be no doubt of what
+its character would be. There would be laughter and the relating
+of incidents. Housemaids and still-room maids would giggle, and
+kitchen-maids and boot-boys would grin and whisper in servile tribute to
+the witticisms of the superior servants.
+
+After dinner the rest of the evening could at least be spent in talk
+about business matters. There still remained details to be enlarged upon
+before Palford himself returned to Lincoln's Inn and left Mr. Temple
+Barholm to the care of the steward of his estate. It was not difficult
+to talk to him when the sole subject of conversation was of a business
+nature.
+
+Before they parted for the night the mystery of the arrangements made
+for Strangeways had been cleared. In fact, Mr. Temple Barholm made no
+mystery of them. He did not seem ignorant of the fact that what he had
+chosen to do was unusual, but he did not appear hampered or embarrassed
+by the knowledge. His remarks on the subject were entirely civil and
+were far from actually suggesting that his singular conduct was purely
+his own business and none of his solicitor's; but for a moment or so
+Mr. Palford was privately just a trifle annoyed. The Hutchinsons had
+traveled from London with Strangeways in their care the day before. He
+would have been unhappy and disturbed if he had been obliged to travel
+with Mr. Palford, who was a stranger to him, and Miss Hutchinson had
+a soothing effect on him. Strangeways was for the present comfortably
+installed as a guest of the house, Miss Hutchinson having talked to the
+housekeeper, Mrs. Butterworth, and to Pearson. What the future held for
+him Mr. Temple Barholm did not seem to feel the necessity of going into.
+He left him behind as a subject, and went on talking cheerfully of other
+things almost as if he had forgotten him.
+
+They had their coffee in the library, and afterward sat at the
+writing-table and looked over documents and talked until Mr. Palford
+felt that he could quite decorously retire to his bedroom. He was glad
+to be relieved of his duties, and Tembarom was amiably resigned to
+parting with him.
+
+Tembarom did not go up-stairs at once himself. He sat by the fire and
+smoked several pipes of tobacco and thought things over. There were
+a lot of things to think over, and several decisions to make, and he
+thought it would be a good idea to pass them in review. The quiet of
+the dead surrounded him. In a house the size of this the servants
+were probably half a mile away. They'd need trolleys to get to one, he
+thought, if you rang for them in a hurry. If an armed burglar made a
+quiet entry without your knowing it, he could get in some pretty rough
+work before any of the seventy-five footmen could come to lend a hand.
+He was not aware that there were two of them standing in waiting in the
+hall, their powdered heads close together, so that their whispers and
+chuckles could be heard. A sound of movement in the library would have
+brought them up standing to a decorous attitude of attention conveying
+to the uninitiated the impression that they had not moved for hours.
+
+Sometimes as he sat in the big morocco chair, T. Tembarom looked grave
+enough; sometimes he looked as though he was confronting problems which
+needed puzzling out and with which he was not making much headway;
+sometimes he looked as though he was thinking of little Ann Hutchinson,
+and not infrequently he grinned. Here he was up to the neck in it, and
+he was darned if he knew what he was going to do. He didn't know a soul,
+and nobody knew him. He didn't know a thing he ought to know, and he
+didn't know any one who could tell him. Even the Hutchinsons had never
+been inside a place like Temple Barholm, and they were going back to
+Manchester after a few weeks' stay at the grandmother's cottage.
+
+Before he had left New York he had seen Hadman and some other fellows
+and got things started, so that there was an even chance that the
+invention would be put on its feet. He had worked hard and used his own
+power to control money in the future as a lever which had proved to be
+exactly what was needed.
+
+Hadman had been spurred and a little startled when he realized the
+magnitude of what really could be done, and saw also that this slangy,
+moneyed youth was not merely an enthusiastic fool, but saw into business
+schemes pretty sharply and was of a most determined readiness. With this
+power ranging itself on the side of Hutchinson and his invention, it was
+good business to begin to move, if one did not want to run a chance of
+being left out in the cold.
+
+Hutchinson had gone to Manchester, and there had been barely time for
+a brief but characteristic interview between him and Tembarom, when he
+rushed back to London. Tembarom felt rather excited when he remembered
+it, recalling what he had felt in confronting the struggles against
+emotion in the blunt-featured, red face, the breaks in the rough voice,
+the charging up and down the room like a curiously elated bull in a
+china shop, and the big effort to restrain relief and gratitude the
+degree of which might seem to under-value the merits of the invention
+itself.
+
+Once or twice when he looked serious, Tembarom was thinking this
+over, and also once or twice when he grinned. Relief and gratitude
+notwithstanding, Hutchinson had kept him in his place, and had not
+made unbounded efforts to conceal his sense of the incongruity of his
+position as the controller of fortunes and the lord of Temple Barholm,
+which was still vaguely flavored with indignation.
+
+When he had finished his last pipe, Tembarom rose and knocked the ashes
+out of it.
+
+"Now for Pearson," he said.
+
+He had made up his mind to have a talk with Pearson, and there was no
+use wasting time. If things didn't suit you, the best thing was to see
+what you could do to fix them right away--if it wasn't against the law.
+He went out into the hall, and seeing the two footmen standing waiting,
+he spoke to them.
+
+"Say, I didn't know you fellows were there," he said. "Are you waiting
+up for me? Well, you can go to bed, the sooner the quicker. Good night."
+And he went up-stairs whistling.
+
+The glow and richness and ceremonial order of preparation in his
+bedroom struck him as soon as he opened the door. Everything which could
+possibly have been made ready for his most luxurious comfort had been
+made ready. He did not, it is true, care much for the huge bed with its
+carved oak canopy and massive pillars.
+
+"But the lying-down part looks about all right," he said to himself.
+
+The fine linen, the soft pillows, the downy blankets, would have allured
+even a man who was not tired. The covering had been neatly turned back
+and the snowy whiteness opened. That was English, he supposed. They
+hadn't got on to that at Mrs. Bowse's.
+
+"But I guess a plain little old New York sleep will do," he said.
+"Temple Barholm or no Temple Barholm, I guess they can't change that."
+
+Then there sounded a quiet knock at the door. He knew who it would
+turn out to be, and he was not mistaken. Pearson stood in the corridor,
+wearing his slightly anxious expression, but ready for orders.
+
+Mr. Temple Barholm looked down at him with a friendly, if unusual, air.
+
+"Say, Pearson," he announced, "if you've come to wash my face and put my
+hair up in crimping-pins, you needn't do it, because I'm not used to it.
+But come on in."
+
+If he had told Pearson to enter and climb the chimney, it cannot be said
+that the order would have been obeyed upon the spot, but Pearson would
+certainly have hesitated and explained with respectful delicacy the fact
+that the task was not "his place." He came into the room.
+
+"I came to see, if I could do anything further and--" making a
+courageous onslaught upon the situation for which he had been preparing
+himself for hours--"and also--if it is not too late--to venture to
+trouble you with regard to your wardrobe." He coughed a low, embarrassed
+cough. "In unpacking, sir, I found--I did not find--"
+
+"You didn't find much, did you?" Tembarom assisted him.
+
+"Of course, sir," Pearson apologized, "leaving New York so hurriedly,
+your--your man evidently had not time to--er--"
+
+Tembarom looked at him a few seconds longer, as if making up his mind to
+something. Then he threw himself easily into the big chair by the fire,
+and leaned back in it with the frankest and best-natured smile possible.
+
+"I hadn't any man," he said. "Say, Pearson," waving his hand to another
+chair near by, "suppose you take a seat."
+
+Long and careful training came to Pearson's aid and supported him, but
+he was afraid that he looked nervous, and certainly there was a lack of
+entire calm in his voice.
+
+"I--thank you, sir,--I think I'd better stand, sir."
+
+"Why?" inquired Tembarom, taking his tobacco-pouch out of his pocket and
+preparing to fill another pipe.
+
+"You're most kind, sir, but--but--" in impassioned embarrassment--"I
+should really PREFER to stand, sir, if you don't mind. I should feel
+more--more at 'ome, sir," he added, dropping an h in his agitation.
+
+"Well, if you'd like it better, that's all right," yielded Mr. Temple
+Barholm, stuffing tobacco into the pipe. Pearson darted to a table,
+produced a match, struck it, and gave it to him.
+
+"Thank you," said Tembarom, still good-naturedly. "But there are a few
+things I've GOT to say to you RIGHT now."
+
+Pearson had really done his best, his very best, but he was terrified
+because of the certain circumstances once before referred to.
+
+"I beg pardon, sir," he appealed, "but I am most anxious to give
+satisfaction in every respect." He WAS, poor young man, horribly
+anxious. "To-day being only the first day, I dare say I have not been
+all I should have been. I have never valeted an American gentleman
+before, but I'm sure I shall become accustomed to everything QUITE
+soon--almost immediately."
+
+"Say," broke in Tembarom, "you're 'way off. I'm not complaining. You're
+all right."
+
+The easy good temper of his manner was so singularly assuring that
+Pearson, unexplainable as he found him in every other respect, knew that
+this at least was to be depended upon, and he drew an almost palpable
+breath of relief. Something actually allured him into approaching what
+he had never felt it safe to approach before under like circumstances--a
+confidential disclosure.
+
+"Thank you, sir: I am most grateful. The--fact is, I hoped especially to
+be able to settle in place just now. I--I'm hoping to save up enough to
+get married, sir."
+
+"You are?" Tembarom exclaimed. "Good business! So was I before all
+this"--he glanced about him--"fell on top of me."
+
+"I've been saving for three years, sir, and if I can know I'm a
+permanency--if I can keep this place--"
+
+"You're going to keep it all right," Tembarom cheered him up with. "If
+you've got an idea you're going to be fired, just you forget it. Cut it
+right out."
+
+"Is--I beg your pardon, sir," Pearson asked with timorous joy, "but is
+that the American for saying you'll be good enough to keep me on?"
+
+Mr. Temple Barholm thought a second.
+
+"Is 'keep me on' the English for 'let me stay'?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"Then we're all right. Let's start from there. I'm going to have a
+heart-to-heart talk with you, Pearson."
+
+"Thank you, sir," said Pearson in a deferential murmur. But if he was
+not dissatisfied, what was going to happen?
+
+"It'll save us both trouble, and me most. I'm not one of those clever
+Clarences that can keep up a bluff, making out I know things I don't
+know. I couldn't deceive a setting hen or a Berlin wool antimacassar."
+
+Pearson swallowed something with effort.
+
+"You see, I fell into this thing KERCHUNK, and I'm just RATTLED--I'm
+rattled." As Pearson slightly coughed again, he translated for him,
+"That's American for 'I don't know where I'm at'."
+
+"Those American jokes, sir, are very funny indeed," answered Pearson,
+appreciatively.
+
+"Funny!" the new Mr. Temple Barholm exclaimed even aggrievedly. "If you
+think this lay-out is an American joke to me, Pearson, there's where
+you're 'way off. Do you think it a merry jest for a fellow like me to
+sit up in a high chair in a dining-room like a cathedral and not know
+whether he ought to bite his own bread or not? And not dare to stir
+till things are handed to him by five husky footmen? I thought that
+plain-clothes man was going to cut up my meat, and slap me on the back
+if I choked."
+
+Pearson's sense of humor was perhaps not inordinate, but unseemly mirth,
+which he had swallowed at the reference to the setting hen and the
+Berlin wool antimacassar, momentarily got the better of him, despite
+his efforts to cough it down, and broke forth in a hoarse, ill-repressed
+sound.
+
+"I beg pardon, sir," he said with a laudable endeavor to recover his
+professional bearing. "It's your--American way of expressing it which
+makes me forget myself. I beg pardon."
+
+Tembarom laughed outright boyishly.
+
+"Oh, cut that out," he said. "Say, how old are you?"
+
+"Twenty-five, sir."
+
+"So am I. If you'd met me three months ago, beating the streets of New
+York for a living, with holes in my shoes and a celluloid collar on,
+you'd have looked down on me. I know you would."
+
+"Oh, no, sir," most falsely insisted Pearson.
+
+"Oh, yes, you would," protested Tembarom, cheerfully. "You'd have said
+I talked through my nose, and I should have laughed at you for dropping
+your h's. Now you're rattled because I'm Mr. Temple Temple Barholm; but
+you're not half as rattled as I am."
+
+"You'll get over it, sir, almost immediately," Pearson assured him,
+hopefully.
+
+"Of course I shall," said Tembarom, with much courage. "But to start
+right I've got to get over YOU."
+
+"Me, sir?" Pearson breathed anxiously.
+
+"Yes. That's what I want to get off my chest. Now, first off, you came
+in here to try to explain to me that, owing to my New York valet having
+left my New York wardrobe behind, I've not got anything to wear, and so
+I shall have to buy some clothes."
+
+"I failed to find any dress-shirts, sir," began Pearson, hesitatingly.
+
+Mr. Temple Barholm grinned.
+
+"I always failed to find them myself. I never had a dress-shirt. I never
+owned a suit of glad rags in my life."
+
+"Gl--glad rags, sir?" stammered Pearson, uncertainly.
+
+"I knew you didn't catch on when I said that to you before dinner.
+I mean claw-hammer and dress-suit things. Don't you be frightened,
+Pearson. I never had six good shirts at once, or two pair of shoes, or
+more than four ten-cent handkerchiefs at a time since I was born. And
+when Mr. Palford yanked me away from New York, he didn't suspect a
+fellow could be in such a state. And I didn't know I was in a state,
+anyhow. I was too busy to hunt up people to tell me, because I was
+rushing something important right through, and I couldn't stop. I just
+bought the first things I set eyes on and crammed them into my trunk.
+There, I guess you know the most of this, but you didn't know I knew you
+knew it. Now you do, and you needn't be afraid to hurt my feelings by
+telling me I haven't a darned thing I ought to have. You can go straight
+ahead."
+
+As he leaned back, puffing away at his pipe, he had thrown a leg over
+the arm of his chair for greater comfort, and it really struck his valet
+that he had never seen a gentleman more at his ease, even one who WAS
+one. His casual candidness produced such a relief from the sense of
+strain and uncertainty that Pearson felt the color returning to his
+face. An opening had been given him, and it was possible for him to do
+his duty.
+
+"If you wish, sir, I will make a list," he ventured further, "and the
+proper firms will send persons to bring things down from London on
+appro."
+
+"What's 'appro' the English for?"
+
+"Approval, sir."
+
+"Good business! Good old Pearson!"
+
+"Thank you, sir. Shall I attend to it to-night, to be ready for the
+morning post?"
+
+"In five minutes you shall. But you threw me off the track a bit. The
+thing I was really going to say was more important than the clothes
+business."
+
+There was something else, then, thought Pearson, some other unexpected
+point of view.
+
+"What have you to do for me, anyhow?"
+
+"Valet you, sir."
+
+"That's English for washing my face and combing my hair and putting my
+socks on, ain't it?"
+
+"Well, sir, it means doing all you require, and being always in
+attendance when you change."
+
+"How much do you get for it?"
+
+"Thirty shillings a week, sir."
+
+"Say, Pearson," said Tembarom, with honest feeling, "I'll give you sixty
+shillings a week NOT to do it."
+
+Calmed though he had felt a few moments ago, it cannot be denied that
+Pearson was aghast. How could one be prepared for developments of such
+an order?
+
+"Not to do it, sir!" he faltered. "But what would the servants think if
+you had no one to valet you?"
+
+"That's so. What would they think?" But he evidently was not dismayed,
+for he smiled widely. "I guess the plainclothes man would throw a fit."
+
+But Pearson's view was more serious and involved a knowledge of not
+improbable complications. He knew "the hall" and its points of view.
+
+"I couldn't draw my wages, sir," he protested. "There'd be the greatest
+dissatisfaction among the other servants, sir, if I didn't do my duties.
+There's always a--a slight jealousy of valets and ladies'-maids. The
+general idea is that they do very little to earn their salaries. I've
+seen them fairly hated."
+
+"Is that so? Well, I'll be darned!" remarked Mr. Temple Barholm. He
+gave a moment to reflection, and then cheered up immensely.
+
+"I'll tell you how we'll fix it. You come up into my room and bring your
+tatting or read a newspaper while I dress." He openly chuckled. "Holy
+smoke! I've GOT to put on my shirt and swear at my collar-buttons
+myself. If I'm in for having a trained nurse do it for me, it'll give me
+the Willies. When you danced around me before dinner--"
+
+Pearson's horror forced him to commit the indiscretion of interrupting.
+
+"I hope I didn't DANCE, sir," he implored. "I tried to be extremely
+quiet."
+
+"That was it," said Tembarom. "I shouldn't have said danced; I meant
+crept. I kept thinking I should tread on you, and I got so nervous
+toward the end I thought I should just break down and sob on your bosom
+and beg to be taken back to home and mother."
+
+"I'm extremely sorry, sir, I am, indeed," apologized Pearson, doing his
+best not to give way to hysterical giggling. How was a man to keep a
+decently straight face, and if one didn't, where would it end? One thing
+after another.
+
+"It was not your fault. It was mine. I haven't a thing against you.
+You're a first-rate little chap."
+
+"I will try to be more satisfactory to-morrow."
+
+There must be no laughing aloud, even if one burst a blood-vessel. It
+would not do. Pearson hastily confronted a vision of a young footman
+or Mr. Burrill himself passing through the corridors on some errand
+and hearing master and valet shouting together in unseemly and wholly
+incomprehensible mirth. And the next remark was worse than ever.
+
+"No, you won't, Pearson," Mr. Temple Barholm asserted. "There's where
+you're wrong. I've got no more use for a valet than I have for a pair of
+straight-front corsets."
+
+This contained a sobering suggestion.
+
+"But you said, sir, that--"
+
+"Oh, I'm not going to fire you," said Tembarom, genially. "I'll 'keep
+you on', but little Willie is going to put on his own socks. If the
+servants have to be pacified, you come up to my room and do anything
+you like. Lie on the bed if you want to; get a jew's-harp and play on
+it--any old thing to pass the time. And I'll raise your wages. What do
+you say? Is it fixed?"
+
+"I'm here, sir, to do anything you require," Pearson answered
+distressedly; "but I'm afraid--"
+
+Tembarom's face changed. A sudden thought had struck him.
+
+"I'll tell you one thing you can do," he said; "you can valet that
+friend of mine."
+
+"Mr. Strangeways, sir?"
+
+"Yes. I've got a notion he wouldn't mind it." He was not joking now. He
+was in fact rather suddenly thoughtful.
+
+"Say, Pearson, what do you think of him?"
+
+"Well, sir, I've not seen much of him, and he says very little, but I
+should think he was a GENTLEMAN, sir."
+
+Mr. Temple Barholm seemed to think it over.
+
+"That's queer," he said as though to himself. "That's what Ann said."
+Then aloud, "Would you say he was an American?"
+
+In his unavoidable interest in a matter much talked over below stairs
+and productive of great curiosity Pearson was betrayed. He could not
+explain to himself, after he had spoken, how he could have been such a
+fool as to forget; but forget himself and the birthplace of the new Mr.
+Temple Barholm he did.
+
+"Oh, no, sir," he exclaimed hastily; "he's QUITE the gentleman, sir,
+even though he is queer in his mind." The next instant he caught himself
+and turned cold. An American or a Frenchman or an Italian, in fact, a
+native of any country on earth so slighted with an unconsciousness so
+natural, if he had been a man of hot temper, might have thrown something
+at him or kicked him out of the room; but Mr. Temple Barholm took his
+pipe out of his mouth and looked at him with a slow, broadening smile.
+
+"Would you call me a gentleman, Pearson?" he asked.
+
+Of course there was no retrieving such a blunder, Pearson felt, but--
+
+"Certainly, sir," he stammered. "Most--most CERTAINLY, sir."
+
+"Pearson," said Tembarom, shaking his head slowly, with a grin so
+good-natured that even the frankness of his words was friendly humor
+itself--"Pearson, you're a liar. But that doesn't jolt me a bit. I dare
+say I'm not one, anyhow. We might put an 'ad' in one of your papers and
+find out."
+
+"I--I beg your pardon, sir," murmured Pearson in actual anguish of mind.
+
+Mr. Temple Barholm laughed outright.
+
+"Oh, I've not got it in for you. How could you help it?" he said. Then
+he stopped joking again. "If you want to please ME," he added with
+deliberation, "you look after Mr. Strangeways, and don't let anything
+disturb him. Don't bother him, but just find out what he wants. When he
+gets restless, come and tell me. If I'm out, tell him I'm coming back.
+Don't let him worry. You understand--don't let him worry."
+
+"I'll do my best--my very best, sir," Pearson answered devoutly. "I've
+been nervous and excited this first day because I am so anxious to
+please--everything seems to depend on it just now," he added, daring
+another confidential outburst. "But you'll see I do know how to keep my
+wits about me in general, and I've got a good memory, and I have learned
+my duties, sir. I'll attend to Mr. Strangeways most particular."
+
+As Tembarom listened, and watched his neat, blond countenance, and
+noted the undertone of quite desperate appeal in his low voice, he was
+thinking of a number of things. Chiefly he was thinking of little Ann
+Hutchinson and the Harlem flat which might have been "run" on fifteen
+dollars a week.
+
+"I want to know I have some one in this museum of a place who'll
+UNDERSTAND," he said--"some one who'll do just exactly what I say and
+ask no fool questions and keep his mouth shut. I believe you could do
+it."
+
+"I'll swear I could, sir. Trust me," was Pearson's astonishingly
+emotional and hasty answer.
+
+"I'm going to," returned Mr. Temple Barholm. "I've set my mind on
+putting something through in my own way. It's a queer thing, and most
+people would say I was a fool for trying it. Mr. Hutchinson does, but
+Miss Hutchinson doesn't."
+
+There was a note in his tone of saying "Miss Hutchinson doesn't" which
+opened up vistas to Pearson--strange vistas when one thought of old Mrs.
+Hutchinson's cottage and the estate of Temple Barholm.
+
+"We're just about the same age," his employer continued, "and in a sort
+of way we're in just about the same fix."
+
+Their eyes looked into each other's a second; but it was not for Pearson
+to presume to make any comment whatsoever upon the possible nature of
+"the fix." Two or three more puffs, and Mr. Temple Barholm spoke again.
+
+"Say, Pearson, I don't want to butt in, but what about that little bunch
+of calico of yours--the one you're saving up for?"
+
+"Calico, sir?" said Pearson, at sea, but hopeful. Whatsoever the new Mr.
+Temple Barholm meant, one began to realize that it was not likely to be
+unfriendly.
+
+"That's American for HER, Pearson. 'Her' stands for the same thing both
+in English and American, I guess. What's her name and where is she?
+Don't you say a word if you don't want to."
+
+Pearson drew a step nearer. There was an extraordinary human atmosphere
+in the room which caused things to begin to go on in his breast. He had
+had a harder life than Tembarom because he had been more timid and less
+buoyant and less unselfconscious. He had been beaten by a drunken mother
+and kicked by a drunken father. He had gone hungry and faint to the
+board school and had been punished as a dull boy. After he had struggled
+into a place as page, he had been bullied by footmen and had had his
+ears boxed by cooks and butlers. Ladies'-maids and smart housemaids had
+sneered at him, and made him feel himself a hopeless, vulgar little worm
+who never would "get on." But he had got on, in a measure, because he
+had worked like a slave and openly resented nothing. A place like this
+had been his fevered hope and dream from his page days, though of course
+his imagination had not encompassed attendance on a gentleman who had
+never owned a dress-shirt in his life. Yet gentleman or no gentleman, he
+was a Temple Barholm, and there was something about him, something human
+in his young voice and grin and queer, unheard-of New York jokes, which
+Pearson had never encountered, and which had the effect of making him
+feel somehow more of a man than his timorous nature had ever allowed of
+his feeling before. It suggested that they were both, valet and master,
+merely masculine human creatures of like kind. The way he had said "Miss
+Hutchinson" and the twinkle in his eye when he'd made that American
+joke about the "little bunch of calico"! The curious fact was that thin,
+neat, white-blooded-looking Pearson was passionately in love. So he took
+the step nearer and grew hot and spoke low.
+
+"Her name is Rose Merrick, sir, and she's in place in London. She's
+lady's-maid to a lady of title, and it isn't an easy place. Her lady has
+a high temper, and she's economical with her servants. Her maid has
+to sew early and late, and turn out as much as if she was a whole
+dressmaking establishment. She's clever with her needle, and it would
+be easier if she felt it was appreciated. But she's treated haughty
+and severe, though she tries her very best. She has to wait up half
+the night after balls, and I'm afraid it's breaking her spirit and
+her health. That's why,--I beg your pardon, sir," he added, his voice
+shaking--"that's why I'd bear anything on earth if I could give her a
+little home of her own."
+
+"Gee whizz!" ejaculated Mr. Temple Barholm, with feeling. "I guess you
+would!"
+
+"And that's not all, sir," said Pearson. "She's a beautiful girl, sir,
+with a figure, and service is sometimes not easy for a young woman
+like that. His lordship--the master of the house, sir,--is much too
+attentive. He's a man with bad habits; the last lady's-maid was sent
+away in disgrace. Her ladyship wouldn't believe she hadn't been forward
+when she saw things she didn't like, though every one in the hall knew
+the girl hated his bold ways with her, and her mother nearly broke her
+heart. He's begun with Rose, and it just drives me mad, sir, it does!"
+
+He choked, and wiped his forehead with his clean handkerchief. It was
+damp, and his young eyes had fire in them, as Mr. Temple Barholm did not
+fail to observe.
+
+"I'm taking a liberty talking to you like this, sir," he said. "I'm
+behaving as if I didn't know my place, sir."
+
+"Your place is behind that fellow, kicking him till he'll never sit down
+again except on eider-down cushions three deep," remarked Mr. Temple
+Barholm, with fire in his eyes also. "That's where your place is. It's
+where mine would be if I was in the same house with him and caught him
+making a goat of himself. I bet nine Englishmen out of ten would break
+his darned neck for him if they got on to his little ways, even if they
+were lordships themselves."
+
+"The decent ones won't know," Pearson said. "That's not what happens,
+sir. He can laugh and chaff it off with her ladyship and coax her round.
+But a girl that's discharged like that, Rose says, that's the worst of
+it: she says she's got a character fastened on to her for life that no
+respectable man ought to marry her with."
+
+Mr. Temple Barholm removed his leg from the arm of his chair and got up.
+Long-legged, sinewy, but somewhat slouchy in his badly made tweed suit,
+sharp New York face and awful American style notwithstanding, he still
+looked rather nice as he laid his hand on his valet's shoulder and gave
+him a friendly push.
+
+"See here," he said. "What you've got to say to Rose is that she's just
+got to cut that sort of thing out--cut it right out. Talking to a man
+that's in love with her as if he was likely to throw her down because
+lies were told. Tell her to forget it--forget it quick. Why, what does
+she suppose a man's FOR, by jinks? What's he FOR?"
+
+"I've told her that, sir, though of course not in American. I just swore
+it on my knees in Hyde Park one night when she got out for an hour. But
+she laid her poor head on the back of the bench and cried and wouldn't
+listen. She says she cares for me too much to--"
+
+Tembarom's hand clutched his shoulder. His face lighted and glowed
+suddenly.
+
+"Care for you too much," he asked. "Did she say that? God bless her!"
+
+"That's what I said," broke in Pearson.
+
+"I heard another girl say that--just before I left New York--a girl
+that's just a wonder," said his master. "A girl can be a wonder, can't
+she?"
+
+"Rose is, sir," protested Pearson. "She is, indeed, sir. And her eyes
+are that blue--"
+
+"Blue, are they?" interrupted Tembarom. "I know the kind. I'm on to the
+whole thing. And what's more, I'm going to fix it. You tell Rose--and
+tell her from me--that she's going to leave that place, and you're going
+to stay in this one, and--well, presently things'll begin to happen.
+They're going to be all right--ALL RIGHT," he went on, with immensely
+convincing emphasis. "She's going to have that little home of her own."
+He paused a moment for reflection, and then a sudden thought presented
+itself to him. "Why, darn it!" he exclaimed, "there must be a whole raft
+of little homes that belong to me in one place or another. Why couldn't
+I fix you both up in one of them?"
+
+"Oh, sir!" Pearson broke forth in some slight alarm. He went so fast
+and so far all in a moment. And Pearson really possessed a neat,
+well-ordered conscience, and, moreover, "knew his place." "I hope I
+didn't seem to be expecting you to trouble yourself about me, sir. I
+mustn't presume on your kindness."
+
+"It's not kindness; it's--well, it's just human. I'm going to think this
+thing over. You just keep your hair on, and let me do my own valeting,
+and you'll see I'll fix it for you somehow."
+
+What he thought of doing, how he thought of doing it, and what Pearson
+was to expect, the agitated young man did not know. The situation was of
+course abnormal, judged by all respectable, long-established custom. A
+man's valet and his valet's "young woman" were not usually of intimate
+interest. Gentlemen were sometimes "kind" to you--gave you half a
+sovereign or even a sovereign, and perhaps asked after your mother if
+you were supporting one; but--
+
+"I never dreamed of going so far, sir," he said. "I forgot myself, I'm
+afraid."
+
+"Good thing you did. It's made me feel as if we were brothers." He
+laughed again, enjoying the thought of the little thing who cared for
+Pearson "too much" and had eyes that were "that blue." "Say, I've just
+thought of something else. Have you bought her an engagement-ring yet?"
+
+"No, sir. In our class of life jewelry is beyond the means."
+
+"I just wondered," Mr. Temple Barholm said. He seemed to be thinking of
+something that pleased him as he fumbled for his pocket-book and took a
+clean banknote out of it. "I'm not on to what the value of this thing is
+in real money, but you go and buy her a ring with it, and I bet she'll
+be so pleased you'll have the time of your life."
+
+Pearson taking it; and recognizing its value in UNreal money, was
+embarrassed by feeling the necessity of explanation.
+
+"This is a five-pound note, sir. It's too much, sir, it is indeed. This
+would FURNISH THE FRONT PARLOR." He said it almost solemnly.
+
+Mr. Temple Barholm looked at the note interestedly.
+
+"Would it? By jinks!" and his laugh had a certain softness of
+recollection. "I guess that's just what Ann would say. She'd know what
+it would furnish, you bet your life!"
+
+"I'm most grateful, sir," protested Pearson, "but I oughtn't to take
+it. Being an American gentleman and not accustomed to English money, you
+don't realize that--"
+
+"I'm not accustomed to any kind of money," said his master. "I'm scared
+to be left alone in the room with it. That's what's the matter. If I
+don't give some away, I shall never know I've got it. Cheer up, Pearson.
+You take that and buy the ring, and when you start furnishing, I'll see
+you don't get left."
+
+"I don't know what to say, sir," Pearson faltered emotionally. "I don't,
+indeed."
+
+"Don't say a darned thing," replied Mr. Temple Barholm. And just here
+his face changed as Mr. Palford had seen it change before, and as
+Pearson often saw it change later. His New York jocular irreverence
+dropped from him, and he looked mature and oddly serious.
+
+"I've tried to sort of put you wise to the way I've lived and the things
+I HAVEN'T had ever since I was born," he said, "but I guess you don't
+really know a thing about it. I've got more money coming in every year
+than a thousand of me would ever expect to see in their lives, according
+to my calculation. And I don't know how to do any of the things a fellow
+who is what you call `a gentleman' would know how to do. I mean in the
+way of spending it. Now, I've got to get some fun out of it. I should
+be a mutt if I didn't, so I'm going to spend it my own way. I may make
+about seventy-five different kinds of a fool of myself, but I guess I
+sha'n't do any particular harm."
+
+"You'll do good, sir,--to every one."
+
+"Shall I?"--said Tembarom, speculatively. "Well, I'm not exactly setting
+out with that in my mind. I'm no Young Men's Christian Association, but
+I'm not in for doing harm, anyway. You take your five-pound note--come
+to think of it, Palford said it came to about twenty-five dollars, real
+money. Hully gee! I never thought I'd have twenty-five dollars to GIVE
+AWAY! It makes me feel like I was Morgan."
+
+"Thank you, sir; thank you," said Pearson, putting the note into his
+pocket with rapt gratitude in his neat face. "You--you do not wish me to
+remain--to do anything for you?"
+
+"Not a thing. But just go and find out if Mr. Strangeways is asleep. If
+he isn't and seems restless, I'll come and have a talk with him."
+
+"Yes, sir," said Pearson, and went at once.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+
+In the course of two days Mr. Palford, having given his client the
+benefit of his own exact professional knowledge of the estate of
+Temple Barholm and its workings and privileges as far as he found them
+transferable and likely to be understood, returned to London, breathing
+perhaps something like a sigh of relief when the train steamed out
+of the little station. Whatsoever happened in days to come, Palford &
+Grimby had done their most trying and awkward duty by the latest Temple
+Barholm. Bradford, who was the steward of the estate, would now take
+him over, and could be trusted to furnish practical information of any
+ordinary order.
+
+It did not appear to Mr. Palford that the new inheritor was particularly
+interested in his possessions or exhilarated by the extraordinary turn
+in his fortunes. The enormity of Temple Barholm itself, regarded as a
+house to live in in an everyday manner, seemed somewhat to depress him.
+When he was taken over its hundred and fifty rooms, he wore a detached
+air as he looked about him, and such remarks as he made were of an
+extraordinary nature and expressed in terms peculiar to America. Neither
+Mr. Palford nor Burrill understood them, but a young footman who was
+said to have once paid a visit to New York, and who chanced to be in the
+picture-gallery when his new master was looking at the portraits of
+his ancestors, over-hearing one observation, was guilty of a convulsive
+snort, and immediately made his way into the corridor, coughing
+violently. From this Mr. Palford gathered that one of the transatlantic
+jokes had been made. That was the New York idea--to be jocular. Yet he
+had not looked jocular when he had made the remark which had upset the
+equilibrium of the young footman. He had, in fact, looked reflective
+before speaking as he stood and studied a portrait of one of his
+ancestors. But, then, he had a trick of saying things incomprehensibly
+ridiculous with an unmoved expression of gravity, which led Palford to
+feel that he was ridiculous through utter ignorance and was not aware
+that he was exposing the fact. Persons who thought that an air of
+seriousness added to a humorous remark were especially annoying to the
+solicitor, because they frequently betrayed one into the position
+of seeming to be dull in the matter of seeing a point. That, he had
+observed, was often part of the New York manner--to make a totally
+absurdly exaggerated or seemingly ignorance-revealing observation, and
+then leave one's hearer to decide for himself whether the speaker was an
+absolute ignoramus and fool or a humorist.
+
+More than once he had somewhat suspected his client of meaning to "get
+a rise out of him," after the odious manner of the tourists described
+in "The Innocents Abroad," though at the same time he felt rather
+supportingly sure of the fact that generally, when he displayed
+ignorance, he displayed it because he was a positive encyclopedia of
+lack of knowledge.
+
+He knew no more of social customs, literature, and art than any other
+street lad. He had not belonged to the aspiring self-taught, who
+meritoriously haunt the night schools and free libraries with a view
+to improving their minds. If this had been his method, he might in one
+sense have been more difficult to handle, as Palford had seen the
+thing result in a bumptiousness most objectionable. He was markedly not
+bumptious, at all events.
+
+A certain degree of interest in or curiosity concerning his ancestors
+as represented in the picture-gallery Mr. Palford had observed. He had
+stared at them and had said queer things--sometimes things which perhaps
+indicated a kind of uneducated thought. The fact that some of them
+looked so thoroughly alive, and yet had lived centuries ago, seemed
+to set him reflecting oddly. His curiosity, however, seemed to connect
+itself with them more as human creatures than as historical figures.
+
+"What did that one do?" he inquired more than once. "What did he start,
+or didn't he start anything?"
+
+When he disturbed the young footman he had stopped before a dark man in
+armor.
+
+"Who's this fellow in the tin overcoat?" he asked seriously, and
+Palford felt it was quite possible that he had no actual intent of being
+humorous.
+
+"That is Miles Gaspard Nevil John, who fought in the Crusades with
+Richard Coeur de Lion," he explained. "He is wearing a suit of armor."
+By this time the footman was coughing in the corridor.
+
+"That's English history, I guess," Tembarom replied. "I'll have to get a
+history-book and read up about the Crusades."
+
+He went on farther, and paused with a slightly puzzled expression before
+a boy in a costume of the period of Charles II.
+
+"Who's this Fauntleroy in the lace collar?" he inquired. "Queer!" he
+added, as though to himself. "I can't ever have seen him in New York."
+And he took a step backward to look again.
+
+"That is Miles Hugo Charles James, who was a page at the court of
+Charles II. He died at nineteen, and was succeeded by his brother Denzel
+Maurice John."
+
+"I feel as if I'd had a dream about him sometime or other," said
+Tembarom, and he stood still a few seconds before he passed on. "Perhaps
+I saw something like him getting out of a carriage to go into the Van
+Twillers' fancy-dress ball. Seems as if I'd got the whole show shut up
+in here. And you say they're all my own relations?" Then he laughed. "If
+they were alive now!" he said. "By jinks!"
+
+His laughter suggested that he was entertained by mental visions. But he
+did not explain to his companion. His legal adviser was not in the least
+able to form any opinion of what he would do, how he would be likely to
+comport himself, when he was left entirely to his own devices. He
+would not know also, one might be sure, that the county would wait with
+repressed anxiety to find out. If he had been a minor, he might have
+been taken in hand, and trained and educated to some extent. But he was
+not a minor.
+
+On the day of Mr. Palford's departure a thick fog had descended and
+seemed to enwrap the world in the white wool. Tembarom found it close to
+his windows when he got up, and he had dressed by the light of tall wax
+candles, the previous Mr. Temple Barholm having objected to more modern
+and vulgar methods of illumination.
+
+"I guess this is what you call a London fog," he said to Pearson.
+
+"No, not exactly the London sort, sir," Pearson answered. "A London fog
+is yellow--when it isn't brown or black. It settles on the hands and
+face. A fog in the country isn't dirty with smoke. It's much less
+trying, sir."
+
+When Palford had departed and he was entirely alone, Tembarom found a
+country fog trying enough for a man without a companion. A degree of
+relief permeated his being with the knowledge that he need no
+longer endeavor to make suitable reply to his solicitor's efforts at
+conversation. He had made conversational efforts himself. You couldn't
+let a man feel that you wouldn't talk to him if you could when he was
+doing business for you, but what in thunder did you have to talk about
+that a man like that wouldn't be bored stiff by? He didn't like New
+York, he didn't know anything about it, and he didn't want to know, and
+Tembarom knew nothing about anything else, and was homesick for the very
+stones of the roaring city's streets. When he said anything, Palford
+either didn't understand what he was getting at or he didn't like it.
+And he always looked as if he was watching to see if you were trying to
+get a joke on him. Tembarom was frequently not nearly so much inclined
+to be humorous as Mr. Palford had irritably suspected him of being. His
+modes of expression might on numerous occasions have roused to mirth
+when his underlying idea was almost entirely serious. The mode of
+expression was merely a result of habit.
+
+Mr. Palford left by an extremely early train, and after he was gone,
+Tembarom sat over his breakfast as long as possible, and then, going to
+the library, smoked long. The library was certainly comfortable, though
+the fire and the big wax candles were called upon to do their best to
+defy the chill, mysterious dimness produced by the heavy, white wool
+curtain folding itself more and more thickly outside the windows.
+
+But one cannot smoke in solitary idleness for much more than an hour,
+and when he stood up and knocked the ashes out of his last pipe,
+Tembarom drew a long breath.
+
+"There's a hundred and thirty-six hours in each of these days," he said.
+"That's nine hundred and fifty-two in a week, and four thousand and
+eighty in a month--when it's got only thirty days in it. I'm not going
+to calculate how many there'd be in a year. I'll have a look at the
+papers. There's Punch. That's their comic one."
+
+He looked out the American news in the London papers, and sighed hugely.
+He took up Punch and read every joke two or three times over. He did not
+know that the number was a specially good one and that there were some
+extremely witty things in it. The jokes were about bishops in gaiters,
+about garden-parties, about curates or lovely young ladies or rectors'
+wives and rustics, about Royal Academicians or esthetic poets. Their
+humor appealed to him as little and seemed as obscure as his had seemed
+to Mr. Palford.
+
+"I'm not laughing my head off much over these," he said. "I guess I'm
+not on to the point."
+
+He got up and walked about. The "L" in New York was roaring to and fro
+loaded with men and women going to work or to do shopping. Some of them
+were devouring morning papers bearing no resemblance to those of London,
+some of them carried parcels, and all of them looked as though they were
+intent on something or other and hadn't a moment to waste. They were all
+going somewhere in a hurry and had to get back in time for something.
+When the train whizzed and slackened at a station, some started up,
+hastily caught their papers or bundles closer, and pushed or were pushed
+out on the platform, which was crowded with other people who rushed to
+get in, and if they found seats, dropped into them hastily with an air
+of relief. The street-cars were loaded and rang their bells loudly,
+trucks and carriages and motors filled the middle of the thoroughfares,
+and people crowded the pavements. The store windows were dressed up for
+Christmas, and most of the people crowded before them were calculating
+as to what they could get for the inadequate sums they had on hand.
+
+The breakfast at Mrs. Bowse's boarding-house was over, and the boarders
+had gone on cars or elevated trains to their day's work. Mrs. Bowse
+was getting ready to go out and do some marketing. Julius and Jim were
+down-town deep in the work pertaining to their separate "jobs." They'd
+go home at night, and perhaps, if they were in luck, would go to a
+"show" somewhere, and afterward come and sit in their tilted chairs in
+the hall bedroom and smoke and talk it over. And he wouldn't be there,
+and the Hutchinsons' rooms would be empty, unless some new people were
+in them. Galton would be sitting among his papers, working like mad. And
+Bennett--well, Bennett would be either "getting out his page," or would
+be rushing about in the hundredth streets to find items and follow up
+weddings or receptions.
+
+"Gee!" he said, "every one of them trying their best to put something
+over, and with so much to think of they've not got time to breathe! It'd
+be no trouble for THEM to put in a hundred and thirty-six hours. They'd
+be darned glad of them. And, believe me, they'd put something over,
+too, before they got through. And I'm here, with three hundred and fifty
+thousand dollars a year round my neck and not a thing to spend it on,
+unless I pay some one part of it to give me lessons in tatting. What is
+tatting, anyhow?"
+
+He didn't really know. It was vaguely supposed to imply some intensely
+feminine fancy-work done by old ladies, and used as a figure of speech
+in jokes.
+
+"If you could ride or shoot, you could amuse yourself in the country,"
+Palford had said.
+
+"I can ride in a street-car when I've got five cents," Tembarom had
+answered. "That's as far as I've gone in riding--and what in thunder
+should I shoot?"
+
+"Game," replied Mr. Palford, with chill inward disgust. "Pheasants,
+partridges, woodcock, grouse--"
+
+"I shouldn't shoot anything like that if I went at it," he responded
+shamelessly. "I should shoot my own head off, or the fellow's that stood
+next to me, unless he got the drop on me first."
+
+He did not know that he was ignominious. Nobody could have made it clear
+to him. He did not know that there were men who had gained distinction,
+popularity, and fame by doing nothing in particular but hitting things
+animate and inanimate with magnificent precision of aim.
+
+He stood still now and listened to the silence.
+
+"There's not a sound within a thousand miles of the place. What do
+fellows with money DO to keep themselves alive?" he said piteously.
+"They've got to do SOMETHING. Shall I have to go out and take a walk, as
+Palford called it? Take a walk, by gee!"
+
+He couldn't conceive it, a man "taking a walk" as though it were
+medicine--a walk nowhere, to reach nothing, just to go and turn back
+again.
+
+"I'll begin and take in sewing," he said, "or I'll open a store in the
+village--a department store. I could spend something on that. I'll ask
+Pearson what he thinks of it--or Burrill. I'd like to see Burrill if I
+said that to him."
+
+He decided at last that he would practise his "short" awhile; that would
+be doing something, at any rate. He sat down at the big writing-table
+and began to dash off mystic signs at furious speed. But the speed did
+not keep up. The silence of the great room, of the immense house, of all
+the scores of rooms and galleries and corridors, closed in about him. He
+had practised his "short" in the night school, with the "L" thundering
+past at intervals of five minutes; in the newspaper office, with all the
+babel of New York about him and the bang of steam-drills going on
+below in the next lot, where the foundation of a new building was being
+excavated; he had practised it in his hall bedroom at Mrs. Bowse's,
+to the tumultuous accompaniment of street sounds and the whizz and
+TING-A-LING of street-cars dashing past, and he had not been disturbed.
+He had never practised it in any place which was silent, and it was the
+silence which became more than he could stand. He actually jumped out
+of his chair when he heard mysterious footsteps outside the door, and a
+footman appeared and spoke in a low voice which startled him as though
+it had been a thunderclap.
+
+"A young person with her father wants to see you, sir," he announced. "I
+don't think they are villagers, but of the working-class, I should say."
+
+"Where are they?"
+
+"I didn't know exactly what to do, sir, so I left them in the hall. The
+young person has a sort of quiet, determined way--"
+
+"Little Ann, by gee!" exclaimed Tembarom with mad joy, and shot out of
+the room.
+
+The footman--he had not seen Little Ann when she had brought
+Strangeways--looked after him and rubbed his chin.
+
+"Wouldn't you call that a rummy sort for Temple Barholm?" he said to one
+of his fellows who had appeared in the hall near him.
+
+"It's not my sort," was the answer. "I'm going to give notice to old
+Butterworth."
+
+Hutchinson and Little Ann were waiting in the hall. Hutchinson was
+looking at the rich, shadowy spaces about him with a sort of proud
+satisfaction. Fine, dark corners with armored figures lurking in
+them, ancient portraits, carved oak settles, and massive chairs and
+cabinets--these were English, and he was an Englishman, and somehow felt
+them the outcome of certain sterling qualities of his own. He looked
+robustly well, and wore a new rough tweed suit such as one of the gentry
+might tramp about muddy roads and fields in. Little Ann was dressed
+in something warm and rough also, a brown thing, with a little close,
+cap-like, brown hat, from under which her red hair glowed. The walk in
+the cold, white fog had made her bloom fresh, soft-red and white-daisy
+color. She was smiling, and showing three distinct dimples, which
+deepened when Tembarom dashed out of the library.
+
+"Hully gee!" he cried out, "but I'm glad to see you!"
+
+He shook hands with both of them furiously, and two footmen stood and
+looked at the group with image-like calm of feature, but with curiously
+interested eyes. Hutchinson was aware of them, and endeavored to present
+to them a back which by its stolid composure should reveal that he knew
+more about such things than this chap did and wasn't a bit upset by
+grandeur.
+
+"Hully gee!" cried Tembarom again, "how glad I am! Come on in and sit
+down and let's talk it over."
+
+Burrill made a stately step forward, properly intent on his duty, and
+his master waved him back.
+
+"Say," he said hastily, "don't bring in any tea. They don't want it.
+They're Americans."
+
+Hutchinson snorted. He could not stand being consigned to ignominy
+before the footmen.
+
+"Nowt o' th' sort," he broke forth. "We're noan American. Tha'rt losing
+tha head, lad."
+
+"He's forgetting because he met us first in New York," said Little Ann,
+smiling still more.
+
+"Shall I take your hat and cane, sir?" inquired Burrill, unmovedly, at
+Hutchinson's side.
+
+"He wasn't going to say anything about tea," explained Little Ann as
+they went into the library. "They don't expect to serve tea in the
+middle of the morning, Mr. Temple Barholm."
+
+"Don't they?" said Tembarom, reckless with relieved delight. "I thought
+they served it every time the clock struck. When we were in London it
+seemed like Palford had it when he was hot and when he was cold and when
+he was glad and when he was sorry and when he was going out and when he
+was coming in. It's brought up to me, by jinks! as soon as I wake, to
+brace me up to put on my clothes--and Pearson wants to put those on."
+
+He stopped short when they reached the middle of the room and looked her
+over.
+
+"O Little Ann!" he breathed tumultuously. "O Little Ann!"
+
+Mr. Hutchinson was looking about the library as he had looked about the
+hall.
+
+"Well, I never thought I'd get inside Temple Barlholm in my day," he
+exclaimed. "Eh, lad, tha must feel like bull in a china shop."
+
+"I feel like a whole herd of 'em," answered Tembarom. Hutchinson nodded.
+He understood.
+
+"Well, perhaps tha'll get over it in time," he conceded, "but it'll take
+thee a good bit." Then he gave him a warmly friendly look. "I'll lay
+you know what Ann came with me for to-day." The way Little Ann looked at
+him--the way she looked at him!
+
+"I came to thank you, Mr. Temple Barholm," she said--"to thank you." And
+there was an odd, tender sound in her voice.
+
+"Don't you do it, Ann," Tembarom answered. "Don't you do it."
+
+"I don't know much about business, but the way you must have worked, the
+way you must have had to run after people, and find them, and make then
+listen, and use all your New York cleverness--because you ARE clever.
+The way you've forgotten all about yourself and thought of nothing but
+father and the invention! I do know enough to understand that, and it
+seems as if I can't think of enough to say. I just wish I could tell you
+what it means to me." Two round pearls of tears brimmed over and fell
+down her cheeks. "I promised mother FAITHFUL I'd take care of him and
+see he never lost hope about it," she added, "and sometimes I didn't
+know whatever I was going to do."
+
+It was perilous when she looked at one like that, and she was so little
+and light that one could have snatched her up in his arms and carried
+her to the big arm-chair and sat down with her and rocked her backward
+and forward and poured forth the whole thing that was making him feel as
+though he might explode.
+
+Hutchinson provided salvation.
+
+"Tha pulled me out o' the water just when I was going under, lad. God
+bless thee!" he broke out, and shook his hand with rough vigor. "I
+signed with the North Electric yesterday."
+
+"Good business!" said Tembarom. "Now I'm in on the ground floor with
+what's going to be the biggest money-maker in sight."
+
+"The way tha talked New York to them chaps took my fancy," chuckled
+Hutchinson. "None o' them chaps wants to be the first to jump over the
+hedge."
+
+"We've got 'em started now," exulted Tembarom.
+
+"Tha started 'em," said Hutchinson, "and it's thee I've got to thank."
+
+"Say, Little Ann," said Tembarom, with sudden thought, "who's come into
+money now? You'll have it to burn."
+
+"We've not got it yet, Mr. Temple Barholm," she replied, shaking
+her head. "Even when inventions get started, they don't go off like
+sky-rockets."
+
+"She knows everything, doesn't she?" Tembarom said to Hutchinson. "Here,
+come and sit down. I've not seen you for 'steen years."
+
+She took her seat in the big arm-chair and looked at him with softly
+examining eyes, as though she wanted to understand him sufficiently to
+be able to find out something she ought to do if he needed help.
+
+He saw it and half laughed, not quite unwaveringly.
+
+"You'll make me cry in a minute," he said. "You don't know what it's
+like to have some one from home and mother come and be kind to you."
+
+"How is Mr. Strangeways?" she inquired.
+
+"He's well taken care of, at any rate. That's where he's got to thank
+you. Those rooms you and the housekeeper chose were the very things for
+him. They're big and comfortable, and 'way off in a place where no one's
+likely to come near. The fellow that's been hired to valet me valets him
+instead, and I believe he likes it. It seems to come quite natural to
+him, any how. I go in and see him every now and then and try to get
+him to talk. I sort of invent things to see if I can start him thinking
+straight. He's quieted down some and he looks better. After a while I'm
+going to look up some big doctors in London and find out which of
+'em's got the most plain horse sense. If a real big one would just get
+interested and come and see him on the quiet and not get him excited, he
+might do him good. I'm dead stuck on this stunt I've set myself--getting
+him right. It's something to work on."
+
+"You'll have plenty to work on soon," said Little Ann. "There's a lot
+of everyday things you've got to think about. They may seem of no
+consequence to you, but they ARE, Mr. Temple Barholm."
+
+"If you say they are, I guess they are," he answered. "I'll do anything
+you say, Ann."
+
+"I came partly to tell you about some of them to-day," she went on,
+keeping the yearningly thoughtful eyes on him. It was rather hard for
+her, too, to be firm enough when there was so much she wanted to say and
+do. And he did not look half as twinkling and light-heartedly grinning
+as he had looked in New York.
+
+He couldn't help dropping his voice a little coaxingly, though Mr.
+Hutchinson was quite sufficiently absorbed in examination of his
+surroundings.
+
+"Didn't you come to save my life by letting me have a look at you,
+Little Ann--didn't you?" he pleaded.
+
+She shook her wonderful, red head.
+
+"No, I didn't, Mr. Temple Barholm," she answered with Manchester
+downrightness. "When I said what I did in New York, I meant it. I
+didn't intend to hang about here and let you--say things to me. You
+mustn't say them. Father and me are going back to Manchester in a
+few days, and very soon we have to go to America again because of the
+business."
+
+"America!" he said. "Oh, Lord!" he groaned. "Do you want me to drop down
+dead here with a dull, sickening thud, Ann?"
+
+"You're not going to drop down dead," she replied convincedly. "You're
+going to stay here and do whatever it's your duty to do, now you've come
+into Temple Barholm."
+
+"Am I?" he answered. "Well, we'll see what I'm going to do when I've had
+time to make up my mind. It may be something different from what you'd
+think, and it mayn't. Just now I'm going to do what you tell me. Go
+ahead, Little Ann."
+
+She thought the matter over with her most destructive little air of
+sensible intentness.
+
+"Well, it may seem like meddling, but it isn't," she began rather
+concernedly. "It's just that I'm used to looking after people. I wanted
+to talk to you about your clothes."
+
+"My clothes?" he replied, bewildered a moment; but the next he
+understood and grinned. "I haven't got any. My valet--think of T. T.
+with a valet!--told me so last night."
+
+"That's what I thought," she said maternally. "I got Mrs. Bowse to write
+to me, and she told me you were so hurried and excited you hadn't time
+for anything."
+
+"I just rushed into Cohen's the last day and yanked a few things off the
+ready-made counter."
+
+She looked him over with impersonal criticism.
+
+"I thought so. Those you've got on won't do at all."
+
+Tembarom glanced at them.
+
+"That's what Pearson says."
+
+"They're not the right shape," she explained. "I know what a gentleman's
+clothes mean in England, and--" her face flushed, and sudden, warm
+spirit made her speak rather fast--"I couldn't ABIDE to think of you
+coming here and--being made fun of--just because you hadn't the right
+clothes."
+
+She said it, the little thing, as though he were hers--her very own, and
+defend him against disrespect she WOULD. Tembarom, being but young
+flesh and blood, made an impetuous dart toward her, and checked himself,
+catching his breath.
+
+"Ann," he said, "has your grandmother got a dog?"
+
+"Y-e-s," she said, faltering because she was puzzled.
+
+"How big is he?"
+
+"He's a big one. He's a brindled bulldog. Why?"
+
+"Well," he said, half pathetic, half defiant, "if you're going to come
+and talk to me like that, and look like that, you've got to bring that
+bull along and set him on me when I make a break; for there's nothing
+but a dog can keep me where you want me to stay--and a big one at that."
+
+He sat down on an ottoman near her and dropped his head on his hands. It
+was not half such a joke as it sounded.
+
+Little Ann saw it wasn't and she watched him tenderly, catching her
+breath once quickly. Men had ways of taking some things hard and feeling
+them a good bit more than one would think. It made trouble many a time
+if one couldn't help them to think reasonable.
+
+"Father," she said to Hutchinson.
+
+"Aye," he answered, turning round.
+
+"Will you tell Mr. Temple Barholm that you think I'm right about giving
+him his chance?"
+
+"Of course I think she's right," Hutchinson blustered, "and it isn't the
+first time either. I'm not going to have my lass married into any family
+where she'd be looked down upon."
+
+But that was not what Little Ann wanted; it was not, in fact, her
+argument. She was not thinking of that side of the situation.
+
+"It's not me that matters so much, Father," she said; "it's him."
+
+"Oh, is it?" disagreed Hutchinson, dictatorially. "That's not th' road
+I look at it. I'm looking after you, not him. Let him take care of
+himself. No chap shall put you where you won't be looked up to, even if
+I AM grateful to him. So there you have it."
+
+"He can't take care of himself when he feels like this," she answered.
+"That's WHY I'm taking care of him. He'll think steadier when he's
+himself again." She put out her hand and softly touched his shoulder.
+
+"Don't do that," she said. "You make me want to be silly." There was a
+quiver in her voice, but she tried to change it. "If you don't lift
+your head," she added with a great effort at disciplinarian firmness, "I
+shall have to go away without telling you the other things."
+
+He lifted his head, but his attempt at a smile was not hilarious.
+
+"Well, Ann," he submitted, "I've warned you. Bring along your dog."
+
+She took a sheet of paper out of one of the neat pockets in her rough,
+brown coat.
+
+"I just wrote down some of the very best tailors' addresses--the very
+best," she explained. "Don't you go to any but the very best, and be
+a bit sharp with them if they're not attentive. They'll think all the
+better of you. If your valet's a smart one, take him with you."
+
+"Yes, Ann," he said rather weakly. "He's going to make a list of things
+himself, anyhow."
+
+"That sounds as if he'd got some sense." She handed him the list of
+addresses. "You give him this, and tell him he must go to the very best
+ones."
+
+"What do I want to put on style for?" he asked desperately. "I don't
+know a soul on this side of the Atlantic Ocean."
+
+"You soon will," she replied, with calm perspicacity. "You've got too
+much money not to."
+
+A gruff chuckle made itself heard from Hutchinson's side of the room.
+
+"Aye, seventy thousand a year'll bring th' vultures about thee, lad."
+
+"We needn't call them vultures exactly," was Little Ann's tolerant
+comment; "but a lot of people will come here to see you. That was one of
+the things I thought I might tell you about."
+
+"Say, you're a wonder!"
+
+"I'm nothing of the sort. I'm just a girl with a bit of common
+sense--and grandmother's one that's looked on a long time, and she sees
+things. The country gentlemen will begin to call on you soon, and then
+you'll be invited to their houses to meet their wives and daughters, and
+then you'll be kept pretty busy."
+
+Hutchinson's bluff chuckle broke out again.
+
+"You will that, my lad, when th' match-making mothers get after you.
+There's plenty on 'em."
+
+"Father's joking," she said. Her tone was judicially unprejudiced.
+"There are young ladies that--that'd be very suitable. Pretty ones and
+clever ones. You'll see them all."
+
+"I don't want to see them."
+
+"You can't help it," she said, with mild decision. "When there
+are daughters and a new gentleman comes into a big property in the
+neighborhood, it's nothing but natural that the mothers should be a bit
+anxious."
+
+"Aye, they'll be anxious enough. Mak' sure o' that," laughed Hutchinson.
+
+"Is that what you want me to put on style for, Little Ann?" Tembarom
+asked reproachfully.
+
+"I want you to put it on for yourself. I don't want you to look
+different from other men. Everybody's curious about you. They're ready
+to LAUGH because you came from America and once sold newspapers."
+
+"It's the men he'll have to look out for," Hutchinson put in, with an
+experienced air. "There's them that'll want to borrow money, and them
+that'll want to drink and play cards and bet high. A green American
+lad'll be a fine pigeon for them to pluck. You may as well tell him,
+Ann; you know you came here to do it."
+
+"Yes, I did," she admitted. "I don't want you to seem not to know what
+people are up to and what they expect."
+
+That little note of involuntary defense was a dangerous thing for
+Tembarom. He drew nearer.
+
+"You don't want them to take me for a fool, Little Ann. You're standing
+up for me; that's it."
+
+"You can stand up for yourself, Mr. Temple Barholm, if you're not taken
+by surprise," she said confidently. "If you understand things a bit, you
+won't be."
+
+His feelings almost overpowered him.
+
+"God bless your dear little soul!" he broke out. "Say, if this goes on,
+that dog of your grandmother's wouldn't have a show, Ann. I should bite
+him before he could bite me."
+
+"I won't go on if you can't be sensible, Mr. Temple Barholm. I shall
+just go away and not come back again. That's what I shall do." Her tone
+was that of a young mother.
+
+He gave in incontinently.
+
+"Good Lord! no!" he exclaimed. "I'll do anything if you'll stay. I'll
+lie down on the mat and not open my mouth. Just sit here and tell me
+things. I know you won't let me hold your hand, but just let me hold a
+bit of your dress and look at you while you talk." He took a bit of her
+brown frock between his fingers and held it, gazing at her with all his
+crude young soul in his eyes. "Now tell me," he added.
+
+"There's only one or two things about the people who'll come to Temple
+Barholm. Grandmother's talked it over with me. She knew all about those
+that came in the late Mr. Temple Barholm's time. He used to hate most of
+them."
+
+"Then why in thunder did he ask them to come?"
+
+"He didn't. They've got clever, polite ways of asking themselves
+sometimes. He couldn't bear the Countess of Mallowe. She'll come.
+Grandmother says you may be sure of that."
+
+"What'll she come for?"
+
+Little Ann's pause and contemplation of him were fraught with
+thoughtfulness.
+
+"She'll come for you," at last she said.
+
+"She's got a daughter she thinks ought to have been married eight years
+ago," announced Hutchinson.
+
+Tembarom pulled at the bit of brown tweed he held as though it were a
+drowning man's straw.
+
+"Don't you drive me to drink, Ann," he said. "I'm frightened. Your
+grandmother will have to lend ME the dog."
+
+This was a flightiness which Little Ann did not encourage.
+
+"Lady Joan--that's her daughter--is very grand and haughty. She's a
+great beauty. You'll look at her, but perhaps she won't look at you. But
+it's not her I'm troubled about. I'm thinking of Captain Palliser and
+men like him."
+
+"Who's he?"
+
+"He's one of those smooth, clever ones that's always getting up some
+company or other and selling the stock. He'll want you to know his
+friends and he'll try to lead you his way."
+
+As Tembarom held to his bit of her dress, his eyes were adoring ones,
+which was really not to be wondered at. She WAS adorable as her soft,
+kind, wonderfully maternal girl face tried to control itself so that it
+should express only just enough to help and nothing to disturb.
+
+"I don't want him to spoil you. I don't want anything to make
+you--different. I couldn't bear it."
+
+He pulled the bit of dress pleadingly.
+
+"Why, Little Ann?" he implored quite low.
+
+"Because," she said, feeling that perhaps she was rash--"because if
+you were different, you wouldn't be T. Tembarom; and it was T. Tembarom
+that--that was T. Tembarom," she finished hastily.
+
+He bent his head down to the bit of tweed and kissed it.
+
+"You just keep looking after me like that," he said, "and there's not
+one of them can get away with me."
+
+She got up, and he rose with her. There was a touch of fire in the
+forget-me-not blue of her eyes.
+
+"Just you let them see--just you let them see that you're not one they
+can hold light and make use of." But there she stopped short, looking
+up at him. He was looking down at her with a kind of matureness in
+his expression. "I needn't be afraid," she said. "You can take care of
+yourself; I ought to have known that."
+
+"You did," he said, smiling; "but you wanted to sort of help me. And
+you've done it, by gee! just by saying that thing about T. Tembarom. You
+set me right on my feet. That's YOU."
+
+Before they went away they paid a visit to Strangeways in his remote,
+undisturbed, and beautiful rooms. They were in a wing of the house
+untouched by any ordinary passing to and fro, and the deep windows
+looked out upon gardens which spring and summer would crowd with
+loveliness from which clouds of perfume would float up to him on days
+when the sun warmed and the soft airs stirred the flowers, shaking
+the fragrance from their full incense-cups. But the white fog shut out
+to-day even their winter bareness. There were light and warmth inside,
+and every added charm of rich harmony of deep color and comfort made
+beautiful. There were books and papers waiting to be looked over, but
+they lay untouched on the writing-table, and Strangeways was sitting
+close to the biggest window, staring into the fog. His eyes looked
+hungry and hollow and dark. Ann knew he was "trying to remember"
+something.
+
+When the sound of footsteps reached his ear, he turned to look at them,
+and rose mechanically at sight of Ann. But his expression was that of a
+man aroused from a dream of far-off places.
+
+"I remember you," he said, but hesitated as though making an effort to
+recall something.
+
+"Of course you do," said Little Ann. "You know me quite well. I brought
+you here. Think a bit. Little--Little--"
+
+"Yes," he broke forth. "Of course, Little Ann! Thank God I've not
+forgotten." He took her hand in both his and held it tenderly. "You have
+a sweet little face. It's such a wise little face!" His voice sounded
+dreamy.
+
+Ann drew him to his chair with a coaxing laugh and sat down by him.
+
+"You're flattering me. You make me feel quite shy," she said. "You know
+HIM, too," nodding toward Tembarom.
+
+"Oh, yes," he replied, and he looked up with a smile. "He is the one who
+remembers. You said you did." He had turned to Tembarom.
+
+"You bet your life I do," Tembarom answered. "And you will, too, before
+long."
+
+"If I did not try so hard," said Strangeways, thoughtfully. "It seems
+as if I were shut up in a room, and so many things were knocking at the
+doors--hundreds of them--knocking because they want to be let in. I am
+damnably unhappy--damnably." He hung his head and stared at the floor.
+Tembarom put a hand on his shoulder and gave him a friendly shake.
+
+"Don't you worry a bit," he said. "You take my word for it. It'll all
+come back. I'm working at it myself." Strangeways lifted his head.
+
+"You are the one I know best. I trust you." But there was the beginning
+of a slight drag in his voice. "I don't always--quite recollect--your
+name. Not quite. Good heavens! I mustn't forget that."
+
+Little Ann was quite ready.
+
+"You won't," she said, "because it's different from other names. It
+begins with a letter--just a letter, and then there is the name. Think."
+
+"Yes, yes," he said anxiously.
+
+Little Ann bent forward and fixed her eyes on his with concentrated
+suggestion. They had never risked confusing him by any mention of
+the new name. She began to repeat letters of the alphabet slowly and
+distinctly until she reached the letter T.
+
+"T," she ended with much emphasis--"R. S. _T_."
+
+His expression cleared itself.
+
+"T," he repeated. "T--Tembarom. R, S, T. How clever you are!"
+
+Little Ann's gaze concentrated itself still more intently.
+
+"Now you'll never forget it again," she said, "because of the T. You'll
+say the other letters until you come to it. R, S, T."
+
+"T. Tembarom," he ended relievedly. "How you help me!" He took her hand
+and kissed it very gently.
+
+"We are all going to help you," Ann soothed him, "T. Tembarom most of
+all."
+
+"Say," Tembarom broke out in an aside to her, "I'm going to come here
+and try things on him every day. When it seems like he gets on to
+something, however little a thing it is, I'm going to follow it up and
+see if it won't get somewhere."
+
+Ann nodded.
+
+"There'll be something some day," she said. "Are you quite comfortable
+here?" she asked aloud to Strangeways.
+
+"Very comfortable, thank you," he answered courteously. "They are
+beautiful rooms. They are furnished with such fine old things. This is
+entirely Jacobean. It's quite perfect." He glanced about him. "And so
+quiet. No one comes in here but my man, and he is a very nice chap. I
+never had a man who knew his duties better."
+
+Little Ann and Tembarom looked at each other.
+
+"I shouldn't be a bit surprised," she said after they had left the room,
+"if it wouldn't be a good thing to get Pearson to try to talk to him now
+and then. He's been used to a man-servant."
+
+"Yes," answered Tembarom. "Pearson didn't rattle HIM, you bet your
+life."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+
+He could not persuade them to remain to take lunch with him. The
+firmness of Hutchinson's declination was not unconnected with a private
+feeling that "them footmen chaps 'u'd be on the lookout to see the way
+you handled every bite you put in your mouth." He couldn't have stood
+it, dang their impudence! Little Ann, on her part, frankly and calmly
+said, "It wouldn't DO." That was all, and evidently covered everything.
+
+After they had gone, the fog lifted somewhat, but though it withdrew
+from the windows, it remained floating about in masses, like huge
+ghosts, among the trees of the park. When Tembarom sat down alone
+to prolong his lunch with the aid of Burrill and the footmen, he was
+confronted by these unearthly shapes every time he lifted his eyes to
+the window he faced from his place at the table. It was an outlook which
+did not inspire to cheerfulness, and the fact that Ann and her father
+were going back to Manchester and later to America left him without even
+the simple consolation of a healthy appetite. Things were bound to get
+better after a while; they were BOUND to. A fellow would be a fool if
+he couldn't fix it somehow so that he could enjoy himself, with money to
+burn. If you made up your mind you couldn't stand the way things were,
+you didn't have to lie down under them, with a thousand or so "per"
+coming in. You could fix it so that it would be different. By jinks!
+there wasn't any law against your giving it all to the church but just
+enough to buy a flat in Harlem out-right, if you wanted to. But you
+weren't going to run crazy and do a lot of fool things in a minute, and
+be sorry the rest of your life. Money was money. And first and foremost
+there was Ann, with her round cheeks flushed and her voice all sweet
+and queer, saying, "You wouldn't be T. Tembarom; and it was T. Tembarom
+that--that was T. Tembarom."
+
+He couldn't help knowing what she had begun to say, and his own face
+flushed as he thought of it. He was at that time of life when there
+generally happens to be one center about which the world revolves. The
+creature who passes through this period of existence without watching it
+revolve about such a center has missed an extraordinary and singularly
+developing experience. It is sometimes happy, often disastrous, but
+always more or less developing. Speaking calmly, detachedly, but not
+cynically, it is a phase. During its existence it is the blood in the
+veins, the sight of the eyes, the beat of the pulse, the throb of the
+heart. It is also the day and the night, the sun, the moon, and the
+stars, heaven and hell, the entire universe. And it doesn't matter in
+the least to any one but the creatures living through it. T. Tembarom
+was in the midst of it. There was Ann. There was this new crazy thing
+which had happened to him--"this fool thing," as he called it. There was
+this monstrous, magnificent house,--he knew it was magnificent, though
+it wasn't his kind,--there was old Palford and his solemn talk about
+ancestors and the name of Temple Barholm. It always reminded him of how
+ashamed he had been in Brooklyn of the "Temple Temple" and how he had
+told lies to prevent the fellows finding out about it. And there was
+seventy thousand pounds a year, and there was Ann, who looked as soft as
+a baby,--Good Lord! how soft she'd feel if you got her in your arms and
+squeezed her!--and yet was somehow strong enough to keep him just where
+she wanted him to stay and believed he ought to stay until "he had
+found out." That was it. She wasn't doing it for any fool little idea of
+making herself seem more important: she just believed it. She was doing
+it because she wanted to let him "have his chance," just as if she were
+his mother instead of the girl he was clean crazy about. His chance!
+He laughed outright--a short, confident laugh which startled Burrill
+exceedingly.
+
+When he went back to the library and lighted his pipe he began to stride
+up and down as he continued to think it over.
+
+"I wish she was as sure as I am," he said. "I wish she was as sure of me
+as I am of myself--and as I am of her." He laughed the short, confident
+laugh again. "I wish she was as sure as I am of us both. We're all
+right. I've got to get through this, and find out what it's best to do,
+and I've got to show her. When I've had my chance good and plenty,
+us two for little old New York! Gee! won't it be fine!" he exclaimed
+imaginatively. "Her going over her bills, looking like a peach of a baby
+that's trying to knit its brows, and adding up, and thinking she ought
+to economize. She'd do it if we had ten million." He laughed outright
+joyfully. "Good Lord! I should kiss her to death!"
+
+The simplest process of ratiocination would lead to a realization of
+the fact that though he was lonely and uncomfortable, he was not in
+the least pathetic or sorry for himself. His normal mental and
+physical structure kept him steady on his feet, and his practical and
+unsentimental training, combining itself with a touch of iron which
+centuries ago had expressed itself through some fighting Temple Barholm
+and a medium of battle-axes, crossbows, and spears, did the rest.
+
+"It'd take more than this to get me where I'd be down and out. I'm
+feeling fine," he said. "I believe I'll go and 'take a walk,' as Palford
+says."
+
+The fog-wreaths in the park were floating away, and he went out grinning
+and whistling, giving Burrill and the footman a nod as he passed them
+with a springing young stride. He got the door open so quickly that he
+left them behind him frustrated and staring at each other.
+
+"It wasn't our fault," said Burrill, gloomily. "He's never had a door
+opened for him in his life. This won't do for me."
+
+He was away for about an hour, and came back in the best of spirits. He
+had found out that there was something in "taking a walk" if a fellow
+had nothing else to do. The park was "fine," and he had never seen
+anything like it. When there were leaves on the trees and the grass
+and things were green, it would be better than Central Park itself.
+You could have base-ball matches in it. What a cinch it would be if you
+charged gate-money! But he supposed you couldn't if it belonged to you
+and you had three hundred and fifty thousand a year. You had to get used
+to that. But it did seem a fool business to have all that land and not
+make a cent out of it. If it was just outside New York and you cut it
+up into lots, you'd just pile it up. He was quite innocent--calamitously
+innocent and commercial and awful in his views. Thoughts such as these
+had been crammed into his brain by life ever since he had gone down the
+staircase of the Brooklyn tenement with his twenty-five cents in his
+ten-year-old hand.
+
+The stillness of the house seemed to have accentuated itself when he
+returned to it. His sense of it let him down a little as he entered. The
+library was like a tomb--a comfortable luxurious tomb with a bright fire
+in it. A new Punch and the morning papers had been laid upon a table
+earlier in the day, and he sat down to look at them.
+
+"I guess about fifty-seven or eight of the hundred and thirty-six hours
+have gone by," he said. "But, gee! ain't it lonesome!"
+
+He sat so still trying to interest himself in "London Day by Day" in the
+morning paper that the combination of his exercise in the fresh air and
+the warmth of the fire made him drowsy. He leaned back in his chair and
+closed his eyes without being aware that he did so. He was on the verge
+of a doze.
+
+He remained upon the verge for a few minutes, and then a soft, rustling
+sound made him open his eyes.
+
+An elderly little lady had timidly entered the room. She was neatly
+dressed in an old-fashioned and far-from-new black silk dress, with a
+darned lace collar and miniature brooch at her neck. She had also thin,
+gray side-ringlets dangling against her cheeks from beneath a small,
+black lace cap with pale-purple ribbons on it. She had most evidently
+not expected to find any one in the room, and, having seen Tembarom,
+gave a half-frightened cough.
+
+"I--I beg your pardon," she faltered. "I really did not mean to
+intrude--really."
+
+Tembarom jumped up, awkward, but good-natured. Was she a kind of servant
+who was a lady?
+
+"Oh, that's all right," he said.
+
+But she evidently did not feel that it was all right. She looked as
+though she felt that she had been caught doing something wrong, and must
+properly propitiate by apology.
+
+"I'm so sorry. I thought you had gone out--Mr. Temple Barholm."
+
+"I did go out--to take a walk; but I came in."
+
+Having been discovered in her overt act, she evidently felt that
+duty demanded some further ceremony from her. She approached him very
+timidly, but with an exquisite, little elderly early-Victorian manner.
+She was of the most astonishingly perfect type, though Tembarom was not
+aware of the fact. The manner, a century earlier, would have expressed
+itself in a curtsy.
+
+"It is Mr. Temple Barholm, isn't it?" she inquired.
+
+"Yes; it has been for the last few weeks," he answered, wondering why
+she seemed so in awe of him and wishing she didn't.
+
+"I ought to apologize for being here," she began.
+
+"Say, don't, please!" he interrupted. "What I feel is, that it ought to
+be up to me to apologize for being here."
+
+She was really quite flurried and distressed.
+
+"Oh, please, Mr. Temple Barholm!" she fluttered, proceeding to explain
+hurriedly, as though he without doubt understood the situation. "I
+should of course have gone away at once after the late Mr. Temple
+Barholm died, but--but I really had nowhere to go--and was kindly
+allowed to remain until about two months ago, when I went to make
+a visit. I fully intended to remove my little belongings before you
+arrived, but I was detained by illness and could not return until this
+morning to pack up. I understood you were in the park, and I remembered
+I had left my knitting-bag here." She glanced nervously about the room,
+and seemed to catch sight of something on a remote corner table. "Oh,
+there it is. May I take it?" she said, looking at him appealingly. "It
+was a kind present from a dear lost friend, and--and--" She paused,
+seeing his puzzled and totally non-comprehending air. It was plainly the
+first moment it had dawned upon her that he did not know what she was
+talking about. She took a small, alarmed step toward him.
+
+"Oh, I BEG your pardon," she exclaimed in delicate anguish. "I'm afraid
+you don't know who I am. Perhaps Mr. Palford forgot to mention me.
+Indeed, why should he mention me? There were so many more important
+things. I am a sort of distant--VERY distant relation of yours. My name
+is Alicia Temple Barholm."
+
+Tembarom was relieved. But she actually hadn't made a move toward the
+knitting-bag. She seemed afraid to do it until he gave her permission.
+He walked over to the corner table and brought it to her, smiling
+broadly.
+
+"Here it is," he said. "I'm glad you left it. I'm very happy to be
+acquainted with you, Miss Alicia."
+
+He was glad just to see her looking up at him with her timid, refined,
+intensely feminine appeal. Why she vaguely brought back something that
+reminded him of Ann he could not have told. He knew nothing whatever of
+types early-Victorian or late.
+
+He took her hand, evidently to her greatest possible amazement, and
+shook it heartily. She knew nothing whatever of the New York street
+type, and it made her gasp for breath, but naturally with an allayed
+terror.
+
+"Gee!" he exclaimed whole-heartedly, "I'm glad to find out I've got a
+relation. I thought I hadn't one in the world. Won't you sit down?" He
+was drawing her toward his own easy-chair. But he really didn't know,
+she was agitatedly thinking. She really must tell him. He seemed so good
+tempered and--and DIFFERENT. She herself was not aware of the enormous
+significance which lay in that word "different." There must be no risk
+of her seeming to presume upon his lack of knowledge.
+
+"It is MOST kind of you," she said with grateful emphasis, "but I
+mustn't sit down and detain you. I can explain in a few words--if I
+may."
+
+He positively still held her hand in the oddest, natural, boyish
+way, and before she knew what she was doing he had made her take the
+chair--quite MADE her.
+
+"Well, just sit down and explain," he said. "I wish to thunder you
+would detain me. Take all the time you like. I want to hear all about
+it--honest Injun."
+
+There was a cushion in the chair, and as he talked, he pulled it out
+and began to arrange it behind her, still in the most natural and
+matter-of-fact way--so natural and matter-of-fact, indeed, that its very
+natural matter-of-factedness took her breath away.
+
+"Is that fixed all right?" he asked.
+
+Being a little lady, she could only accept his extraordinary
+friendliness with grateful appreciation, though she could not help
+fluttering a little in her bewilderment.
+
+"Oh, thank you, thank you, Mr. Temple Barholm," she said.
+
+He sat down on the square ottoman facing her, and leaned forward with an
+air of making a frank confession.
+
+"Guess what I was thinking to myself two minutes before you came in?
+I was thinking, `Lord, I'm lonesome--just sick lonesome!' And then I
+opened my eyes and looked--and there was a relation! Hully gee! I call
+that luck!"
+
+"Dear me!" she said, shyly delighted. "DO you, Mr. Temple
+Barholm--REALLY?"
+
+Her formal little way of saying his name was like Ann's.
+
+"Do I? I'm tickled to death. My mother died when I was ten, and I've
+never had any women kin-folks."
+
+"Poor bo--" She had nearly said "Poor boy!" and only checked the
+familiarity just in time--"Poor Mr. Temple Barholm!"
+
+"Say, what are we two to each other, anyhow?" He put it to her with
+great interest.
+
+"It is a very distant relationship, if it is one at all," she answered.
+"You see, I was only a second cousin to the late Mr. Temple Barholm,
+and I had not really the SLIGHTEST claim upon him." She placed pathetic
+emphasis on the fact. "It was most generous of him to be so kind to me.
+When my poor father died and I was left quite penniless, he gave me a--a
+sort of home here."
+
+"A sort of home?" Tembarom repeated.
+
+"My father was a clergyman in VERY straitened circumstances. We had
+barely enough to live upon--barely. He could leave me nothing. It
+actually seemed as if I should have to starve--it did, indeed." There
+was a delicate quiver in her voice. "And though the late Mr. Temple
+Barholm had a great antipathy to ladies, he was so--so noble as to send
+word to me that there were a hundred and fifty rooms in his house, and
+that if I would keep out of his way I might live in one of them."
+
+"That was noble," commented her distant relative.
+
+"Oh, yes, indeed, especially when one considers how he disliked the
+opposite sex and what a recluse he was. He could not endure ladies. I
+scarcely ever saw him. My room was in quite a remote wing of the house,
+and I never went out if I knew he was in the park. I was most careful.
+And when he died of course I knew I must go away."
+
+Tembarom was watching her almost tenderly.
+
+"Where did you go?"
+
+"To a kind clergyman in Shropshire who thought he might help me."
+
+"How was he going to do it?"
+
+She answered with an effort to steady a somewhat lowered and hesitating
+voice.
+
+"There was near his parish a very nice--charity,"--her breath caught
+itself pathetically,--"some most comfortable almshouses for decayed
+gentlewomen. He thought he might be able to use his influence to get
+me into one." She paused and smiled, but her small, wrinkled hands held
+each other closely.
+
+Tembarom looked away. He spoke as though to himself, and without knowing
+that he was thinking aloud.
+
+"Almshouses!" he said. "Wouldn't that jolt you!" He turned on her again
+with a change to cheerful concern. "Say, that cushion of yours ain't
+comfortable. I 'm going to get you another one." He jumped up and,
+taking one from a sofa, began to arrange it behind her dexterously.
+
+"But I mustn't trouble you any longer. I must go, really," she said,
+half rising nervously. He put a hand on her shoulder and made her sit
+again.
+
+"Go where?" he said. "Just lean back on that cushion, Miss Alicia. For
+the next few minutes this is going to be MY funeral."
+
+She was at once startled and uncomprehending. What an extraordinary
+expression! What COULD it mean?
+
+"F--funeral?" she stammered.
+
+Suddenly he seemed somehow to have changed. He looked as serious as
+though he was beginning to think out something all at once. What was he
+going to say?
+
+"That's New York slang," he answered. "It means that I want to explain
+myself to you and ask a few questions."
+
+"Certainly, certainly, Mr. Temple Barholm."
+
+He leaned his back against the mantel, and went into the matter
+practically.
+
+"First off, haven't you ANY folks?" Then, answering her puzzled look,
+added, "I mean relations."
+
+Miss Alicia gently shook her head.
+
+"No sisters or brothers or uncles or aunts or cousins?"
+
+She shook her head again.
+
+He hesitated a moment, putting his hands in his pockets and taking them
+out again awkwardly as he looked down at her.
+
+"Now here's where I'm up against it," he went on. "I don't want to be
+too fresh or to butt in, but--didn't old Temple Barholm leave you ANY
+money?"
+
+"Oh, no!" she exclaimed. "Dear me! no! I couldn't possibly EXPECT such a
+thing."
+
+He gazed at her as though considering the situation. "Couldn't you?" he
+said.
+
+There was an odd reflection in his eyes, and he seemed to consider her
+and the situation again.
+
+"Well," he began after his pause, "what I want to know is what you
+expect ME to do."
+
+There was no unkindness in his manner, in fact, quite the contrary,
+even when he uttered what seemed to Miss Alicia these awful, unwarranted
+words. As though she had forced herself into his presence to make
+demands upon his charity! They made her tremble and turn pale as she got
+up quickly, shocked and alarmed.
+
+"Oh, nothing! nothing! nothing WHATEVER, Mr. Temple Barholm!" she
+exclaimed, her agitation doing its best to hide itself behind a fine
+little dignity. He saw in an instant that his style of putting it had
+been "'way off," that his ignorance had betrayed him, that she had
+misunderstood him altogether. He almost jumped at her.
+
+"Oh, say, I didn't mean THAT!" he cried out. "For the Lord's sake! don't
+think I'm such a Tenderloin tough as to make a break like that! Not on
+your life!"
+
+Never since her birth had a male creature looked at Miss Alicia with the
+appeal which showed itself in his eyes as he actually put his arm half
+around her shoulders, like a boy begging a favor from his mother or his
+aunt.
+
+"What I meant was--" He broke off and began again quite anxiously, "say,
+just as a favor, will you sit down again and let me tell you what I did
+mean?"
+
+It was that natural, warm, boyish way which overcame her utterly. It
+reminded her of the only boy she had ever really known, the one male
+creature who had allowed her to be fond of him. There was moisture in
+her eyes as she let him put her back into her chair. When he had done
+it, he sat down on the ottoman again and poured himself forth.
+
+"You know what kind of a chap I am. No, you don't, either. You mayn't
+know a thing about me; and I want to tell you. I'm so different from
+everything you've ever known that I scare you. And no wonder. It's the
+way I've lived. If you knew, you'd understand what I was thinking of
+when I spoke just now. I've been cold, I've been hungry, I've walked
+the wet streets on my uppers. I know all about GOING WITHOUT. And do you
+expect that I am going to let a--a little thing like you--go away from
+here without friends and without money on the chance of getting into an
+almshouse that isn't vacant? Do you expect that of me? Not on your life!
+That was what I meant."
+
+Miss Alicia quivered; the pale-purple ribbons on her little lace cap
+quivered.
+
+"I haven't," she said, and the fine little dignity was piteous, "a
+SHADOW of a claim upon you." It was necessary for her to produce a
+pocket-handkerchief. He took it from her, and touched her eyes as softly
+as though she were a baby.
+
+"Claim nothing!" he said. "I've got a claim on YOU. I'm going to stake
+one out right now." He got up and gesticulated, taking in the big
+room and its big furniture. "Look at all this! It fell on me like a
+thunderbolt. It's nearly knocked the life out of me. I'm like a lost cat
+on Broadway. You can't go away and leave me, Miss Alicia; it's your duty
+to stay. You've just GOT to stay to take care of me." He came over to
+her with a wheedling smile. "I never was taken care of in my life. Just
+be as noble to me as old Temple Barholm was to you: give me a sort of
+home."
+
+If a little gentlewoman could stare, it might be said that Miss Alicia
+stared at him. She trembled with amazed emotion.
+
+"Do you mean--" Despite all he had said, she scarcely dared to utter the
+words lest, after all, she might be taking for granted more than it was
+credible could be true. "Can you mean that if I stayed here with you it
+would make Temple Barholm seem more like HOME? Is it possible you--you
+mean THAT?"
+
+"I mean just that very thing."
+
+It was too much for her. Finely restrained little elderly gentlewoman as
+she was, she openly broke down under it.
+
+"It can't be true!" she ejaculated shakily. "It isn't possible. It is
+too--too beautiful and kind. Do forgive me! I c-a-n't help it." She
+burst into tears.
+
+She knew it was most stupidly wrong. She knew gentlemen did not like
+tears. Her father had told her that men never really forgave women who
+cried at them. And here, when her fate hung in the balance, she was not
+able to behave herself with feminine decorum.
+
+Yet the new Mr. Temple Barholm took it in as matter-of-fact a manner as
+he seemed to take everything. He stood by her chair and soothed her in
+his dear New York voice.
+
+"That's all right, Miss Alicia," he commented. "You cry as much as you
+want to, just so that you don't say no. You've been worried and you're
+tired. I'll tell you there's been two or three times lately when I
+should like to have cried myself if I'd known how. Say," he added with a
+sudden outburst of imagination, "I bet anything it's about time you had
+tea."
+
+The suggestion was so entirely within the normal order of things that it
+made her feel steadier, and she was able to glance at the clock.
+
+"A cup of tea would be refreshing," she said. "They will bring it in
+very soon, but before the servants come I must try to express--"
+
+But before she could express anything further the tea appeared. Burrill
+and a footman brought it on splendid salvers, in massive urn and
+tea-pot, with chaste, sacrificial flame flickering, and wonderful, hot
+buttered and toasted things and wafers of bread and butter attendant.
+As they crossed the threshold, the sight of Miss Alicia's small form
+enthroned in their employer's chair was one so obviously unanticipated
+that Burrill made a step backward and the footman almost lost the
+firmness of his hold on the smaller tray. Each recovered himself in
+time, however, and not until the tea was arranged upon the table near
+the fire was any outward recognition of Miss Alicia's presence made.
+Then Burrill, pausing, made an announcement entirely without prejudice:
+
+"I beg pardon, sir, but Higgins's cart has come for Miss Temple
+Barholm's box; he is asking when she wants the trap."
+
+"She doesn't want it at all," answered Tembarom. "Carry her trunk
+up-stairs again. She's not going away."
+
+The lack of proper knowledge contained in the suggestion that Burrill
+should carry trunks upstairs caused Miss Alicia to quail in secret, but
+she spoke with outward calm.
+
+"No, Burrill," she said. "I am not going away."
+
+"Very good, Miss," Burrill replied, and with impressive civility he
+prepared to leave the room. Tembarom glanced at the tea-things.
+
+"There's only one cup here," he said. "Bring one for me."
+
+Burrill's expression might perhaps have been said to start slightly.
+
+"Very good, sir," he said, and made his exit. Miss Alicia was fluttering
+again.
+
+"That cup was really for you, Mr. Temple Barholm," she ventured.
+
+"Well, now it's for you, and I've let him know it," replied Tembarom.
+
+"Oh, PLEASE," she said in an outburst of feeling--"PLEASE let me tell
+you how GRATEFUL--how grateful I am!"
+
+But he would not let her.
+
+"If you do," he said, "I'll tell you how grateful _I_ am, and that'll
+be worse. No, that's all fixed up between us. It goes. We won't say any
+more about it."
+
+He took the whole situation in that way, as though he was assuming no
+responsibility which was not the simple, inevitable result of their
+drifting across each other--as though it was only what any man would
+have done, even as though she was a sort of delightful, unexpected
+happening. He turned to the tray.
+
+"Say, that looks all right, doesn't it?" he said. "Now you are here, I
+like the way it looks. I didn't yesterday."
+
+Burrill himself brought the extra cup and saucer and plate. He wished
+to make sure that his senses had not deceived him. But there she sat who
+through years had existed discreetly in the most unconsidered rooms
+in an uninhabited wing, knowing better than to presume upon her
+privileges--there she sat with an awed and rapt face gazing up at this
+new outbreak into Temple Barholm's and "him joking and grinning as
+though he was as pleased as Punch."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+
+To employ the figure of Burrill, Tembarom was indeed "as pleased as
+Punch." He was one of the large number of men who, apart from all
+sentimental relations, are made particularly happy by the kindly society
+of women; who expand with quite unconscious rejoicing when a woman
+begins to take care of them in one way or another. The unconsciousness
+is a touching part of the condition. The feminine nearness supplies a
+primeval human need. The most complete of men, as well as the weaklings,
+feel it. It is a survival of days when warm arms held and protected,
+warm hands served, and affectionate voices soothed. An accomplished male
+servant may perform every domestic service perfectly, but the fact that
+he cannot be a woman leaves a sense of lack. An accustomed feminine
+warmth in the surrounding daily atmosphere has caused many a man to
+marry his housekeeper or even his cook, as circumstances prompted.
+
+Tembarom had known no woman well until he had met Little Ann. His
+feeling for Mrs. Bowse herself had verged on affection, because he would
+have been fond of any woman of decent temper and kindliness, especially
+if she gave him opportunities to do friendly service. Little Ann had
+seemed the apotheosis of the feminine, the warmly helpful, the subtly
+supporting, the kind. She had been to him an amazement and a revelation.
+She had continually surprised him by revealing new characteristics which
+seemed to him nicer things than he had ever known before, but which, if
+he had been aware of it, were not really surprising at all. They were
+only the characteristics of a very nice young feminine creature.
+
+The presence of Miss Alicia, with the long-belated fashion of her
+ringlets and her little cap, was delightful to him. He felt as though
+he would like to take her in his arms and hug her. He thought perhaps
+it was partly because she was a little like Ann, and kept repeating his
+name in Ann's formal little way. Her delicate terror of presuming
+or intruding he felt in its every shade. Mentally she touched him
+enormously. He wanted to make her feel that she need not be afraid of
+him in the least, that he liked her, that in his opinion she had more
+right in the house than he had. He was a little frightened lest through
+ignorance he should say things the wrong way, as he had said that thing
+about wanting to know what she expected him to do. What he ought to have
+said was, "You're not expecting me to let that sort of thing go on."
+It had made him sick when he saw what a break he'd made and that she
+thought he was sort of insulting her. The room seemed all right now that
+she was in it. Small and unassuming as she was, she seemed to make it
+less over-sized. He didn't so much mind the loftiness of the ceiling,
+the depth and size of the windows, and the walls covered with thousands
+of books he knew nothing whatever about. The innumerable books had been
+an oppressing feature. If he had been one of those "college guys" who
+never could get enough of books, what a "cinch" the place would have
+been for him--good as the Astor Library! He hadn't a word to say against
+books,--good Lord! no;--but even if he'd had the education and the time
+to read, he didn't believe he was naturally that kind, anyhow. You had
+to be "that kind" to know about books. He didn't suppose she--meaning
+Miss Alicia--was learned enough to make you throw a fit. She didn't look
+that way, and he was mighty glad of it, because perhaps she wouldn't
+like him much if she was. It would worry her when she tried to talk to
+him and found out he didn't know a darned thing he ought to.
+
+They'd get on together easier if they could just chin about common sort
+of every-day things. But though she didn't look like the Vassar sort,
+he guessed that she was not like himself: she had lived in libraries
+before, and books didn't frighten her. She'd been born among people
+who read lots of them and maybe could talk about them. That was why she
+somehow seemed to fit into the room. He was aware that, timid as she was
+and shabby as her neat dress looked, she fitted into the whole place, as
+he did not. She'd been a poor relative and had been afraid to death of
+old Temple Barholm, but she'd not been afraid of him because she wasn't
+his sort. She was a lady; that was what was the matter with her. It was
+what made things harder for her, too. It was what made her voice tremble
+when she'd tried to seem so contented and polite when she'd talked about
+going into one of those "decayed alms-houses." As if the old ladies were
+vegetables that had gone wrong, by gee! he thought.
+
+He liked her little, modest, delicate old face and her curls and her
+little cap with the ribbons so much that he smiled with a twinkling eye
+every time he looked at her. He wanted to suggest something he thought
+would be mighty comfortable, but he was half afraid he might be asking
+her to do something which wasn't "her job," and it might hurt her
+feelings. But he ventured to hint at it.
+
+"Has Burrill got to come back and pour that out?" he asked, with an
+awkward gesture toward the tea-tray. "Has he just GOT to?"
+
+"Oh, no, unless you wish it," she answered. "Shall--may I give it to
+you?"
+
+"Will you?" he exclaimed delightedly. "That would be fine. I shall feel
+like a regular Clarence."
+
+She was going to sit at the table in a straight-backed chair, but he
+sprang at her.
+
+"This big one is more comfortable," he said, and he dragged it forward
+and made her sit in it. "You ought to have a footstool," he added, and
+he got one and put it under her feet. "There, that's all right."
+
+A footstool, as though she were a royal personage and he were a
+gentleman in waiting, only probably gentlemen in waiting did not jump
+about and look so pleased. The cheerful content of his boyish face when
+he himself sat down near the table was delightful.
+
+"Now," he said, "we can ring up for the first act."
+
+She filled the tea-pot and held it for a moment, and then set it down as
+though her feelings were too much for her.
+
+"I feel as if I were in a dream," she quavered happily. "I do indeed."
+
+"But it's a nice one, ain't it?" he answered. "I feel as if I was in
+two. Sitting here in this big room with all these fine things about me,
+and having afternoon tea with a relation! It just about suits me. It
+didn't feel like this yesterday, you bet your life!"
+
+"Does it seem--nicer than yesterday?" she ventured. "Really, Mr. Temple
+Barholm?"
+
+"Nicer!" he ejaculated. "It's got yesterday beaten to a frazzle."
+
+It was beyond all belief. He was speaking as though the advantage, the
+relief, the happiness, were all on his side. She longed to enlighten
+him.
+
+"But you can't realize what it is to me," she said gratefully, "to sit
+here, not terrified and homeless and--a beggar any more, with your kind
+face before me. Do forgive me for saying it. You have such a kind young
+face, Mr. Temple Barholm. And to have an easy-chair and cushions,
+and actually a buffet brought for my feet!" She suddenly recollected
+herself. "Oh, I mustn't let your tea get cold," she added, taking up the
+tea-pot apologetically. "Do you take cream and sugar, and is it to be
+one lump or two?"
+
+"I take everything in sight," he replied joyously, "and two lumps,
+please."
+
+She prepared the cup of tea with as delicate a care as though it had
+been a sacramental chalice, and when she handed it to him she smiled
+wistfully.
+
+"No one but you ever thought of such a thing as bringing a buffet for
+my feet--no one except poor little Jem," she said, and her voice was
+wistful as well as her smile.
+
+She was obviously unaware that she was introducing an entirely new
+acquaintance to him. Poor little Jem was supposed to be some one whose
+whole history he knew.
+
+"Jem?" he repeated, carefully transferring a piece of hot buttered
+crumpet to his plate.
+
+"Jem Temple Barholm," she answered. "I say little Jem because I remember
+him only as a child. I never saw him after he was eleven years old."
+
+"Who was he?" he asked. The tone of her voice, and her manner of
+speaking made him feel that he wanted to hear something more.
+
+She looked rather startled by his ignorance. "Have you--have you never
+heard of him?" she inquired.
+
+"No. Is he another distant relation?"
+
+Her hesitation caused him to neglect his crumpet, to look up at her.
+He saw at once that she wore the air of a sensitive and beautifully
+mannered elderly lady who was afraid she had made a mistake and said
+something awkward.
+
+"I am so sorry," she apologized. "Perhaps I ought not to have mentioned
+him."
+
+"Why shouldn't he be mentioned?"
+
+She was embarrassed. She evidently wished she had not spoken, but
+breeding demanded that she should ignore the awkwardness of the
+situation, if awkwardness existed.
+
+"Of course--I hope your tea is quite as you like it--of course there is
+no real reason. But--shall I give you some more cream? No? You see, if
+he hadn't died, he--he would have inherited Temple Barholm."
+
+Now he was interested. This was the other chap.
+
+"Instead of me?" he asked, to make sure. She endeavored not to show
+embarrassment and told herself it didn't really matter--to a thoroughly
+nice person. But--
+
+"He was the next of kin--before you. I'm so sorry I didn't know you
+hadn't heard of him. It seemed natural that Mr. Palford should have
+mentioned him."
+
+"He did say that there was a young fellow who had died, but he didn't
+tell me about him. I guess I didn't ask. There were such a lot of other
+things. I'd like to hear about him. You say you knew him?"
+
+"Only when he was a little fellow. Never after he grew up. Something
+happened which displeased my father. I'm afraid papa was very easily
+displeased. Mr. Temple Barholm disliked him, too. He would not have him
+at Temple Barholm."
+
+"He hadn't much luck with his folks, had he?" remarked Tembarom.
+
+"He had no luck with any one. I seemed to be the only person who was
+fond of him, and of course I didn't count."
+
+"I bet you counted with him," said Tembarom.
+
+"I do think I did. Both his parents died quite soon after he was born,
+and people who ought to have cared for him were rather jealous because
+he stood so near to Temple Barholm. If Mr. Temple Barholm had not been
+so eccentric and bitter, everything would have been done for him; but as
+it was, he seemed to belong to no one. When he came to the vicarage it
+used to make me so happy. He used to call me Aunt Alicia, and he had
+such pretty ways." She hesitated and looked quite tenderly at the
+tea-pot, a sort of shyness in her face. "I am sure," she burst forth, "I
+feel quite sure that you will understand and won't think it indelicate;
+but I had thought so often that I should like to have a little boy--if I
+had married," she added in hasty tribute to propriety.
+
+Tembarom's eyes rested on her in a thoughtfulness openly touched with
+affection. He put out his hand and patted hers two or three times in
+encouraging sympathy.
+
+"Say," he said frankly, "I just believe every woman that's the real
+thing'd like to have a little boy--or a little girl--or a little
+something or other. That's why pet cats and dogs have such a cinch of
+it. And there's men that's the same way. It's sort of nature."
+
+"He had such a high spirit and such pretty ways," she said again. "One
+of his pretty ways was remembering to do little things to make one
+comfortable, like thinking of giving one a cushion or a buffet for one's
+feet. I noticed it so much because I had never seen boys or men
+wait upon women. My own dear papa was used to having women wait upon
+him--bring his slippers, you know, and give him the best chair. He
+didn't like Jem's ways. He said he liked a boy who was a boy and not
+an affected nincompoop. He wasn't really quite just." She paused
+regretfully and sighed as she looked back into a past doubtlessly
+enriched with many similar memories of "dear papa." "Poor Jem! Poor
+Jem!" she breathed softly.
+
+Tembarom thought that she must have felt the boy's loss very much,
+almost as much as though she had really been his mother; perhaps more
+pathetically because she had not been his mother or anybody's mother. He
+could see what a good little mother she would have made, looking after
+her children and doing everything on earth to make them happy and
+comfortable, just the kind of mother Ann would make, though she had not
+Ann's steady wonder of a little head or her shrewd farsightedness. Jem
+would have been in luck if he had been her son. It was a darned pity he
+hadn't been. If he had, perhaps he would not have died young.
+
+"Yes," he answered sympathetically, "it's hard for a young fellow to
+die. How old was he, anyhow? I don't know."
+
+"Not much older than you are now. It was seven years ago. And if he had
+only died, poor dear! There are things so much worse than death."
+
+"Worse!"
+
+"Awful disgrace is worse," she faltered. She was plainly trying to keep
+moisture out of her eyes.
+
+"Did he get into some bad mix-up, poor fellow?" If there had been
+anything like that, no wonder it broke her up to think of him.
+
+It surely did break her up. She flushed emotionally.
+
+"The cruel thing was that he didn't really do what he was accused of,"
+she said.
+
+"He didn't?"
+
+"No; but he was a ruined man, and he went away to the Klondike because
+he could not stay in England. And he was killed--killed, poor boy! And
+afterward it was found out that he was innocent--too late."
+
+"Gee!" Tembarom gasped, feeling hot and cold. "Could you beat that for
+rotten luck! What was he accused of?"
+
+Miss Alicia leaned forward and spoke in a whisper. It was too dreadful
+to speak of aloud.
+
+"Cheating at cards--a gentleman playing with gentlemen. You know what
+that means."
+
+Tembarom grew hotter and colder. No wonder she looked that way, poor
+little thing!
+
+"But,"--he hesitated before he spoke,--"but he wasn't that kind, was he?
+Of course he wasn't."
+
+"No, no. But, you see,"--she hesitated herself here,--"everything looked
+so much against him. He had been rather wild." She dropped her voice
+even lower in making the admission.
+
+Tembarom wondered how much she meant by that.
+
+"He was so much in debt. He knew he was to be rich in the future, and he
+was poor just in those reckless young days when it seemed unfair. And
+he had played a great deal and had been very lucky. He was so lucky
+that sometimes his luck seemed uncanny. Men who had played with him were
+horrible about it afterward."
+
+"They would be," put in Tembarom. "They'd be sore about it, and bring
+it up."
+
+They both forgot their tea. Miss Alicia forgot everything as she poured
+forth her story in the manner of a woman who had been forced to keep
+silent and was glad to put her case into words. It was her case. To tell
+the truth of this forgotten wrong was again to offer justification of
+poor handsome Jem whom everybody seemed to have dropped talk of, and
+even preferred not to hear mentioned.
+
+"There were such piteously cruel things about it," she went on. "He had
+fallen very much in love, and he meant to marry and settle down. Though
+we had not seen each other for years, he actually wrote to me and told
+me about it. His letter made me cry. He said I would understand and care
+about the thing which seemed to have changed everything and made him a
+new man. He was so sorry that he had not been better and more careful.
+He was going to try all over again. He was not going to play at all
+after this one evening when he was obliged to keep an engagement he had
+made months before to give his revenge to a man he had won a great deal
+of money from. The very night the awful thing happened he had told Lady
+Joan, before he went into the card-room, that this was to be his last
+game."
+
+Tembarom had looked deeply interested from the first, but at her last
+words a new alertness added itself.
+
+"Did you say Lady Joan?" he asked. "Who was Lady Joan?"
+
+"She was the girl he was so much in love with. Her name was Lady Joan
+Fayre."
+
+"Was she the daughter of the Countess of Mallowe?"
+
+"Yes. Have you heard of her?"
+
+He recalled Ann's reflective consideration of him before she had said,
+"She'll come after you." He replied now: "Some one spoke of her to me
+this morning. They say she's a beauty and as proud as Lucifer."
+
+"She was, and she is yet, I believe. Poor Lady Joan--as well as poor
+Jem!"
+
+"She didn't believe it, did she?" he put in hastily. "She didn't throw
+him down?"
+
+"No one knew what happened between them afterward. She was in the
+card-room, looking on, when the awful thing took place."
+
+She stopped, as though to go on was almost unbearable. She had been so
+overwhelmed by the past shame of it that even after the passing of years
+the anguish was a living thing. Her small hands clung hard together
+as they rested on the edge of the table. Tembarom waited in thrilled
+suspense. She spoke in a whisper again:
+
+"He won a great deal of money--a great deal. He had that uncanny luck
+again, and of course people in the other rooms heard what was going on,
+and a number drifted in to look on. The man he had promised to give his
+revenge to almost showed signs of having to make an effort to conceal
+his irritation and disappointment. Of course, as he was a gentleman,
+he was as cool as possible; but just at the most exciting moment, the
+height of the game, Jem made a quick movement, and--and something fell
+out of his sleeve."
+
+"Something," gasped Tembarom, "fell out of his sleeve!"
+
+Miss Alicia's eyes overflowed as she nodded her beribboned little cap.
+
+"It"--her voice was a sob of woe--"it was a marked card. The man he was
+playing against snatched it and held it up. And he laughed out loud."
+
+"Holy cats!" burst from Tembarom; but the remarkable exclamation was
+one of genuine horror, and he turned pale, got up from his seat, and
+took two or three strides across the room, as though he could not sit
+still.
+
+"Yes, he laughed--quite loudly," repeated Miss Alicia, "as if he had
+guessed it all the time. Papa heard the whole story from some one who
+was present."
+
+Tembarom came back to her rather breathless.
+
+"What in thunder did he do--Jem?" he asked.
+
+She actually wrung her poor little hands.
+
+"What could he do? There was a dead silence. People moved just a little
+nearer to the table and stood and stared, merely waiting. They say it
+was awful to see his face--awful. He sprang up and stood still, and
+slowly became as white as if he were dying before their eyes. Some one
+thought Lady Joan Fayre took a step toward him, but no one was quite
+sure. He never uttered one word, but walked out of the room and down the
+stairs and out of the house."
+
+"But didn't he speak to the girl?"
+
+"He didn't even look at her. He passed her by as if she were stone."
+
+"What happened next?"
+
+"He disappeared. No one knew where at first, and then there was a rumor
+that he had gone to the Klondike and had been killed there. And a year
+later--only a year! Oh, if he had only waited in England!--a worthless
+villain of a valet he had discharged for stealing met with an accident,
+and because he thought he was going to die, got horribly frightened,
+and confessed to the clergyman that he had tucked the card in poor Jem's
+sleeve himself just to pay him off. He said he did it on the chance
+that it would drop out where some one would see it, and a marked card
+dropping out of a man's sleeve anywhere would look black enough, whether
+he was playing or not. But poor Jem was in his grave, and no one seemed
+to care, though every one had been interested enough in the scandal.
+People talked about that for weeks."
+
+Tembarom pulled at his collar excitedly.
+
+"It makes me sort of strangle," he said. "You've got to stand your own
+bad luck, but to hear of a chap that's had to lie down and take the
+worst that could come to him and know it wasn't his--just KNOW it! And
+die before he's cleared! That knocks me out."
+
+Almost every sentence he uttered had a mystical sound to Miss Alicia,
+but she knew how he was taking it, with what hot, young human sympathy
+and indignation. She loved the way he took it, and she loved the feeling
+in his next words,
+
+"And the girl--good Lord!--the girl?"
+
+"I never met her, and I know very little of her; but she has never
+married."
+
+"I'm glad of that," he said. "I'm darned glad of it. How could she?" Ann
+wouldn't, he knew. Ann would have gone to her grave unmarried. But she
+would have done things first to clear her man's name. Somehow she would
+have cleared him, if she'd had to fight tooth and nail till she was
+eighty.
+
+"They say she has grown very bitter and haughty in her manner. I'm
+afraid Lady Mallowe is a very worldly woman. One hears they don't get on
+together, and that she is bitterly disappointed because her daughter has
+not made a good match. It appears that she might have made several,
+but she is so hard and cynical that men are afraid of her. I wish I had
+known her a little--if she really loved Jem."
+
+Tembarom had thrust his hands into his pockets, and was standing deep in
+thought, looking at the huge bank of red coals in the fire-grate. Miss
+Alicia hastily wiped her eyes.
+
+"Do excuse me," she said.
+
+"I'll excuse you all right," he replied, still looking into the coals.
+"I guess I shouldn't excuse you as much if you didn't" He let her cry in
+her gentle way while he stared, lost in reflection.
+
+"And if he hadn't fired that valet chap, he would be here with you
+now--instead of me. Instead of me," he repeated.
+
+And Miss Alicia did not know what to say in reply. There seemed to be
+nothing which, with propriety and natural feeling, one could say.
+
+"It makes me feel just fine to know I'm not going to have my dinner all
+by myself," he said to her before she left the library.
+
+She had a way of blushing about things he noticed, when she was shy
+or moved or didn't know exactly what to say. Though she must have been
+sixty, she did it as though she were sixteen. And she did it when
+he said this, and looked as though suddenly she was in some sort of
+trouble.
+
+"You are going to have dinner with me," he said, seeing that she
+hesitated--"dinner and breakfast and lunch and tea and supper and every
+old thing that goes. You can't turn me down after me staking out that
+claim."
+
+"I'm afraid--" she said. "You see, I have lived such a secluded life.
+I scarcely ever left my rooms except to take a walk. I'm sure you
+understand. It would not have been necessary even if I could have
+afforded it, which I really couldn't--I'm afraid I have nothing--quite
+suitable--for evening wear."
+
+"You haven't!" he exclaimed gleefully. "I don't know what is suitable
+for evening wear, but I haven't got it either. Pearson told me so with
+tears in his eyes. It never was necessary for me either. I've got to
+get some things to quiet Pearson down, but until I do I've got to eat
+my dinner in a tweed cutaway; and what I've caught on to is that it's
+unsuitable enough to throw a man into jail. That little black dress
+you've got on and that little cap are just 'way out of sight, they're so
+becoming. Come down just like you are."
+
+She felt a little as Pearson had felt when confronting his new
+employer's entire cheerfulness in face of a situation as exotically
+hopeless as the tweed cutaway, and nothing else by way of resource. But
+there was something so nice about him, something which was almost as
+though he was actually a gentleman, something which absolutely, if one
+could go so far, stood in the place of his being a gentleman. It was
+impossible to help liking him more and more at every queer speech he
+made. Still, there were of course things he did not realize, and perhaps
+one ought in kindness to give him a delicate hint.
+
+"I'm afraid," she began quite apologetically. "I'm afraid that the
+servants, Burrill and the footmen, you know, will be--will think--"
+
+"Say," he took her up, "let's give Burrill and the footmen the Willies
+out and out. If they can't stand it, they can write home to their
+mothers and tell 'em they've got to take 'em away. Burrill and the
+footmen needn't worry. They're suitable enough, and it's none of their
+funeral, anyhow."
+
+He wasn't upset in the least. Miss Alicia, who, as a timid dependent
+either upon "poor dear papa" or Mr. Temple Barholm, had been secretly,
+in her sensitive, ladylike little way, afraid of superior servants
+all her life, knowing that they realized her utterly insignificant
+helplessness, and resented giving her attention because she was not able
+to show her appreciation of their services in the proper manner--Miss
+Alicia saw that it had not occurred to him to endeavor to propitiate
+them in the least, because somehow it all seemed a joke to him, and he
+didn't care. After the first moment of being startled, she regarded him
+with a novel feeling, almost a kind of admiration. Tentatively she dared
+to wonder if there was not something even rather--rather ARISTOCRATIC in
+his utter indifference.
+
+If he had been a duke, he would not have regarded the servants' point of
+view; it wouldn't have mattered what they thought. Perhaps, she
+hastily decided, he was like this because, though he was not a duke,
+boot-blacking in New York notwithstanding he was a Temple Barholm. There
+were few dukes as old of blood as a Temple Barholm. That must be it. She
+was relieved.
+
+Whatsoever lay at the root of his being what he was and as he was, he
+somehow changed the aspect of things for her, and without doing anything
+but be himself, cleared the atmosphere of her dread of the surprise and
+mental reservations of the footmen and Burrill when she came down to
+dinner in her high-necked, much-cleaned, and much-repaired black silk,
+and with no more distinguishing change in her toilet than a white lace
+cap instead of a black one, and with "poor dear mamma's" hair bracelet
+with the gold clasp on her wrist, and a weeping-willow made of "poor
+dear papa's" hair in a brooch at her collar.
+
+It was so curious, though still "nice," but he did not offer her his arm
+when they were going into the dining-room, and he took hold of hers with
+his hand and affectionately half led, half pushed, her along with him as
+they went. And he himself drew back her chair for her at the end of the
+table opposite his own. He did not let a footman do it, and he stood
+behind it, talking in his cheerful way all the time, and he moved it to
+exactly the right place, and then actually bent down and looked under
+the table.
+
+"Here," he said to the nearest man-servant, "where's there a footstool?
+Get one, please," in that odd, simple, almost aristocratic way. It was
+not a rude dictatorial way, but a casual way, as though he knew the man
+was there to do things, and he didn't expect any time to be wasted.
+
+And it was he himself who arranged the footstool, making it comfortable
+for her, and then he went to his own chair at the head of the table
+and sat down, smiling at her joyfully across the glass and silver and
+flowers.
+
+"Push that thing in the middle on one side, Burrill," he said. "It's too
+high. I can't see Miss Alicia."
+
+Burrill found it difficult to believe the evidence of his hearing.
+
+"The epergne, sir?" he inquired.
+
+"Is that what it's called, an apern? That's a new one on me. Yes, that's
+what I mean. Push the apern over."
+
+"Shall I remove it from the table, sir?" Burrill steeled himself to
+exact civility. Of what use to behave otherwise? There always remained
+the liberty to give notice if the worst came to the worst, though what
+the worst might eventually prove to be it required a lurid imagination
+to depict. The epergne was a beautiful thing of crystal and gold, a
+celebrated work of art, regarded as an exquisite possession. It was
+almost remarkable that Mr. Temple Barholm had not said, "Shove it on
+one side," but Burrill had been spared the poignant indignity of being
+required to "shove."
+
+"Yes, suppose you do. It's a fine enough thing when it isn't in the
+way, but I've got to see you while I talk, Miss Alicia," said Mr. Temple
+Barholm. The episode of the epergne--Burrill's expression, and the
+rigidly restrained mouths of Henry and James as the decoration was
+removed, leaving a painfully blank space of table-cloth until Burrill
+silently filled it with flowers in a low bowl--these things temporarily
+flurried Miss Alicia somewhat, but the pleased smile at the head of the
+table calmed even that trying moment.
+
+Then what a delightful meal it was, to be sure! How entertaining and
+cheerful and full of interesting conversation! Miss Alicia had always
+admired what she reverently termed "conversation." She had read of the
+houses of brilliant people where they had it at table, at dinner and
+supper parties, and in drawing-rooms. The French, especially the French
+ladies, were brilliant conversationalists. They held "salons" in which
+the conversation was wonderful--Mme. de Stael and Mme. Roland, for
+instance; and in England, Lady Mary Wortley Montague, Sydney Smith, and
+Horace Walpole, and surely Miss Fanny Burney, and no doubt L. E. L.,
+whose real name was Miss Letitia Elizabeth Landon--what conversation
+they must have delighted their friends with and how instructive it must
+have been even to sit in the most obscure corner and listen!
+
+Such gifted persons seemed to have been chosen by Providence to delight
+and inspire every one privileged to hear them. Such privileges had been
+omitted from the scheme of Miss Alicia's existence. She did not know,
+she would have felt it sacrilegious to admit it even if the fact had
+dawned upon her, that "dear papa" had been a heartlessly arrogant,
+utterly selfish, and tyrannical old blackguard of the most pronounced
+type. He had been of an absolute morality as far as social laws were
+concerned. He had written and delivered a denunciatory sermon a week,
+and had made unbearable by his ministrations the suffering hours and the
+last moments of his parishioners during the long years of his pastorate.
+When Miss Alicia, in reading records of the helpful relationship of the
+male progenitors of the Brontes, Jane Austen, Fanny Burney, and Mrs.
+Browning, was frequently reminded of him, she revealed a perception of
+which she was not aware. He had combined the virile qualities of all of
+them. Consequently, brilliancy of conversation at table had not been the
+attractive habit of the household; "poor dear papa" had confined himself
+to scathing criticism of the incompetence of females who could not teach
+their menials to "cook a dinner which was not a disgrace to any decent
+household." When not virulently aspersing the mutton, he was expressing
+his opinion of muddle-headed weakness which would permit household bills
+to mount in a manner which could only bring ruin and disaster upon a
+minister of the gospel who throughout a protracted career of usefulness
+had sapped his intellectual manhood in the useless effort to support in
+silly idleness a family of brainless and maddening fools. Miss Alicia
+had heard her character, her unsuccessful physical appearance, her mind,
+and her pitiful efforts at table-talk, described in detail with a choice
+of adjective and adverb which had broken into terrified fragments every
+atom of courage and will with which she had been sparsely dowered.
+
+So, not having herself been gifted with conversational powers to begin
+with, and never having enjoyed the exhibition of such powers in others,
+her ideals had been high. She was not sure that Mr. Temple Barholm's
+fluent and cheerful talk could be with exactness termed "conversation."
+It was perhaps not sufficiently lofty and intellectual, and did not
+confine itself rigorously to one exalted subject. But how it did raise
+one's spirits and open up curious vistas! And how good tempered
+and humorous it was, even though sometimes the humor was a little
+bewildering! During the whole dinner there never occurred even one of
+those dreadful pauses in which dead silence fell, and one tried, like a
+frightened hen flying from side to side of a coop, to think of something
+to say which would not sound silly, but perhaps might divert attention
+from dangerous topics. She had often thought it would be so interesting
+to hear a Spaniard or a native Hindu talk about himself and his own
+country in English. Tembarom talked about New York and its people and
+atmosphere, and he did not know how foreign it all was. He described the
+streets--Fifth Avenue and Broadway and Sixth Avenue--and the street-cars
+and the elevated railroad, and the way "fellows" had to "hustle" "to put
+it over." He spoke of a boarding-house kept by a certain Mrs. Bowse, and
+a presidential campaign, and the election of a mayor, and a quick-lunch
+counter, and when President Garfield had been assassinated, and a
+department store; and the electric lights, and the way he had of making
+a sort of picture of everything was really instructive and, well,
+fascinating. She felt as though she had been taken about the city in
+one of the vehicles the conductor of which described things through a
+megaphone.
+
+Not that Mr. Temple Barholm suggested a megaphone, whatsoever that might
+be, but he merely made you feel as if you had seen things. Never had she
+been so entertained and enlightened. If she had been a beautiful girl,
+he could not have seemed more as though in amusing her he was also
+really pleasing himself. He was so very funny sometimes that she could
+not help laughing in a way which was almost unladylike, because she
+could not stop, and was obliged to put her handkerchief up to her face
+and wipe away actual tears of mirth.
+
+Fancy laughing until you cried, and the servants looking on!
+
+Once Burrill himself was obliged to turn hastily away, and twice she
+heard him severely reprove an overpowered young footman in a rapid
+undertone.
+
+Tembarom at least felt that the unlifting heaviness of atmosphere which
+had surrounded him while enjoying the companionship of Mr. Palford was a
+thing of the past.
+
+The thrilled interest, the surprise and delight of Miss Alicia would
+have stimulated a man in a comatose condition, it seemed to him. The
+little thing just loved every bit of it--she just "eat it up." She asked
+question after question, sometimes questions which would have made him
+shout with laughter if he had not been afraid of hurting her feelings.
+She knew as little of New York as he knew of Temple Barholm, and was, it
+made him grin to see, allured by it as by some illicit fascination. She
+did not know what to make of it, and sometimes she was obliged hastily
+to conceal a fear that it was a sort of Sodom and Gomorrah; but she
+wanted to hear more about it, and still more.
+
+And she brightened up until she actually did not look frightened, and
+ate her dinner with an excellent appetite.
+
+"I really never enjoyed a dinner so much in my life," she said when
+they went into the drawing-room to have their coffee. "It was the
+conversation which made it so delightful. Conversation is such a
+stimulating thing!"
+
+She had almost decided that it was "conversation," or at least a
+wonderful substitute.
+
+When she said good night to him and went beaming to bed, looking forward
+immensely to breakfast next morning, he watched her go up the staircase,
+feeling wonderfully normal and happy.
+
+"Some of these nights, when she's used to me," he said as he stuffed
+tobacco into his last pipe in the library--"some of these nights I'm
+darned if I sha'n't catch hold of the sweet, little old thing and hug
+her in spite of myself. I sha'n't be able to help it." He lit his pipe,
+and puffed it even excitedly. "Lord!" he said, "there's some blame' fool
+going about the world right now that might have married her. And he'll
+never know what a break he made when he didn't."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+
+A fugitive fine day which had strayed into the month from the
+approaching spring appeared the next morning, and Miss Alicia was
+uplifted by the enrapturing suggestion that she should join her new
+relative in taking a walk, in fact that it should be she who took him
+to walk and showed him some of his possessions. This, it had revealed
+itself to him, she could do in a special way of her own, because during
+her life at Temple Barholm she had felt it her duty to "try to do a
+little good" among the villagers. She and her long-dead mother and
+sister had of course been working adjuncts of the vicarage, and had
+numerous somewhat trying tasks to perform in the way of improving upon
+"dear papa's" harrying them into attending church, chivying the mothers
+into sending their children to Sunday-school, and being unsparing in
+severity of any conduct which might be construed into implying lack of
+appreciation of the vicar or respect for his eloquence.
+
+It had been necessary for them as members of the vicar's family--always,
+of course, without adding a sixpence to the household bills--to supply
+bowls of nourishing broth and arrowroot to invalids and to bestow the
+aid and encouragement which result in a man of God's being regarded with
+affection and gratitude by his parishioners. Many a man's career in the
+church, "dear papa" had frequently observed, had been ruined by lack of
+intelligence and effort on the part of the female members of his family.
+
+"No man could achieve proper results," he had said, "if he was hampered
+by the selfish influence and foolishness of his womenkind. Success in
+the church depends in one sense very much upon the conduct of a man's
+female relatives."
+
+After the deaths of her mother and sister, Miss Alicia had toiled on
+patiently, fading day by day from a slim, plain, sweet-faced girl to
+a slim, even plainer and sweeter-faced middle-aged and at last elderly
+woman. She had by that time read aloud by bedsides a great many chapters
+in the Bible, had given a good many tracts, and bestowed as much
+arrowroot, barley-water, and beef-tea as she could possibly
+encompass without domestic disaster. She had given a large amount of
+conscientious, if not too intelligent, advice, and had never failed to
+preside over her Sunday-school class or at mothers' meetings. But
+her timid unimpressiveness had not aroused enthusiasm or awakened
+comprehension. "Miss Alicia," the cottage women said, "she's well
+meanin', but she's not one with a head." "She reminds me," one of them
+had summed her up, "of a hen that lays a' egg every day, but it's too
+small for a meal, and 'u'd never hatch into anythin'."
+
+During her stay at Temple Barholm she had tentatively tried to do a
+little "parish work," but she had had nothing to give, and she was
+always afraid that if Mr. Temple Barholm found her out, he would be
+angry, because he would think she was presuming. She was aware that the
+villagers knew that she was an object of charity herself, and a person
+who was "a lady" and yet an object of charity was, so to speak, poaching
+upon their own legitimate preserves. The rector and his wife were rather
+grand people, and condescended to her greatly on the few occasions of
+their accidental meetings. She was neither smart nor influential enough
+to be considered as an asset.
+
+It was she who "conversed" during their walk, and while she trotted
+by Tembarom's side looking more early-Victorian than ever in a neat,
+fringed mantle and a small black bonnet of a fashion long decently
+interred by a changing world, Tembarom had never seen anything
+resembling it in New York; but he liked it and her increasingly at every
+moment.
+
+It was he who made her converse. He led her on by asking her questions
+and being greatly interested in every response she made. In fact, though
+he was quite unaware of the situation, she was creating for him such an
+atmosphere as he might have found in a book, if he had had the habit of
+books. Everything she told him was new and quaint and very often rather
+touching. She related anecdotes about herself and her poor little past
+without knowing she was doing it. Before they had talked an hour he had
+an astonishing clear idea of "poor dear papa" and "dearest Emily" and
+"poor darling mama" and existence at Rowcroft Vicarage. He "caught
+on to" the fact that though she was very much given to the word
+"dear,"--people were "dear," and so were things and places,--she never
+even by chance slipped into saying "dear Rowcroft," which she would
+certainly have done if she had ever spent a happy moment in it.
+
+As she talked to him he realized that her simple accustomedness to
+English village life and all its accompaniments of county surroundings
+would teach him anything and everything he might want to know. Her
+obscurity had been surrounded by stately magnificence, with which
+she had become familiar without touching the merest outskirts of its
+privileges. She knew names and customs and families and things to be
+cultivated or avoided, and though she would be a little startled and
+much mystified by his total ignorance of all she had breathed in since
+her birth, he felt sure that she would not regard him either with
+private contempt or with a lessened liking because he was a vandal pure
+and simple.
+
+And she had such a nice, little, old polite way of saying things. When,
+in passing a group of children, he failed to understand that their hasty
+bobbing up and down meant that they were doing obeisance to him as lord
+of the manor, she spoke with the prettiest apologetic courtesy.
+
+"I'm sure you won't mind touching your hat when they make their little
+curtsies, or when a villager touches his forehead," she said.
+
+"Good Lord! no," he said, starting. "Ought I? I didn't know they were
+doing it at me." And he turned round and made a handsome bow and grinned
+almost affectionately at the small, amazed party, first puzzling, and
+then delighting, them, because he looked so extraordinarily friendly.
+A gentleman who laughed at you like that ought to be equal to a
+miscellaneous distribution of pennies in the future, if not on the spot.
+They themselves grinned and chuckled and nudged one another, with stares
+and giggles.
+
+"I am sorry to say that in a great many places the villagers are not
+nearly so respectful as they used to be," Miss Alicia explained. "In
+Rowcroft the children were very remiss about curtseying. It's quite sad.
+But Mr. Temple Barholm was very strict indeed in the matter of demanding
+proper respectfulness. He has turned men off their farms for incivility.
+The villagers of Temple Barholm have much better manners than some even
+a few miles away."
+
+"Must I tip my hat to all of them?" he asked.
+
+"If you please. It really seems kinder. You--you needn't quite lift it,
+as you did to the children just now. If you just touch the brim lightly
+with your hand in a sort of military salute--that is what they are
+accustomed to."
+
+After they had passed through the village street she paused at the end
+of a short lane and looked up at him doubtfully.
+
+"Would you--I wonder if you would like to go into a cottage," she said.
+
+"Go into a cottage?" he asked. "What cottage? What for?"
+
+He had not the remotest idea of any reason why he should go into a
+cottage inhabited by people who were entire strangers to him, and Miss
+Alicia felt a trifle awkward at having to explain anything so wholly
+natural.
+
+"You see, they are your cottages, and the people are your tenants,
+and--"
+
+"But perhaps they mightn't like it. It might make 'em mad," he argued.
+"If their water-pipes had busted, and they'd asked me to come and look
+at them or anything; but they don't know me yet. They might think I was
+Mr. Buttinski."
+
+"I don't quite--" she began. "Buttinski is a foreign name; it sounds
+Russian or Polish. I'm afraid I don't quite understand why they should
+mistake you for him."
+
+Then he laughed--a boyish shout of laughter which brought a cottager
+to the nearest window to peep over the pots of fuchsias and geraniums
+blooming profusely against the diamond panes.
+
+"Say," he apologized, "don't be mad because I laughed. I'm laughing
+at myself as much as at anything. It's a way of saying that they might
+think I was 'butting in' too much--pushing in where I wasn't asked. See?
+I said they might think I was Mr. Butt-in-ski! It's just a bit of fool
+slang. You're not mad, are you?"
+
+"Oh, no!" she said. "Dear me! no. It is very funny, of course. I'm
+afraid I'm extremely ignorant about--about foreign humor" It seemed more
+delicate to say "foreign" than merely "American." But her gentle little
+countenance for a few seconds wore a baffled expression, and she said
+softly to herself, "Mr. Buttinski, Butt-in--to intrude. It sounds quite
+Polish; I think even more Polish than Russian."
+
+He was afraid he would yell with glee, but he did not. Herculean
+effort enabled him to restrain his feelings, and present to her only an
+ordinary-sized smile.
+
+"I shouldn't know one from the other," he said; "but if you say it
+sounds more Polish, I bet it does."
+
+"Would you like to go into a cottage?" she inquired. "I think it might
+be as well. They will like the attention."
+
+"Will they? Of course I'll go if you think that. What shall I say?" he
+asked somewhat anxiously.
+
+"If you think the cottage looks clean, you might tell them so, and ask a
+few questions about things. And you must be sure to inquire about Susan
+Hibblethwaite's legs."
+
+"What?" ejaculated Tembarom.
+
+"Susan Hibblethwaite's legs," she replied in mild explanation. "Susan is
+Mr. Hibblethwaite's unmarried sister, and she has very bad legs. It is a
+thing one notices continually among village people, more especially the
+women, that they complain of what they call `bad legs.' I never quite
+know what they mean, whether it is rheumatism or something different,
+but the trouble is always spoken of as `bad legs' And they like you to
+inquire about them, so that they can tell you their symptoms."
+
+"Why don't they get them cured?"
+
+"I don't know, I'm sure. They take a good deal of medicine when they can
+afford it. I think they like to take it. They're very pleased when the
+doctor gives them `a bottle o' summat,' as they call it. Oh, I mustn't
+forget to tell you that most of them speak rather broad Lancashire."
+
+"Shall I understand them?" Tembarom asked, anxious again. "Is it a sort
+of Dago talk?"
+
+"It is the English the working-classes speak in Lancashire. 'Summat'
+means 'something.' 'Whoam' means 'home.' But I should think you would be
+very clever at understanding things."
+
+"I'm scared stiff," said Tembarom, not in the least uncourageously; "but
+I want to go into a cottage and hear some of it. Which one shall we go
+into?"
+
+There were several whitewashed cottages in the lane, each in its own
+bit of garden and behind its own hawthorn hedge, now bare and wholly
+unsuggestive of white blossoms and almond scent to the uninitiated. Miss
+Alicia hesitated a moment.
+
+"We will go into this one, where the Hibblethwaites live," she decided.
+"They are quite clean, civil people. They have a naughty, queer, little
+crippled boy, but I suppose they can't keep him in order because he is
+an invalid. He's rather rude, I'm sorry to say, but he's rather sharp
+and clever, too. He seems to lie on his sofa and collect all the gossip
+of the village."
+
+They went together up the bricked path, and Miss Alicia knocked at
+the low door with her knuckles. A stout, apple-faced woman opened it,
+looking a shade nervous.
+
+"Good morning, Mrs. Hibblethwaite," said Miss Alicia in a kind but
+remote manner. "The new Mr. Temple Barholm has been kind enough to come
+to see you. It's very good of him to come so soon, isn't it?"
+
+"It is that," Mrs. Hibblethwaite answered respectfully, looking him
+over. "Wilt tha coom in, sir?"
+
+Tembarom accepted the invitation, feeling extremely awkward because Miss
+Alicia's initiatory comment upon his goodness in showing himself had
+"rattled" him. It had made him feel that he must appear condescending,
+and he had never condescended to any one in the whole course of his
+existence. He had, indeed, not even been condescended to. He had met
+with slanging and bullying, indifference and brutality of manner, but he
+had not met with condescension.
+
+"I hope you're well, Mrs. Hibblethwaite," he answered. "You look it."
+
+"I deceive ma looks a good bit, sir," she answered. "Mony a day ma legs
+is nigh as bad as Susan's."
+
+"Tha 'rt jealous o' Susan's legs," barked out a sharp voice from a
+corner by the fire.
+
+The room had a flagged floor, clean with recent scrubbing with
+sandstone; the whitewashed walls were decorated with pictures cut
+from illustrated papers; there was a big fireplace, and by it was a
+hard-looking sofa covered with blue-and-white checked cotton stuff. A
+boy of about ten was lying on it, propped up with a pillow. He had a big
+head and a keen, ferret-eyed face, and just now was looking round the
+end of his sofa at the visitors. "Howd tha tongue, Tummas!" said his
+mother. "I wunnot howd it," Tummas answered. "Ma tongue's th' on'y thing
+about me as works right, an' I'm noan goin' to stop it."
+
+"He's a young nowt," his mother explained; "but, he's a cripple, an' we
+conna do owt wi' him."
+
+"Do not be rude, Thomas," said Miss Alicia, with dignity.
+
+"Dunnot be rude thysen," replied Tummas. "I'm noan o' thy lad."
+
+Tembarom walked over to the sofa.
+
+"Say," he began with jocular intent, "you've got a grouch on, ain't
+you?"
+
+Tummas turned on him eyes which bored. An analytical observer or a
+painter might have seen that he had a burning curiousness of look, a
+sort of investigatory fever of expression.
+
+"I dunnot know what tha means," he said. "Happen tha'rt talkin'
+'Merican?"
+
+"That's just what it is," admitted Tembarom. "What are you talking?"
+
+"Lancashire," said Tummas. "Theer's some sense i' that."
+
+Tembarom sat down near him. The boy turned over against his pillow and
+put his chin in the hollow of his palm and stared.
+
+"I've wanted to see thee," he remarked. "I've made mother an' Aunt Susan
+an' feyther tell me every bit they've heared about thee in the village.
+Theer was a lot of it. Tha coom fro' 'Meriker?"
+
+"Yes." Tembarom began vaguely to feel the demand in the burning
+curiosity.
+
+"Gi' me that theer book," the boy said, pointing to a small table heaped
+with a miscellaneous jumble of things and standing not far from him.
+"It's a' atlas," he added as Tembarom gave it to him. "Yo' con find
+places in it." He turned the leaves until he found a map of the world.
+"Theer's 'Meriker," he said, pointing to the United States. "That
+theer's north and that theer's south. All th' real 'Merikens comes from
+the North, wheer New York is."
+
+"I come from New York," said Tembarom.
+
+"Tha wert born i' th' workhouse, tha run about th' streets i' rags, tha
+pretty nigh clemmed to death, tha blacked boots, tha sold newspapers,
+tha feyther was a common workin'-mon--and now tha's coom into Temple
+Barholm an' sixty thousand a year."
+
+"The last part's true all right," Tembarom owned, "but there's some
+mistakes in the first part. I wasn't born in the workhouse, and though
+I've been hungry enough, I never starved to death--if that's what
+`clemmed' means."
+
+Tummas looked at once disappointed and somewhat incredulous.
+
+"That's th' road they tell it i' th' village," he argued.
+
+"Well, let them tell it that way if they like it best. That's not going
+to worry me," Tembarom replied uncombatively.
+
+Tummas's eyes bored deeper into him.
+
+"Does na tha care?" he demanded.
+
+"What should I care for? Let every fellow enjoy himself his own way."
+
+"Tha'rt not a bit like one o' th' gentry," said Tummas. "Tha'rt quite a
+common chap. Tha'rt as common as me, for aw tha foine clothes."
+
+"People are common enough, anyhow," said Tembarom. "There's nothing much
+commoner, is there? There's millions of 'em everywhere--billions of 'em.
+None of us need put on airs."
+
+"Tha'rt as common as me," said Tummas, reflectively. "An' yet tha
+owns Temple Barholm an' aw that brass. I conna mak' out how th' loike
+happens."
+
+"Neither can I; but it does all samee."
+
+"It does na happen i' 'Meriker," exulted Tummas. "Everybody's equal
+theer."
+
+"Rats!" ejaculated Tembarom. "What about multimillionaires?"
+
+He forgot that the age of Tummas was ten. It was impossible not to
+forget it. He was, in fact, ten hundred, if those of his generation had
+been aware of the truth. But there he sat, having spent only a decade
+of his most recent incarnation in a whitewashed cottage, deprived of the
+use of his legs.
+
+Miss Alicia, seeing that Tembarom was interested in the boy, entered
+into domestic conversation with Mrs. Hibblethwaite at the other side
+of the room. Mrs. Hibblethwaite was soon explaining the uncertainty
+of Susan's temper on wash-days, when it was necessary to depend on her
+legs.
+
+"Can't you walk at all?" Tembarom asked. Tummas shook his head. "How
+long have you been lame?"
+
+"Ever since I wur born. It's summat like rickets. I've been lyin' here
+aw my days. I look on at foak an' think 'em over. I've got to do summat.
+That's why I loike th' atlas. Little Ann Hutchinson gave it to me onct
+when she come to see her grandmother."
+
+Tembarom sat upright.
+
+"Do you know her?" he exclaimed.
+
+"I know her best o' onybody in th' world. An' I loike her best."
+
+"So do I," rashly admitted Tembarom.
+
+"Tha does?" Tummas asked suspiciously. "Does she loike thee?"
+
+"She says she does." He tried to say it with proper modesty.
+
+"Well, if she says she does, she does. An' if she does, then yo an'
+me'll be friends." He stopped a moment, and seemed to be taking Tembarom
+in with thoroughness. "I could get a lot out o' thee," he said after the
+inspection.
+
+"A lot of what?" Tembarom felt as though he would really like to hear.
+
+"A lot o' things I want to know about. I wish I'd lived th' life tha's
+lived, clemmin' or no clemmin'. Tha's seen things goin' on every day o'
+thy loife."
+
+"Well, yes, there's been plenty going on, plenty," Tembarom admitted.
+
+"I've been lying here for ten year'," said Tummas, savagely. "An' I've
+had nowt i' th' world to do an' nowt to think on but what I could mak'
+foak tell me about th' village. But nowt happens but this chap gettin'
+drunk an' that chap deein' or losin' his place, or wenches gettin'
+married or havin' childer. I know everything that happens, but it's nowt
+but a lot o' women clackin'. If I'd not been a cripple, I'd ha' been
+at work for mony a year by now, 'arnin' money to save by an' go to
+'Meriker."
+
+"You seem to be sort of stuck on America. How's that?"
+
+"What dost mean?"
+
+"I mean you seem to like it."
+
+"I dunnot loike it nor yet not loike it, but I've heard a bit more about
+it than I have about th' other places on th' map. Foak goes there to
+seek their fortune, an' it seems loike there's a good bit doin'."
+
+"Do you like to read newspapers?" said Tembarom, inspired to his query
+by a recollection of the vision of things "doin'" in the Sunday Earth.
+
+"Wheer'd I get papers from?" the boy asked testily. "Foak like us hasn't
+got th' brass for 'em."
+
+"I'll bring you some New York papers," promised Tembarom, grinning a
+little in anticipation. "And we'll talk about the news that's in them.
+The Sunday Earth is full of pictures. I used to work on that paper
+myself."
+
+"Tha did?" Tummas cried excitedly. "Did tha help to print it, or was it
+th' one tha sold i' th' streets?"
+
+"I wrote some of the stuff in it."
+
+"Wrote some of th' stuff in it? Wrote it thaself? How could tha, a
+common chap like thee?" he asked, more excited still, his ferret eyes
+snapping.
+
+"I don't know how I did it," Tembarom answered, with increased cheer and
+interest in the situation. "It wasn't high-brow sort of work."
+
+Tummas leaned forward in his incredulous eagerness.
+
+"Does tha mean that they paid thee for writin' it--paid thee?"
+
+"I guess they wouldn't have done it if they'd been Lancashire," Tembarom
+answered. "But they hadn't much more sense than I had. They paid me
+twenty-five dollars a week--that's five pounds."
+
+"I dunnot believe thee," said Tummas, and leaned back on his pillow
+short of breath.
+
+"I didn't believe it myself till I'd paid my board two weeks and bought
+a suit of clothes with it," was Tembarom's answer, and he chuckled as he
+made it.
+
+But Tummas did believe it. This, after he had recovered from the shock,
+became evident. The curiosity in his face intensified itself; his
+eagerness was even vaguely tinged with something remotely resembling
+respect. It was not, however, respect for the money which had been
+earned, but for the store of things "doin'" which must have been
+required. It was impossible that this chap knew things undreamed of.
+
+"Has tha ever been to th' Klondike?" he asked after a long pause.
+
+"No. I've never been out of New York."
+
+Tummas seemed fretted and depressed.
+
+"Eh, I'm sorry for that. I wished tha'd been to th' Klondike. I want to
+be towd about it," he sighed. He pulled the atlas toward him and found a
+place in it.
+
+"That theer's Dawson," he announced. Tembarom saw that the region of
+the Klondike had been much studied. It was even rather faded with the
+frequent passage of searching fingers, as though it had been pored over
+with special curiosity.
+
+"There's gowd-moines theer," revealed Tummas. "An' theer's welly newt
+else but snow an' ice. A young chap as set out fro' here to get theer
+froze to death on th' way."
+
+"How did you get to hear about it?"
+
+"Ann she browt me a paper onet." He dug under his pillow, and brought
+out a piece of newspaper, worn and frayed and cut with age and usage.
+"This heer's what's left of it." Tembarom saw that it was a fragment
+from an old American sheet and that a column was headed "The Rush for
+the Klondike."
+
+"Why didna tha go theer?" demanded Tummas. He looked up from his
+fragment and asked his question with a sudden reflectiveness, as though
+a new and interesting aspect of things had presented itself to him.
+
+"I had too much to do in New York," said Tembarom. "There's always
+something doing in New York, you know."
+
+Tummas silently regarded him a moment or so.
+
+"It's a pity tha didn't go," he said. "Happen tha'd never ha' coom
+back."
+
+Tembarom laughed the outright laugh.
+
+"Thank you," he answered.
+
+Tummas was still thinking the matter over and was not disturbed.
+
+"I was na thinkin' o' thee," he said in an impersonal tone. "I was
+thinkin' o' t' other chap. If tha'd gon i'stead o' him, he'd ha' been
+here i'stead o' thee. Eh, but it's funny." And he drew a deep breath
+like a sigh having its birth in profundity of baffled thought.
+
+Both he and his evident point of view were "funny" in the Lancashire
+sense, which does not imply humor, but strangeness and the
+unexplainable. Singular as the phrasing was, Tembarom knew what he
+meant, and that he was thinking of the oddity of chance. Tummas had
+obviously heard of "poor Jem" and had felt an interest in him.
+
+"You're talking about Jem Temple Barholm I guess," he said. Perhaps the
+interest he himself had felt in the tragic story gave his voice a tone
+somewhat responsive to Tummas's own mood, for Tummas, after one more
+boring glance, let himself go. His interest in this special subject
+was, it revealed itself, a sort of obsession. The history of Jem Temple
+Barholm had been the one drama of his short life.
+
+"Aye, I was thinkin' o' him," he said. "I should na ha' cared for th'
+Klondike so much but for him."
+
+"But he went away from England when you were a baby."
+
+"Th' last toime he coom to Temple Barholm wur when I wur just born. Foak
+said he coom to ax owd Temple Barholm if he'd help him to pay his debts,
+an' th' owd chap awmost kicked him out o' doors. Mother had just had me,
+an' she was weak an' poorly an' sittin' at th' door wi' me in her arms,
+an' he passed by an' saw her. He stopped an' axed her how she was doin'.
+An' when he was goin' away, he gave her a gold sovereign, an' he says,
+`Put it in th' savin's-bank for him, an' keep it theer till he's a big
+lad an' wants it.' It's been in th' savin's-bank ever sin'. I've got
+a whole pound o' ma own out at interest. There's not many lads ha' got
+that."
+
+"He must have been a good-natured fellow," commented Tembarom. "It was
+darned bad luck him going to the Klondike."
+
+"It was good luck for thee," said Tummas, with resentment.
+
+"Was it?" was Tembarom's unbiased reply. "Well, I guess it was, one way
+or the other. I'm not kicking, anyhow."
+
+Tummas naturally did not know half he meant. He went on talking about
+Jem Temple Barholm, and as he talked his cheeks flushed and his eyes
+lighted.
+
+"I would na spend that sovereign if I was starvin'. I'm going to leave
+it to Ann Hutchinson in ma will when I dee. I've axed questions about
+him reet and left ever sin' I can remember, but theer's nobody knows
+much. Mother says he was fine an' handsome, an' gentry through an'
+through. If he'd coom into th' property, he'd ha' coom to see me
+again I'll lay a shillin', because I'm a cripple an' I canna spend his
+sovereign. If he'd coom back from th' Klondike, happen he'd ha' towd me
+about it." He pulled the atlas toward him, and laid his thin finger
+on the rubbed spot. "He mun ha' been killed somewheer about here," he
+sighed. "Somewheer here. Eh, it's funny."
+
+Tembarom watched him. There was something that rather gave you the
+"Willies" in the way this little cripple seemed to have taken to the
+dead man and worried along all these years thinking him over and asking
+questions and studying up the Klondike because he was killed there. It
+was because he'd made a kind of story of it. He'd enjoyed it in the way
+people enjoy stories in a newspaper. You always had to give 'em a kind
+of story; you had to make a story even if you were telling about a
+milk-wagon running away. In newspaper offices you heard that was the
+secret of making good with what you wrote. Dish it up as if it was a
+sort of story.
+
+He not infrequently arrived at astute enough conclusions concerning
+things. He had arrived at one now. Shut out even from the tame drama
+of village life, Tummas, born with an abnormal desire for action and a
+feverish curiosity, had hungered and thirsted for the story in any
+form whatsoever. He caught at fragments of happenings, and colored and
+dissected them for the satisfying of unfed cravings. The vanished man
+had been the one touch of pictorial form and color in his ten years of
+existence. Young and handsome and of the gentry, unfavored by the owner
+of the wealth which some day would be his own possession, stopping
+"gentry-way" at a cottage door to speak good-naturedly to a pale young
+mother, handing over the magnificence of a whole sovereign to be saved
+for a new-born child, going away to vaguely understood disgrace, leaving
+his own country to hide himself in distant lands, meeting death amid
+snow and ice and surrounded by gold-mines, leaving his empty place to be
+filled by a boot-black newsboy--true there was enough to lie and think
+over and to try to follow with the help of maps and excited questions.
+
+"I wish I could ha' seen him," said Tummas. "I'd awmost gi' my sovereign
+to get a look at that picture in th' gallery at Temple Barholm."
+
+"What picture?" Tembarom asked. "Is there a picture of him there?"
+
+"There is na one o' him, but there's one o' a lad as deed two hundred
+year' ago as they say wur th' spit an' image on him when he wur a lad
+hissen. One o' th' owd servants towd mother it wur theer."
+
+This was a natural stimulus to interest and curiosity.
+
+"Which one is it? Jinks! I'd like to see it myself. Do you know which
+one it is? There's hundreds of them."
+
+"No, I dunnot know," was Tummas's dispirited answer, "an' neither does
+mother. Th' woman as knew left when owd Temple Barholm deed."
+
+"Tummas," broke in Mrs. Hibblethwaite from the other end of the room,
+to which she had returned after taking Miss Alicia out to complain about
+the copper in the "wash-'us'--" "Tummas, tha'st been talkin' like a
+magpie. Tha'rt a lot too bold an' ready wi' tha tongue. Th' gentry's
+noan comin' to see thee if tha clacks th' heads off theer showthers."
+
+"I'm afraid he always does talk more than is good for him," said Miss
+Alicia. "He looks quite feverish."
+
+"He has been talking to me about Jem Temple Barholm," explained
+Tembarom. "We've had a regular chin together. He thinks a heap of poor
+Jem."
+
+Miss Alicia looked startled, and Mrs. Hibblethwaite was plainly
+flustered tremendously. She quite lost her temper.
+
+"Eh," she exclaimed, "tha wants tha young yed knocked off, Tummas
+Hibblethwaite. He's fair daft about th' young gentleman as--as was
+killed. He axes questions mony a day till I'd give him th' stick if he
+wasna a cripple. He moithers me to death."
+
+"I'll bring you some of those New York papers to look at," Tembarom said
+to the boy as he went away.
+
+He walked back through the village to Temple Barholm, holding Miss
+Alicia's elbow in light, affectionate guidance and support, a little to
+her embarrassment and also a little to her delight. Until he had taken
+her into the dining-room the night before she had never seen such a
+thing done. There was no over-familiarity in the action. It merely
+seemed somehow to suggest liking and a wish to take care of her.
+
+"That little fellow in the village," he said after a silence in which it
+occurred to her that he seemed thoughtful, "what a little freak he is!
+He's got an idea that there's a picture in the gallery that's said to
+look like Jem Temple Barholm when he was a boy. Have you ever heard
+anything about it? He says a servant told his mother it was there."
+
+"Yes, there is one," Miss Alicia answered. "I sometimes go and look at
+it. But it makes me feel very sad. It is the handsome boy who was a page
+in the court of Charles II. He died in his teens. His name was Miles
+Hugo Charles James. Jem could see the likeness himself. Sometimes for a
+little joke I used to call him Miles Hugo."
+
+"I believe I remember him," said Tembarom. "I believe I asked Palford
+his name. I must go and have a look at him again. He hadn't much better
+luck than the fellow that looked like him, dying as young as that."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+
+Form, color, drama, and divers other advantages are necessary to the
+creation of an object of interest. Presenting to the world none of these
+assets, Miss Alicia had slipped through life a scarcely remarked unit.
+No little ghost of prettiness had attracted the wandering eye, no
+suggestion of agreeable or disagreeable power of self-assertion had
+arrested attention. There had been no hour in her life when she had
+expected to count as being of the slightest consequence. When she had
+knocked at the door of the study at Rowcroft Vicarage, and "dear papa"
+had exclaimed irritably: "Who is that? Who is that?" she had always
+replied, "It is only Alicia."
+
+This being the case, her gradual awakening to the singularity of her new
+situation was mentally a process full of doubts and sometimes of alarmed
+bewilderments. If in her girlhood a curate, even a curate with prominent
+eyes and a receding chin, had proposed to her that she should face with
+him a future enriched by the prospect of being called upon to bring up
+a probable family of twelve on one hundred and fifty pounds a year, with
+both parish and rectory barking and snapping at her worn-down heels, she
+would have been sure to assert tenderly that she was afraid she was "not
+worthy." This was the natural habit of her mind, and in the weeks which
+followed the foggy afternoon when Tembarom "staked out his claim" she
+dwelt often upon her unworthiness of the benefits bestowed upon her.
+
+First the world below-stairs, then the village, and then the county
+itself awoke to the fact that the new Temple Temple Barholm had "taken
+her up." The first tendency of the world below-stairs was to resent the
+unwarranted uplifting of a person whom there had been a certain luxury
+in regarding with disdain and treating with scarcely veiled lack of
+consideration. To be able to do this with a person who, after all was
+said and done, was not one of the servant class, but a sort of lady of
+birth, was not unstimulating. And below-stairs the sense of personal
+rancor against "a 'anger-on" is strong. The meals served in Miss
+Alicia's remote sitting-room had been served at leisure, her tea had
+rarely been hot, and her modestly tinkled bell irregularly answered.
+Often her far from liberally supplied fire had gone out on chilly days,
+and she had been afraid to insist on its being relighted. Her sole
+defense against inattention would have been to complain to Mr. Temple
+Barholm, and when on one occasion a too obvious neglect had obliged her
+to gather her quaking being together in mere self-respect and say, "If
+this continues to occur, William, I shall be obliged to speak to Mr.
+Temple Barholm," William had so looked at her and so ill hid a secret
+smile that it had been almost tantamount to his saying, "I'd jolly well
+like to see you."
+
+And now! Sitting at the end of the table opposite him, if you please!
+Walking here and walking there with him! Sitting in the library or
+wherever he was, with him talking and laughing and making as much of her
+as though she were an aunt with a fortune to leave, and with her making
+as free in talk as though at liberty to say anything that came into her
+head! Well, the beggar that had found himself on horseback was setting
+another one galloping alongside of him. In the midst of this natural
+resentment it was "a bit upsetting," as Burrill said, to find it dawning
+upon one that absolute exactness of ceremony was as much to be required
+for "her" as for "him." Miss Alicia had long felt secretly sure that
+she was spoken of as "her" in the servants' hall. That businesslike
+sharpness which Palford had observed in his client aided Tembarom always
+to see things without illusions. He knew that There was no particular
+reason why his army of servants should regard him for the present as
+much more than an intruder; but he also knew that if men and women had
+employment which was not made hard for them, and were well paid for
+doing, they were not anxious to lose it, and the man who paid their
+wages might give orders with some certainty of finding them obeyed. He
+was "sharp" in more ways than one. He observed shades he might have been
+expected to overlook. He observed a certain shade in the demeanor of the
+domestics when attending Miss Alicia, and it was a shade which marked
+a difference between service done for her and service done for himself.
+This was only at the outset, of course, when the secret resentment was
+felt; but he observed it, mere shade though it was.
+
+He walked out into the hall after Burrill one morning. Not having yet
+adjusted himself to the rule that when one wished to speak to a man one
+rang a bell and called him back, fifty times if necessary, he walked
+after Burrill and stopped him.
+
+"This is a pretty good place for servants, ain't it?" he said.
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"Good pay, good food, not too much to do?"
+
+"Certainly, sir," Burrill replied, somewhat disturbed by a casualness
+which yet suggested a method of getting at something or other.
+
+"You and the rest of them don't want to change, do you?"
+
+"No, sir. There is no complaint whatever as far as I have heard."
+
+"That's all right." Mr. Temple Barholm had put his hands into his
+pockets, and stood looking non-committal in a steady sort of way.
+"There's something I want the lot of you to get on to--right away. Miss
+Temple Barholm is going to stay here. She's got to have everything just
+as she wants it. She's got to be pleased. She's the lady of the house.
+See?"
+
+"I hope, sir," Burrill said with professional dignity, "that Miss Temple
+Barholm has not had reason to express any dissatisfaction."
+
+"I'm the one that would express it--quick," said Tembarom. "She wouldn't
+have time to get in first. I just wanted to make sure I shouldn't have
+to do it. The other fellows are under you. You've got a head on your
+shoulders, I guess. It's up to you to put 'em on to it. That's all."
+
+"Thank you, sir," said Burrill.
+
+His master went back into the library smiling genially, and Burrill
+stood still a moment or so gazing at the door he closed behind him.
+
+Be sure the village, and finally circles not made up of cottagers, heard
+of this, howsoever mysteriously. Miss Alicia was not aware that the
+incident had occurred. She could not help observing, however, that the
+manners of the servants of the household curiously improved; also, when
+she passed through the village, that foreheads were touched without
+omission and the curtseys of playing children were prompt. When she
+dropped into a cottage, housewives polished off the seats of chairs
+vigorously before offering them, and symptoms and needs were explained
+with a respectful fluency which at times almost suggested that she might
+be relied on to use influence.
+
+"I'm afraid I have done the village people injustice," she said
+leniently to Tembarom. "I used to think them so disrespectful and
+unappreciative. I dare say it was because I was so troubled myself. I'm
+afraid one's own troubles do sometimes make one unfair."
+
+"Well, yours are over," said Tembarom. "And so are mine as long as you
+stay by me."
+
+Never had Miss Alicia been to London. She had remained, as was
+demanded of her by her duty to dear papa, at Rowcroft, which was in
+Somersetshire. She had only dreamed of London, and had had fifty-five
+years of dreaming. She had read of great functions, and seen pictures
+of some of them in the illustrated papers. She had loyally endeavored
+to follow at a distance the doings of her Majesty,--she always spoke
+of Queen Victoria reverentially as "her Majesty,"--she rejoiced when
+a prince or a princess was born or christened or married, and believed
+that a "drawing-room" was the most awe-inspiring, brilliant, and
+important function in the civilized world, scarcely second to
+Parliament. London--no one but herself or an elderly gentlewoman of her
+type could have told any one the nature of her thoughts of London.
+
+Let, therefore, those of vivid imagination make an effort to depict
+to themselves the effect produced upon her mind by Tembarom's casually
+suggesting at breakfast one morning that he thought it might be rather
+a good "stunt" for them to run up to London. By mere good fortune she
+escaped dropping the egg she had just taken from the egg-stand.
+
+"London!" she said. "Oh!"
+
+"Pearson thinks it would be a first-rate idea," he explained. "I guess
+he thinks that if he can get me into the swell clothing stores he can
+fix me up as I ought to be fixed, if I'm not going to disgrace him. I
+should hate to disgrace Pearson. Then he can see his girl, too, and I
+want him to see his girl."
+
+"Is--Pearson--engaged?" she asked; but the thought which was repeating
+itself aloud to her was "London! London!"
+
+"He calls it 'keeping company,' or 'walking out,'" Tembarom answered.
+"She's a nice girl, and he's dead stuck on her. Will you go with me,
+Miss Alicia?"
+
+"Dear Mr. Temple Barholm," she fluttered, "to visit London would be a
+privilege I never dreamed it would be my great fortune to enjoy--never."
+
+"Good business!" he ejaculated delightedly. "That's luck for me. It gave
+me the blues--what I saw of it. But if you are with me, I'll bet it'll
+be as different as afternoon tea was after I got hold of you. When shall
+we start? To-morrow?"
+
+Her sixteen-year-old blush repeated itself.
+
+"I feel so sorry. It seems almost undignified to mention it, but--I
+fear I should not look smart enough for London. My wardrobe is so very
+limited. I mustn't," she added with a sweet effort at humor, "do the new
+Mr. Temple Barholm discredit by looking unfashionable."
+
+He was more delighted than before.
+
+"Say," he broke out, "I'll tell you what we'll do: we'll go together and
+buy everything 'suitable' in sight. The pair of us'll come back here as
+suitable as Burrill and Pearson. We'll paint the town red."
+
+He actually meant it. He was like a boy with a new game. His sense of
+the dreariness of London had disappeared. He knew what it would be like
+with Miss Alicia as a companion. He had really seen nothing of the place
+himself, and he would find out every darned thing worth looking at, and
+take her to see it--theaters, shops, every show in town. When they left
+the breakfast-table it was agreed upon that they would make the journey
+the following day.
+
+He did not openly refer to the fact that among the plans for their round
+of festivities he had laid out for himself the attending to one or
+two practical points. He was going to see Palford, and he had made an
+appointment with a celebrated nerve specialist. He did not discuss this
+for several reasons. One of them was that his summing up of Miss Alicia
+was that she had had trouble enough to think over all her little life,
+and the thing for a fellow to do for her, if he liked her, was to
+give her a good time and make her feel as if she was at a picnic right
+straight along--not let her even hear of a darned thing that might worry
+her. He had said comparatively little to her about Strangeways. His
+first mention of his condition had obviously made her somewhat nervous,
+though she had been full of kindly interest. She was in private not
+sorry that it was felt better that she should not disturb the patient
+by a visit to his room. The abnormality of his condition seemed just
+slightly alarming to her.
+
+"But, oh, how good, how charitable, you are!" she had murmured.
+
+"Good," he answered, the devout admiration of her tone rather puzzling
+him. "It ain't that. I just want to see the thing through. I dropped
+into it by accident, and then I dropped into this by accident, and that
+made it as easy as falling off a log. I believe he's going to get well
+sometime. I guess I kind of like him because he holds on to me so and
+believes I'm just It. Maybe it's because I'm stuck on myself."
+
+His visit to Strangeways was longer than usual that afternoon. He
+explained the situation to him so that he understood it sufficiently not
+to seem alarmed by it. This was one of the advances Tembarom had noticed
+recently, that he was less easily terrified, and seemed occasionally
+to see facts in their proper relation to one another. Sometimes the
+experiments tried on him were successful, sometimes they were not, but
+he never resented them.
+
+"You are trying to help me to remember," he said once. "I think you will
+sometime."
+
+"Sure I will," said Tembarom. "You're better every day."
+
+Pearson was to remain in charge of him until toward the end of the
+London visit. Then he was to run up for a couple of days, leaving in his
+place a young footman to whom the invalid had become accustomed.
+
+The visit to London was to Miss Alicia a period of enraptured delirium.
+The beautiful hotel in which she was established, the afternoons at the
+Tower, the National Gallery, the British Museum, the evenings at the
+play, during which one saw the most brilliant and distinguished actors,
+the mornings in the shops, attended as though one were a person of
+fortune, what could be said of them? And the sacred day on which she
+saw her Majesty drive slowly by, glittering helmets, splendid uniforms,
+waving plumes, and clanking swords accompanying and guarding her, and
+gentlemen standing still with their hats off, and everybody looking
+after her with that natural touch of awe which royalty properly
+inspires! Miss Alicia's heart beat rapidly in her breast, and she
+involuntarily made a curtsey as the great lady in mourning drove by. She
+lost no shade of any flavor of ecstatic pleasure in anything, and was to
+Tembarom, who knew nothing about shades and flavors, indeed a touching
+and endearing thing.
+
+He had never got so much out of anything. If Ann had just been there,
+well, that would have been the limit. Ann was on her way to America now,
+and she wouldn't write to him or let him write to her. He had to make a
+fair trial of it. He could find out only in that way, she said. It
+was not to be denied that the youth and longing in him gave him some
+half-hours to face which made him shut himself up in his room and stare
+hard at the wall, folding his arms tightly as he tilted his chair.
+
+There arrived a day when one of the most exalted shops in Bond Street
+was invaded by an American young man of a bearing the peculiarities of
+which were subtly combined with a remotely suggested air of knowing that
+if he could find what he wanted, there was no doubt as to his power to
+get it. What he wanted was not usual, and was explained with a frankness
+which might have seemed unsophisticated, but, singularly, did not. He
+wanted to have a private talk with some feminine power in charge, and
+she must be some one who knew exactly what ladies ought to have.
+
+Being shown into a room, such a feminine power was brought to him and
+placed at his service. She was a middle-aged person, wearing beautifully
+fitted garments and having an observant eye and a dignified suavity of
+manner. She looked the young American over with a swift inclusion of
+all possibilities. He was by this time wearing extremely well-fitting
+garments himself, but she was at once aware that his tailored perfection
+was a new thing to him.
+
+He went to his point without apologetic explanation.
+
+"You know all the things any kind of a lady ought to have," he
+said--"all the things that would make any one feel comfortable and as if
+they'd got plenty? Useful things as well as ornamental ones?"
+
+"Yes, sir," she replied, with rising interest. "I have been in the
+establishment thirty years."
+
+"Good business," Tembarom replied. Already he felt relieved. "I've got
+a relation, a little old lady, and I want her to fix herself out just
+as she ought to be fixed. Now, what I'm afraid of is that she won't get
+everything she ought to unless I manage it for her somehow beforehand.
+She's got into a habit of--well, economizing. Now the time's past for
+that, and I want her to get everything a woman like you would know she
+really wants, so that she could look her best, living in a big country
+house, with a relation that thinks a lot of her."
+
+He paused a second or so, and then went further, fixing a clear and
+astonishingly shrewd eye upon the head of the department listening to
+him.
+
+"I found out this was a high-class place," he explained. "I made sure of
+that before I came in. In a place that was second or third class there
+might be people who'd think they'd caught a 'sucker' that would take
+anything that was unloaded on to him, because he didn't know. The things
+are for Miss Temple Barholm, and she DOES know. I shall ask her to come
+here herself to-morrow morning, and I want you to take care of her, and
+show her the best you've got that's suitable." He seemed to like the
+word; he repeated it--"Suitable," and quickly restrained a sudden,
+unexplainable, wide smile.
+
+The attending lady's name was Mrs. Mellish. Thirty years' experience
+had taught her many lessons. She was a hard woman and a sharp one, but
+beneath her sharp hardness lay a suppressed sense of the perfect in
+taste. To have a customer with unchecked resources put into her hands to
+do her best by was an inspiring incident. A quiver of enlightenment had
+crossed her countenance when she had heard the name of Temple Barholm.
+She had a newspaper knowledge of the odd Temple Barholm story. This
+was the next of kin who had blacked boots in New York, and the obvious
+probability that he was a fool, if it had taken the form of a hope, had
+been promptly nipped in the bud. The type from which he was furthest
+removed was that of the fortune-intoxicated young man who could be
+obsequiously flattered into buying anything which cost money enough.
+
+"Not a thing's to be unloaded on her that she doesn't like," he added,
+"and she's not a girl that goes to pink teas. She's a--a--lady--and not
+young--and used to quiet ways."
+
+The evidently New York word "unload" revealed him to his hearer as by a
+flash, though she had never heard it before.
+
+"We have exactly the things which will be suitable, sir," she said. "I
+think I quite understand." Tembarom smiled again, and, thanking her,
+went away still smiling, because he knew Miss Alicia was safe.
+
+There were of course difficulties in the way of persuading Miss Alicia
+that her duty lay in the direction of spending mornings in the most
+sumptuous of Bond Street shops, ordering for herself an entire wardrobe
+on a basis of unlimited resources. Tembarom was called upon to employ
+the most adroitly subtle reasoning, entirely founded on his "claim" and
+her affectionate willingness to give him pleasure.
+
+He really made love to her in the way a joyful young fellow can make
+love to his mother or his nicest aunt. He made her feel that she counted
+for so much in his scheme of enjoyment that to do as he asked would be
+to add a glow to it.
+
+"And they won't spoil you," he said. "The Mellish woman that's the boss
+has promised that. I wouldn't have you spoiled for a farm," he added
+heartily.
+
+And he spoke the truth. If he had been told that he was cherishing her
+type as though it were a priceless bit of old Saxe, he would have stared
+blankly and made a jocular remark. But it was exactly this which he
+actually clung to and adored. He even had a second private interview
+with Mrs. Mellish, and asked her to "keep her as much like she was" as
+was possible.
+
+Stimulated by the suppressed touch of artistic fervor, Mrs. Mellish
+guessed at something even before her client arrived; but the moment she
+entered the showroom all was revealed to her at once. The very hint of
+flush and tremor in Miss Alicia's manner was an assistance. Surrounded
+by a small and extremely select court composed of Mrs. Mellish and two
+low-voiced, deft-handed assistants, it was with a fine little effort
+that Miss Alicia restrained herself from exterior suggestion of
+her feeling that there was something almost impious in thinking of
+possessing the exquisite stuffs and shades displayed to her in flowing
+beauty on every side. Such linens and batistes and laces, such delicate,
+faint grays and lavenders and soft-falling blacks! If she had been
+capable of approaching the thought, such luxury might even have hinted
+at guilty splendor.
+
+Mrs. Mellish became possessed of an "idea" To create the costume of
+an exquisite, early-Victorian old lady in a play done for the most
+fashionable and popular actor manager of the most "drawing-room" of West
+End theaters, where one saw royalty in the royal box, with bouquets on
+every side, the orchestra breaking off in the middle of a strain to play
+"God Save the Queen," and the audience standing up as the royal party
+came in--that was her idea. She carried it out, steering Miss Alicia
+with finished tact through the shoals and rapids of her timidities. And
+the result was wonderful; color,--or, rather, shades,--textures, and
+forms were made subservient by real genius. Miss Alicia--as she was
+turned out when the wardrobe was complete--might have been an elderly
+little duchess of sweet and modest good taste in the dress of forty
+years earlier. It took time, but some of the things were prepared as
+though by magic, and the night the first boxes were delivered at the
+hotel Miss Alicia, on going to bed, in kneeling down to her devotions
+prayed fervently that she might not be "led astray by fleshly desires,"
+and that her gratitude might be acceptable, and not stained by a too
+great joy "in the things which corrupt."
+
+The very next day occurred Rose. She was the young person to whom
+Pearson was engaged, and it appeared that if Miss Alicia would make up
+her mind to oblige Mr. Temple Barholm by allowing the girl to come to
+her as lady's-maid, even if only temporarily, she would be doing a most
+kind and charitable thing. She was a very nice, well-behaved girl, and
+unfortunately she had felt herself forced to leave her place because her
+mistress's husband was not at all a nice man. He had shown himself so
+far from nice that Pearson had been most unhappy, and Rose had been
+compelled to give notice, though she had no other situation in prospect
+and her mother was dependent on her. This was without doubt not Mr.
+Temple Barholm's exact phrasing of the story, but it was what Miss
+Alicia gathered, and what moved her deeply. It was so cruel and so sad!
+That wicked man! That poor girl! She had never had a lady's-maid, and
+might be rather at a loss at first, but it was only like Mr. Temple
+Barholm's kind heart to suggest such a way of helping the girl and poor
+Pearson.
+
+So occurred Rose, a pretty creature whose blue eyes suppressed grateful
+tears as she took Miss Alicia's instructions during their first
+interview. And Pearson arrived the same night, and, waiting upon
+Tembarom, stood before him, and with perfect respect, choked.
+
+"Might I thank you, if you please, sir," he began, recovering
+himself--"might I thank you and say how grateful--Rose and me, sir--"
+and choked again.
+
+"I told you it would be all right," answered Tembarom. "It is all right.
+I wish I was fixed like you are, Pearson."
+
+When the Countess of Mallowe called, Rose had just dressed Miss Alicia
+for the afternoon in one of the most perfect of the evolutions of
+Mrs. Mellish's idea. It was a definite creation, as even Lady Mallowe
+detected the moment her eyes fell upon it. Its hue was dull, soft gray,
+and how it managed to concede points and elude suggestions of modes
+interred, and yet remain what it did remain, and accord perfectly with
+the side ringlets and the lace cap of Mechlin, only dressmaking genius
+could have explained. The mere wearing of it gave Miss Alicia a support
+and courage which she could scarcely believe to be her own. When the
+cards of Lady Mallowe and Lady Joan Fayre were brought up to her, she
+was absolutely not really frightened; a little nervous for a moment,
+perhaps, but frightened, no. A few weeks of relief and ease, of cheery
+consideration, of perfectly good treatment and good food and good
+clothes, had begun a rebuilding of the actual cells of her.
+
+Lady Mallowe entered alone. She was a handsome person, and astonishingly
+young when considered as the mother of a daughter of twenty-seven. She
+wore a white veil, and looked pink through it. She swept into the room,
+and shook hands with Miss Alicia with delicate warmth.
+
+"We do not really know each other at all," she said. "It is disgraceful
+how little relatives see of one another."
+
+The disgrace, if measured by the extent of the relationship, was not
+immense. Perhaps this thought flickered across Miss Alicia's mind among
+a number of other things. She had heard "dear papa" on Lady Mallowe,
+and, howsoever lacking in graces, the vicar of Rowcroft had not lacked
+an acrid shrewdness. Miss Alicia's sensitively self-accusing soul shrank
+before a hasty realization of the fact that if he had been present when
+the cards were brought up, he would, on glancing over them through his
+spectacles, have jerked out immediately: "What does the woman want?
+She's come to get something." Miss Alicia wished she had not been so
+immediately beset by this mental vision.
+
+Lady Mallowe had come for something. She had come to be amiable to Miss
+Temple Barholm and to establish relations with her.
+
+"Joan should have been here to meet me," she explained. "Her dressmaker
+is keeping her, of course. She will be so annoyed. She wanted very much
+to come with me."
+
+It was further revealed that she might arrive at any moment, which gave
+Miss Alicia an opportunity to express, with pretty grace, the hope that
+she would, and her trust that she was quite well.
+
+"She is always well," Lady Mallowe returned. "And she is of course
+as interested as we all are in this romantic thing. It is perfectly
+delicious, like a three-volumed novel."
+
+"It is romantic," said Miss Alicia, wondering how much her visitor knew
+or thought she knew, and what circumstances would present themselves to
+her as delicious.
+
+"Of course one has heard only the usual talk one always hears when
+everybody is chattering about a thing," Lady Mallowe replied, with a
+propitiating smile. "No one really knows what is true and what isn't.
+But it is nice to notice that all the gossip speaks so well of him. No
+one seems to pretend that he is anything but extremely nice himself,
+notwithstanding his disadvantages."
+
+She kept a fine hazel eye, surrounded by a line which artistically
+represented itself as black lashes, steadily resting on Miss Alicia as
+she said the last words.
+
+"He is," said Miss Alicia, with gentle firmness, "nicer than I had ever
+imagined any young man could be--far nicer."
+
+Lady Mallowe's glance round the luxurious private sitting-room and
+over the perfect "idea" of Mrs. Mellish was so swift as to be almost
+imperceptible.
+
+"How delightful!" she said. "He must be unusually agreeable, or you
+would not have consented to stay and take care of him."
+
+"I cannot tell you how HAPPY I am to have been asked to stay with him,
+Lady Mallowe," Miss Alicia replied, the gentle firmness becoming a soft
+dignity.
+
+"Which of course shows all the more how attractive he must be. And in
+view of the past lack of advantages, what a help you can be to him!
+It is quite wonderful for him to have a relative at hand who is an
+Englishwoman and familiar with things he will feel he must learn."
+
+A perhaps singular truth is that but for the unmistakable nature of the
+surroundings she quickly took in the significance of, and but for the
+perfection of the carrying out of Mrs. Mellish's delightful idea, it
+is more than probable that her lady-ship's manner of approaching Miss
+Alicia and certain subjects on which she desired enlightenment would
+have been much more direct and much less propitiatory. Extraordinary as
+it was, "the creature"--she thought of Tembarom as "the creature"--had
+plainly been so pleased with the chance of being properly coached that
+he had put everything, so to speak, in the little old woman's hands.
+She had got a hold upon him. It was quite likely that to regard her as a
+definite factor would only be the part of the merest discretion. She was
+evidently quite in love with him in her early-Victorian, spinster way.
+One had to be prudent with women like that who had got hold of a male
+creature for the first time in their lives, and were almost unaware
+of their own power. Their very unconsciousness made them a dangerous
+influence.
+
+With a masterly review of these facts in her mind Lady Mallowe went on
+with a fluent and pleasant talk, through the medium of which she managed
+to convey a large number of things Miss Alicia was far from being clever
+enough to realize she was talking about. She lightly waved wings of
+suggestion across the scene, she dropped infinitesimal seeds in passing,
+she left faint echoes behind her--the kind of echoes one would find
+oneself listening to and trying to hear as definitely formed sounds. She
+had been balancing herself on a precarious platform of rank and title,
+unsupported by any sordid foundation of a solid nature, through a
+lifetime spent in London. She had learned to catch fiercely at straws of
+chance, and bitterly to regret the floating past of the slightest, which
+had made of her a finished product of her kind. She talked lightly,
+and was sometimes almost witty. To her hearer she seemed to know every
+brilliant personage and to be familiar with every dazzling thing. She
+knew well what social habits and customs meant, what their value,
+or lack of value, was. There were customs, she implied skilfully,
+so established by time that it was impossible to ignore them.
+Relationships, for instance, stood for so much that was fine in England
+that one was sometimes quite touched by the far-reachingness of family
+loyalty. The head of the house of a great estate represented a certain
+power in the matter of upholding the dignity of his possessions, of
+caring for his tenantry, of standing for proper hospitality and friendly
+family feeling. It was quite beautiful as one often saw it. Throughout
+the talk there were several references to Joan, who really must come
+in shortly, which were very interesting to Miss Alicia. Lady Joan,
+Miss Alicia heard casually, was a great beauty. Her perfection and her
+extreme cleverness had made her perhaps a trifle difficile. She had
+not done--Lady Mallowe put it with a lightness of phrasing which was
+delicacy itself--what she might have done, with every exalted advantage,
+so many times. She had a profound nature. Here Lady Mallowe waved away,
+as it were, a ghost of a sigh. Since Miss Temple Barholm was a relative,
+she had no doubt heard of the unfortunate, the very sad incident which
+her mother sometimes feared prejudiced the girl even yet.
+
+"You mean--poor Jem!" broke forth involuntarily from Miss Alicia's lips.
+Lady Mallowe stared a little.
+
+"Do you call him that?" she asked. "Did you know him, then?"
+
+"I loved him," answered Miss Alicia, winking her eyes to keep back the
+moisture in them, "though it was only when he was a little boy."
+
+"Oh," said Lady Mallowe, with a sudden, singular softness, "I must tell
+Joan that."
+
+Lady Joan had not appeared even after they had had tea and her mother
+went away, but somehow Miss Alicia had reached a vaguely yearning
+feeling for her and wished very much the dressmaker had released her.
+She was quite stirred when it revealed itself almost at the last moment
+that in a few weeks both she and Lady Mallowe were to pay a visit at no
+great distance from Temple Barholm itself, and that her ladyship would
+certainly arrange to drive over to continue her delightful acquaintance
+and to see the beautiful old place again.
+
+"In any case one must, even if he lived in lonely state, pay one's
+respects to the head of the house. The truth is, of course, one is
+extremely anxious to meet him, and it is charming to know that one is
+not merely invading the privacy of a bachelor," Lady Mallowe put it.
+
+"She'll come for YOU," Little Ann had soberly remarked.
+
+Tembarom remembered the look in her quiet, unresentful blue eyes when
+he came in to dinner and Miss Alicia related to him the events of the
+afternoon.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+
+The spring, when they traveled back to the north, was so perceptibly
+nearer that the fugitive soft days strayed in advance at intervals that
+were briefer. They chose one for their journey, and its clear sunshine
+and hints at faint greenness were so exhilarating to Miss Alicia that
+she was a companion to make any journey an affair to rank with
+holidays and adventures. The strange luxury of traveling in a reserved
+first-class carriage, of being made timid by no sense of unfitness of
+dress or luggage, would have filled her with grateful rapture; but Rose,
+journeying with Pearson a few coaches behind, appeared at the carriage
+window at every important station to say, "Is there anything I may
+do for you, ma'am?" And there really never was anything she could do,
+because Mr. Temple Barholm remembered everything which could make her
+comfort perfect. In the moods of one who searches the prospect for
+suggestions as to pleasure he can give to himself by delighting a
+dear child, he had found and bought for her a most elegant little
+dressing-bag, with the neatest of plain-gold fittings beautifully
+initialed. It reposed upon the cushioned seat near her, and made her
+heart beat every time she caught sight of it anew. How wonderful it
+would be if poor dear, darling mama could look down and see everything
+and really know what happiness had been vouchsafed to her unworthy
+child!
+
+Having a vivid recollection of the journey made with Mr. Palford,
+Tembarom felt that his whole world had changed for him. The landscape
+had altered its aspect. Miss Alicia pointed out bits of freshening
+grass, was sure of the breaking of brown leaf-buds, and more than
+once breathlessly suspected a primrose in a sheltered hedge corner. A
+country-bred woman, with country-bred keenness of eye and a country-bred
+sense of the seasons' change, she saw so much that he had never known
+that she began to make him see also. Bare trees would be thick-leaved
+nesting-places, hedges would be white with hawthorn, and hold blue eggs
+and chirps and songs. Skylarks would spring out of the fields and soar
+into the sky, dropping crystal chains of joyous trills. The cottage
+gardens would be full of flowers, there would be poppies gleaming
+scarlet in the corn, and in buttercup-time all the green grass would be
+a sheet of shining gold.
+
+"When it all happens I shall be like a little East-Sider taken for a
+day in the country. I shall be asking questions at every step," Tembarom
+said. "Temple Barholm must be pretty fine then."
+
+"It is so lovely," said Miss Alicia, turning to him almost solemnly,
+"that sometimes it makes one really lose one's breath."
+
+He looked out of the window with sudden wistfulness.
+
+"I wish Ann--" he began and then, seeing the repressed question in her
+eyes, made up his mind.
+
+He told her about Little Ann. He did not use very many words, but
+she knew a great deal when he had finished. And her spinster soul was
+thrilled. Neither she nor poor Emily had ever had an admirer, and it was
+not considered refined for unsought females to discuss "such subjects."
+Domestic delirium over the joy of an engagement in families in which
+daughters were a drug she had seen. It was indeed inevitable that there
+should be more rejoicing over one Miss Timson who had strayed from the
+fold into the haven of marriage than over the ninety-nine Misses Timson
+who remained behind. But she had never known intimately any one who was
+in love--really in love. Mr. Temple Barholm must be. When he spoke of
+Little Ann he flushed shyly and his eyes looked so touching and nice.
+His voice sounded different, and though of course his odd New York
+expressions were always rather puzzling, she felt as though she saw
+things she had had no previous knowledge of--things which thrilled her.
+
+"She must be a very--very nice girl," she ventured at length. "I am
+afraid I have never been into old Mrs. Hutchinson's cottage. She is
+quite comfortably off in her way, and does not need parish care. I wish
+I had seen Miss Hutchinson."
+
+"I wish she had seen you," was Tembarom's answer.
+
+Miss Alicia reflected.
+
+"She must be very clever to have such--sensible views," she remarked.
+
+If he had remained in New York, and there had been no question of his
+inheriting Temple Barholm, the marriage would have been most suitable.
+But however "superior" she might be, a vision of old Mrs. Hutchinson's
+granddaughter as the wife of Mr. Temple Barholm, and of noisy old Mr.
+Hutchinson as his father-in-law was a staggering thing.
+
+"You think they were sensible?" asked Tembarom. "Well, she never did
+anything that wasn't. So I guess they were. And what she says GOES. I
+wanted you to know, anyhow. I wouldn't like you not to know. I'm too
+fond of you, Miss Alicia." And he put his hand round her neat glove and
+squeezed it. The tears of course came into her tender eyes. Emotion of
+any sort always expressed itself in her in this early-Victorian manner.
+
+"This Lady Joan girl," he said suddenly not long afterward, "isn't she
+the kind that I'm to get used to--the kind in the pictorial magazine
+Ann talked about? I bought one at the news-stand at the depot before
+we started. I wanted to get on to the pictures and see what they did to
+me."
+
+He found the paper among his belongings and regarded it with the
+expression of a serious explorer. It opened at a page of illustrations
+of slim goddesses in court dresses. By actual measurement, if regarded
+according to scale, each was about ten feet high; but their long lines,
+combining themselves with court trains, waving plumes, and falling
+veils, produced an awe-inspiring effect. Tembarom gazed at them in
+absorbed silence.
+
+"Is she something like any of these?" he inquired finally.
+
+Miss Alicia looked through her glasses.
+
+"Far more beautiful, I believe," she answered. "These are only
+fashion-plates, and I have heard that she is a most striking girl."
+
+"A beaut' from Beautsville!" he said. "So that's what I'm up against! I
+wonder how much use that kind of a girl would have for me."
+
+He gave a good deal of attention to the paper before he laid it aside.
+As she watched him, Miss Alicia became gradually aware of the existence
+of a certain hint of determined squareness in his boyish jaw. It was
+perhaps not much more than a hint, but it really was there, though she
+had not noticed it before. In fact, it usually hid itself behind his
+slangy youthfulness and his readiness for any good cheer.
+
+One may as well admit that it sustained him during his novitiate and
+aided him to pass through it without ignominy or disaster. He was
+strengthened also by a private resolve to bear himself in such a manner
+as would at least do decent credit to Little Ann and her superior
+knowledge. With the curious eyes of servants, villagers, and secretly
+outraged neighborhood upon him, he was shrewd enough to know that he
+might easily become a perennial fount of grotesque anecdote, to be used
+as a legitimate source of entertainment in cottages over the consumption
+of beans and bacon, as well as at great houses when dinner-table talk
+threatened to become dull if not enlivened by some spice. He would not
+have thought of this or been disturbed by it but for Ann. She knew, and
+he was not going to let her be met on her return from America with what
+he called "a lot of funny dope" about him.
+
+"No girl would like it," he said to himself. "And the way she said she
+'cared too much' just put it up to me to see that the fellow she cares
+for doesn't let himself get laughed at."
+
+Though he still continued to be jocular on subjects which to his valet
+seemed almost sacred, Pearson was relieved to find that his employer
+gradually gave himself into his hands in a manner quite amenable. In the
+touching way in which nine out of ten nice, domesticated American males
+obey the behests of the women they are fond of, he had followed Ann's
+directions to the letter. Guided by the adept Pearson, he had gone to
+the best places in London and purchased the correct things, returning to
+Temple Barholm with a wardrobe to which any gentleman might turn at any
+moment without a question.
+
+"He's got good shoulders, though he does slouch a bit," Pearson said to
+Rose. "And a gentleman's shoulders are more than half the battle."
+
+What Tembarom himself felt cheered by was the certainty that if Ann
+saw him walking about the park or the village, or driving out with Miss
+Alicia in the big landau, or taking her in to dinner every evening, or
+even going to church with her, she would not have occasion to flush at
+sight of him.
+
+The going to church was one of the duties of his position he found
+out. Miss Alicia "put him on" to that. It seemed that he had to present
+himself to the villagers "as an example." If the Temple Barholm pews
+were empty, the villagers, not being incited to devotional exercise by
+his exalted presence, would feel at liberty to remain at home, and in
+the irreligious undress of shirt-sleeves sit and smoke their pipes, or,
+worse still, gather at "the Hare and Hounds" and drink beer. Also, it
+would not be "at all proper" not to go to church.
+
+Pearson produced a special cut of costume for this ceremony, and
+Tembarom walked with Miss Alicia across the park to the square-towered
+Norman church.
+
+In a position of dignity the Temple Barholm pews over-looked the
+congregation. There was the great square pew for the family, with two
+others for servants. Footmen and house-maids gazed reverentially at
+prayer-books. Pearson, making every preparation respectfully to declare
+himself a "miserable sinner" when the proper moment arrived, could
+scarcely re-strain a rapid side glance as the correctly cut and fitted
+and entirely "suitable" work of his hands opened the pew-door for Miss
+Alicia, followed her in, and took his place.
+
+Let not the fact that he had never been to church before be counted
+against him. There was nothing very extraordinary in the fact. He had
+felt no antipathy to church-going, but he had not by chance fallen under
+proselyting influence, and it had certainly never occurred to him that
+he had any place among the well-dressed, comfortable-looking people
+he had seen flocking into places of worship in New York. As far as
+religious observances were concerned, he was an unadulterated heathen,
+and was all the more to be congratulated on being a heathen of genial
+tendencies.
+
+The very large pew, under the stone floor of which his ancestors had
+slept undisturbedly for centuries, interested him greatly. A recumbent
+marble crusader in armor, with feet crossed in the customary manner,
+fitted into a sort of niche in one side of the wall. There were carved
+tablets and many inscriptions in Latin wheresoever one glanced. The
+place was like a room. A heavy, round table, on which lay prayer-books,
+Bibles, and hymn-books, occupied the middle. About it were arranged
+beautiful old chairs, with hassocks to kneel on. Toward a specially
+imposing chair with arms Miss Alicia directed, him with a glance. It was
+apparently his place. He was going to sit down when he saw Miss Alicia
+gently push forward a hassock with her foot, and kneel on it, covering
+her face with her hands as she bent her head. He hastily drew forth his
+hassock and followed her example.
+
+That was it, was it? It wasn't only a matter of listening to a sermon;
+you had to do things. He had better watch out and see that he didn't
+miss anything. She didn't know it was his first time, and it might worry
+her to the limit if he didn't put it over all right. One of the things
+he had noticed in her was her fear of attracting attention by failing to
+do exactly the "proper thing." If he made a fool of himself by kneeling
+down when he ought to stand up, or lying down when he ought to sit,
+she'd get hot all over, thinking what the villagers or the other people
+would say. Well, Ann hadn't wanted him to look different from other
+fellows or to make breaks. He'd look out from start to finish. He
+directed a watchful eye at Miss Alicia through his fingers. She remained
+kneeling a few moments, and then very quietly got up. He rose with her,
+and took his big chair when she sat down. He breathed more freely when
+they had got that far. That was the first round.
+
+It was not a large church, but a gray and solemn impression of dignity
+brooded over it. It was dim with light, which fell through stained-glass
+memorial windows set deep in the thick stone walls. The silence
+which reigned throughout its spaces seemed to Tembarom of a new kind,
+different from the silence of the big house. The occasional subdued
+rustle of turned prayer-book leaves seemed to accentuate it; the
+most careful movement could not conceal itself; a slight cough was
+a startling thing. The way, Tembarom thought, they could get things
+dead-still in English places!
+
+The chimes, which had been ringing their last summons to the tardy,
+slackened their final warning notes, became still slower, stopped.
+There was a slight stir in the benches occupied by the infant school. It
+suggested that something new was going to happen. From some unseen place
+came the sound of singing voices--boyish voices and the voices of men.
+Tembarom involuntarily turned his head. Out of the unseen place came a
+procession in white robes. Great Scott! every one was standing up! He
+must stand up, too. The boys and men in white garments filed into their
+seats. An elderly man, also in white robes, separated himself from them,
+and, going into his special place, kneeled down. Then he rose and began
+to read:
+
+"When the wicked man turneth away from his wickedness--"
+
+Tembarom took the open book which Miss Alicia had very delicately pushed
+toward him. He read the first words,--that was plain sailing,--then he
+seemed to lose his place. Miss Alicia turned a leaf. He turned one also.
+
+"Dearly beloved brethren--"
+
+There you were. This was once more plain sailing. He could follow it.
+What was the matter with Miss Alicia? She was kneeling again, everybody
+was kneeling. Where was the hassock? He went down upon his knees, hoping
+Miss Alicia had not seen that he wasn't going to kneel at all. Then when
+the minister said "Amen," the congregation said it, too, and he came in
+too late, so that his voice sounded out alone. He must watch that. Then
+the minister knelt, and all the people prayed aloud with him. With the
+book before him he managed to get in after the first few words; but he
+was not ready with the responses, and in the middle of them everybody
+stood up again. And then the organ played, and every one sang. He
+couldn't sing, anyhow, and he knew he couldn't catch on to the kind of
+thing they were doing. He hoped Miss Alicia wouldn't mind his standing
+up and holding his book and doing nothing. He could not help seeing that
+eyes continually turned toward him. They'd notice every darned break he
+made, and Miss Alicia would know they did. He felt quite hot more than
+once. He watched Miss Alicia like a hawk; he sat down and listened to
+reading, he stood up and listened to singing; he kneeled, he tried to
+chime in with "Amens" and to keep up with Miss Alicia's bending of head
+and knee. But the creed, with its sudden turn toward the altar, caught
+him unawares, he lost himself wholly in the psalms, the collects left
+him in deep water, hopeless of ever finding his place again, and the
+litany baffled him, when he was beginning to feel safe, by changing from
+"miserable sinners" to "Spare us Good Lord" and "We beseech thee to hear
+us." If he could just have found the place he would have been all
+right, but an honest anxiety to be right excited him, and the fear of
+embarrassing Miss Alicia by going wrong made the morning a strenuous
+thing. He was so relieved to find he might sit still when the sermon
+began that he gave the minister an attention which might have marked
+him, to the chance beholder, as a religious enthusiast.
+
+By the time the service had come to an end the stately peace of the
+place had seemed to sink into his being and become part of himself.
+The voice of the minister bestowing his blessing, the voices of the
+white-clothed choir floating up into the vaulted roof, stirred him to a
+remote pleasure. He liked it, or he knew he would like it when he knew
+what to do. The filing out of the choristers, the silent final prayer,
+the soft rustle of people rising gently from their knees, somehow
+actually moved him by its suggestion of something before unknown. He was
+a heathen still, but a heathen vaguely stirred.
+
+He was very quiet as he walked home across the park with Miss Alicia.
+
+"How did you enjoy the sermon?" she asked with much sweetness.
+
+"I 'm not used to sermons, but it seemed all right to me," he answered.
+"What I've got to get on to is knowing when to stand up and when to sit
+down. I wasn't much of a winner at it this morning. I guess you noticed
+that."
+
+But his outward bearing had been much more composed than his inward
+anxiety had allowed him to believe. His hesitations had not produced the
+noticeable effect he had feared.
+
+"Do you mean you are not quite familiar with the service?" she said.
+Poor dear boy! he had perhaps not been able to go to church regularly at
+all.
+
+"I'm not familiar with any service," he answered without prejudice. "I
+never went to church before."
+
+She slightly started and then smiled.
+
+"Oh, you mean you have never been to the Church of England," she said.
+
+Then he saw that, if he told her the exact truth, she would be
+frightened and shocked. She would not know what to say or what to think.
+To her unsophisticated mind only murderers and thieves and criminals
+NEVER went to church. She just didn't know. Why should she? So he smiled
+also.
+
+"No, I've never been to the Church of England," he said.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+
+The country was discreetly conservative in its social attitude. The gulf
+between it and the new owner of Temple Barholm was too wide and deep to
+be crossed without effort combined with immense mental agility. It was
+on the whole, much easier not to begin a thing at all than to begin it
+and find one must hastily search about for not too noticeable methods
+of ending it. A few unimportant, tentative calls were made, and
+several ladies who had remained unaware of Miss Alicia during her first
+benefactor's time drove over to see what she was like and perhaps by
+chance hear something of interest. One or two of them who saw Tembarom
+went away puzzled and amazed. He did not drop his h's, which they had
+of course expected, and he was well dressed, and not bad-looking; but
+it was frequently impossible to understand what he was talking about, he
+used such odd phrases. He seemed good natured enough, and his way with
+little old Miss Temple Barholm was really quite nice, queer as it was.
+It was queer because he was attentive to her in a manner in which
+young men were not usually attentive to totally insignificant, elderly
+dependents.
+
+Tembarom derived an extremely diluted pleasure from the visits. The few
+persons he saw reminded him in varying degrees of Mr. Palford. They had
+not before seen anything like his species, and they did not know what
+to do with him. He also did not know what to do with them. A certain
+inelasticity frustrated him at the outset. When, in obedience to Miss
+Alicia's instructions, he had returned the visits, he felt he had not
+gone far.
+
+Serious application enabled him to find his way through the church
+service, and he accompanied Miss Alicia to church with great regularity.
+He began to take down the books from the library shelves and look them
+over gravely. The days gradually ceased to appear so long, but he had
+a great deal of time on his hands, and he tried to find ways of filling
+it. He wondered if Ann would be pleased if he learned things out of
+books.
+
+When he tentatively approached the subject of literature with Miss
+Alicia, she glowed at the delightful prospect of his reading aloud to
+her in the evenings--"reading improving things like history and the
+poets."
+
+"Let's take a hack at it some night," he said pleasantly.
+
+The more a fellow knew, the better it was for him, he supposed; but he
+wondered, if anything happened and he went back to New York, how much
+"improving things" and poetry would help a man in doing business.
+
+The first evening they began with Gray's "Elegy," and Miss Alicia felt
+that it did not exhilarate him; she was also obliged to admit that
+he did not read it very well. But she felt sure he would improve.
+Personally she was touchingly happy. The sweetly domestic picture of
+the situation, she sitting by the fire with her knitting and he
+reading aloud, moved and delighted her. The next evening she suggested
+Tennyson's "Maud." He was not as much stirred by it as she had hoped. He
+took a somewhat humorous view of it.
+
+"He had it pretty bad, hadn't he?"' he said of the desperate lover.
+
+"Oh, if only you could once have heard Sims Reeves sing 'Come into the
+Garden, Maud'!" she sighed. "A kind friend once took me to hear him, and
+I have never, never forgotten it."
+
+But Mr. Temple Barholm notably did not belong to the atmosphere of
+impassioned tenors.
+
+On still another evening they tried Shakspere. Miss Alicia felt that
+a foundation of Shakspere would be "improving" indeed. They began with
+"Hamlet."
+
+He found play-reading difficult and Shaksperian language baffling, but
+he made his way with determination until he reached a point where he
+suddenly grew quite red and stopped.
+
+"Say, have you read this?" he inquired after his hesitation.
+
+"The plays of Shakspere are a part of every young lady's education," she
+answered; "but I am afraid I am not at all a Shaksperian scholar."
+
+"A young lady's education?" he repeated. "Gee whizz!" he added softly
+after a pause.
+
+He glanced over a page or so hastily, and then laid the book down.
+
+"Say," he suggested, with an evasive air, "let's go over that 'Maud' one
+again. It's--well, it's easier to read aloud."
+
+The crude awkwardness of his manner suddenly made Miss Alicia herself
+flush and drop a stitch in her knitting. How dreadful of her not to have
+thought of that!
+
+"The Elizabethan age was, I fear, a rather coarse one in some respects.
+Even history acknowledges that Queen Elizabeth herself used profane
+language." She faltered and coughed a little apologetic cough as she
+picked up her stitch again.
+
+"I bet Ann's never seen inside Shakspere," said Tembarom. Before reading
+aloud in the future he gave some previous personal attention to the poem
+or subject decided upon. It may be at once frankly admitted that when he
+read aloud it was more for Miss Alicia's delectation than for his own.
+He saw how much she enjoyed the situation.
+
+His effect of frankness and constant boyish talk was so inseparable from
+her idea of him that she found it a puzzling thing to realize that she
+gradually began to feel aware of a certain remote reserve in him,
+or what might perhaps be better described as a habit of silence upon
+certain subjects. She felt it marked in the case of Strangeways. She
+surmised that he saw Strangeways often and spent a good deal of time
+with him, but he spoke of him rarely, and she never knew exactly what
+hours were given to him. Sometimes she imagined he found him a greater
+responsibility than he had expected. Several times when she believed
+that he had spent part of a morning or afternoon in his room, he was
+more silent than usual and looked puzzled and thoughtful. She observed,
+as Mr. Palford had, that the picture-gallery, with its portraits of his
+ancestors, had an attraction. A certain rainy day he asked her to go
+with him and look them over. It was inevitable that she should soon
+wander to the portrait of Miles Hugo and remain standing before it.
+Tembarom followed, and stood by her side in silence until her sadness
+broke its bounds with a pathetic sigh.
+
+"Was he very like him?" he asked.
+
+She made an unconscious, startled movement. For the moment she had
+forgotten his presence, and she had not really expected him to remember.
+
+"I mean Jem," he answered her surprised look. "How was he like him? Was
+there--" he hesitated and looked really interested--"was he like him in
+any particular thing?"
+
+"Yes," she said, turning to the portrait of Miles Hugo again. "They both
+had those handsome, drooping eyes, with the lashes coming together
+at the corners. There is something very fascinating about them, isn't
+there? I used to notice it so much in dear little Jem. You see how
+marked they are in Miles Hugo."
+
+"Yes," Tembarom answered. "A fellow who looked that way at a girl when
+he made love to her would get a strangle-holt. She wouldn't forget him
+soon."
+
+"It strikes you in that way, too?" said Miss Alicia, shyly. "I used to
+wonder if it was--not quite nice of me to think of it. But it did seem
+that if any one did look at one like that--" Maidenly shyness overcame
+her. "Poor Lady Joan!" she sighed.
+
+"There's a sort of cleft in his chin, though it's a good, square chin,"
+he suggested. "And that smile of his--Were Jem's--?"
+
+"Yes, they were. The likeness was quite odd sometimes--quite."
+
+"Those are things that wouldn't be likely to change much when he grew
+up," Tembarom said, drawing a little closer to the picture. "Poor Jem!
+He was up against it hard and plenty. He had it hardest. This chap only
+died."
+
+There was no mistaking his sympathy. He asked so many questions that
+they sat down and talked instead of going through the gallery. He was
+interested in the detail of all that had occurred after the ghastly
+moment when Jem had risen from the card-table and stood looking around,
+like some baited dying animal, at the circle of cruel faces drawing in
+about him. How soon had he left London? Where had he gone first? How had
+he been killed? He had been buried with others beneath a fall of earth
+and stones. Having heard this much, Tembarom saw he could not ask more
+questions. Miss Alicia became pale, and her hands trembled. She could
+not bear to discuss details so harrowing.
+
+"Say, I oughtn't to let you talk about that," he broke out, and he
+patted her hand and made her get up and finish their walk about the
+gallery. He held her elbow in his own odd, nice way as he guided her,
+and the things he said, and the things he pretended to think or not to
+understand, were so amusing that in a short time he had made her
+laugh. She knew him well enough by this time to be aware that he was
+intentionally obliging her to forget what it only did her harm to
+remember. That was his practical way of looking at it.
+
+"Getting a grouch on or being sorry for what you can't help cuts no
+ice," he sometimes said. "When it does, me for getting up at daybreak
+and keeping at it! But it doesn't, you bet your life on that."
+
+She could see that he had really wanted to hear about Jem, but he knew
+it was bad for her to recall things, and he would not allow her to dwell
+on them, just as she knew he would not allow himself to dwell on little
+Miss Hutchinson, remotely placed among the joys of his beloved New York.
+
+Two other incidents besides the visit to Miles Hugo afterward marked
+that day when Miss Alicia looked back on it. The first was his unfolding
+to her his plans for the house-party, which was characteristic of his
+habit of thinking things over and deciding them before he talked about
+them.
+
+"If I'm going to try the thing out, as Ann says I must," he began when
+they had gone back to the library after lunch, "I've got to get going.
+I'm not seeing any of those Pictorial girls, and I guess I've got to see
+some."
+
+"You will be invited to dine at places," said Miss Alicia,--"presently,"
+she added bravely, in fact, with an air of greater conviction than she
+felt.
+
+"If it's not the law that they've got to invite me or go to jail," said
+Tembarom, "I don't blame 'em for not doing it if they're not stuck on
+me. And they're not; and it's natural. But I've got to get in my fine
+work, or my year'll be over before I've 'found out for myself,' as Ann
+called it. There's where I'm at, Miss Alicia--and I've been thinking of
+Lady Joan and her mother. You said you thought they'd come and stay here
+if they were properly asked."
+
+"I think they would," answered Miss Alicia with her usual delicacy.
+"I thought I gathered from Lady Mallowe that, as she was to be in the
+neighborhood, she would like to see you and Temple Barholm, which she
+greatly admires."
+
+"If you'll tell me what to do, I'll get her here to stay awhile," he
+said, "and Lady Joan with her. You'd have to show me how to write to ask
+them; but perhaps you'd write yourself."
+
+"They will be at Asshawe Holt next week," said Miss Alicia, "and we
+could go and call on them together. We might write to them in London
+before they leave."
+
+"We'll do it," answered Tembarom. His manner was that of a practical
+young man attacking matter-of-fact detail. "From what I hear, Lady Joan
+would satisfy even Ann. They say she's the best-looker on the slate. If
+I see her every day I shall have seen the blue-ribbon winner. Then if
+she's here, perhaps others of her sort'll come, too; and they'll have to
+see me whether they like it or not--and I shall see them. Good Lord!" he
+added seriously, "I'd let 'em swarm all over me and bite me all summer
+if it would fix Ann."
+
+He stood up, with his hands thrust deep in his pockets, and looked down
+at the floor.
+
+"I wish she knew T. T. like T. T. knows himself," he said. It was quite
+wistful.
+
+It was so wistful and so boyish that Miss Alicia was thrilled as he
+often thrilled her.
+
+"She ought to be a very happy girl," she exclaimed.
+
+"She's going to be," he answered, "sure as you're alive. But whatever
+she does, is right, and this is as right as everything else. So it just
+goes."
+
+They wrote their letters at once, and sent them off by the afternoon
+post. The letter Miss Alicia composed, and which Tembarom copied, he
+read and reread, with visions of Jim Bowles and Julius looking over his
+shoulder. If they picked it up on Broadway, with his name signed to it,
+and read it, they'd throw a fit over it, laughing. But he supposed she
+knew what you ought to write.
+
+It had not, indeed, the masculine touch. When Lady Mallowe read it, she
+laughed several times. She knew quite well that he had not known what
+to say, and, allowing Miss Alicia to instruct him, had followed her
+instructions to the letter. But she did not show the letter to Joan,
+who was difficult enough to manage without being given such material to
+comment upon.
+
+The letters had just been sent to the post when a visitor was
+announced--Captain Palliser. Tembarom remembered the name, and recalled
+also certain points connected with him. He was the one who was a
+promoter of schemes--"One of the smooth, clever ones that get up
+companies," Little Ann had said.
+
+That in a well-bred and not too pronounced way he looked smooth and
+clever might be admitted. His effect was that of height, finished
+slenderness of build, and extremely well-cut garments. He was no longer
+young, and he had smooth, thin hair and a languidly observant gray eye.
+
+"I have been staying at Detchworth Grange," he explained when he had
+shaken hands with the new Temple Barholm and Miss Alicia. "It gave me an
+excellent opportunity to come and pay my respects."
+
+There was a hint of uncertainty in the observant gray eye. The fact was
+that he realized in the space of five minutes that he knew his ground
+even less than he had supposed he did. He had not spent his week at
+Detchworth Grange without making many quiet investigations, but he had
+found out nothing whatever. The new man was an ignoramus, but no one had
+yet seemed to think him exactly a fool. He was not excited by the new
+grandeurs of his position and he was not ashamed of himself. Captain
+Palliser wondered if he was perhaps sharp--one of those New Yorkers
+shrewd even to light-fingeredness in clever scheming. Stories of a newly
+created method of business dealing involving an air of candor and
+almost primitive good nature--an American method--had attracted Captain
+Palliser's attention for some time. A certain Yankee rawness of manner
+played a part as a factor, a crudity which would throw a man off guard
+if he did not recognize it. The person who employed the method was
+of philosophical non-combativeness. The New York phrase was that "He
+jollied a man along." Immense schemes had been carried through in that
+way. Men in London, in England, were not sufficiently light of touch
+in their jocularity. He wondered if perhaps this young fellow, with his
+ready laugh and rather loose-jointed, casual way of carrying himself,
+was of this dangerous new school.
+
+What, however, could he scheme for, being the owner of Temple Barholm's
+money? It may be mentioned at once that Captain Palliser's past had
+been such as had fixed him in the belief that every one was scheming
+for something. People with money wanted more or were privately arranging
+schemes to prevent other schemers from getting any shade the better of
+them. Debutantes with shy eyes and slim figures had their little plans
+to engineer delicately. Sometimes they were larger plans than the
+uninitiated would have suspected as existing in the brains of creatures
+in their 'teens, sometimes they were mere fantastic little ideas
+connected with dashing young men or innocent dances which must be
+secured or lovely young rivals who must be evaded. Young men had also
+deft things to do--people to see or not to see, reasons for themselves
+being seen or avoiding observation. As years increased, reasons for
+schemes became more numerous and amazingly more varied. Women with
+daughters, with sons, with husbands, found in each relationship
+a necessity for active, if quiet, manoeuvering. Women like Lady
+Mallowe--good heaven! by what schemes did not that woman live and have
+her being--and her daughter's--from day to day! Without money, without
+a friend who was an atom more to be relied on than she would have been
+herself if an acquaintance had needed her aid, her outwardly well-to-do
+and fashionable existence was a hand-to-hand fight. No wonder she had
+turned a still rather brilliant eye upon Sir Moses Monaldini, the great
+Israelite financier. All of these types passed rapidly before his mental
+vision as he talked to the American Temple Barholm. What could he want,
+by chance? He must want something, and it would be discreet to find out
+what it chanced to be.
+
+If it was social success, he would be better off in London, where in
+these days you could get a good run for your money and could swing
+yourself up from one rung of the ladder to another if you paid some
+one to show you how. He himself could show him how. A youngster who
+had lived the beastly hard life he had lived would be likely to find
+exhilaration in many things not difficult to purchase. It was an odd
+thing, by the way, the fancy he had taken to the little early-Victorian
+spinster. It was not quite natural. It perhaps denoted tendencies--or
+lack of tendencies--it would also be well to consider. Palliser was
+a sufficiently finished product himself to be struck greatly by the
+artistic perfection of Miss Alicia, and to wonder how much the new man
+understood it.
+
+He did not talk to him about schemes. He talked to him of New York,
+which he had never seen and hoped sometime shortly to visit. The
+information he gained was not of the kind he most desired, but it
+edified him. Tembarom's knowledge of high finance was a street lad's
+knowledge of it, and he himself knew its limitations and probable
+unreliability. Such of his facts as rested upon the foundation of
+experience did not include multimillionaires and their resources.
+
+Captain Palliser passed lightly to Temple Barholm and its neighborhood.
+He knew places and names, and had been to Detchworth more than once.
+He had never visited Temple Barholm, and his interest suggested that he
+would like to walk through the gardens. Tembarom took him out, and they
+strolled about for some time. Even an alert observer would not have
+suspected the fact that as they strolled, Tembarom slouching a trifle
+and with his hands in his pockets, Captain Palliser bearing himself with
+languid distinction, each man was summing up the other and considering
+seriously how far and in what manner he could be counted as an asset.
+
+"You haven't been to Detchworth yet?" Palliser inquired.
+
+"No, not yet," answered Tembarom. The Granthams were of those who had
+not yet called.
+
+"It's an agreeable house. The Granthams are agreeable people."
+
+"Are there any young people in the family?" Tembarom asked.
+
+"Young people? Male or female?" Palliser smilingly put it. Suddenly it
+occurred to him that this might give him a sort of lead.
+
+"Girls," said Tembarom, crudely--"just plain girls."
+
+Palliser laughed. Here it was, perhaps.
+
+"They are not exactly 'plain' girls, though they are not beauties.
+There are four Misses Grantham. Lucy is the prettiest. Amabel is quite
+tremendous at tennis."
+
+"Are they ladies?" inquired Tembarom.
+
+Captain Palliser turned and involuntarily stared at him. What was the
+fellow getting at?
+
+"I'm afraid I don't quite understand," he said.
+
+The new Temple Barholm looked quite serious. He did not, amazing to
+relate, look like a fool even when he gave forth his extraordinary
+question. It was his almost business-like seriousness which saved him.
+
+"I mean, do you call them Lady Lucy and Lady Amabel?" he answered.
+
+If he had been younger, less hardened, or less finished, Captain
+Palliser would have laughed outright. But he answered without
+self-revelation.
+
+"Oh, I see. You were asking whether the family is a titled one. No;
+it is a good old name, quite old, in fact, but no title goes with the
+estate."
+
+"Who are the titled people about here?" Tembarom asked, quite unabashed.
+
+"The Earl of Pevensy at Pevensy Park, the Duke of Stone at Stone Hover,
+Lord Hambrough at Doone. Doone is in the next county, just over the
+border."
+
+"Have they all got daughters?"
+
+Captain Palliser found it expedient to clear his throat before speaking.
+
+"Lord Pevensy has daughters, so has the duke. Lord Hambrough has three
+sons."
+
+"How many daughters are there--in a bunch?" Mr. Temple Barholm suggested
+liberally.
+
+There Captain Palliser felt it safe to allow himself to smile, as though
+taking it with a sense of humor.
+
+"'In a bunch' is an awfully good way of putting it," he said. "It
+happens to apply perhaps rather unfortunately well; both families are
+much poorer than they should be, and daughters must be provided for.
+Each has four. 'In a bunch' there are eight: Lady Alice, Lady Edith,
+Lady Ethel, and Lady Celia at Stone Hover; Lady Beatrice, Lady Gwynedd,
+Lady Honora, and Lady Gwendolen at Pevensy Park. And not a fortune among
+them, poor girls!"
+
+"It's not the money that matters so much," said the astounding
+foreigner, "it's the titles."
+
+Captain Palliser stopped short in the garden path for a moment. He could
+scarcely believe his ears. The crude grotesqueness of it so far got the
+better of him that if he had not coughed he would have betrayed himself.
+
+"I've had a confounded cold lately," he said. "Excuse me; I must get it
+over."
+
+He turned a little aside and coughed energetically.
+
+After watching him a few seconds Tembarom slipped two fingers into his
+waistcoat pocket and produced a small tube of tablets.
+
+"Take two of these," he said as soon as the cough stopped. "I always
+carry it about with me. It's a New York thing called 'G. Destroyer.' G
+stands for grippe."
+
+Palliser took it.
+
+"Thanks. With water? No? Just dissolve in the mouth. Thanks awfully."
+And he took two, with tears still standing in his eyes.
+
+"Don't taste bad, do they?" Mr. Temple Barholm remarked encouragingly.
+
+"Not at all. I think I shall be all right now. I just needed the relief.
+I have been trying to restrain it."
+
+"That's a mistake," said Tembarom. They strolled on a pace or so, and
+he began again, as though he did not mean to let the subject drop. "It's
+the titles," he said, "and the kind. How many of them are good-lookers?"
+
+Palliser reflected a moment, as though making mental choice.
+
+"Lady Alice and Lady Celia are rather plain," he said, "and both of them
+are invalidish. Lady Ethel is tall and has handsome eyes, but Lady Edith
+is really the beauty of the family. She rides and dances well and has a
+charming color."
+
+"And the other ones," Tembaron suggested as he paused--"Lady Beatrice
+and Lady Gwynedd and Lady Honora and Lady Gwendolen."
+
+"You remember their names well," Palliser remarked with a half-laugh.
+
+"Oh, I shall remember them all right," Tembarom answered. "I earned
+twenty-five per in New York by getting names down fine."
+
+"The Talchesters are really all rather taking. Talchester is Lord
+Pevensy's family name," Palliser explained. "They are girls who have
+pretty little noses and bright complexions and eyes. Lady Gwynedd and
+Lady Honora both have quite fascinating dimples."
+
+"Dimples!" exclaimed his companion. "Good business."
+
+"Do you like dimples particularly?" Palliser inquired with an impartial
+air.
+
+"I'd always make a bee-line for a dimple," replied Mr. Temple Barholm.
+"Clear the way when I start."
+
+This was New York phrasing, and was plainly humorous; but there was
+something more than humor in his eye and smile--something hinting
+distantly at recollection.
+
+"You'll find them at Pevensy Park," said Palliser.
+
+"What about Lady Joan Fayre?" was the next inquiry.
+
+Palliser's side glance at him was observant indeed. He asked himself how
+much the man could know. Taking the past into consideration, Lady Joan
+might turn out to be a subject requiring delicate handling. It was not
+the easiest thing in the world to talk at all freely to a person with
+whom one desired to keep on good terms, about a young woman supposed
+still to cherish a tragic passion for the dead man who ought to stand
+at the present moment in the person's, figuratively speaking, extremely
+ill-fitting shoes.
+
+"Lady Joan has been from her first season an undeniable beauty," he
+replied.
+
+"She and the old lady are going to stay at a place called Asshawe Holt.
+I think they're going next week," Tembarom said.
+
+"The old lady?" repeated Captain Palliser.
+
+"I mean her mother. The one that's the Countess of Mallowe."
+
+"Have you met Lady Mallowe?" Palliser inquired with a not wholly
+repressed smile. A vision of Lady Mallowe over-hearing their
+conversation arose before him.
+
+"No, I haven't. What's she like?"
+
+"She is not the early-or mid-Victorian old lady," was Palliser's reply.
+"She wears Gainsborough hats, and looks a quite possible eight and
+thirty. She is a handsome person herself."
+
+He was not aware that the term "old lady" was, among Americans of the
+class of Mrs. Bowse's boarders, a sort of generic term signifying almost
+anything maternal which had passed thirty.
+
+Tembarom proceeded.
+
+"After they get through at the Asshawe Holt place, I've asked them to
+come here."
+
+"Indeed," said Palliser, with an inward start. The man evidently did
+not know what other people did. After all, why should he? He had been
+selling something or other in the streets of New York when the thing
+happened, and he knew nothing of London.
+
+"The countess called on Miss Alicia when we were in London," he heard
+next. "She said we were relations."
+
+"You are--as we are. The connection is rather distant, but it is near
+enough to form a sort of link."
+
+"I've wanted to see Lady Joan," explained Tembarom. "From what I've
+heard, I should say she was one of the 'Lady's Pictorial' kind."
+
+"I am afraid--" Palliser's voice was slightly unsteady for the
+moment--"I have not studied the type sufficiently to know. The
+'Pictorial' is so exclusively a women's periodical."
+
+His companion laughed.
+
+"Well, I've only looked through it once myself just to find out. Some
+way I always think of Lady Joan as if she was like one of those Beaut's
+from Beautsville, with trains as long as parlor-cars and feathers
+in their heads--dressed to go to see the queen. I guess she's been
+presented at court," he added.
+
+"Yes, she has been presented."
+
+"Do they let 'em go more than once?" he asked with casual curiosity.
+
+"Confound this cough!" exclaimed Captain Palliser, and he broke forth
+again.
+
+"Take another G," said Tembarom, producing his tube. "Say, just take the
+bottle and keep it in your pocket."
+
+When the brief paroxysm was over and they moved on again, Palliser was
+looking an odd thing or so in the face. "I always think of Lady Joan"
+was one of them. "Always" seemed to go rather far. How often and why had
+he "always thought"? The fellow was incredible. Did his sharp, boyish
+face and his slouch conceal a colossal, vulgar, young ambition? There
+was not much concealment about it, Heaven knew. And as he so evidently
+was not aware of the facts, how would they affect him when he discovered
+them? And though Lady Mallowe was a woman not in the least distressed or
+hampered by shades of delicacy and scruple, she surely was astute
+enough to realize that even this bounder's dullness might be awakened
+to realize that there was more than a touch of obvious indecency in
+bringing the girl to the house of the man she had tragically loved, and
+manoeuvering to work her into it as the wife of the man who, monstrously
+unfit as he was, had taken his place. Captain Palliser knew well that
+the pressing of the relationship had meant only one thing. And how, in
+the name of the Furies! had she dragged Lady Joan into the scheme with
+her?
+
+It was as unbelievable as was the new Temple Barholm himself. And how
+unconcerned the fellow looked! Perhaps the man he had supplanted was no
+more to him than a scarcely remembered name, if he was as much as that.
+Then Tembarom, pacing slowly by his side, hands in pockets, eyes on the
+walk, spoke:
+
+"Did you ever see Jem Temple Barholm?" he asked.
+
+It was like a thunderbolt. He said it as though he were merely carrying
+his previous remarks on to their natural conclusion; but Palliser felt
+himself so suddenly unadjusted, so to speak, that he palpably hesitated.
+
+"Did you?" his companion repeated.
+
+"I knew him well," was the answer made as soon as readjustment was
+possible.
+
+"Remember just how he looked?"
+
+"Perfectly. He was a striking fellow. Women always said he had
+fascinating eyes."
+
+"Sort of slant downward on the outside corners--and black eyelashes
+sorter sweeping together?"
+
+Palliser turned with a movement of surprise.
+
+"How did you know? It was just that odd sort of thing."
+
+"Miss Alicia told me. And there's a picture in the gallery that's like
+him."
+
+Captain Palliser felt as embarrassed as Miss Alicia had felt, but it was
+for a different reason. She had felt awkward because she had feared she
+had touched on a delicate subject. Palliser was embarrassed because he
+was entirely thrown out of all his calculations. He felt for the moment
+that there was no calculating at all, no security in preparing paths.
+You never know where they would lead. Here had he been actually alarmed
+in secret! And the oaf stood before him undisturbedly opening up the
+subject himself.
+
+"For a fellow like that to lose a girl as he lost Lady Joan was pretty
+tough," the oaf said. "By gee! it was tough!"
+
+He knew it all--the whole thing, scandal, tragically broken marriage,
+everything. And knowing it, he was laying his Yankee plans for getting
+the girl to Temple Barholm to look her over. It was of a grossness
+one sometimes heard of in men of his kind, and yet it seemed in its
+casualness to out-leap any little scheme of the sort he had so far
+looked on at.
+
+"Lady Joan felt it immensely," he said.
+
+A footman was to be seen moving toward them, evidently bearing a
+message. Tea was served in the drawing-room, and he had come to announce
+the fact.
+
+They went back to the house, and Miss Alicia filled cups for them and
+presided over the splendid tray with a persuasive suggestion in the
+matter of hot or cold things which made it easy to lead up to any
+subject. She was the best of unobtrusive hostesses.
+
+
+Palliser talked of his visit at Detchworth, which had been shortened
+because he had gone to "fit in" and remain until a large but uncertain
+party turned up. It had turned up earlier than had been anticipated, and
+of course he could only delicately slip away.
+
+"I am sorry it has happened, however," he said, "not only because one
+does not wish to leave Detchworth, but because I shall miss Lady Mallowe
+and Lady Joan, who are to be at Asshawe Holt next week. I particularly
+wanted to see them."
+
+Miss Alicia glanced at Tembarom to see what he would do. He spoke before
+he could catch her glance.
+
+"Say," he suggested, "why don't you bring your grip over here and stay?
+I wish you would."
+
+"A grip means a Gladstone bag," Miss Alicia murmured in a rapid
+undertone.
+
+Palliser replied with appreciative courtesy. Things were going extremely
+well.
+
+"That's awfully kind of you," he answered. "I should like it
+tremendously. Nothing better. You are giving me a delightful
+opportunity. Thank you, thank you. If I may turn up on Thursday I shall
+be delighted."
+
+There was satisfaction in this at least in the observant gray eye when
+he went away.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+
+Dinner at Detchworth Grange was most amusing that evening. One of the
+chief reasons--in fact, it would not be too venturesome to say THE chief
+reason--for Captain Palliser's frequent presence in very good country
+houses was that he had a way of making things amusing. His relation of
+anecdotes, of people and things, was distinguished by a manner which
+subtly declined to range itself on the side of vulgar gossip. Quietly
+and with a fine casualness he conveyed the whole picture of the new
+order at Temple Barholm. He did it with wonderfully light touches, and
+yet the whole thing was to be seen--the little old maid in her exquisite
+clothes, her unmistakable stamp of timid good breeding, her protecting
+adoration combined with bewilderment; the long, lean, not altogether
+ill-looking New York bounder, with his slight slouch, his dangerously
+unsophisticated-looking face, and his American jocularity of slang
+phrase.
+
+"He's of a class I know nothing about. I own he puzzled me a trifle at
+first," Palliser said with his cool smile. "I'm not sure that I've 'got
+on to him' altogether yet. That's an expressive New York phrase of his
+own. But when we were strolling about together, he made revelations
+apparently without being in the least aware that they were revelations.
+He was unbelievable. My fear was that he would not go on."
+
+"But he did go on?" asked Amabel. "One must hear something of the
+revelations."
+
+Then was given in the best possible form the little drama of the talk in
+the garden. No shade of Mr. Temple Barholm's characteristics was lost.
+Palliser gave occasionally an English attempt at the reproduction of his
+nasal twang, but it was only a touch and not sufficiently persisted in
+to become undignified.
+
+"I can't do it," he said. "None of us can really do it. When English
+actors try it on the stage, it is not in the least the real thing. They
+only drawl through their noses, and it is more than that."
+
+The people of Detchworth Grange were not noisy people, but their
+laughter was unrestrained before the recital was finished. Nobody had
+gone so far as either to fear or to hope for anything as undiluted in
+its nature as this was.
+
+"Then he won't give us a chance, the least chance," cried Lucy and
+Amabel almost in unison. "We are out of the running."
+
+"You won't get even a look in--because you are not 'ladies,'" said their
+brother.
+
+"Poor Jem Temple Barholm! What a different thing it would have been if
+we had had him for a neighbor!" Mr. Grantham fretted.
+
+"We should have had Lady Joan Fayre as well," said his wife.
+
+"At least she's a gentlewoman as well as a 'lady,'" Mr. Grantham said.
+"She would not have become so bitter if that hideous thing had not
+occurred."
+
+They wondered if the new man knew anything about Jem. Palliser had not
+reached that part of his revelation when the laughter had broken into
+it. He told it forthwith, and the laughter was overcome by a sort of
+dismayed disgust. This did not accord with the rumors of an almost
+"nice" good nature.
+
+"There's a vulgar horridness about it," said Lucy.
+
+"What price Lady Mallowe!" said the son. "I'll bet a sovereign she began
+it."
+
+"She did," remarked Palliser; "but I think one may leave Mr. Temple
+Barholm safely to Lady Joan." Mr. Grantham laughed as one who knew
+something of Lady Joan.
+
+"There's an Americanism which I didn't learn from him," Palliser added,
+"and I remembered it when he was talking her over. It's this: when you
+dispose of a person finally and forever, you 'wipe up the earth with
+him.' Lady Joan will 'wipe up the earth' with your new neighbor."
+
+There was a little shout of laughter. "Wipe up the earth" was entirely
+new to everybody, though even the country in England was at this time by
+no means wholly ignorant of American slang.
+
+This led to so many other things both mirth-provoking and serious, even
+sometimes very serious indeed, that the entire evening at Detchworth was
+filled with talk of Temple Barholm. Very naturally the talk did not end
+by confining itself to one household. In due time Captain Palliser's
+little sketches were known in divers places, and it became a habit to
+discuss what had happened, and what might possibly happen in the future.
+There were those who went to the length of calling on the new man
+because they wanted to see him face to face. People heard new things
+every few days, but no one realized that it was vaguely through Palliser
+that there developed a general idea that, crude and self-revealing as
+he was, there lurked behind the outward candor of the intruder a hint of
+over-sharpness of the American kind. There seemed no necessity for
+him to lay schemes beyond those he had betrayed in his inquiries about
+"ladies," but somehow it became a fixed idea that he was capable of
+doing shady things if at any time the temptation arose. That was really
+what his boyish casualness meant. That in truth was Palliser's final
+secret conclusion. And he wanted very much to find out why exactly
+little old Miss Temple Barholm had been taken up. If the man wanted
+introductions, he could have contrived to pick up a smart and
+enterprising unprofessional chaperon in London who would have done for
+him what Miss Temple Barholm would never presume to attempt. And yet he
+seemed to have chosen her deliberately. He had set her literally at the
+head of his house. And Palliser, having heard a vague rumor that he had
+actually settled a decent income upon her, had made adroit inquiries and
+found it was true.
+
+It was. To arrange the matter had been one of his reasons for going to
+see Mr. Palford during their stay in London.
+
+"I wanted to fix you--fix you safe," he said when he told Miss Alicia
+about it. "I guess no one can take it away from you, whatever old thing
+happens."
+
+"What could happen, dear Mr. Temple Barholm?" said Miss Alicia in the
+midst of tears of gratitude and tremulous joy. "You are so young and
+strong and--everything! Don't even speak of such a thing in jest. What
+could happen?"
+
+"Anything can happen," he answered, "just anything. Happening's the one
+thing you can't bet on. If I was betting, I'd put my money on the thing
+I was sure couldn't happen. Look at this Temple Barholm song and dance!
+Look at T. T. as he was half strangling in the blizzard up at Harlem
+and thanking his stars little Munsberg didn't kick him out of his
+confectionery store less than a year ago! So long as I'm all right,
+you're all right. But I wanted you fixed, anyhow."
+
+He paused and looked at her questioningly for a moment. He wanted to
+say something and he was not sure he ought. His reverence for her little
+finenesses and reserves increased instead of wearing away. He was always
+finding out new things about her.
+
+"Say," he broke forth almost impetuously after his hesitation, "I wish
+you wouldn't call me Mr. Temple Barholm."
+
+"D-do you?" she fluttered. "But what could I call you?"
+
+"Well," he answered, reddening a shade or so, "I'd give a house and lot
+if you could just call me Tem."
+
+"But it would sound so unbecoming, so familiar," she protested.
+
+"That's just what I'm asking for," he said--"some one to be familiar
+with. I'm the familiar kind. That's what's the matter with me. I'd be
+familiar with Pearson, but he wouldn't let me. I'd frighten him half to
+death. He'd think that he wasn't doing his duty and earning his wages,
+and that somehow he'd get fired some day without a character."
+
+He drew nearer to her and coaxed.
+
+"Couldn't you do it?" he asked almost as though he were asking a favor
+of a girl. "Just Tem? I believe that would come easier to you than T. T.
+I get fonder and fonder of you every day, Miss Alicia, honest Injun. And
+I'd be so grateful to you if you'd just be that unbecomingly familiar."
+
+He looked honestly in earnest; and if he grew fonder and fonder of her,
+she without doubt had, in the face of everything, given her whole heart
+to him.
+
+"Might I call you Temple--to begin with?" she asked. "It touches me so
+to think of your asking me. I will begin at once. Thank you--Temple,"
+with a faint gasp. "I might try the other a little later."
+
+It was only a few evenings later that he told her about the flats in
+Harlem. He had sent to New York for a large bundle of newspapers, and
+when he opened them he read aloud an advertisement, and showed her a
+picture of a large building given up entirely to "flats."
+
+He had realized from the first that New York life had a singular
+attraction for her. The unrelieved dullness of her life--those few
+years of youth in which she had stifled vague longings for the joys
+experienced by other girls; the years of middle age spent in the
+dreary effort to be "submissive to the will of God," which, honestly
+translated, signified submission to the exactions and domestic tyrannies
+of "dear papa" and others like him--had left her with her capacities for
+pleasure as freshly sensitive as a child's. The smallest change in the
+routine of existence thrilled her with excitement. Tembarom's casual
+references to his strenuous boyhood caused her eyes to widen with
+eagerness to hear more. Having seen this, he found keen delight in
+telling her stories of New York life--stories of himself or of other
+lads who had been his companions. She would drop her work and gaze at
+him almost with bated breath. He was an excellent raconteur when he
+talked of the things he knew well. He had an unconscious habit of
+springing from his seat and acting his scenes as he depicted them,
+laughing and using street-boy phrasing:
+
+"It's just like a tale," Miss Alicia would breathe, enraptured as he
+jumped from one story to another. "It's exactly like a wonderful tale."
+
+She learned to know the New York streets when they blazed with heat,
+when they were hard with frozen snow, when they were sloppy with melting
+slush or bright with springtime sunshine and spring winds blowing, with
+pretty women hurrying about in beflowered spring hats and dresses and
+the exhilaration of the world-old springtime joy. She found herself
+hurrying with them. She sometimes hung with him and his companions on
+the railing outside dazzling restaurants where scores of gay people ate
+rich food in the sight of their boyish ravenousness. She darted in and
+out among horses and vehicles to find carriages after the theater or
+opera, where everybody was dressed dazzlingly and diamonds glittered.
+
+"Oh, how rich everybody must have seemed to you--how cruelly rich, poor
+little boy!"
+
+"They looked rich, right enough," he answered when she said it. "And
+there seemed a lot of good things to eat all corralled in a few places.
+And you wished you could be let loose inside. But I don't know as it
+seemed cruel. That was the way it was, you know, and you couldn't help
+it. And there were places where they'd give away some of what was left.
+I tell you, we were in luck then."
+
+There was some spirit in his telling it all--a spirit which had surely
+been with him through his hardest days, a spirit of young mirth in
+rags--which made her feel subconsciously that the whole experience had,
+after all, been somehow of the nature of life's high adventure. He had
+never been ill or heart-sick, and he laughed when he talked of it, as
+though the remembrance was not a recalling of disaster.
+
+"Clemmin' or no clemmin'. I wish I'd lived the loife tha's lived,"
+Tummas Hibblethwaite had said.
+
+Her amazement would indeed have been great if she had been told that she
+secretly shared his feeling.
+
+"It seems as if somehow you had never been dull," was her method of
+expressing it.
+
+"Dull! Holy cats! no," he grinned. "There wasn't any time for being
+anything. You just had to keep going."
+
+She became in time familiar with Mrs. Bowse's boarding-house and
+boarders. She knew Mrs. Peck and Mr. Jakes and the young lady from the
+notion counter (those wonderful shops!). Julius and Jem and the hall
+bedroom and the tilted chairs and cloud of smoke she saw so often that
+she felt at home with them.
+
+"Poor Mrs. Bowse," she said, "must have been a most respectable,
+motherly, hard-working creature. Really a nice person of her class." She
+could not quite visualize the "parlor," but it must have been warm and
+comfortable. And the pianola--a piano which you could play without even
+knowing your notes--What a clever invention! America seemed full of the
+most wonderfully clever things.
+
+Tembarom was actually uplifted in soul when he discovered that she laid
+transparent little plans for leading him into talk about New York. She
+wanted him to talk about it, and the Lord knows he wanted to talk
+about himself. He had been afraid at first. She might have hated it,
+as Palford did, and it would have hurt him somehow if she hadn't
+understood. But she did. Without quite realizing the fact, she was
+beginning to love it, to wish she had seen it. Her Somerset vicarage
+imagination did not allow of such leaps as would be implied by the
+daring wish that sometime she might see it.
+
+But Tembarom's imagination was more athletic.
+
+"Jinks! wouldn't it be fine to take her there! The lark in London
+wouldn't be ace high to it."
+
+The Hutchinsons were not New Yorkers, but they had been part of the
+atmosphere of Mrs. Bowse's. Mr. Hutchinson would of course be rather a
+forward and pushing man to be obliged to meet, but Little Ann! She
+did so like Little Ann! And the dear boy did so want, in his heart of
+hearts, to talk about her at times. She did not know whether, in the
+circumstances, she ought to encourage him; but he was so dear, and
+looked so much dearer when he even said "Little Ann," that she could not
+help occasionally leading him gently toward the subject.
+
+When he opened the newspapers and found the advertisements of the flats,
+she saw the engaging, half-awkward humorousness come into his eyes.
+
+"Here's one that would do all right," he said--"four rooms and a bath,
+eleventh floor, thirty-five dollars a month."
+
+He spread the newspaper on the table and rested on his elbow, gazing
+at it for a few minutes wholly absorbed. Then he looked up at her and
+smiled.
+
+"There's a plan of the rooms," he said. "Would you like to look at it?
+Shall I bring your chair up to the table while we go over it together?"
+
+He brought the chair, and side by side they went over it thoroughly.
+To Miss Alicia it had all the interest of a new kind of puzzle. He
+explained it in every detail. One of his secrets had been that on
+several days when Galton's manner had made him hopeful he had visited
+certain flat buildings and gone into their intricacies. He could
+therefore describe with color their resources--the janitor; the
+elevator; the dumb-waiters to carry up domestic supplies and carry down
+ashes and refuse; the refrigerator; the unlimited supply of hot and cold
+water, the heating plan; the astonishing little kitchen, with stationary
+wash-tubs; the telephone, if you could afford it,--all the conveniences
+which to Miss Alicia, accustomed to the habits of Rowcroft Vicarage,
+where you lugged cans of water up-stairs and down if you took a bath or
+even washed your face; seemed luxuries appertaining only to the rich and
+great.
+
+"How convenient! How wonderful! Dear me! Dear me!" she said again and
+again, quite flushed with excitement. "It is like a fairy-story. And
+it's not big at all, is it?"
+
+"You could get most of it into this," he answered, exulting. "You could
+get all of it into that big white-and gold parlor."
+
+"The white saloon?"
+
+He showed his teeth.
+
+"I guess I ought to remember to call it that," he said, "but it always
+makes me think of Kid MacMurphy's on Fourth Avenue. He kept what was
+called a saloon, and he'd had it painted white."
+
+"Did you know him?" Miss Alicia asked.
+
+"Know him! Gee! no! I didn't fly as high as that. He'd have thought me
+pretty fresh if I'd acted like I knew him. He thought he was one of the
+Four Hundred. He'd been a prize-fighter. He was the fellow that knocked
+out Kid Wilkens in four rounds." He broke off and laughed at himself.
+"Hear me talk to you about a tough like that!" he ended, and he gave her
+hand the little apologetic, protective pat which always made her heart
+beat because it was so "nice."
+
+He drew her back to the advertisements, and drew such interesting
+pictures of what the lives of two people--mother and son or father
+and daughter or a young married couple who didn't want to put on
+style--might be in the tiny compartments, that their excitement mounted
+again.
+
+This could be a bedroom, that could be a bedroom, that could be the
+living-room, and if you put a bit of bright carpet on the hallway and
+hung up a picture or so, it would look first-rate. He even went into
+the matter of measurements, which made it more like putting a puzzle
+together than ever, and their relief when they found they could fit
+a piece of furniture he called "a lounge" into a certain corner was a
+thing of flushing delight. The "lounge," she found, was a sort of cot
+with springs. You could buy them for three dollars, and when you put on
+a mattress and covered it with a "spread," you could sit on it in the
+daytime and sleep on it at night, if you had to.
+
+From measurements he went into calculations about the cost of things.
+He had seen unpainted wooden tables you could put mahogany stain on, and
+they'd look all you'd want. He'd seen a splendid little rocking-chair in
+Second Avenue for five dollars, one of the padded kind that ladies
+like. He had seen an arm-chair for a man that was only seven; but there
+mightn't be room for both, and you'd have to have the rocking-chair. He
+had once asked the price of a lot of plates and cups and saucers with
+roses on them, and you could get them for six; and you didn't need a
+stove because there was the range.
+
+He had once heard Little Ann talking to Mrs. Bowse about the price of
+frying-pans and kettles, and they seemed to cost next to nothing.
+He'd looked into store windows and noticed the prices of groceries
+and vegetables and things like that--sugar, for instance; two people
+wouldn't use much sugar in a week--and they wouldn't need a ton of tea
+or flour or coffee. If a fellow had a mother or sister or wife who had
+a head and knew about things, you could "put it over" on mighty little,
+and have a splendid time together, too. You'd even be able to work in a
+cheap seat in a theater every now and then. He laughed and flushed as he
+thought of it.
+
+Miss Alicia had never had a doll's house. Rowcroft Vicarage did not run
+to dolls and their belongings. Her thwarted longing for a doll's house
+had a sort of parallel in her similarly thwarted longing for "a little
+boy."
+
+And here was her doll's house so long, so long unpossessed! It was like
+that, this absorbed contriving and fitting of furniture into corners.
+She also flushed and laughed. Her eyes were so brightly eager and her
+cheeks so pink that she looked quite girlish under her lace cap.
+
+"How pretty and cozy it might be made, how dear!" she exclaimed. "And
+one would be so high up on the eleventh floor, that one would feel like
+a bird in a nest."
+
+His face lighted. He seemed to like the idea tremendously.
+
+"Why, that's so," he laughed. "That idea suits me down to the ground.
+A bird in a nest. But there'd have to be two. One would be lonely. Say,
+Miss Alicia, how would you like to live in a place like that?"
+
+"I am sure any one would like it--if they had some dear relative with
+them."
+
+He loved her "dear relative," loved it. He knew how much it meant of
+what had lain hidden unacknowledged, even unknown to her, through a
+lifetime in her early-Victorian spinster breast.
+
+"Let's go to New York and rent one and live in it together. Would you
+come?" he said, and though he laughed, he was not jocular in the usual
+way. "Would you, if we waked up and found this Temple Barholm thing was
+a dream?"
+
+Something in his manner, she did not know what, puzzled her a little.
+
+"But if it were a dream, you would be quite poor again," she said,
+smiling.
+
+"No, I wouldn't. I'd get Galton to give me back the page. He'd do it
+quick--quick," he said, still with a laugh. "Being poor's nothing,
+anyhow. We'd have the time of our lives. We'd be two birds in a nest.
+You can look out those eleventh-story windows 'way over to the Bronx,
+and get bits of the river. And perhaps after a while Ann would do like
+she said, and we'd be three birds."
+
+"Oh!" she sighed ecstatically. "How beautiful it would be! We should be
+a little family!"
+
+"So we should," he exulted. "Think of T. T. with a family!" He drew his
+paper of calculations toward him again. "Let's make believe we're going
+to do it, and work out what it would cost--for three. You know about
+housekeeping, don't you? Let's write down a list."
+
+If he had warmed to his work before, he warmed still more after this.
+Miss Alicia was drawn into it again, and followed his fanciful plans
+with a new fervor. They were like two children who had played at
+make-believe until they had lost sight of commonplace realities.
+
+Miss Alicia had lived among small economies and could be of great
+assistance to him. They made lists and added up lines of figures until
+the fine, huge room and its thousands of volumes melted away. In the
+great hall, guarded by warriors in armor, the powdered heads of the
+waiting footmen drooped and nodded while the prices of pounds of butter
+and sugar and the value of potatoes and flour and nutmegs were balanced
+with a hectic joy, and the relative significance of dollars and cents
+and shillings and half-crowns and five-cent pieces caused Miss Alicia a
+mild delirium.
+
+By the time that she had established the facts that a shilling was
+something like twenty-five cents, a dollar was four and twopence,
+and twenty-five dollars was something over five pounds, it was past
+midnight.
+
+They heard the clock strike the half-hour, and stopped to stare at each
+other.
+
+Tembarom got up with yet another laugh.
+
+"Say, I mustn't keep you up all night," he said. "But haven't we had a
+fine time--haven't we? I feel as if I'd been there."
+
+They had been there so entirely that Miss Alicia brought herself back
+with difficulty.
+
+"I can scarcely believe that we have not," she said. "I feel as if I
+didn't like to leave it. It was so delightful." She glanced about her.
+"The room looks huge," she said--"almost too huge to live in."
+
+"Doesn't it?" he answered. "Now you know how I feel." He gathered his
+scraps of paper together with a feeling touch. "I didn't want to come
+back myself. When I get a bit of a grouch I shall jerk these out and go
+back there again."
+
+"Oh, do let me go with you!" she said. "I have so enjoyed it."
+
+"You shall go whenever you like," he said. "We'll keep it up for a sort
+of game on rainy days. How much is a dollar, Miss Alicia?"
+
+"Four and twopence. And sugar is six cents a pound."
+
+"Go to the head," he answered. "Right again."
+
+The opened roll of newspapers was lying on the table near her. They were
+copies of The Earth, and the date of one of them by merest chance caught
+her eye.
+
+"How odd!" she said. "Those are old papers. Did you notice? Is it a
+mistake? This one is dated" She leaned forward, and her eye caught a
+word in a head-line.
+
+"The Klondike," she read. "There's something in it about the Klondike."
+He put his hand out and drew the papers away.
+
+"Don't you read that," he said. "I don't want you to go to bed and dream
+about the Klondike. You've got to dream about the flat in Harlem."
+
+"Yes," she answered. "I mustn't think about sad things. The flat in
+Harlem is quite happy. But it startled me to see that word."
+
+"I only sent for them--because I happened to want to look something up,"
+he explained. "How much is a pound, Miss Alicia?"
+
+"Four dollars and eighty-six cents," she replied, recovering herself.
+
+"Go up head again. You're going to stay there."
+
+When she gave him her hand on their parting for the night he held it a
+moment. A subtle combination of things made him do it. The calculations,
+the measurements, the nest from which one could look out over the Bronx,
+were prevailing elements in its make-up. Ann had been in each room of
+the Harlem flat, and she always vaguely reminded him of Ann.
+
+"We are relations, ain't we?" he asked.
+
+"I am sure we often seem quite near relations--Temple." She added the
+name with very pretty kindness.
+
+"We're not distant ones any more, anyhow," he said. "Are we near
+enough--would you let me kiss you good night, Miss Alicia?"
+
+An emotional flush ran up to her cap ribbons.
+
+"Indeed, my dear boy--indeed, yes."
+
+Holding her hand with a chivalric, if slightly awkward, courtesy, he
+bent, and kissed her cheek. It was a hearty, affectionately grateful
+young kiss, which, while it was for herself, remotely included Ann.
+
+"It's the first time I've ever said good night to any one like that," he
+said. "Thank you for letting me."
+
+He patted her hand again before releasing it. She went up-stairs
+blushing and feeling rather as though she had been proposed to, and yet,
+spinster though she was, somehow quite understanding about the nest and
+Ann.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+
+Lady Mallowe and her daughter did not pay their visit to Asshawe Holt,
+the absolute, though not openly referred to, fact being that they had
+not been invited. The visit in question had merely floated in the air as
+a delicate suggestion made by her ladyship in her letter to Mrs. Asshe
+Shaw, to the effect that she and Joan were going to stay at Temple
+Barholm, the visit to Asshawe they had partly arranged some time ago
+might now be fitted in.
+
+The partial arrangement itself, Mrs. Asshe Shaw remarked to her eldest
+daughter when she received the suggesting note, was so partial as to
+require slight consideration, since it had been made "by the woman
+herself, who would push herself and her daughter into any house in
+England if a back door were left open." In the civilly phrased letter
+she received in answer to her own, Lady Mallowe read between the lines
+the point of view taken, and writhed secretly, as she had been made to
+writhe scores of times in the course of her career. It had happened so
+often, indeed, that it might have been imagined that she had become used
+to it; but the woman who acted as maid to herself and Joan always knew
+when "she had tried to get in somewhere" and failed.
+
+The note of explanation sent immediately to Miss Alicia was at once
+adroit and amiable. They had unfortunately been detained in London a day
+or two past the date fixed for their visit to Asshawe, and Lady
+Mallowe would not allow Mrs. Asshe Shawe, who had so many guests, to
+be inconvenienced by their arriving late and perhaps disarranging her
+plans. So if it was quite convenient, they would come to Temple
+Barholm a week earlier; but not, of course, if that would be the least
+upsetting.
+
+When they arrived, Tembarom himself was in London. He had suddenly found
+he was obliged to go. The business which called him was something which
+could not be put off. He expected to return at once. It was made very
+easy for him when he made his excuses to Palliser, who suggested that
+he might even find himself returning by the same train with his guests,
+which would give him opportunities. If he was detained, Miss Alicia
+could take charge of the situation. They would quite understand when she
+explained. Captain Palliser foresaw for himself some quiet entertainment
+in his own meeting with the visitors. Lady Mallowe always provided a
+certain order of amusement for him, and no man alive objected to finding
+interest and even a certain excitement in the society of Lady Joan. It
+was her chief characteristic that she inspired in a man a vague, even if
+slightly irritated, desire to please her in some degree. To lead her
+on to talk in her sometimes brilliant, always heartlessly unsparing,
+fashion, perhaps to smile her shade of a bitter smile, gave a man
+something to do, especially if he was bored. Palliser anticipated a
+possible chance of repeating the dialogue of "the ladies," not, however,
+going into the Jem Temple Barholm part of it. When one finds a man whose
+idle life has generated in him the curiosity which is usually called
+feminine, it frequently occupies him more actively than he is aware or
+will admit.
+
+A fashionable male gossip is a curious development. Palliser was, upon
+the whole, not aware that he had an intense interest in finding out the
+exact reason why Lady Mallowe had not failed utterly in any attempt to
+drag her daughter to this particular place, to be flung headlong, so
+to speak, at this special man. Lady Mallowe one could run and read, but
+Lady Joan was in this instance unexplainable. And as she never deigned
+the slightest concealment, the story of the dialogue would no doubt
+cause her to show her hand. She must have a hand, and it must be one
+worth seeing.
+
+It was not he, however, who could either guess or understand. The
+following would have been his summing up of her: "Flaringly handsome
+girl, brought up by her mother to one end. Bad temper to begin with.
+Girl who might, if she lost her head, get into some frightful mess.
+Meets a fascinating devil in the first season. A regular Romeo and
+Juliet passion blazes up--all for love and the world well lost. All
+London looking on. Lady Mallowe frantic and furious. Suddenly the
+fascinating devil ruined for life, done for. Bolts, gets killed. Lady
+Mallowe triumphant. Girl dragged about afterward like a beautiful young
+demon in chains. Refuses all sorts of things. Behaves infernally. Nobody
+knows anything else."
+
+Nobody did know; Lady Mallowe herself did not. From the first year in
+which Joan had looked at her with child consciousness she had felt
+that there was antagonism in the deeps of her eyes. No mother likes to
+recognize such a thing, and Lady Mallowe was a particularly vain woman.
+The child was going to be an undeniable beauty, and she ought to adore
+the mother who was to arrange her future. Instead of which, she plainly
+disliked her. By the time she was three years old, the antagonism had
+become defiance and rebellion. Lady Mallowe could not even indulge
+herself in the satisfaction of showing her embryo beauty off, and thus
+preparing a reputation for her. She was not cross or tearful, but she
+had the temper of a little devil. She would not be shown off. She hated
+it, and her bearing dangerously suggested that she hated her handsome
+young mother. No effects could be produced with her.
+
+Before she was four the antagonism was mutual, and it increased with
+years. The child was of a passionate nature, and had been born intensely
+all her mother was not, and intensely not all her mother was. A
+throw-back to some high-spirited and fiercely honest ancestor created in
+her a fury at the sight of mean falsities and dishonors. Before she was
+old enough to know the exact cause of her rage she was shaken by it. She
+thought she had a bad temper, and was bad enough to hate her own mother
+without being able to help it. As she grew older she found out that
+she was not really so bad as she had thought, though she was obliged to
+concede that nothing palliative could be said about the temper. It had
+been violent from the first, and she had lived in an atmosphere which
+infuriated it. She did not suppose such a thing could be controlled.
+It sometimes frightened her. Had not the old Marquis of Norborough
+been celebrated through his entire life for his furies? Was there not a
+hushed-up rumor that he had once thrown a decanter at his wife, and so
+nearly killed her that people had been asking one another in whispers if
+a peer of the realm could be hanged. He had been born that way, so had
+she. Her school-room days had been a horror to her, and also a terror,
+because she had often almost flung ink-bottles and heavy rulers at her
+silly, lying governesses, and once had dug a pair of scissors into one
+sneaking old maid fool's arm when she had made her "see red" by her
+ignoble trickeries. Perhaps she would be hanged some day herself. She
+once prayed for a week that she might be made better tempered,--not that
+she believed in prayer,--and of course nothing came of it.
+
+Every year she lived she raged more furiously at the tricks she saw
+played by her mother and every one who surrounded her; the very servants
+were greater liars and pilferers than any other servants. Her mother was
+always trying to get things from people which they did not want to give
+her. She would carry off slights and snubs as though they were actual
+tributes, if she could gain her end. The girl knew what the meaning of
+her own future would be. Since she definitely disliked her daughter,
+Lady Mallowe did not mince matters when they were alone. She had no
+money, she was extremely good looking, she had a certain number of years
+in which to fight for her own hand among the new debutantes who were
+presented every season. Her first season over, the next season other
+girls would be fresher than she was, and newer to the men who were worth
+marrying. Men like novelty. After her second season the debutantes would
+seem fresher still by contrast. Then people would begin to say, "She
+was presented four or five years ago." After that it would be all
+struggle,--every season it would be worse. It would become awful.
+Unmarried women over thirty-five would speak of her as though they had
+been in the nursery together. Married girls with a child or so would
+treat her as though she were a maiden aunt. She knew what was before
+her. Beggary stared them both in the face if she did not make the most
+of her looks and waste no time. And Joan knew it was all true, and that
+worse, far worse things were true also. She would be obliged to spend
+a long life with her mother in cheap lodgings, a faded, penniless,
+unmarried woman, railed at, taunted, sneered at, forced to be part of
+humiliating tricks played to enable them to get into debt and then to
+avoid paying what they owed. Had she not seen one horrible old woman of
+their own rank who was an example of what poverty might bring one to,
+an old harpy who tried to queen it over her landlady in an actual back
+street, and was by turns fawned upon and disgustingly "your ladyshiped"
+or outrageously insulted by her landlady?
+
+Then that first season! Dear, dear God! that first season when she met
+Jem! She was not nineteen, and the facile world pretended to be at her
+feet, and the sun shone as though London were in Italy, and the park was
+marvelous with flowers, and there were such dances and such laughter!
+
+And it was all so young--and she met Jem! It was at a garden-party at
+a lovely old house on the river, a place with celebrated gardens which
+would always come back to her memory as a riot of roses. The frocks of
+the people on the lawn looked as though they were made of the petals of
+flowers, and a mad little haunting waltz was being played by the band,
+and there under a great copper birch on the green velvet turf near her
+stood Jem, looking at her with dark, liquid, slanting eyes! They were
+only a few feet from each other,--and he looked, and she looked, and the
+haunting, mad little waltz played on, and it was as though they had been
+standing there since the world began, and nothing else was true.
+
+Afterward nothing mattered to either of them. Lady Mallowe herself
+ceased to count. Now and then the world stops for two people in this
+unearthly fashion. At such times, as far as such a pair are concerned,
+causes and effects cease. Her bad temper fled, and she knew she would
+never feel its furious lash again.
+
+With Jem looking at her with his glowing, drooping eyes, there would be
+no reason for rage and shame. She confessed the temper to him and told
+of her terror of it; he confessed to her his fondness for high play, and
+they held each other's hands, not with sentimental youthful lightness,
+but with the strong clasp of sworn comrades, and promised on honor that
+they would stand by each other every hour of their lives against their
+worst selves.
+
+They would have kept the pact. Neither was a slight or dishonest
+creature. The phase of life through which they passed is not a new
+one, but it is not often so nearly an omnipotent power as was their
+three-months' dream.
+
+It lasted only that length of time. Then came the end of the world. Joan
+did not look fresh in her second season, and before it was over men were
+rather afraid of her. Because she was so young the freshness returned to
+her cheek, but it never came back to her eyes.
+
+What exactly had happened, or what she thought, it was impossible to
+know. She had delicate, black brows, and between them appeared two
+delicate, fierce lines. Her eyes were of a purplish-gray, "the color of
+thunder," a snubbed admirer had once said. Between their black lashes
+they were more deeply thunder-colored. Her life with her mother was a
+thing not to be spoken of. To the desperate girl's agony of rebellion
+against the horror of fate Lady Mallowe's taunts and beratings were
+devilish. There was a certain boudoir in the house in Hill Street which
+was to Joan like the question chamber of the Inquisition. Shut up in it
+together, the two went through scenes which in their cruelty would have
+done credit to the Middle Ages. Lady Mallowe always locked the door to
+prevent the unexpected entrance of a servant, but servants managed to
+hover about it, because her ladyship frequently forgot caution so far as
+to raise her voice at times, as ladies are not supposed to do.
+
+"We fight," Joan said with a short, horrible laugh one morning--"we
+fight like cats and dogs. No, like two cats. A cat-and-dog fight is more
+quickly over. Some day we shall scratch each other's eyes out."
+
+"Have you no shame?" her mother cried.
+
+"I am burning with it. I am like St. Lawrence on his gridiron. 'Turn me
+over on the other side,'" she quoted.
+
+This was when she had behaved so abominably to the Duke of Merthshire
+that he had actually withdrawn his more than half-finished proposal.
+That which she hated more than all else was the God she had prayed to
+when she asked she might be helped to control her temper.
+
+She had not believed in Him at the time, but because she was frightened
+after she had stuck the scissors into Fraulein she had tried the appeal
+as an experiment. The night after she met Jem, when she went to her
+room in Hill Street for the night, she knelt down and prayed because she
+suddenly did believe. Since there was Jem in the world, there must be
+the other somewhere.
+
+As day followed day, her faith grew with her love. She told Jem about
+it, and they agreed to say a prayer together at the same hour every
+night. The big young man thought her piety beautiful, and, his voice was
+unsteady as they talked. But she told him that she was not pious, but
+impious.
+
+"I want to be made good," she said. "I have been bad all my life. I was
+a bad child, I have been a bad girl; but now I must be good."
+
+On the night after the tragic card-party she went to her room and
+kneeled down in a new spirit. She knelt, but not to cover her face, she
+knelt with throat strained and her fierce young face thrown back and
+upward.
+
+Her hands were clenched to fists and flung out and shaken at the
+ceiling. She said things so awful that her own blood shuddered as she
+uttered them. But she could not--in her mad helplessness--make them
+awful enough. She flung herself on the carpet at last, her arms
+outstretched like a creature crucified face downward on the cross.
+
+"I believed in You!" she gasped. "The first moment you gave me a reason
+I believed. I did! I did! We both said our prayer to You every night,
+like children. And you've done this--this--this!" And she beat with her
+fists upon the floor.
+
+Several years had passed since that night, and no living being knew what
+she carried in her soul. If she had a soul, she said to herself, it was
+black--black. But she had none. Neither had Jem had one; when the earth
+and stones had fallen upon him it had been the end, as it would have
+been if he had been a beetle.
+
+This was the guest who was coming to the house where Miles Hugo smiled
+from his frame in the picture-gallery--the house which would to-day have
+been Jem's if T. Tembarom had not inherited it.
+
+Tembarom returned some twenty-four hours after Miss Alicia had received
+his visitors for him. He had been "going into" absorbing things in
+London. His thoughts during his northward journey were puzzled and
+discouraged ones. He sat in the corner of the railway carriage and
+stared out of the window without seeing the springtime changes in the
+flying landscape.
+
+The price he would have given for a talk with Ann would not have been
+easy to compute. Her head, her level little head, and her way of seeing
+into things and picking out facts without being rattled by what didn't
+really count, would have been worth anything. The day itself was a
+discouraging one, with heavy threatenings of rain which did not fall.
+
+The low clouds were piles of dark-purple gray, and when the sun tried
+to send lances of ominous yellow light through them, strange and lurid
+effects were produced, and the heavy purple-gray masses rolled together
+again. He wondered why he did not hear low rumblings of thunder.
+
+He went to his room at once when he reached home. He was late, and
+Pearson told him that the ladies were dressing for dinner. Pearson was
+in waiting with everything in readiness for the rapid performance of his
+duties. Tembarom had learned to allow himself to be waited upon. He
+had, in fact, done this for the satisfying of Pearson, whose respectful
+unhappiness would otherwise have been manifest despite his efforts
+to conceal it. He dressed quickly and asked some questions about
+Strangeways. Otherwise Pearson thought he seemed preoccupied. He only
+made one slight joke.
+
+"You'd be a first-rate dresser for a quick-change artist, Pearson," he
+remarked.
+
+On his way to the drawing-room he deflected from the direct path,
+turning aside for a moment to the picture-gallery because for a reason
+of his own he wanted to take a look at Miles Hugo. He took a look at
+Miles Hugo oftener than Miss Alicia knew.
+
+The gallery was dim and gloomy enough, now closing in in the purple-gray
+twilight. He walked through it without glancing at the pictures until
+he came to the tall boy in the satin and lace of Charles II period.
+He paused there only for a short time, but he stood quite near the
+portrait, and looked hard at the handsome face.
+
+"Gee!" he exclaimed under his breath, "it's queer, gee!"
+
+Then he turned suddenly round toward one of the big windows. He turned
+because he had been startled by a sound, a movement. Some one was
+standing before the window. For a second's space the figure seemed
+as though it was almost one with the purple-gray clouds that were its
+background. It was a tall young woman, and her dress was of a thin
+material of exactly their color--dark-gray and purple at once. The
+wearer held her head high and haughtily. She had a beautiful, stormy
+face, and the slender, black brows were drawn together by a frown.
+Tembarom had never seen a girl as handsome and disdainful. He had,
+indeed, never been looked at as she looked at him when she moved
+slightly forward.
+
+He knew who it was. It was the Lady Joan girl, and the sudden sight of
+her momentarily "rattled" him.
+
+"You quite gave me a jolt," he said awkwardly, and knowing that he said
+it like a "mutt." "I didn't know any one was in the gallery."
+
+"What are you doing here?" she asked. She spoke to him as though she
+were addressing an intruding servant. There was emphasis on the word
+"you."
+
+Her intention was so evident that it increased his feeling of being
+"rattled." To find himself confronting deliberate ill nature of a
+superior and finished kind was like being spoken to in a foreign
+language.
+
+"I--I'm T. Tembarom." he answered, not able to keep himself from staring
+because she was such a "winner" as to looks.
+
+"T. Tembarom?" she repeated slowly, and her tone made him at once see
+what a fool he had been to say it.
+
+"I forgot," he half laughed. "I ought to have said I'm Temple Barholm."
+
+"Oh!" was her sole comment. She actually stood still and looked him up
+and down.
+
+She knew perfectly well who he was, and she knew perfectly well that no
+palliative view could possibly be taken by any well-bred person of her
+bearing toward him. He was her host. She had come, a guest, to his house
+to eat his bread and salt, and the commonest decency demanded that she
+should conduct herself with civility. But she cared nothing for the
+commonest, or the most uncommon, decency. She was thinking of other
+things. As she had stood before the window she had felt that her soul
+had never been so black as it was when she turned away from Miles Hugo's
+portrait--never, never. She wanted to hurt people. Perhaps Nero had felt
+as she did and was not so hideous as he seemed.
+
+The man's tailor had put him into proper clothes, and his features were
+respectable enough, but nothing on earth could make him anything but
+what he so palpably was. She had seen that much across the gallery as
+she had watched him staring at Miles Hugo.
+
+"I should think," she said, dropping the words slowly again, "that you
+would often forget that you are Temple Barholm."
+
+"You're right there," he answered. "I can't nail myself down to it. It
+seems like a sort of joke."
+
+She looked him over again.
+
+"It is a joke," she said.
+
+It was as though she had slapped him in the face, though she said it so
+quietly. He knew he had received the slap, and that, as it was a woman,
+he could not slap back. It was a sort of surprise to her that he did not
+giggle nervously and turn red and shuffle his feet in impotent misery.
+He kept quite still a moment or so and looked at her, though not as she
+had looked at him. She wondered if he was so thick-skinned that he did
+not feel anything at all.
+
+"That's so," he admitted. "That's so." Then he actually smiled at her.
+"I don't know how to behave myself, you see," he said. "You're Lady
+Joan Fayre, ain't you? I'm mighty glad to see you. Happy to make your
+acquaintance, Lady Joan."
+
+He took her hand and shook it with friendly vigor before she knew what
+he was going to do.
+
+"I'll bet a dollar dinner's ready," he added, "and Burrill's waiting.
+It scares me to death to keep Burrill waiting. He's got no use for me,
+anyhow. Let's go and pacify him."
+
+He did not lead the way or drag her by the arm, as it seemed to her
+quite probable that he might, as costermongers do on Hampstead Heath.
+He knew enough to let her pass first through the door; and when Lady
+Mallowe looked up to see her enter the drawing-room, he was behind
+her. To her ladyship's amazement and relief, they came in, so to speak,
+together. She had been spared the trying moment of assisting at the
+ceremony of their presentation to each other.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+
+In a certain sense she had been dragged to the place by her mother. Lady
+Mallowe had many resources, and above all she knew how to weary her into
+resistlessness which was almost indifference. There had been several
+shameless little scenes in the locked boudoir. But though she had been
+dragged, she had come with an intention. She knew what she would find
+herself being forced to submit to if the intruder were not disposed of
+at the outset, and if the manoeuvering began which would bring him to
+London. He would appear at her elbow here and there and at every corner,
+probably unaware that he was being made an offensive puppet by the
+astute cleverness against which she could not defend herself, unless
+she made actual scenes in drawing-rooms, at dinner-tables, in the very
+streets themselves. Gifted as Lady Mallowe was in fine and light-handed
+dealing of her cards in any game, her stakes at this special juncture
+were seriously high. Joan knew what they were, and that she was in a
+mood touched with desperation. The defenselessly new and ignorant Temple
+Barholm was to her mind a direct intervention of Providence, and it was
+only Joan herself who could rob her of the benefits and reliefs he could
+provide. With regard to Lady Joan, though Palliser's quoted New Yorkism,
+"wipe up the earth," was unknown to her, the process she had in mind
+when she left London for Lancashire would have been well covered by it.
+As in feudal days she might have ordered the right hand of a creature
+such as this to be struck off, forgetting that he was a man, so was she
+capable to-day of inflicting upon him any hurt which might sweep him out
+of her way. She had not been a tender-hearted girl, and in these years
+she was absolutely callous. The fellow being what he was, she had not
+the resources she might have called upon if he had been a gentleman.
+He would not understand the chills and slights of good manners. In
+the country he would be easier to manage than in town, especially if
+attacked in his first timidity before his new grandeurs. His big house
+no doubt frightened him, his servants, the people who were of a class
+of which he knew nothing. When Palliser told his story she saw new
+openings. He would stand in servile awe of her and of others like her.
+He would be afraid of her, to begin with, and she could make him more
+so.
+
+But though she had come to alarm him so that he would be put to absolute
+flight, she had also come for another reason. She had never seen Temple
+Barholm, and she had discovered before they had known each other a week
+that it was Jem's secret passion. He had loved it with a slighted and
+lonely child's romantic longing; he had dreamed of it as boy and man,
+knowing that it must some time be his own, his home, and yet prevented
+by his uncle's attitude toward him from daring to act as though he
+remembered the fact. Old Mr. Temple Barholm's special humor had been
+that of a man guarding against presumption.
+
+Jem had not intended to presume, but he had been snubbed with relentless
+cruelty even for boyish expressions of admiration. And he had hid his
+feeling in his heart until he poured it out to Joan. To-day it would
+have been his. Together, together, they would have lived in it and loved
+every stone of it, every leaf on every great tree, every wild daffodil
+nodding in the green grass. Most people, God be thanked! can forget. The
+wise ones train themselves beyond all else to forgetting.
+
+Joan had been a luckless, ill-brought-up, passionate child and girl. In
+her Mayfair nursery she had been as little trained as a young savage.
+Since her black hour she had forgotten nothing, allowed herself no
+palliating moments. Her brief dream of young joy had been the one
+real thing in her life. She absolutely had lain awake at night and
+reconstructed the horror of Jem's death, had lived it over again,
+writhing in agony on her bed, and madly feeling that by so doing she was
+holding her love close to her life.
+
+And the man who stood in the place Jem had longed for, the man who sat
+at the head of his table, was this "thing!" That was what she felt him
+to be, and every hurt she could do him, every humiliation which should
+write large before him his presumption and grotesque unfitness, would be
+a blow struck for Jem, who could never strike a blow for himself again.
+It was all senseless, but she had not want to reason. Fate had not
+reasoned in her behalf. She watched Tembarom under her lids at the
+dinner-table.
+
+He had not wriggled or shuffled when she spoke to him in the gallery; he
+did neither now, and made no obvious efforts to seem unembarrassed.
+He used his knife and fork in odd ways, and he was plainly not used to
+being waited upon. More than once she saw the servants restrain smiles.
+She addressed no remarks to him herself, and answered with chill
+indifference such things as he said to her. If conversation had flagged
+between him and Mr. Palford because the solicitor did not know how
+to talk to him, it did not even reach the point of flagging with her,
+because she would not talk and did not allow it to begin. Lady Mallowe,
+sick with annoyance, was quite brilliant. She drew out Miss Alicia by
+detailed reminiscences of a visit paid to Rowlton Hall years before.
+The vicar had dined at the hall while she had been there. She remembered
+perfectly his charm of manner and powerful originality of mind, she said
+sweetly. He had spoken with such affection of his "little Alicia," who
+was such a help to him in his parish work.
+
+"I thought he was speaking of a little girl at first," she said
+smilingly, "but it soon revealed itself that 'little Alicia' was only
+his caressing diminutive."
+
+A certain widening of Miss Alicia's fascinated eye, which could not
+remove itself from her face, caused her to quail slightly.
+
+"He was of course a man of great force of character and--and
+expression," she added. "I remember thinking at the time that his
+eloquent frankness of phrase might perhaps seem even severe to frivolous
+creatures like myself. A really remarkable personality."
+
+"His sermons," faltered Miss Alicia, as a refuge, "were indeed
+remarkable. I am sure he must greatly have enjoyed his conversations
+with you. I am afraid there were very few clever women in the
+neighborhood of Rowlton."
+
+Casting a bitter side glance on her silent daughter, Lady Mallowe
+lightly seized upon New York as a subject. She knew so much of it from
+delightful New Yorkers. London was full of delightful New Yorkers.
+She would like beyond everything to spend a winter in New York. She
+understood that the season there was in the winter and that it was most
+brilliant. Mr. Temple Barholm must tell them about it.
+
+"Yes," said Lady Joan, looking at him through narrowed lids, "Mr. Temple
+Barholm ought to tell us about it."
+
+She wanted to hear what he would say, to see how he would try to get out
+of the difficulty or flounder staggeringly through it. Her mother knew
+in an instant that her own speech had been a stupid blunder. She had put
+the man into exactly the position Joan would enjoy seeing him in. But he
+wasn't in a position, it appeared.
+
+"What is the season, anyhow?" he said. "You've got one on me when you
+talk about seasons."
+
+"In London," Miss Alicia explained courageously, "it is the time when
+her Majesty is at Buckingham Palace, and when the drawing-rooms are
+held, and Parliament sits, and people come up to town and give balls."
+
+She wished that Lady Mallowe had not made her remark just at this time.
+She knew that the quietly moving servants were listening, and that their
+civilly averted eyes had seen Captain Palliser smile and Lady Joan's
+curious look, and that the whole incident would form entertainment for
+their supper-table.
+
+"I guess they have it in the winter in New York, then, if that's it,"
+he said. "There's no Buckingham Palace there, and no drawing-rooms, and
+Congress sits in Washington. But New York takes it out in suppers at
+Sherry's and Delmonico's and theaters and receptions. Miss Alicia knows
+how I used to go to them when I was a little fellow, don't you, Miss
+Alicia?" he added, smiling at her across the table.
+
+"You have told me," she answered. She noticed that Burrill and the
+footmen stood at attention in their places.
+
+"I used to stand outside in the snow and look in through the windows
+at the people having a good time," he said. "Us kids that were selling
+newspapers used to try to fill ourselves up with choosing whose plate
+we'd take if we could get at it. Beefsteak and French fried potatoes
+were the favorites, and hot oyster stews. We were so all-fired hungry!"
+
+"How pathetic!" exclaimed Lady Mallowe. "And how interesting, now that
+it is all over!"
+
+She knew that her manner was gushing, and Joan's slight side glance of
+subtle appreciation of the fact exasperated her almost beyond endurance.
+What could one do, what could one talk about, without involving oneself
+in difficulties out of which one's hasty retreat could be effected
+only by gushing? Taking into consideration the awkwardness of the whole
+situation and seeing Joan's temper and attitude, if there had not been
+so much at stake she would have received a summoning telegram from
+London the next day and taken flight. But she had been forced to hold
+her ground before in places she detested or where she was not wanted,
+and she must hold it again until she had found out the worst or the
+best. And, great heaven! how Joan was conducting herself, with that
+slow, quiet insultingness of tone and look, the wicked, silent insolence
+of bearing which no man was able to stand, however admiringly he began!
+The Duke of Merthshire had turned his back upon it even after all
+the world had known his intentions, even after the newspapers had
+prematurely announced the engagement and she herself had been convinced
+that he could not possibly retreat. She had worked desperately that
+season, she had fawned on and petted newspaper people, and stooped to
+little things no one but herself could have invented and which no one
+but herself knew of. And never had Joan been so superb; her beauty
+had seemed at its most brilliant height. The match would have been
+magnificent; but he could not stand her, and would not. Why, indeed,
+should any man? She glanced at her across the table. A beauty, of
+course; but she was thinner, and her eyes had a hungry fierceness in
+them, and the two delicate, straight lines between her black brows were
+deepening.
+
+And there were no dukes on the horizon. Merthshire had married almost
+at once, and all the others were too young or had wives already. If this
+man would take her, she might feel herself lucky. Temple Barholm and
+seventy thousand a year were not to be trifled with by a girl who had
+made herself unpopular and who was twenty-six. And for her own luck the
+moment had come just before it was too late--a second marriage, wealth,
+the end of the hideous struggle. Joan was the obstacle in her path, and
+she must be forced out of it. She glanced quickly at Tembarom. He was
+trying to talk to Joan now. He was trying to please her. She evidently
+had a fascination for him. He looked at her in a curious way when she
+was not looking at him. It was a way different from that of other men
+whom she had watched as they furtively stared. It had struck her that he
+could not take his eyes away. That was because he had never before been
+on speaking terms with a woman of beauty and rank.
+
+Joan herself knew that he was trying to please her, and she was asking
+herself how long he would have the courage and presumption to keep it
+up. He could scarcely be enjoying it.
+
+He was not enjoying it, but he kept it up. He wanted to be friends with
+her for more reasons than one. No one had ever remained long at enmity
+with him. He had "got over" a good many people in the course of his
+career, as he had "got over" Joseph Hutchinson. This had always been
+accomplished because he presented no surface at which arrows could be
+thrown. She was the hardest proposition he had ever come up against, he
+was thinking; but if he didn't let himself be fool enough to break loose
+and get mad, she'd not hate him so much after a while. She would begin
+to understand that it wasn't his fault; then perhaps he could get her to
+make friends. In fact, if she had been able to read his thoughts, there
+is no certainty as to how far her temper might have carried her. But
+she could see him only as a sharp-faced, common American of the shop-boy
+class, sitting at the head of Jem Temple Barholm's table, in his chair.
+
+As they passed through the hall to go to the drawing-room after the meal
+was over, she saw a neat, pale young man speaking to Burrill and heard a
+few of his rather anxiously uttered words.
+
+"The orders were that he was always to be told when Mr. Strangeways was
+like this, under all circumstances. I can't quiet him, Mr. Burrill. He
+says he must see him at once."
+
+Burrill walked back stiffly to the dining-room.
+
+"It won't trouble HIM much to be disturbed at his wine," he muttered
+before going. "He doesn't know hock from port."
+
+When the message was delivered to him, Tembarom excused himself with
+simple lack of ceremony.
+
+"I 'll be back directly," he said to Palliser. "Those are good cigars."
+And he left the room without going into the matter further.
+
+Palliser took one of the good cigars, and in taking it exchanged a
+glance with Burrill which distantly conveyed the suggestion that perhaps
+he had better remain for a moment or so. Captain Palliser's knowledge of
+interesting detail was obtained "by chance here and there," he sometimes
+explained, but it was always obtained with a light and casual air.
+
+"I am not sure," he remarked as he took the light Burrill held for
+him and touched the end of his cigar--"I am not quite sure that I know
+exactly who Mr. Strangeways is."
+
+"He's the gentleman, sir, that Mr. Temple Barholm brought over from New
+York," replied Burrill with a stolidity clearly expressive of distaste.
+
+"Indeed, from New York! Why doesn't one see him?"
+
+"He's not in a condition to see people, sir," said Burrill, and
+Palliser's slightly lifted eyebrow seeming to express a good deal, he
+added a sentence, "He's not all there, sir."
+
+"From New York, and not all there. What seems to be the matter?"
+Palliser asked quietly. "Odd idea to bring a lunatic all the way from
+America. There must be asylums there."
+
+"Us servants have orders to keep out of the way," Burrill said with
+sterner stolidity. "He's so nervous that the sight of strangers does him
+harm. I may say that questions are not encouraged."
+
+"Then I must not ask any more," said Captain Palliser. "I did not know I
+was edging on to a mystery."
+
+"I wasn't aware that I was myself, sir," Burrill remarked, "until I
+asked something quite ordinary of Pearson, who is Mr. Temple Barholm's
+valet, and it was not what he said, but what he didn't, that showed me
+where I stood."
+
+"A mystery is an interesting thing to have in a house," said Captain
+Palliser without enthusiasm. He smoked his cigar as though he was
+enjoying its aroma, and even from his first remark he had managed not to
+seem to be really quite addressing himself to Burrill. He was certainly
+not talking to him in the ordinary way; his air was rather that of
+a gentleman overhearing casual remarks in which he was only vaguely
+interested. Before Burrill left the room, however, and he left it under
+the impression that he had said no more than civility demanded, Captain
+Palliser had reached the point of being able to deduce a number of
+things from what he, like Pearson, had not said.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+
+The man who in all England was most deeply submerged in deadly boredom
+was, the old Duke of Stone said with wearied finality, himself. He had
+been a sinful young man of finished taste in 1820; he had cultivated
+these tastes, which were for literature and art and divers other things,
+in the most richly alluring foreign capitals until finding himself
+becoming an equally sinful and finished elderly man, he had decided to
+marry. After the birth of her four daughters, his wife had died and left
+them on his hands. Developing at that time a tendency to rheumatic gout
+and a daily increasing realization of the fact that the resources of
+a poor dukedom may be hopelessly depleted by an expensive youth passed
+brilliantly in Vienna, Paris, Berlin, and London, when it was endurable,
+he found it expedient to give up what he considered the necessities
+of life and to face existence in the country in England. It is not
+imperative that one should enter into detail. There was much, and it
+covered years during which his four daughters grew up and he "grew
+down," as he called it. If his temper had originally been a bad one, it
+would doubtless have become unbearable; as he had been born an amiable
+person, he merely sank into the boredom which threatens extinction.
+His girls bored him, his neighbors bored him, Stone Hover bored him,
+Lancashire bored him, England had always bored him except at abnormal
+moments.
+
+"I read a great deal, I walk when I can," this he wrote once to a friend
+in Rome. "When I am too stiff with rheumatic gout, I drive myself about
+in a pony chaise and feel like an aunt in a Bath chair. I have so
+far escaped the actual chair itself. It perpetually rains here, I may
+mention, so I don't get out often. You who gallop on white roads in the
+sunshine and hear Italian voices and vowels, figure to yourself your
+friend trundling through damp, lead-colored Lancashire lanes and being
+addressed in the Lancashire dialect. But so am I driven by necessity
+that I listen to it gratefully. I want to hear village news from
+villagers. I have become a gossip. It is a wonderful thing to be a
+gossip. It assists one to get through one's declining years. Do not wait
+so long as I did before becoming one. Begin in your roseate middle age."
+
+An attack of gout more severe than usual had confined him to his room
+for some time after the arrival of the new owner of Temple Barholm.
+He had, in fact, been so far indisposed that a week or two had passed
+before he had heard of him. His favorite nurse had been chosen by him,
+because she was a comfortable village woman whom he had taught to lay
+aside her proper awe and talk to him about her own affairs and her
+neighbors when he was in the mood to listen. She spoke the broadest
+possible dialect,--he liked dialect, having learned much in his youth
+from mellow-eyed Neapolitan and Tuscan girls,--and she had never been
+near a hospital, but had been trained by the bedsides of her children
+and neighbors.
+
+"If I were a writing person, she would become literature, impinging upon
+Miss Mitford's tales of 'Our Village,' Miss Austen's varieties, and the
+young Bronte woman's 'Wuthering Heights.' Mon Dieu! what a resource it
+would be to be a writing person!" he wrote to the Roman friend.
+
+To his daughters he said:
+
+"She brings back my tenderest youth. When she pokes the fire in the
+twilight and lumbers about the room, making me comfortable, I lie in my
+bed and watch the flames dancing on the ceiling and feel as if I were
+six and had the measles. She tucks me in, my dears--she tucks me in, I
+assure you. Sometimes I feel it quite possible that she will bend over
+and kiss me."
+
+She had tucked him in luxuriously in his arm-chair by the fire on the
+first day of his convalescence, and as she gave him his tray, with his
+beef tea and toast, he saw that she contained anecdotal information of
+interest which tactful encouragement would cause to flow.
+
+"Now that I am well enough to be entertained, Braddle," he said, "tell
+me what has been happening."
+
+"A graidely lot, yore Grace," she answered; "but not so much i' Stone
+Hover as i' Temple Barholm. He's coom!"
+
+Then the duke vaguely recalled rumors he had heard sometime before his
+indisposition.
+
+"The new Mr. Temple Barholm? He's an American, isn't he? The lost heir
+who had to be sought for high and low--principally low, I understand."
+
+The beef tea was excellently savory, the fire was warm, and relief from
+two weeks of pain left a sort of Nirvana of peace. Rarely had the duke
+passed a more delightfully entertaining morning. There was a richness
+in the Temple Barholm situation, as described in detail by Mrs. Braddle,
+which filled him with delight. His regret that he was not a writing
+person intensified itself. Americans had not appeared upon the horizon
+in Miss Mitford's time, or in Miss Austen's, or in the Brontes' the
+type not having entirely detached itself from that of the red Indian. It
+struck him, however, that Miss Austen might have done the best work with
+this affair if she had survived beyond her period. Her finely demure and
+sly sense of humor would have seen and seized upon its opportunities.
+Stark moorland life had not encouraged humor in the Brontes, and village
+patronage had not roused in Miss Mitford a sense of ironic contrasts.
+Yes, Jane Austen would have done it best.
+
+That the story should be related by Mrs. Braddle gave it extraordinary
+flavor. No man or woman of his own class could have given such a
+recounting, or revealed so many facets of this jewel of entertainment.
+He and those like him could have seen the thing only from their own
+amused, outraged, bewildered, or cynically disgusted point of view.
+Mrs. Braddle saw it as the villagers saw it--excited, curious, secretly
+hopeful of undue lavishness from "a chap as had nivver had brass before
+an' wants to chuck it away for brag's sake," or somewhat alarmed at the
+possible neglecting of customs and privileges by a person ignorant
+of memorial benefactions. She saw it as the servants saw it--secretly
+disdainful, outwardly respectful, waiting to discover whether the
+sacrifice of professional distinction would be balanced by liberties
+permitted and lavishness of remuneration and largess. She saw it also
+from her own point of view--that of a respectable cottage dweller whose
+great-great-grandfather had been born in a black-and-white timbered
+house in a green lane, and who knew what were "gentry ways" and what
+nature of being could never even remotely approach the assumption of
+them. She had seen Tembarom more than once, and summed him up by no
+means ill-naturedly.
+
+"He's not such a bad-lookin' chap. He is na short-legged or
+turn-up-nosed, an' that's summat. He con stride along, an' he looks
+healthy enow for aw he's thin. A thin chap nivver looks as common as a
+fat un. If he wur pudgy, it ud be a lot more agen him."
+
+"I think, perhaps," amiably remarked the duke, sipping his beef tea,
+"that you had better not call him a `chap,' Braddle. The late Mr. Temple
+Barholm was never referred to as a `chap' exactly, was he?"
+
+Mrs. Braddle gave vent to a sort of internal-sounding chuckle. She had
+not meant to be impertinent, and she knew her charge was aware that she
+had not, and that he was neither being lofty or severe with her.
+
+"Eh, I'd 'a'loiked to ha' heard somebody do it when he was nigh," she
+said. "Happen I'd better be moindin' ma P's an' Q's a bit more. But
+that's what this un is, yore Grace. He's a `chap' out an' out. An'
+theer's some as is sayin' he's not a bad sort of a chap either. There's
+lots o' funny stories about him i' Temple Barholm village. He goes in to
+th' cottages now an' then, an' though a fool could see he does na know
+his place, nor other people's, he's downreet open-handed. An' he maks
+foak laugh. He took a lot o' New York papers wi' big pictures in 'em
+to little Tummas Hibblethwaite. An' wot does tha think he did one rainy
+day? He walks in to the owd Dibdens' cottage, an' sits down betwixt 'em
+as they sit one each side o' th' f're, an' he tells 'em they've got to
+cheer him up a bit becos he's got nought to do. An' he shows 'em th'
+picter-papers, too, an' tells 'em about New York, an' he ends up wi'
+singin' 'em a comic song. They was frightened out o' their wits at
+first, but somehow he got over 'em, an' made 'em laugh their owd heads
+nigh off."
+
+Her charge laid his spoon down, and his shrewd, lined face assumed a new
+expression of interest.
+
+"Did he! Did he, indeed!" he exclaimed. "Good Lord! what an exhilarating
+person! I must go and see him. Perhaps he'd make me laugh my `owd head
+nigh off.' What a sensation!"
+
+There was really immense color in the anecdotes and in the side views
+accompanying them; the routing out of her obscurity of the isolated,
+dependent spinster relative, for instance. Delicious! The man was either
+desperate with loneliness or he was one of the rough-diamond benefactors
+favored by novelists, in which latter case he would not be so
+entertaining. Pure self-interest caused the Duke of Stone quite
+unreservedly to hope that he was anguished by the unaccustomedness of
+his surroundings, and was ready to pour himself forth to any one who
+would listen. There would be originality in such a situation, and one
+could draw forth revelations worth forming an audience to. He himself
+had thought that the volte-face such circumstances demanded would surely
+leave a man staring at things foreign enough to bore him. This, indeed,
+had been one of his cherished theories; but the only man he had ever
+encountered who had become a sort of millionaire between one day
+and another had been an appalling Yorkshire man, who had had some
+extraordinary luck with diamond-mines in South Africa, and he had been
+simply drunk with exhilaration and the delight of spending money with
+both hands, while he figuratively slapped on the back persons who six
+weeks before would have kicked him for doing it.
+
+This man did not appear to be excited. The duke mentally rocked with
+gleeful appreciation of certain things Mrs. Braddle detailed. She
+gave, of course, Burrill's version of the brief interview outside the
+dining-room door when Miss Alicia's status in the household bad been
+made clear to him. But the duke, being a man endowed with a subtle sense
+of shades, was wholly enlightened as to the inner meaning of Burrill's
+master.
+
+"Now, that was good," he said to himself, almost chuckling. "By the
+Lord! the man might have been a gentleman."
+
+When to all this was added the story of the friend or poor relative, or
+what not, who was supposed to be "not quoite reet i' th' yed," and was
+taken care of like a prince, in complete isolation, attended by a valet,
+visited and cheered up by his benefactor, he felt that a boon had
+indeed been bestowed upon him. It was a nineteenth century "Mysteries of
+Udolpho" in embryo, though too greatly diluted by the fact that though
+the stranger was seen by no one, the new Temple Barholm made no secret
+of him.
+
+If he had only made a secret of him, the whole thing would have been
+complete. There was of course in the situation a discouraging suggestion
+that Temple Barholm MIGHT turn out to be merely the ordinary noble
+character bestowing boons.
+
+"I will burn a little candle to the Virgin and offer up prayers that
+he may NOT. That sort of thing would have no cachet whatever, and would
+only depress me," thought his still sufficiently sinful Grace.
+
+"When, Braddle, do you think I shall be able to take a drive again?" he
+asked his nurse.
+
+Braddle was not prepared to say upon her own responsibility, but the
+doctor would tell him when he came in that afternoon.
+
+"I feel astonishingly well, considering the sharpness of the attack,"
+her patient said. "Our little talk has quite stimulated me. When I go
+out,"--there was a gleam in the eye he raised to hers,--"I am going to
+call at Temple Barholm."
+
+"I knowed tha would," she commented with maternal familiarity. "I dunnot
+believe tha could keep away."
+
+And through the rest of the morning, as he sat and gazed into the
+fire, she observed that he several times chuckled gently and rubbed his
+delicate, chill, swollen knuckled hands together.
+
+A few weeks later there were some warm days, and his Grace chose to go
+out in his pony carriage. Much as he detested the suggestion of "the
+aunt in the Bath chair," he had decided that he found the low, informal
+vehicle more entertaining than a more imposing one, and the desperation
+of his desire to be entertained can be comprehended only by those who
+have known its parallel. If he was not in some way amused, he found
+himself whirling, with rheumatic gout and seventy years, among
+recollections of vivid pictures better hung in galleries with closed
+doors. It was always possible to stop the pony carriage to look at
+views--bits of landscape caught at by vision through trees or under
+their spreading branches, or at the end of little green-hedged lanes
+apparently adorned with cottages, or farm-houses with ricks and
+barn-yards and pig-pens designed for the benefit of Morland and other
+painters of rusticity. He could also slacken the pony's pace and draw up
+by roadsides where solitary men sat by piles of stone, which they broke
+at leisure with hammers as though they were cracking nuts. He had spent
+many an agreeable half-hour in talk with a road-mender who could be led
+into conversation and was left elated by an extra shilling. As in years
+long past he had sat under chestnut-trees in the Apennines and shared
+the black bread and sour wine of a peasant, so in these days he
+frequently would have been glad to sit under a hedge and eat bread and
+cheese with a good fellow who did not know him and whose summing up of
+the domestic habits and needs of "th' workin' mon" or the amiabilities
+or degeneracies of the gentry would be expressed, figuratively speaking,
+in thoughts and words of one syllable. The pony, however, could not
+take him very far afield, and one could not lunch on the grass with a
+stone-breaker well within reach of one's own castle without an air of
+eccentricity which he no more chose to assume than he would have chosen
+to wear long hair and a flowing necktie. Also, rheumatic gout had
+not hovered about the days in the Apennines. He did not, it might be
+remarked, desire to enter into conversation with his humble fellow-man
+from altruistic motives. He did it because there was always a chance
+more or less that he would be amused. He might hear of little tragedies
+or comedies,--he much preferred the comedies,--and he often learned new
+words or phrases of dialect interestingly allied to pure Anglo-Saxon.
+When this last occurred, he entered them in a notebook he kept in his
+library. He sometimes pretended to himself that he was going to write a
+book on dialects; but he knew that he was a dilettante sort of creature
+and would really never do it. The pretense, however, was a sort of
+asset. In dire moments during rains or foggy weather when he felt
+twinges and had read till his head ached, he had wished that he had
+not eaten all his cake at the first course of life's feast, that he had
+formed a habit or so which might have survived and helped him to eke out
+even an easy-chair existence through the last courses. He did not
+find consolation in the use of the palliative adjective as applied to
+himself. A neatly cynical sense of humor prevented it. He knew he had
+always been an entirely selfish man and that he was entirely selfish
+still, and was not revoltingly fretful and domineering only because he
+was constitutionally unirritable.
+
+He was, however, amiably obstinate, and was accustomed to getting his
+own way in most things. On this day of his outing he insisted on driving
+himself in the face of arguments to the contrary. He was so fixed in
+his intention that his daughters and Mrs. Braddle were obliged to admit
+themselves overpowered.
+
+"Nonsense! Nonsense!" he protested when they besought him to allow
+himself to be driven by a groom. "The pony is a fat thing only suited to
+a Bath chair. He does not need driving. He doesn't go when he is driven.
+He frequently lies down and puts his cheek on his hand and goes to
+sleep, and I am obliged to wait until he wakes up."
+
+"But, papa, dear," Lady Edith said, "your poor hands are not very
+strong. And he might run away and kill you. Please do be reasonable!"
+
+"My dear girl," he answered, "if he runs, I shall run after him and kill
+him when I catch him. George," he called to the groom holding the plump
+pony's head, "tell her ladyship what this little beast's name is."
+
+"The Indolent Apprentice, your Grace," the groom answered, touching his
+hat and suppressing a grin.
+
+"I called him that a month ago," said the duke. "Hogarth would have
+depicted all sorts of evil ends for him. Three weeks since, when I
+was in bed being fed by Braddle with a spoon, I could have outrun him
+myself. Let George follow me on a horse if you like, but he must keep
+out of my sight. Half a mile behind will do."
+
+He got into the phaeton, concealing his twinges with determination, and
+drove down the avenue with a fine air, sitting erect and smiling. Indoor
+existence had become unendurable, and the spring was filling the woods.
+
+"I love the spring," he murmured to himself. "I am sentimental about it.
+I love sentimentality, in myself, when I am quite alone. If I had been
+a writing person, I should have made verses every year in April and sent
+them to magazines--and they would have been returned to me."
+
+The Indolent Apprentice was, it is true, fat, though comely, and he was
+also entirely deserving of his name. Like his Grace of Stone, however,
+he had seen other and livelier days, and now and then he was beset by
+recollections. He was still a rather high, though slow, stepper--the
+latter from fixed preference. He had once stepped fast, as well as with
+a spirited gait. During his master's indisposition he had stood in his
+loose box and professed such harmlessness that he had not been annoyed
+by being taken out for exercise as regularly as he might have been. He
+had champed his oats and listened to the repartee of the stable-boys,
+and he had, perhaps, felt the coming of the spring when the cuckoo
+insisted upon it with thrilling mellowness across the green sweeps of
+the park land. Sometimes it made him sentimental, as it made his master,
+sometimes it made him stamp his small hoofs restlessly in his straw and
+want to go out. He did not intend, when he was taken out, to emulate the
+Industrious Apprentice by hastening his pace unduly and raising false
+hopes for the future, but he sniffed in the air the moist green of
+leafage and damp moss, massed with yellow primroses cuddling in it as
+though for warmth, and he thought of other fresh scents and the feel of
+the road under a pony's feet.
+
+Therefore, when he found himself out in the world again, he shook his
+head now and then and even tossed it with the recurring sensations of a
+pony who was a mere boy and still slight in the waist.
+
+"You feel it too, do you?" said the duke. "I won't remind you of your
+years."
+
+The drive from Stone Hover to the village of Temple Barholm was an easy
+one, of many charms of leaf-arched lanes and green-edged road. The duke
+had always had a partiality for it, and he took it this morning. He
+would probably have taken it in any case, but Mrs. Braddle's anecdotes
+had been floating through his mind when he set forth and perhaps
+inclined him in its direction.
+
+The groom was a young man of three and twenty, and he felt the spring
+also. The horse he rode was a handsome animal, and he himself was not
+devoid of a healthy young man's good looks. He knew his belted livery
+was becoming to him, and when on horseback he prided himself on what
+he considered an almost military bearing. Sarah Hibson, farmer Hibson's
+dimple-chinned and saucy-eyed daughter, had been "carryin' on a good
+bit" with a soldier who was a smart, well-set-up, impudent fellow, and
+it was the manifest duty of any other young fellow who had considered
+himself to be "walking out with her" to look after his charges. His
+Grace had been most particular about George's keeping far enough behind
+him; and as half a mile had been mentioned as near enough, certainly one
+was absolved from the necessity of keeping in sight. Why should not one
+turn into the lane which ended at Hibson's farm-yard, and drop into the
+dairy, and "have it out wi' Sarah?"
+
+Dimpled chins and saucy eyes, and bare, dimpled arms and hands patting
+butter while heads are tossed in coquettishly alluring defiance, made
+even "having it out" an attractive and memory-obscuring process. Sarah
+was a plump and sparkling imp of prettiness, and knew the power of every
+sly glance and every dimple and every golden freckle she possessed.
+George did not know it so well, and in ten minutes had lost his head and
+entirely forgotten even the half-mile behind.
+
+He was lover-like, he was masterful, he brought the spring with him; he
+"carried on," as Sarah put it, until he had actually out-distanced
+the soldier, and had her in his arms, kissing her as she laughed and
+prettily struggled.
+
+"Shame o' tha face! Shame o' tha face, George!" she scolded and dimpled
+and blushed. "Wilt tha be done now? Wilt tha be done? I'll call mother."
+
+And at that very moment mother came without being called, running, red
+of face, heavy-footed, and panting, with her cap all on one side.
+
+"Th' duke's run away! Th' duke's run away!" she shouted. "Jo seed him.
+Pony got freetened at summat--an' what art doin' here, George Bind? Get
+o' thy horse an' gallop. If he's killed, tha 'rt a ruined man."
+
+There was an odd turn of chance in it, the duke thought afterward.
+Though friskier than usual, the Indolent Apprentice had behaved
+perfectly well until they neared the gates of Temple Barholm, which
+chanced to be open because a cart had just passed through. And it was
+not the cart's fault, for the Indolent Apprentice regarded it with
+friendly interest. It happened, however, that perhaps being absorbed
+in the cart, which might have been drawn by a friend or even a distant
+relative, the Indolent Apprentice was horribly startled by a large
+rabbit which leaped out of the hedge almost under his nose, and, worse
+still, was followed the next instant by another rabbit even larger and
+more sudden and unexpected in its movements. The Indolent Apprentice
+snorted, pawed, whirled, dashed through the open gateway,--the duke's
+hands were even less strong than his daughter had thought,--and
+galloped, head in air and bit between teeth, up the avenue, the low
+carriage rocking from side to side.
+
+"Damn! Damn!" cried the duke, rocking also. "Oh, damn! I shall be killed
+in a runaway perambulator!"
+
+And ridiculous as it was, things surged through his brain, and once,
+though he laughed at himself bitterly afterward, he gasped "Ah,
+Heloise;" as he almost whirled over a jagged tree-stump; gallop and
+gallop and gallop, off the road and through trees, and back again on to
+the sward, and gallop and gallop and jerk and jolt and jerk, and he
+was nearing the house, and a long-legged young man ran down the steps,
+pushing aside footmen, and was ahead of the drunken little beast of a
+pony, and caught him just as the phaeton overturned and shot his grace
+safely though not comfortably in a heap upon the grass.
+
+It was of course no trifle of a shock, but its victim's sensations gave
+him strong reason to hope, as he rolled over, that no bones were broken.
+The following servants were on the spot almost at once, and took the
+pony's head.
+
+The young man helped the duke to his feet and dusted him with masterly
+dexterity. He did not know he was dusting a duke, and he would not have
+cared if he had.
+
+"Hello," he said, "you're not hurt. I can see that. Thank the Lord! I
+don't believe you've got a scratch."
+
+His grace felt a shade shaky, and he was slightly pale, but he smiled
+in a way which had been celebrated forty years earlier, and the charm of
+which had survived even rheumatic gout.
+
+"Thank you. I'm not hurt in the least. I am the Duke of Stone. This
+isn't really a call. It isn't my custom to arrive in this way. May I
+address you as my preserver, Mr. Temple Barholm?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+
+Upon the terrace, when he was led up the steps, stood a most perfect
+little elderly lady in a state of agitation much greater than his own or
+his rescuer's. It was an agitation as perfect in its femininity as she
+herself was. It expressed its kind tremors in the fashion which belonged
+to the puce silk dress and fine bits of collar and undersleeve the
+belated gracefulness of which caused her to present herself to him
+rather as a figure cut neatly from a book of the styles he had admired
+in his young manhood. It was of course Miss Alicia, who having, with
+Tembarom, seen the galloping pony from a window, had followed him when
+he darted from the room. She came forward, looking pale with charming
+solicitude.
+
+"I do so hope you are not hurt," she exclaimed. "It really seemed that
+only divine Providence could prevent a terrible accident."
+
+"I am afraid that it was more grotesque than terrible," he answered a
+shade breathlessly.
+
+"Let me make you acquainted with the Duke of Stone, Miss Alicia,"
+Tembarom said in the formula of Mrs. Bowse's boarders on state
+occasions of introduction. "Duke, let me make you acquainted, sir, with
+my--relation--Miss Alicia Temple Barholm."
+
+The duke's bow had a remote suggestion of almost including a kissed hand
+in its gallant courtesy. Not, however, that Early Victorian ladies had
+been accustomed to the kissing of hands; but at the period when he had
+best known the type he had daily bent over white fingers in Continental
+capitals.
+
+"A glass of wine," Miss Alicia implored. "Pray let me give you a glass
+of wine. I am sure you need it very much."
+
+He was taken into the library and made to sit in a most comfortable
+easy-chair. Miss Alicia fluttered about him with sympathy still
+delicately tinged with alarm. How long, how long, it had been since he
+had been fluttered over! Nearly forty years. Ladies did not flutter
+now, and he remembered that it was no longer the fashion to call them
+"ladies." Only the lower-middle classes spoke of "ladies." But he found
+himself mentally using the word again as he watched Miss Alicia.
+
+It had been "ladies" who had fluttered and been anxious about a man in
+this quite pretty way.
+
+He could scarcely remove his eyes from her as he sipped his wine. She
+felt his escape "providential," and murmured such devout little phrases
+concerning it that he was almost consoled for the grotesque inward
+vision of himself as an aged peer of the realm tumbling out of a
+baby-carriage and rolled over on the grass at the feet of a man on whom
+later he had meant to make, in proper state, a formal call. She put her
+hand to her side, smiling half apologetically.
+
+"My heart beats quite fast yet," she said. Whereupon a quaintly novel
+thing took place, at the sight of which the duke barely escaped opening
+his eyes very wide indeed. The American Temple Barholm put his arm about
+her in the most casual and informally accustomed way, and led her to a
+chair, and put her in it, so to speak.
+
+"Say," he announced with affectionate authority, "you sit down right
+away. It's you that needs a glass of wine, and I'm going to give it to
+you."
+
+The relations between the two were evidently on a basis not common in
+England even among people who were attached to one another. There was a
+spontaneous, every-day air of natural, protective petting about it, as
+though the fellow was fond of her in his crude fashion, and meant to
+take care of her. He was fond of her, and the duke perceived it with
+elation, and also understood. He might be the ordinary bestower of
+boons, but the protective curve of his arm included other things. In the
+blank dullness of his unaccustomed splendors he had somehow encountered
+this fine, delicately preserved little relic of other days, and had
+seized on her and made her his own.
+
+"I have not seen anything as delightful as Miss Temple Barholm for many
+a year," the duke said when Miss Alicia was called from the room and
+left them together.
+
+"Ain't she great?" was Tembarom's reply. "She's just great."
+
+"It's an exquisite survival of type," said the duke. "She belongs to my
+time, not yours," he added, realizing that "survival of type" might not
+clearly convey itself.
+
+"Well, she belongs to mine now," answered Tembarom. "I wouldn't lose her
+for a farm."
+
+"The voice, the phrases, the carriage might survive,-they do in
+remote neighborhoods, I suppose--but the dress is quite delightfully
+incredible. It is a work of art," the duke went on. She had seemed too
+good to be true. Her clothes, however, had certainly not been dug out of
+a wardrobe of forty years ago.
+
+"When I went to talk to the head woman in the shop in Bond Street I
+fixed it with 'em hard and fast that she was not to spoil her. They were
+to keep her like she was. She's like her little cap, you know, and her
+little mantles and tippets. She's like them," exclaimed Tembarom.
+
+Did he see that? What an odd feature in a man of his sort! And how
+thoroughly New Yorkish it was that he should march into a fashionable
+shop and see that he got what he wanted and the worth of his money!
+There had been no rashness in the hope that the unexplored treasure
+might be a rich one. The man's simplicity was an actual complexity. He
+had a boyish eye and a grin, but there was a business-like line about
+his mouth which was strong enough to have been hard if it had not been
+good-natured.
+
+"That was confoundedly clever of you," his grace commented
+heartily--"confoundedly. I should never have had the wit to think of it
+myself, or the courage to do it if I had. Shop-women make me shy."
+
+"Oh, well, I just put it up to them," Tembarom answered easily.
+
+"I believe," cautiously translated the duke, "that you mean that you
+made them feel that they alone were responsible."
+
+"Yes, I do," assented Tembarom, the grin slightly in evidence. "Put it
+up to them's the short way of saying it."
+
+"Would you mind my writing that down?" said the duke. "I have a fad for
+dialects and new phrases." He hastily scribbled the words in a tablet
+that he took from his pocket. "Do you like living in England?" he asked
+in course of time.
+
+"I should like it if I'd been born here," was the answer.
+
+"I see, I see."
+
+"If it had not been for finding Miss Alicia, and that I made a promise
+I'd stay for a year, anyhow, I'd have broken loose at the end of the
+first week and worked my passage back if I hadn't had enough in my
+clothes to pay for it." He laughed, but it was not real laughter. There
+was a thing behind it. The situation was more edifying than one could
+have hoped. "I made a promise, and I'm going to stick it out," he said.
+
+He was going to stick it out because he had promised to endure for a
+year Temple Barholm and an income of seventy thousand pounds! The duke
+gazed at him as at a fond dream realized.
+
+"I've nothing to do," Tembarom added.
+
+"Neither have I," replied the Duke of Stone.
+
+"But you're used to it, and I'm not. I'm used to working 'steen hours
+a day, and dropping into bed as tired as a dog, but ready to sleep like
+one and get up rested."
+
+"I used to play twenty hours a day once," answered the duke, "but I
+didn't get up rested. That's probably why I have gout and rheumatism
+combined. Tell me how you worked, and I will tell you how I played."
+
+It was worth while taking this tone with him. It had been worth while
+taking it with the chestnut-gathering peasants in the Apennines,
+sometimes even with a stone-breaker by an English roadside. And this one
+was of a type more unique and distinctive than any other--a fellow who,
+with the blood of Saxon kings and Norman nobles in his veins, had known
+nothing but the street life of the crudest city in the world, who spoke
+a sort of argot, who knew no parallels of the things which surrounded
+him in the ancient home he had inherited and in which he stood apart, a
+sort of semi-sophisticated savage. The duke applied himself with grace
+and finished ability to drawing him out. The questions he asked were
+all seemingly those of a man of the world charmingly interested in the
+superior knowledge of a foreigner of varied experience. His method was
+one which engaged the interest of Tembarom himself. He did not know that
+he was not only questioned, but, so to speak, delicately cross-examined
+and that before the end of the interview the Duke of Stone knew more of
+him, his past existence and present sentiments, than even Miss Alicia
+knew after their long and intimate evening talks. The duke, however, had
+the advantage of being a man and of cherishing vivid recollections of
+the days of his youth, which, unlike as it had been to that of
+Tembarom, furnished a degree of solid foundation upon which go to build
+conjecture.
+
+"A young man of his age," his grace reflected astutely, "has always just
+fallen out of love, is falling into it, or desires vaguely to do so. Ten
+years later there would perhaps be blank spaces, lean years during which
+he was not in love at all; but at his particular period there must be
+a young woman somewhere. I wonder if she is employed in one of the
+department stores he spoke of, and how soon he hopes to present her to
+us. His conversation has revealed so far, to use his own rich simile,
+'neither hide nor hair' of her."
+
+On his own part, he was as ready to answer questions as to ask them. In
+fact, he led Tembarom on to asking.
+
+"I will tell you how I played" had been meant. He made a human document
+of the history he enlarged, he brilliantly diverged, he included, he
+made pictures, and found Tembarom's point of view or lack of it gave
+spice and humor to relations he had thought himself tired of. To tell
+familiar anecdotes of courts and kings to a man who had never quite
+believed that such things were realities, who almost found them humorous
+when they were casually spoken of, was edification indeed. The novel
+charm lay in the fact that his class in his country did not include them
+as possibilities. Peasants in other countries, plowmen, shopkeepers,
+laborers in England--all these at least they knew of, and counted them
+in as factors in the lives of the rich and great; but this dear young
+man--!
+
+"What's a crown like? I'd like to see one. How much do you guess such a
+thing would cost--in dollars?"
+
+"Did not Miss Temple Barholm take you to see the regalia in the Tower
+of London? I am quite shocked," said the duke. He was, in fact, a trifle
+disappointed. With the puce dress and undersleeves and little fringes
+she ought certainly to have rushed with her pupil to that seat of
+historical instruction on their first morning in London, immediately
+after breakfasting on toast and bacon and marmalade and eggs.
+
+"She meant me to go, but somehow it was put off. She almost cried on our
+journey home when she suddenly remembered that we'd forgotten it, after
+all."
+
+"I am sure she said it was a wasted opportunity," suggested his grace.
+
+"Yes, that was what hit her so hard. She'd never been to London before,
+and you couldn't make her believe she could ever get there again, and
+she said it was ungrateful to Providence to waste an opportunity. She's
+always mighty anxious to be grateful to Providence, bless her!"
+
+"She regards you as Providence," remarked the duke, enraptured. With a
+touch here and there, the touch of a master, he had gathered the
+whole little story of Miss Alicia, and had found it of a whimsical
+exquisiteness and humor.
+
+"She's a lot too good to me," answered Tembarom. "I guess women as nice
+as her are always a lot too good to men. She's a kind of little old
+angel. What makes me mad is to think of the fellows that didn't get busy
+and marry her thirty-five years ago."
+
+"Were there--er--many of 'em?" the duke inquired.
+
+"Thousands of 'em, though most of 'em never saw her. I suppose you never
+saw her then. If you had, you might have done it."
+
+The duke, sitting with an elbow on each arm of his chair, put the tips
+of his fine, gouty fingers together and smiled with a far-reaching
+inclusion of possibilities.
+
+"So I might," he said; "so I might. My loss entirely--my abominable
+loss."
+
+They had reached this point of the argument when the carriage from Stone
+Hover arrived. It was a stately barouche the coachman and footman of
+which equally with its big horses seemed to have hastened to an extent
+which suggested almost panting breathlessness. It contained Lady Edith
+and Lady Celia, both pale, and greatly agitated by the news which had
+brought them horrified from Stone Hover without a moment's delay.
+
+They both ascended in haste and swept in such alarmed anxiety up the
+terrace steps and through the hall to their father's side that they had
+barely a polite gasp for Miss Alicia and scarcely saw Tembarom at all.
+
+"Dear Papa!" they cried when he revealed himself in his chair in the
+library intact and smiling. "How wicked of you, dear! How you have
+frightened us!"
+
+"I begged you to be good, dearest," said Lady Edith, almost in tears.
+"Where was George? You must dismiss him at once. Really--really--"
+
+"He was half a mile away, obeying my orders," said the duke. "A groom
+cannot be dismissed for obeying orders. It is the pony who must be
+dismissed, to my great regret; or else we must overfeed him until he is
+even fatter than he is and cannot run away."
+
+Were his arms and legs and his ribs and collar-bones and head quite
+right? Was he sure that he had not received any internal injury when he
+fell out of the pony-carriage? They could scarcely be convinced, and
+as they hung over and stroked and patted him, Tembarom stood aside and
+watched them with interest. They were the girls he had to please Ann by
+"getting next to," giving himself a chance to fall in love with them,
+so that she'd know whether they were his kind or not. They were
+nice-looking, and had a way of speaking that sounded rather swell, but
+they weren't ace high to a little slim, redheaded thing that looked at
+you like a baby and pulled your heart up into your throat.
+
+"Don't poke me any more, dear children. I am quite, quite sound," he
+heard the duke say. "In Mr. Temple Barholm you behold the preserver
+of your parent. Filial piety is making you behave with shocking
+ingratitude."
+
+They turned to Tembarom at once with a pretty outburst of apologies
+and thanks. Lady Celia wasn't, it is true, "a looker," with her narrow
+shoulders and rather long nose, but she had an air of breeding, and the
+charming color of which Palliser had spoken, returning to Lady Edith's
+cheeks, illuminated her greatly.
+
+They both were very polite and made many agreeably grateful speeches,
+but in the eyes of both there lurked a shade of anxiety which they hoped
+to be able to conceal. Their father watched them with a wicked pleasure.
+He realized clearly their well-behaved desire to do and say exactly the
+right thing and bear themselves in exactly the right manner, and also
+their awful uncertainty before an entirely unknown quantity. Almost any
+other kind of young man suddenly uplifted by strange fortune they might
+have known some parallel for, but a newsboy of New York! All the New
+Yorkers they had met or heard of had been so rich and grand as to make
+them feel themselves, by contrast, mere country paupers, quite shivering
+with poverty and huddling for protection in their barely clean rags,
+so what was there to go on? But how dreadful not to be quite right,
+precisely right, in one's approach--quite familiar enough, and yet not
+a shade too familiar, which of course would appear condescending! And be
+it said the delicacy of the situation was added to by the fact that they
+had heard something of Captain Palliser's extraordinary little story
+about his determination to know "ladies." Really, if Willocks the
+butcher's boy had inherited Temple Barholm, it would have been easier to
+know where one stood in the matter of being civil and agreeable to
+him. First Lady Edith, made perhaps bold by the suggestion of physical
+advantage bestowed by the color, talked to him to the very best of her
+ability; and when she felt herself fearfully flagging, Lady Celia took
+him up and did her very well-conducted best. Neither she nor her sister
+were brilliant talkers at any time, and limited by the absence of any
+common familiar topic, effort was necessary. The neighborhood he did
+not know; London he was barely aware of; social functions it would be an
+impertinence to bring in; games he did not play; sport he had scarcely
+heard of. You were confined to America, and if you knew next to nothing
+of American life, there you were.
+
+Tembarom saw it all,--he was sharp enough for that,--and his habit
+of being jocular and wholly unashamed saved him from the misery of
+awkwardness that Willocks would have been sure to have writhed under.
+His casual frankness, however, for a moment embarrassed Lady Edith to
+the bitterest extremity. When you are trying your utmost to make a queer
+person oblivious to the fact that his world is one unknown to you, it is
+difficult to know where do you stand when he says.
+
+"It's mighty hard to talk to a man who doesn't know a thing that belongs
+to the kind of world you've spent your life in, ain't it? But don't you
+mind me a minute. I'm glad to be talked to anyhow by people like you.
+When I don't catch on, I'll just ask. No man was ever electrocuted for
+not knowing, and that's just where I am. I don't know, and I'm glad to
+be told. Now, there's one thing. Burrill said 'Your Ladyship' to you, I
+heard him. Ought I to say it, er oughtn't I?"
+
+"Oh, no," she answered, but somehow without distaste in the momentary
+stare he had startled her into; "Burrill is--"
+
+"He's a servant," he aided encouragingly. "Well, I've never been a
+butler, but I've been somebody's servant all my life, and mighty glad of
+the chance. This is the first time I've been out of a job."
+
+What nice teeth he had! What a queer, candid, unresentful creature! What
+a good sort of smile! And how odd that it was he who was putting her
+more at her ease by the mere way in which he was saying this almost
+alarming thing! By the time he had ended, it was not alarming at all,
+and she had caught her breath again.
+
+She was actually sorry when the door opened and Lady Joan Fayre came in,
+followed almost immediately by Lady Mallowe and Captain Palliser, who
+appeared to have just returned from a walk and heard the news.
+
+Lady Mallowe was most sympathetic. Why not, indeed? The Duke of Stone
+was a delightful, cynical creature, and Stone Hover was, despite its
+ducal poverty, a desirable place to be invited to, if you could manage
+it. Her ladyship's method of fluttering was not like Miss Alicia's,
+its character being wholly modern; but she fluttered, nevertheless.
+The duke, who knew all about her, received her amiabilities with
+appreciative smiles, but it was the splendidly handsome, hungry-eyed
+young woman with the line between her black brows who engaged his
+attention. On the alert, as he always was, for a situation, he detected
+one at once when he saw his American address her. She did not address
+him, and scarcely deigned a reply when he spoke to her. When he spoke
+to others, she conducted herself as though he were not in the room, so
+obviously did she choose to ignore his existence. Such a bearing toward
+one's host had indeed the charm of being an interesting novelty. And
+what a beauty she was, with her lovely, ferocious eyes and the small,
+black head poised on the exquisite long throat, which was on the verge
+of becoming a trifle too thin! Then as in a flash he recalled between
+one breath and another the quite fiendish episode of poor Jem Temple
+Barholm--and she was the girl!
+
+Then he became almost excited in his interest. He saw it all. As he had
+himself argued must be the case, this poor fellow was in love. But it
+was not with a lady in the New York department stores; it was with a
+young woman who would evidently disdain to wipe her feet upon him. How
+thrilling! As Lady Mallowe and Palliser and the others chattered, he
+watched him, observing his manner. He stood the handsome creature's
+steadily persistent rudeness very well; he made no effort to push into
+the talk when she coolly held him out of it. He waited without external
+uneasiness or spasmodic smiles. If he could do that despite the
+inevitable fact that he must feel his position uncomfortable, he was
+possessed of fiber. That alone would make him worth cultivating. And if
+there were persons who were to be made uncomfortable, why not cut in and
+circumvent the beauty somewhat and give her a trifle of unease? It
+was with the light and adroit touch of accustomedness to all orders of
+little situations that his grace took the matter in hand, with a shade,
+also, of amiable malice. He drew Tembarom adroitly into the center of
+things; he knew how to lead him to make easily the odd, frank
+remarks which were sufficiently novel to suggest that he was actually
+entertaining. He beautifully edged Lady Joan out of her position. She
+could not behave ill to him, he was far too old, he said to himself,
+leaving out the fact that a Duke of Stone is a too respectable personage
+to be quite waved aside.
+
+Tembarom began to enjoy himself a little more. Lady Celia and Lady Edith
+began to enjoy themselves a little more also. Lady Mallowe was filled
+with admiring delight. Captain Palliser took in the situation, and asked
+himself questions about it. On her part, Miss Alicia was restored to
+the happiness any lack of appreciation of her "dear boy" touchingly
+disturbed. In circumstances such as these he appeared to the advantage
+which in a brief period would surely reveal his wonderful qualities. She
+clung so to his "wonderful qualities" because in all the three-volumed
+novels of her youth the hero, debarred from early advantages and raised
+by the turn of fortune's wheel to splendor, was transformed at once into
+a being of the highest accomplishments and the most polished breeding,
+and ended in the third volume a creature before whom emperors paled.
+And how more than charmingly cordial his grace's manner was when he left
+them!
+
+"To-morrow," he said, "if my daughters do not discover that I have
+injured some more than vital organ, I shall call to proffer my thanks
+with the most immense formality. I shall get out of the carriage in
+the manner customary in respectable neighborhoods, not roll out at your
+feet. Afterward you will, I hope, come and dine with us. I am devoured
+by a desire to become more familiar with The Earth."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+
+It was Lady Mallowe who perceived the moment when he became the fashion.
+The Duke of Stone called with the immense formality he had described,
+and his visit was neither brief nor dull. A little later Tembarom with
+his guests dined at Stone Hover, and the dinner was further removed from
+dullness than any one of numerous past dinners always noted for being
+the most agreeable the neighborhood afforded. The duke managed his guest
+as an impresario might have managed his tenor, though this was done with
+subtly concealed methods. He had indeed a novelty to offer which had
+been discussed with much uncertainty of point of view. He presented it
+to an only languidly entertained neighborhood as a trouvaille of his own
+choice. Here was drama, here was atmosphere, here was charm verging in
+its character upon the occult. You would not see it if you were not a
+collector of such values.
+
+"Nobody will be likely to see him as he is unless he is pointed out to
+them," was what he said to his daughters. "But being bored to death,--we
+are all bored,--once adroitly assisted to suspect him of being alluring,
+most of them will spring upon him and clasp him to their wearied
+breasts. I haven't the least idea what will happen afterward. I shall in
+fact await the result with interest."
+
+Being told Palliser's story of the "Ladies," he listened, holding the
+tips of his fingers together, and wearing an expression of deep interest
+slightly baffled in its nature. It was Lady Edith who related the
+anecdote to him.
+
+"Now," he said, "it would be very curious and complicating if that were
+true; but I don't believe it is. Palliser, of course, likes to tell a
+good story. I shall be able to discover in time whether it is true or
+not; but at present I don't believe it."
+
+Following the dinner party at Stone Hover came many others. All the
+well-known carriages began to roll up the avenue to Temple Barholm. The
+Temple Barholm carriages also began to roll down the avenue and between
+the stone griffins on their way to festive gatherings of varied order.
+Burrill and the footmen ventured to reconsider their early plans for
+giving warning. It wasn't so bad if the country was going to take him
+up.
+
+"Do you see what is happening?" Lady Mallowe said to Joan. "The man is
+becoming actually popular."
+
+"He is popular as a turn at a music hall is," answered Joan. "He will be
+dropped as he was taken up."
+
+"There's something about him they like, and he represents what everybody
+most wants. For God's sake! Joan, don't behave like a fool this time.
+The case is more desperate. There is nothing else--nothing."
+
+"There never was," said Joan, "and I know the desperateness of the
+case. How long are you going to stay here?"
+
+"I am going to stay for some time. They are not conventional people. It
+can be managed very well. We are relatives."
+
+"Will you stay," inquired Joan in a low voice, "until they ask you to
+remove yourself?"
+
+Lady Mallowe smiled an agreeably subtle smile.
+
+"Not quite that," she answered. "Miss Alicia would never have the
+courage to suggest it. It takes courage and sophistication to do that
+sort of thing. Mr. Temple Barholm evidently wants us to remain. He will
+be willing to make as much of the relationship as we choose to let him."
+
+"Do you choose to let him make as much of it as will establish us here
+for weeks--or months?" Joan asked, her low voice shaking a little.
+
+"That will depend entirely upon circumstances. It will, in fact, depend
+entirely upon you," said Lady Mallowe, her lips setting themselves into
+a straight, thin line.
+
+For an appreciable moment Joan was silent; but after it she lost her
+head and whirled about.
+
+"I shall go away," she cried.
+
+"Where?" asked Lady Mallowe.
+
+"Back to London."
+
+"How much money have you?" asked her mother. She knew she had none. She
+was always sufficiently shrewd to see that she had none. If the girl had
+had a pound a week of her own, her mother had always realized that she
+would have been unmanageable. After the Jem Temple Barholm affair she
+would have been capable of going to live alone in slums. As it was,
+she knew enough to be aware that she was too handsome to walk out into
+Piccadilly without a penny in her pocket; so it had been just possible
+to keep her indoors.
+
+"How much money have you?" she repeated quietly. This was the way in
+which their unbearable scenes began--the scenes which the servants
+passing the doors paused to listen to in the hope that her ladyship
+would forget that raised voices may be heard by the discreet outsider.
+
+"How much money have you?" she said again.
+
+Joan looked at her; this time it was for about five seconds. She turned
+her back on her and walked out of the room. Shortly afterward Lady
+Mallowe saw her walking down the avenue in the rain, which was beginning
+to fall.
+
+She had left the house because she dared not stay in it. Once out in
+the park, she folded her long purple cloak about her and pulled her soft
+purple felt hat down over her brows, walking swiftly under the big trees
+without knowing where she intended to go before she returned. She liked
+the rain, she liked the heavy clouds; she wore her dark purples because
+she felt a fantastic, secret comfort in calling them her mourning--her
+mourning which she would wear forevermore.
+
+No one could know so well as herself how desperate from her own point of
+view the case was. She had long known that her mother would not hesitate
+for a moment before any chance of a second marriage which would totally
+exclude her daughter from her existence. Why should she, after all, Joan
+thought? They had always been antagonists. The moment of chance had been
+looming on the horizon for months. Sir Moses Monaldini had hovered
+about fitfully and evidently doubtfully at first, more certainly and
+frequently of late, but always with a clearly objecting eye cast askance
+upon herself. With determination and desire to establish a social
+certainty, astute enough not to care specially for young beauty and
+exactions he did not purpose to submit to, and keen enough to see the
+advantage of a handsome woman with bitter reason to value what was
+offered to her in the form of a luxurious future, Sir Moses was moving
+toward action, though with proper caution. He would have no penniless
+daughters hanging about scowling and sneering. None of that for him. And
+the ripest apple upon the topmost bow in the highest wind would not drop
+more readily to his feet than her mother would, Joan knew with sharp and
+shamed burnings.
+
+As the rain fell, she walked in her purple cloak, unpaid for, and her
+purple hat, for which they had been dunned with threatening insults, and
+knew that she did not own and could not earn a penny. She could not dig,
+and to beg she was ashamed, and all the more horribly because she had
+been a beggar of the meaner order all her life. It made her sick to
+think of the perpetual visits they had made where they were not wanted,
+of the times when they had been politely bundled out of places, of the
+methods which had been used to induce shop-keepers to let them run up
+bills. For years her mother and she had been walking advertisements of
+smart shops because both were handsome, wore clothes well, and carried
+them where they would be seen and talked about. Now this would be all
+over, since it had been Lady Mallowe who had managed all details. Thrown
+upon her own resources, Joan would have none of them, even though she
+must walk in rags. Her education had prepared her for only one thing--to
+marry well, if luck were on her side. It had never been on her side. If
+she had never met Jem, she would have married somebody, since that would
+have been better than the inevitable last slide into an aging life spent
+in cheap lodgings with her mother. But Jem had been the beginning and
+the end.
+
+She bit her lips as she walked, and suddenly tears swept down her cheeks
+and dripped on to the purple cloth folded over her breast.
+
+"And he sits in Jem's place! And every day that common, foolish stare
+will follow me!" she said.
+
+He sat, it was true, in the place Jem Temple Barholm would have occupied
+if he had been a living man, and he looked at her a good deal. Perhaps
+he sometimes unconsciously stared because she made him think of many
+things. But if she had been in a state of mind admitting of judicial
+fairness, she would have been obliged to own that it was not quite a
+foolish stare. Absorbed, abstracted, perhaps, but it was not foolish.
+Sometimes, on the contrary, it was searching and keen.
+
+Of course he was doing his best to please her. Of all the "Ladies," it
+seemed evident that he was most attracted by her. He tried to talk to
+her despite her unending rebuffs, he followed her about and endeavored
+to interest her, he presented a hide-bound unsensitiveness when she did
+her worst. Perhaps he did not even know that she was being icily rude.
+He was plainly "making up to her" after the manner of his class. He
+was perhaps playing the part of the patient adorer who melted by noble
+long-suffering in novels distinguished by heroes of humble origin.
+
+She had reached the village when the rain changed its mind, and without
+warning began to pour down as if the black cloud passing overhead had
+suddenly opened. She was wondering if she would not turn in somewhere
+for shelter until the worst was over when a door opened and Tembarom ran
+out with an umbrella.
+
+"Come in to the Hibblethwaites cottage, Lady Joan," he said. "This will
+be over directly."
+
+He did not affectionately hustle her in by the arm as he would have
+hustled in Miss Alicia, but he closely guarded her with the umbrella
+until he guided her inside.
+
+"Thank you," she said.
+
+The first object she became aware of was a thin face with pointed chin
+and ferret eyes peering at her round the end of a sofa, then a sharp
+voice.
+
+"Tak' off her cloak an' shake th' rain off it in th' wash 'us'," it
+said. "Mother an' Aunt Susan's out. Let him unbutton it fer thee."
+
+"I can unbutton it myself, thank you," said Lady Joan. Tembarom took it
+when she had unbuttoned it. He took it from her shoulders before she had
+time to stop him. Then he walked into the tiny "wash 'us" and shook it
+thoroughly. He came back and hung it on a chair before the fire.
+
+Tummas was leaning back in his pillows and gazing at her.
+
+"I know tha name," he said. "He towd me," with a jerk of the head toward
+Tembarom.
+
+"Did he?" replied Lady Joan without interest.
+
+A flaringly illustrated New York paper was spread out upon his sofa. He
+pushed it aside and pulled the shabby atlas toward him. It fell open at
+a map of North America as if through long habit.
+
+"Sit thee down," he ordered.
+
+Tembarom had stood watching them both.
+
+"I guess you'd better not do that," he suggested to Tummas.
+
+"Why not?" said the boy, sharply. "She's th' wench he was goin' to
+marry. It's th' same as if he'd married her. If she wur his widder,
+she'd want to talk about him. Widders allus wants to talk. Why shouldn't
+she? Women's women. He'd ha' wanted to talk about her."
+
+"Who is `he'?" asked Joan with stiff lips.
+
+"The Temple Barholm as' 'd be here if he was na."
+
+Joan turned to Tembarom.
+
+"Do you come here to talk to this boy about HIM?" she said. "How dare
+you!"
+
+Tummas's eyes snapped; his voice snapped also.
+
+"He knew next to nowt about him till I towd him," he said. "Then he came
+to ax me things an' foind out more. He knows as much as I do now. Us
+sits here an' talks him over."
+
+Lady Joan still addressed Tembarom.
+
+"What interest can you have in the man who ought to be in your place?"
+she asked. "What possible interest?"
+
+"Well," he answered awkwardly, "because he ought to be, I suppose. Ain't
+that reason enough?"
+
+He had never had to deal with women who hated him and who were angry and
+he did not know exactly what to say. He had known very few women, and
+he had always been good-natured with them and won their liking in some
+measure. Also, there was in his attitude toward this particular woman
+a baffled feeling that he could not make her understand him. She would
+always think of him as an enemy and believe he meant things he did not
+mean. If he had been born and educated in her world, he could have used
+her own language; but he could use only his own, and there were so many
+things he must not say for a time at least.
+
+"Do you not realize," she said, "that you are presuming upon your
+position--that you and this boy are taking liberties?"
+
+Tummas broke in wholly without compunction.
+
+"I've taken liberties aw my loife," he stated, "an' I'm goin' to tak'
+'em till I dee. They're th' on'y things I can tak', lyin' here crippled,
+an' I'm goin' to tak' 'em."
+
+"Stop that, Tummas!" said Tembarom with friendly authority. "She
+doesn't catch on, and you don't catch on, either. You're both of you
+'way off. Stop it!"
+
+"I thought happen she could tell me things I didn't know," protested
+Tummas, throwing himself back on his pillows. "If she conna, she conna,
+an' if she wunnot, she wunnot. Get out wi' thee!" he said to Joan. "I
+dunnot want thee about th' place."
+
+"Say," said Tembarom, "shut up!"
+
+"I am going," said Lady Joan and turned to open the door.
+
+The rain was descending in torrents, but she passed swiftly out into its
+deluge walking as rapidly as she could. She thought she cared nothing
+about the rain, but it dashed in her face and eyes, taking her breath
+away, and she had need of breath when her heart was beating with such
+fierceness.
+
+"If she wur his widder," the boy had said.
+
+Even chance could not let her alone at one of her worst moments. She
+walked faster and faster because she was afraid Tembarom would follow
+her, and in a few minutes she heard him splashing behind her, and then
+he was at her side, holding the umbrella over her head.
+
+"You're a good walker," he said, "but I'm a sprinter. I trained running
+after street cars and catching the 'L' in New York."
+
+She had so restrained her miserable hysteric impulse to break down and
+utterly humiliate herself under the unexpected blow of the episode in
+the cottage that she had had no breath to spare when she left the room,
+and her hurried effort to escape had left her so much less that she did
+not speak.
+
+"I'll tell you something," he went on. "He's a little freak, but you
+can't blame him much. Don't be mad at him. He's never moved from that
+corner since he was born, I guess, and he's got nothing to do or to
+think of but just hearing what's happening outside. He's sort of crazy
+curious, and when he gets hold of a thing that suits him he just holds
+on to it till the last bell rings."
+
+She said nothing whatever, and he paused a moment because he wanted to
+think over the best way to say the next thing.
+
+"Mr. James Temple Barholm "--he ventured it with more delicacy of
+desire not to seem to "take liberties" than she would have credited him
+with--"saw his mother sitting with him in her arms at the cottage door
+a week or so after he was born. He stopped at the gate and talked to
+her about him, and he left him a sovereign. He's got it now. It seems
+a fortune to him. He's made a sort of idol of him. That's why he talks
+like he does. I wouldn't let it make me mad if I were you."
+
+He did not know that she could not have answered him if she would, that
+she felt that if he did not stop she might fling herself down upon the
+wet heather and wail aloud.
+
+"You don't like me," he began after they had walked a few steps farther.
+"You don't like me."
+
+This was actually better. It choked back the sobs rising in her throat.
+The stupid shock of it, his tasteless foolishness, helped her by its
+very folly to a sort of defense against the disastrous wave of emotion
+she might not have been able to control. She gathered herself together.
+
+"It must be an unusual experience," she answered.
+
+"Well, it is--sort of," he said, but in a manner curiously free from
+fatuous swagger. "I've had luck that way. I guess it's been because I'd
+GOT to make friends so as I could earn a living. It seems sort of queer
+to know that some one's got a grouch against me that--that I can't get
+away with."
+
+She looked up the avenue to see how much farther they must walk
+together, since she was not "a sprinter" and could not get away from
+him. She thought she caught a glimpse through the trees of a dog-cart
+driven by a groom, and hoped she had not mistaken and that it was
+driving in their direction.
+
+"It must, indeed," she said, "though I am not sure I quite understand
+what a grouch is."
+
+"When you've got a grouch against a fellow," he explained impersonally,
+"you want to get at him. You want to make him feel like a mutt; and a
+mutt's the worst kind of a fool. You've got one against me."
+
+She looked before her between narrowed lids and faintly smiled--the
+most disagreeable smile she was capable of. And yet for some too
+extraordinary reason he went on. But she had seen men go on before this
+when all the odds were against them. Sometimes their madness took them
+this way.
+
+"I knew there was a lot against me when I came here," he persisted. "I
+should have been a fool if I hadn't. I knew when you came that I was up
+against a pretty hard proposition; but I thought perhaps if I got busy
+and SHOWED you--you've got to SHOW a person--"
+
+"Showed me what?" she asked contemptuously.
+
+"Showed you--well--me," he tried to explain.
+
+"You!"
+
+"And that I wanted to be friends," he added candidly.
+
+Was the man mad? Did he realize nothing? Was he too thick of skin even
+to see?
+
+"Friends! You and I?" The words ought to have scorched him, pachyderm
+though he was.
+
+"I thought you'd give me a chance--a sort of chance--"
+
+She stopped short on the avenue.
+
+"You did?"
+
+She had not been mistaken. The dog-cart had rounded the far-off curve
+and was coming toward them. And the man went on talking.
+
+"You've felt every minute that I was in a place that didn't belong to
+me. You know that if the man that it did belong to was here, you'd be
+here with him. You felt as if I'd robbed him of it--and I'd robbed you.
+It was your home--yours. You hated me too much to think of anything
+else. Suppose--suppose there was a way I could give it back to you--make
+it your home again."
+
+His voice dropped and was rather unsteady. The fool, the gross, brutal,
+vulgar, hopeless fool! He thought this was the way to approach her, to
+lead her to listen to his proposal of marriage! Not for a second did she
+guess that they were talking at cross purposes. She did not know that as
+he kept himself steady under her contemptuousness he was thinking that
+Ann would have to own that he had been up against it hard and plenty
+while the thing was going on.
+
+"I'm always up against it when I'm talking to you," he said. "You get
+me rattled. There's things I want to talk about and ask you. Suppose you
+give me a chance, and let us start out by being sort of friends."
+
+"I am staying in your house," she answered in a deadly voice, "and I
+cannot go away because my mother will not let me. You can force yourself
+upon me, if you choose, because I cannot help it; but understand once
+for all that I will not give you your ridiculous chance. And I will not
+utter one word to you when I can avoid it."
+
+He was silent for a moment and seemed to be thinking rather deeply. She
+realized now that he saw the nearing dog-cart.
+
+"You won't. Then it's up to me," he said. Then with a change of tone, he
+added, "I'll stop the cart and tell the man to drive you to the house.
+I'm not going to force myself on you, as you call it. It'd be no use.
+Perhaps it'll come all right in the end."
+
+
+He made a sign to the groom, who hastened his horse's pace and drew up
+when he reached them.
+
+"Take this lady back to the house," he said.
+
+The groom, who was a new arrival, began to prepare to get down and give
+up his place.
+
+"You needn't do that," said Tembarom.
+
+"Won't you get up and take the reins, sir?" the man asked uncertainly.
+
+"No. I can't drive. You'll have to do it. I'll walk."
+
+And to the groom's amazement, they left him standing under the trees
+looking after them.
+
+"It's up to me," he was saying. "The whole durned thing's up to me."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+
+The neighborhood of Temple Barholm was not, upon the whole, a brilliant
+one. Indeed, it had been frankly designated by the casual guest as dull.
+The country was beautiful enough, and several rather large estates lay
+within reach of one another, but their owners were neither very rich nor
+especially notable personages. They were of extremely good old blood,
+and were of established respectability. None of them, however, was given
+to entertaining house parties made up of the smart and dazzlingly sinful
+world of fashion said by moralists to be composed entirely of young and
+mature beauties, male and female, capable of supplying at any moment
+enlivening detail for the divorce court--glittering beings whose
+wardrobes were astonishing and whose conversations were composed wholly
+of brilliant paradox and sparkling repartee.
+
+Most of the residents took their sober season in London, the men of the
+family returning gladly to their pheasants, the women not regretfully to
+their gardens and tennis, because their successes in town had not been
+particularly delirious. The guests who came to them were generally
+as respectable and law-abiding as themselves, and introduced no
+iconoclastic diversions. For the greater portion of the year, in fact,
+diners out were of the neighborhood and met the neighborhood, and were
+reduced to discussing neighborhood topics, which was not, on the whole,
+a fevered joy. The Duke of Stone was, perhaps, the one man who might
+have furnished topics. Privately it was believed, and in part known,
+that he at least had had a brilliant, if not wholly unreprehensible,
+past. He might have introduced enlivening elements from London, even
+from Paris, Vienna, Berlin, and Rome; but the sobering influence of
+years of rheumatic gout and a not entirely sufficing income prevented
+activities, and his opinions of his social surroundings were vaguely
+guessed to be those of a not too lenient critic.
+
+"I do not know anything technical or scientific about ditch-water," he
+had expressed himself in the bosom of his family. "I never analyzed it,
+but analyzers, I gather, consider it dull. If anything could be duller
+than ditch-water, I should say it was Stone Hover and its surrounding
+neighborhood." He had also remarked at another time: "If our society
+could be enriched by some of the characters who form the house parties
+and seem, in fact, integral parts of all country society in modern
+problem or even unproblem novels, how happy one might be, how edified
+and amused! A wicked lady or so of high, or extremely low, rank, of
+immense beauty and corruscating brilliancy; a lovely creature, male or
+female, whom she is bent upon undoing--"
+
+"Dear papa!" protested Lady Celia.
+
+"Reproach me, dearest. Reproach me as severely as you please. It
+inspires me. It makes me feel like a wicked, dangerous man, and I have
+not felt like one for many years. Such persons as I describe form the
+charm of existence, I assure you. A ruthless adventuress with any kind
+of good looks would be the making of us. Several of them, of different
+types, a handsome villain, and a few victims unknowing of their fate,
+would cause life to flow by like a peaceful stream."
+
+Lady Edith laughed an unseemly little laugh--unseemly, since filial
+regret at paternal obliquity should have restrained it.
+
+"Papa, you are quite horrible," she said. "You ought not to make your
+few daughters laugh at improper things."
+
+"I would make my daughters laugh at anything so long as I must doom them
+to Stone Hover--and Lady Pevensy and Mrs. Stoughton and the rector, if
+one may mention names," he answered. "To see you laugh revives me by
+reminding me that once I was considered a witty person--quite so. Some
+centuries ago, however; about the time when things were being rebuilt
+after the flood."
+
+In such circumstances it cannot be found amazing that a situation such
+as Temple Barholm presented should provide rich food for conversation,
+supposition, argument, and humorous comment.
+
+T. Tembarom himself, after the duke had established him, furnished an
+unlimited source of interest. His household became a perennial fount of
+quiet discussion. Lady Mallowe and her daughter were the members of it
+who met with the most attention. They appeared to have become members of
+it rather than visitors. Her ladyship had plainly elected to extend her
+stay even beyond the period to which a fond relative might feel entitled
+to hospitality. She had been known to extend visits before with great
+cleverness, but this one assumed an established aspect. She was not
+going away, the neighborhood decided, until she had achieved that which
+she had come to accomplish. The present unconventional atmosphere of the
+place naturally supported her. And how probable it seemed, taking into
+consideration Captain Palliser's story, that Mr. Temple Barholm wished
+her to stay. Lady Joan would be obliged to stay also, if her mother
+intended that she should. But the poor American--there were some
+expressions of sympathy, though the situation was greatly added to by
+the feature--the poor American was being treated by Lady Joan as only
+she could treat a man. It was worth inviting the whole party to dinner
+or tea or lunch merely to see the two together. The manner in which
+she managed to ignore him and be scathing to him without apparently
+infringing a law of civility, and the number of laws she sometimes chose
+to sweep aside when it was her mood to do so, were extraordinary. If
+she had not been a beauty, with a sort of mystic charm for the male
+creature, surely he would have broken his chains. But he did not. What
+was he going to do in the end? What was she going to do? What was
+Lady Mallowe going to do if there was no end at all? He was not as
+unhappy-looking a lover as one might have expected, they said. He
+kept up his spirits wonderfully. Perhaps she was not always as icily
+indifferent to him as she chose to appear in public. Temple Barholm was
+a great estate, and Sir Moses Monaldini had been mentioned by rumor. Of
+course there would be something rather strange and tragic in it if she
+came to Temple Barholm as its mistress in such singular circumstances.
+But he certainly did not look depressed or discouraged. So they talked
+it over as they looked on.
+
+"How they gossip! How delightfully they gossip!" said the duke. "But it
+is such a perfect subject. They have never been so enthralled before.
+Dear young man! how grateful we ought to be for him!"
+
+One of the most discussed features of the case was the duke's own
+cultivation of the central figure. There was an actual oddity about
+it. He drove from Stone Hover to Temple Barholm repeatedly. He invited
+Tembarom to the castle and had long talks with him--long, comfortable
+talks in secluded, delightful rooms or under great trees on a lawn.
+He wanted to hear anecdotes of his past, to draw him on to giving his
+points of view. When he spoke of him to his daughters, he called him "T.
+Tembarom," but the slight derision of his earlier tone modified itself.
+
+"That delightful young man will shortly become my closest intimate," he
+said. "He not only keeps up my spirits, but he opens up vistas. Vistas
+after a man's seventy-second birthday! At times I could clasp him to my
+breast."
+
+"I like him first rate," Tembarom said to Miss Alicia. "I liked him the
+minute he got up laughing like an old sport when he fell out of the pony
+carriage."
+
+As he became more intimate with him, he liked him still better. Obscured
+though it was by airy, elderly persiflage, he began to come upon a
+background of stability and points of view wholly to be relied on in
+his new acquaintance. It had evolved itself out of long and varied
+experience, with the aid of brilliant mentality. The old peer's reasons
+were always logical. He laughed at most things, but at a few he did not
+laugh at all. After several of the long conversations Tembarom began
+to say to himself that this seemed like a man you need not be afraid to
+talk things over with--things you didn't want to speak of to everybody.
+
+"Seems to me," he said thoughtfully to Miss Alicia, "he's an old fellow
+you could tie to. I've got on to one thing when I've listened to him: he
+talks all he wants to and laughs a lot, but he never gives himself away.
+He wouldn't give another fellow away either if he said he wouldn't. He
+knows how not to."
+
+There was an afternoon on which during a drive they took together the
+duke was enlightened as to several points which had given him cause for
+reflection, among others the story beloved of Captain Palliser and his
+audiences.
+
+"I guess you've known a good many women," T. Tembarom remarked on this
+occasion after a few minutes of thought. "Living all over the world as
+you've done, you'd be likely to come across a whole raft of them one
+time and another."
+
+"A whole raft of them, one time and another," agreed the duke. "Yes."
+
+"You've liked them, haven't you?"
+
+"Immensely. Sometimes a trifle disastrously. Find me a more absolutely
+interesting object in the universe than a woman--any woman--and I will
+devote the remainder of my declining years to the study of it," answered
+his grace.
+
+He said it with a decision which made T. Tembarom turn to look at him,
+and after his look decide to proceed.
+
+"Have you ever known a bit of a slim thing"--he made an odd embracing
+gesture with his arm--"the size that you could pick up with one hand
+and set on your knee as if she was a child"--the duke remained still,
+knowing this was only the beginning and pricking up his ears as he took
+a rapid kaleidoscopic view of all the "Ladies" in the neighborhood, and
+as hastily waved them aside--"a bit of a thing that some way seems to
+mean it all to you--and moves the world?" The conclusion was one which
+brought the incongruous touch of maturity into his face.
+
+"Not one of the `Ladies,"' the duke was mentally summing the matter up.
+"Certainly not Lady Joan, after all. Not, I think, even the young person
+in the department store."
+
+He leaned back in his corner the better to inspect his companion
+directly.
+
+"You have, I see," he replied quietly. "Once I myself did." (He had
+cried out, "Ah! Heloise!" though he had laughed at himself when he
+seemed facing his ridiculous tragedy.)
+
+"Yes," confessed T. Tembarom. "I met her at the boarding-house where I
+lived. Her father was a Lancashire man and an inventor. I guess you've
+heard of him; his name is Joseph Hutchinson."
+
+The whole country had heard of him; more countries, indeed, than one
+had heard. He was the man who was going to make his fortune in America
+because T. Tembarom had stood by him in his extremity. He would make a
+fortune in America and another in England and possibly several others
+on the Continent. He had learned to read in the village school, and the
+girl was his daughter.
+
+"Yes," replied the duke.
+
+"I don't know whether the one you knew had that quiet little way of
+seeing right straight into a thing, and making you see it, too," said
+Tembarom.
+
+"She had," answered the duke, and an odd expression wavered in his
+eyes because he was looking backward across forty years which seemed a
+hundred.
+
+"That's what I meant by moving the world," T. Tembarom went on. "You
+know she's RIGHT, and you've got to do what she says, if you love her."
+
+"And you always do," said the duke--"always and forever. There are very
+few. They are the elect."
+
+T. Tembarom took it gravely.
+
+"I said to her once that there wasn't more than one of her in the world
+because there couldn't be enough to make two of that kind. I wasn't
+joshing either; I meant it. It's her quiet little voice and her quiet,
+babyfied eyes that get you where you can't move. And it's something
+else you don't know anything about. It's her never doing anything for
+herself, but just doing it because it's the right thing for you."
+
+The duke's chin had sunk a little on his breast, and looking back across
+the hundred years, he forgot for a moment where he was. The one he
+remembered had been another man's wife, a little angel brought up in a
+convent by white-souled nuns, passed over by her people to an elderly
+vaurien of great magnificence, and she had sent the strong, laughing,
+impassioned young English peer away before it was too late, and with
+the young, young eyes of her looking upward at him in that way which saw
+"straight into a thing" and with that quiet little voice. So long ago!
+So long ago!
+
+"Ah! Heloise!" he sighed unconsciously.
+
+"What did you say?" asked T. Tembarom. The duke came back.
+
+"I was thinking of the time when I was nine and twenty," he answered.
+"It was not yesterday nor even the day before. The one I knew died when
+she was twenty-four."
+
+"Died!" said Tembarom. "Good Lord!" He dropped his head and even changed
+color. "A fellow can't get on to a thing like that. It seems as if it
+couldn't happen. Suppose--" he caught his breath hard and then pulled
+himself up--"Nothing could happen to her before she knew that I've
+proved what I said--just proved it, and done every single thing she told
+me to do."
+
+"I am sure you have," the duke said.
+
+"It's because of that I began to say this." Tembarom spoke hurriedly
+that he might thrust away the sudden dark thought. "You're a man, and
+I'm a man; far away ahead of me as you are, you're a man, too. I was
+crazy to get her to marry me and come here with me, and she wouldn't."
+
+The duke's eyes lighted anew.
+
+"She had her reasons," he said.
+
+"She laid 'em out as if she'd been my mother instead of a little
+red-headed angel that you wanted to snatch up and crush up to you so she
+couldn't breathe. She didn't waste a word. She just told me what I was
+up against. She'd lived in the village with her grandmother, and she
+knew. She said I'd got to come and find out for myself what no one else
+could teach me. She told me about the kind of girls I'd see--beauties
+that were different from anything I'd ever seen before. And it was up to
+me to see all of them--the best of them."
+
+"Ladies?" interjected the duke gently.
+
+"Yes. With titles like those in novels, she said, and clothes like those
+in the Ladies' Pictorial. The kind of girls, she said, that would make
+her look like a housemaid. Housemaid be darned!" he exclaimed, suddenly
+growing hot. "I've seen the whole lot of them; I've done my darndest to
+get next, and there's not one--" he stopped short. "Why should any of
+them look at me, anyhow?" he added suddenly.
+
+"That was not her point," remarked the duke. "She wanted you to look
+at them, and you have looked." T. Tembarom's eagerness was inspiring to
+behold.
+
+"I have, haven't I?" he cried. "That was what I wanted to ask you. I've
+done as she said. I haven't shirked a thing. I've followed them around
+when I knew they hadn't any use on earth for me. Some of them have
+handed me the lemon pretty straight. Why shouldn't they? But I don't
+believe she knew how tough it might be for a fellow sometimes."
+
+"No, she did not," the duke said. "Also she probably did not know that
+in ancient days of chivalry ladies sent forth their knights to bear
+buffeting for their sakes in proof of fealty. Rise up, Sir Knight!" This
+last phrase of course T. Tembarom did not know the poetic significance
+of.
+
+To his hearer Palliser's story became an amusing thing, read in the
+light of this most delicious frankness. It was Palliser himself who
+played the fool, and not T. Tembarom, who had simply known what he
+wanted, and had, with businesslike directness, applied himself to
+finding a method of obtaining it. The young women he gave his time to
+must be "Ladies" because Miss Hutchinson had required it from him. The
+female flower of the noble houses had been passed in review before
+him to practise upon, so to speak. The handsomer they were, the more
+dangerously charming, the better Miss Hutchinson would be pleased. And
+he had been regarded as a presumptuous aspirant. It was a situation for
+a comedy. But the "Ladies" would not enjoy it if they were told. It was
+also not the Duke of Stone who would tell them. They could not in
+the least understand the subtlety of the comedy in which they had
+unconsciously taken part. Ann Hutchinson's grandmother curtsied to them
+in her stiff old way when they passed. Ann Hutchinson had gone to the
+village school and been presented with prizes for needlework and good
+behavior. But what a girl she must be, the slim bit of a thing with a
+red head! What a clear-headed and firm little person!
+
+In courts he had learned to wear a composed countenance when he was
+prompted to smile, and he wore one now. He enjoyed the society of T.
+Tembarom increasingly every hour. He provided him with every joy.
+
+Their drive was a long one, and they talked a good deal. They talked of
+the Hutchinsons, of the invention, of the business "deals" Tembarom
+had entered into at the outset, and of their tremendously encouraging
+result. It was not mere rumor that Hutchinson would end by being a rich
+man. The girl would be an heiress. How complex her position would be!
+And being of the elect who unknowingly bear with them the power
+that "moves the world," how would she affect Temple Barholm and its
+surrounding neighborhood?
+
+"I wish to God she was here now!" exclaimed Tembarom, suddenly.
+
+It had been an interesting talk, but now and then the duke had wondered
+if, as it went on, his companion was as wholly at his ease as was usual
+with him. An occasional shade of absorption in his expression, as if
+he were thinking of two things at once despite himself, a hint of
+restlessness, revealed themselves occasionally. Was there something more
+he was speculating on the possibility of saying, something more to tell
+or explain? If there was, let him take his time. His audience, at all
+events, was possessed of perceptions. This somewhat abrupt exclamation
+might open the way.
+
+"That is easily understood, my dear fellow," replied the duke.
+
+"There's times when you want a little thing like that just to talk
+things over with, just to ask, because you--you're dead sure she'd never
+lose her head and give herself away without knowing she was doing
+it. She could just keep still and let the waves roll over her and
+be standing there ready and quiet when the tide had passed. It's the
+keeping your mouth shut that's so hard for most people, the not saying a
+darned thing, whatever happens, till just the right time."
+
+"Women cannot often do it," said the duke. "Very few men can."
+
+"You're right," Tembarom answered, and there was a trifle of anxiety in
+his tone.
+
+"There's women, just the best kind, that you daren't tell a big thing
+to. Not that they'd mean to give it away--perhaps they wouldn't know
+when they did it--but they'd feel so anxious they'd get--they'd get--"
+
+"Rattled," put in the duke, and knew who he was thinking of. He saw Miss
+Alicia's delicate, timid face as he spoke.
+
+T. Tembarom laughed.
+
+"That's just it," he answered. "They wouldn't go back on you for worlds,
+but--well, you have to be careful with them."
+
+"He's got something on his mind," mentally commented the duke. "He
+wonders if he will tell it to me."
+
+"And there's times when you'd give half you've got to be able to talk a
+thing out and put it up to some one else for a while. I could do it with
+her. That's why I said I wish to God that she was here."
+
+"You have learned to know how to keep still," the duke said. "So have I.
+We learned it in different schools, but we have both learned."
+
+As he was saying the words, he thought he was going to hear something;
+when he had finished saying them he knew that he would without a doubt.
+T. Tembarom made a quick move in his seat; he lost a shade of color and
+cleared his throat as he bent forward, casting a glance at the backs of
+the coachman and footman on the high seat above them.
+
+"Can those fellows hear me?" he asked.
+
+"No," the duke answered; "if you speak as you are speaking now."
+
+"You are the biggest man about here," the young man went on. "You stand
+for everything that English people care for, and you were born knowing
+all the things I don't. I've been carrying a big load for quite a while,
+and I guess I'm not big enough to handle it alone, perhaps. Anyhow, I
+want to be sure I'm not making fool mistakes. The worst of it is that
+I've got to keep still if I'm right, and I've got to keep still if I'm
+wrong. I've got to keep still, anyhow."
+
+"I learned to hold my tongue in places where, if I had not held it, I
+might have plunged nations into bloodshed," the duke said. "Tell me all
+you choose."
+
+As a result of which, by the time their drive had ended and they
+returned to Stone Hover, he had told him, and, the duke sat in his
+corner of the carriage with an unusual light in his eyes and a flush of
+somewhat excited color on his cheek.
+
+"You're a queer fellow, T. Tembarom," he said when they parted in the
+drawing-room after taking tea. "You exhilarate me. You make me laugh. If
+I were an emotional person, you would at moments make me cry. There's an
+affecting uprightness about you. You're rather a fine fellow too, 'pon
+my life." Putting a waxen, gout-knuckled old hand on his shoulder, and
+giving him a friendly push which was half a pat, he added, "You are, by
+God!"
+
+
+
+And after his guest had left him, the duke stood for some minutes gazing
+into the fire with a complicated smile and the air of a man who finds
+himself quaintly enriched.
+
+"I have had ambitions in the course of my existence--several of them,"
+he said, "but even in over-vaulting moments never have I aspired to such
+an altitude as this--to be, as it were, part of a melodrama. One feels
+that one scarcely deserves it."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+
+
+"Mr. Temple Barholm seems in better spirits," Lady Mallowe said to
+Captain Palliser as they walked on the terrace in the starlight dusk
+after dinner.
+
+Captain Palliser took his cigar from his mouth and looked at the glowing
+end of it.
+
+"Has it struck you that he has been in low spirits?" he inquired
+speculatively. "One does not usually connect him with depression."
+
+"Certainly not with depression. He's an extraordinary creature.
+One would think he would perish from lack of the air he is used to
+breathing--New York air."
+
+"He is not perishing. He's too shrewd," returned Palliser. "He mayn't
+exactly like all this, but he's getting something out of it."
+
+"He is not getting much of what he evidently wants most. I am out of all
+patience," said Lady Mallowe.
+
+Her acquaintance with Palliser had lasted through a number of years.
+They argued most matters from the same basis of reasoning. They were at
+times almost candid with each other. It may be acknowledged, however,
+that of the two Lady Mallowe was the more inclined to verge on
+self-revelation. This was of course because she was the less clever and
+had more temper. Her temper, she had, now and then, owned bitterly to
+herself, had played her tricks. Captain Palliser's temper never did
+this. It was Lady Mallowe's temper which spoke now, but she did not
+in the least mind his knowing that Joan was exasperating her beyond
+endurance. He knew the whole situation well enough to be aware of it
+without speech on her part. He had watched similar situations several
+times before.
+
+"Her manner toward him is, to resort to New York colloquialisms, `the
+limit,'" Palliser said quietly. "Is it your idea that his less good
+spirits have been due to Lady Joan's ingenuities? They are ingenious,
+you know."
+
+"They are devilish," exclaimed her mother. "She treads him in the mire
+and sails about professing to be conducting herself flawlessly. She is
+too clever for me," she added with bitterness.
+
+Palliser laughed softly.
+
+"But very often you have been too clever for her," he suggested. "For my
+part, I don't quite see how you got her here."
+
+Lady Mallowe became not almost, but entirely, candid.
+
+"Upon the whole, I don't quite know myself. I believe she really came
+for some mysterious reason of her own."
+
+"That is rather my impression," said Palliser. "She has got something up
+her sleeve, and so has he."
+
+"He!" Lady Mallowe quite ejaculated the word. "She always has. That's
+her abominable secretive way. But he! T. Tembarom with something up his
+sleeve! One can't imagine it."
+
+"Almost everybody has. I found that out long years ago," said Palliser,
+looking at his cigar end again as if consulting it. "Since I arrived at
+the conclusion, I always take it for granted, and look out for it. I've
+become rather clever in following such things up, and I have taken an
+unusual interest in T. Tembarom from the first."
+
+Lady Mallowe turned her handsome face, much softened by an enwreathing
+gauze scarf, toward him anxiously.
+
+"Do you think his depression, or whatever it is, means Joan?" she asked.
+
+"If he is depressed by her, you need not be discouraged," smiled
+Palliser. "The time to lose hope would be when, despite her ingenuities,
+he became entirely cheerful. But," he added after a moment of pause, "I
+have an idea there is some other little thing."
+
+"Do you suppose that some young woman he has left behind in New York
+is demanding her rights?" said Lady Mallowe, with annoyance. "That
+is exactly the kind of thing Joan would like to hear, and so entirely
+natural. Some shop-girl or other."
+
+"Quite natural, as you say; but he would scarcely be running up to
+London and consulting Scotland Yard about her," Palliser answered.
+
+"Scotland Yard!" ejaculated his companion. "How in the world did you
+find that out?"
+
+Captain Palliser did not explain how he had done it. Presumably his
+knowledge was due to the adroitness of the system of "following such
+things up."
+
+"Scotland Yard has also come to him," he went on. "Did you chance to see
+a red-faced person who spent a morning with him last week?"
+
+"He looked like a butcher, and I thought he might be one of his
+friends," Lady Mallowe said.
+
+"I recognized the man. He is an extremely clever detective, much
+respected for his resources in the matter of following clues which are
+so attenuated as to be scarcely clues at all."
+
+"Clues have no connection with Joan," said Lady Mallowe, still more
+annoyed. "All London knows her miserable story."
+
+"Have you--" Captain Palliser's tone was thoughtful, "--has any one ever
+seen Mr. Strangeways?"
+
+"No. Can you imagine anything more absurdly romantic? A creature without
+a memory, shut up in a remote wing of a palace like this, as if he were
+the Man with the Iron Mask. Romance is not quite compatible with T.
+Tembarom."
+
+"It is so incongruous that it has entertained me to think it over a good
+deal," remarked Palliser. "He leaves everything to one's imagination.
+All one knows is that he isn't a relative; that he isn't mad, but only
+too nervous to see or be seen. Queer situation. I've found there is
+always a reason for things; the queerer they are, the more sure it is
+that there's a reason. What is the reason Strangeways is kept here, and
+where would a detective come in? Just on general principles I'm rather
+going into the situation. There's a reason, and it would be amusing to
+find it out. Don't you think so?"
+
+He spoke casually, and Lady Mallowe's answer was casual, though she knew
+from experience that he was not as casual as he chose to seem. He was
+clever enough always to have certain reasons of his own which formulated
+themselves into interests large and small. He knew things about people
+which were useful. Sometimes quite small things were useful. He was
+always well behaved, and no one had ever accused him of bringing
+pressure to bear; but it was often possible for him to sell things
+or buy things or bring about things in circumstances which would have
+presented difficulties to other people. Lady Mallowe knew from long
+experience all about the exigencies of cases when "needs must," and she
+was not critical. Temple Barholm as the estate of a distant relative
+and T. Tembarom as its owner were not assets to deal with indifferently.
+When a man made a respectable living out of people who could be
+persuaded to let you make investments for them, it was not an
+unbusinesslike idea to be in the position to advise an individual
+strongly.
+
+"It's quite natural that you should feel an interest," she answered.
+"But the romantic stranger is too romantic, though I will own Scotland
+Yard is a little odd."
+
+"Yes, that is exactly what I thought," said Palliser.
+
+He had in fact thought a good deal and followed the thing up in a quiet,
+amateur way, though with annoyingly little result. Occasionally he had
+felt rather a fool for his pains, because he had been led to so few
+facts of importance and had found himself so often confronted by T.
+Tembarom's entirely frank grin. His own mental attitude was not a
+complex one. Lady Mallowe's summing up had been correct enough on the
+whole. Temple Barholm ought to be a substantial asset, regarded in its
+connection with its present owner. Little dealings in stocks--sometimes
+rather large ones when luck was with him--had brought desirable returns
+to Captain Palliser throughout a number of years. Just now he was
+taking an interest in a somewhat imposing scheme, or what might prove
+an imposing one if it were managed properly and presented to the right
+persons. If T. Tembarom had been sufficiently lured by the spirit of
+speculation to plunge into old Hutchinson's affair, as he evidently had
+done, he was plainly of the temperament attracted by the game of chance.
+There had been no reason but that of temperament which could have led
+him to invest. He had found himself suddenly a moneyed man and had
+liked the game. Never having so much as heard of Little Ann Hutchinson,
+Captain Palliser not unnaturally argued after this wise. There seemed no
+valid reason why, if a vague invention had allured, a less vague scheme,
+managed in a more businesslike manner, should not. This Mexican silver
+and copper mine was a dazzling thing to talk about. He could go into
+details. He had, in fact, allowed a good deal of detail to trail through
+his conversation at times. It had not been difficult to accomplish this
+in his talks with Lady Mallowe in his host's presence. Lady Mallowe was
+always ready to talk of mines, gold, silver, or copper. It happened at
+times that one could manage to secure a few shares without the actual
+payment of money. There were little hospitalities or social amiabilities
+now and then which might be regarded as value received. So she had made
+it easy for Captain Palliser to talk, and T. Tembarom had heard much
+which would have been of interest to the kind of young man he appeared
+to be. Sometimes he had listened absorbedly, and on a few occasions he
+had asked a few questions which laid him curiously bare in his role of
+speculator. If he had no practical knowledge of the ways and means of
+great mining companies, he at least professed none. At all events, if
+there was any little matter he preferred to keep to himself, there was
+no harm in making oneself familiar with its aspect and significance. A
+man's arguments, so far as he himself is concerned, assume the character
+with which his own choice of adjectives and adverbs labels them. That
+is, if he labels them. The most astute do not. Captain Palliser did not.
+He dealt merely with reasoning processes which were applicable to the
+subject in hand, whatsoever its nature. He was a practical man of
+the world--a gentleman, of course. It was necessary to adjust matters
+without romantic hair-splitting. It was all by the way.
+
+T. Tembarom had at the outset seemed to present, so to speak, no
+surface. Palliser had soon ceased to be at all sure that his social
+ambitions were to be relied on as a lever. Besides which, when the old
+Duke of Stone took delighted possession of him, dined with him, drove
+with him, sat and gossiped with him by the hour, there was not much one
+could offer him. Strangeways had at first meant only eccentricity. A
+little later he had occasionally faintly stirred curiosity, and perhaps
+the fact that Burrill enjoyed him as a grievance and a mystery had
+stimulated the stirring. The veriest chance had led him to find himself
+regarding the opening up of possible vistas.
+
+From a certain window in a certain wing of the house a much-praised view
+was to be seen. Nothing was more natural than that on the occasion of a
+curious sunset Palliser should, in coming from his room, decide to take
+a look at it. As he passed through a corridor Pearson came out of a room
+near him.
+
+"How is Mr. Strangeways to-day?" Palliser asked.
+
+"Not quite so well, I am afraid, sir," was the answer.
+
+"Sorry to hear it," replied Palliser, and passed on.
+
+On his return he walked somewhat slowly down the corridor. As he turned
+into it he thought he heard the murmur of voices. One was that of T.
+Tembarom, and he was evidently using argument. It sounded as if he were
+persuading some one to agree with him, and the persuasion was earnest.
+He was not arguing with Pearson or a housemaid. Why was he arguing with
+his pensioner? His voice was as low as it was eager, and the other man's
+replies were not to be heard. Only just after Palliser had passed the
+door there broke out an appeal which was a sort of cry.
+
+"No! My God, no! Don't send me away? Don't send me away!"
+
+One could not, even if so inclined, stand and listen near a door while
+servants might chance to be wandering about. Palliser went on his way
+with a sense of having been slightly startled.
+
+"He wants to get rid of him, and the fellow is giving him trouble," he
+said to himself. "That voice is not American. Not in the least." It set
+him thinking and observing. When Tembarom wore the look which was not a
+look of depression, but of something more puzzling, he thought that he
+could guess at its reason. By the time he talked with Lady Mallowe he
+had gone much further than he chose to let her know.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII
+
+
+The popularity of Captain Palliser's story of the "Ladies" had been
+great at the outset, but with the passage of time it had oddly waned.
+This had resulted from the story's ceasing to develop itself, as the
+simplest intelligence might have anticipated, by means of the only
+person capable of its proper development. The person in question was of
+course T. Tembarom. Expectations, amusing expectations, of him had been
+raised, and he had singularly failed in the fulfilling of them. The
+neighborhood had, so to speak, stood upon tiptoe,--the feminine portion
+of it, at least,--looking over shoulders to get the first glimpses of
+what would inevitably take place.
+
+As weeks flew by, the standing on tiptoe became a thing of the past. The
+whole thing flattened out most disappointingly. No attack whatever was
+made upon the "Ladies." That the Duke of Stone had immensely taken up
+Mr. Temple Barholm had of course resulted in his being accepted in such
+a manner as gave him many opportunities to encounter one and all. He
+appeared at dinners, teas, and garden parties. Miss Alicia, whom he had
+in some occult manner impressed upon people until they found themselves
+actually paying a sort of court to her, was always his companion.
+
+"One realizes one cannot possibly leave her out of anything," had been
+said. "He has somehow established her as if she were his mother or his
+aunt--or his interpreter. And such clothes, my dear, one doesn't behold.
+Worth and Paquin and Doucet must go sleepless for weeks to invent them.
+They are without a flaw in shade or line or texture." Which was true,
+because Mrs. Mellish of the Bond Street shop had become quite obsessed
+by her idea and committed extravagances Miss Alicia offered up contrite
+prayer to atone for, while Tembarom, simply chortling in his glee,
+signed checks to pay for their exquisite embodiment. That he was not
+reluctant to avail himself of social opportunities was made manifest by
+the fact that he never refused an invitation. He appeared upon any spot
+to which hospitality bade him, and unashamedly placed himself on record
+as a neophyte upon almost all occasions. His well-cut clothes began in
+time to wear more the air of garments belonging to him, but his hat
+made itself remarked by its trick of getting pushed back on his head
+or tilted on side, and his New York voice and accent rang out sharp and
+finely nasal in the midst of low-pitched, throaty, or mellow English
+enunciations. He talked a good deal at times because he found himself
+talked to by people who either wanted to draw him out or genuinely
+wished to hear the things he would be likely to say.
+
+That the hero of Palliser's story should so comport himself as to
+provide either diversion or cause for haughty displeasure would have
+been only a natural outcome of his ambitions. In a brief period of time,
+however, every young woman who might have expected to find herself
+an object of such ambitions realized that his methods of approach and
+attack were not marked by the usual characteristics of aspirants of his
+class. He evidently desired to see and be seen. He presented himself, as
+it were, for inspection and consideration, but while he was attentive,
+he did not press attentions upon any one. He did not make advances in
+the ordinary sense of the word. He never essayed flattering or even
+admiring remarks. He said queer things at which one often could not help
+but laugh, but he somehow wore no air of saying them with the intention
+of offering them as witticisms which might be regarded as allurements.
+He did not ogle, he did not simper or shuffle about nervously and turn
+red or pale, as eager and awkward youths have a habit of doing under
+the stress of unrequited admiration. In the presence of a certain
+slightingness of treatment, which he at the outset met with not
+infrequently, he conducted himself with a detached good nature which
+seemed to take but small account of attitudes less unoffending than his
+own. When the slightingness disappeared from sheer lack of anything to
+slight, he did not change his manner in any degree.
+
+"He is not in the least forward," Beatrice Talchester said, the time
+arriving when she and her sisters occasionally talked him over with
+their special friends, the Granthams, "and he is not forever under one's
+feet, as the pushing sort usually is. Do you remember those rich
+people from the place they called Troy--the ones who took Burnaby for
+a year--and the awful eldest son who perpetually invented excuses for
+calling, bringing books and ridiculous things?"
+
+"This one never makes an excuse," Amabel Grantham put in.
+
+"But he never declines an invitation. There is no doubt that he wants
+to see people," said Lady Honora, with the pretty little nose and the
+dimples. She had ceased to turn up the pretty little nose, and she
+showed a dimple as she added: "Gwynedd is tremendously taken with him.
+She is teaching him to play croquet. They spend hours together."
+
+"He's beginning to play a pretty good game," said Gwynedd. "He's not
+stupid, at all events."
+
+"I believe you are the first choice, if he is really choosing," Amabel
+Grantham decided. "I should like to ask you a question."
+
+"Ask it, by all means," said Gwynedd.
+
+"Does he ever ask you to show him how to hold his mallet, and then do
+idiotic things, such as managing to touch your hand?"
+
+"Never," was Gwynedd's answer. "The young man from Troy used to do it,
+and then beg pardon and turn red."
+
+"I don't understand him, or I don't understand Captain Palliser's
+story," Amabel Grantham argued. "Lucy and I are quite out of the
+running, but I honestly believe that he takes as much notice of us as
+he does of any of you. If he has intentions, he 'doesn't act the part,'
+which is pure New York of the first water."
+
+"He said, however, that the things that mattered were not only titles,
+but looks. He asked how many of us were 'lookers.' Don't be modest,
+Amabel. Neither you nor Lucy are out of the running," Beatrice amiably
+suggested.
+
+"Ladies first," commented Amabel, pertly. There was no objection to
+being supported in one's suspicion that, after all, one was a "looker."
+
+"There may be a sort of explanation," Honora put the idea forward
+somewhat thoughtfully. "Captain Palliser insists that he is much
+shrewder than he seems. Perhaps he is cautious, and is looking us all
+over before he commits himself."
+
+"He is a Temple Barholm, after all," said Gwynedd, with boldness. "He's
+rather good looking. He has the nicest white teeth and the most cheering
+grin I ever saw, and he's as 'rich as grease is,' as I heard a
+housemaid say one day. I'm getting quite resigned to his voice, or it
+is improving, I don't know which. If he only knew the mere A B C of
+ordinary people like ourselves, and he committed himself to me, I
+wouldn't lay my hand on my heart and say that one might not think him
+over."
+
+"I told you she was tremendously taken with him," said her sister. "It's
+come to this."
+
+"But," said Lady Gwynedd, "he is not going to commit himself to any of
+us, incredible as it may seem. The one person he stares at sometimes is
+Joan Fayre, and he only looks at her as if he were curious and wouldn't
+object to finding out why she treats him so outrageously. He isn't
+annoyed; he's only curious."
+
+"He's been adored by salesladies in New York," said Honora, "and he
+can't understand it."
+
+"He's been liked," Amabel Grantham summed him up. "He's a likable thing.
+He's even rather a dear. I've begun to like him myself."
+
+"I hear you are learning to play croquet," the Duke of Stone remarked to
+him a day or so later. "How do you like it?"
+
+"Lady Gwynedd Talchester is teaching me," Tembarom answered. "I'd learn
+to iron shirt-waists if she would give me lessons. She's one of the two
+that have dimples," he added, reflection in his tone. "I guess that'll
+count. Shouldn't you think it would?"
+
+"Miss Hutchinson?" queried the duke.
+
+Tembarom nodded.
+
+"Yes, it's always her," he answered without a ray of humor. "I just want
+to stack 'em up."
+
+"You are doing it," the duke replied with a slightly twisted mouth.
+There were, in fact, moments when he might have fallen into fits of
+laughter while Tembarom was seriousness itself. "I must, however, call
+your attention to the fact that there is sometimes in your manner a hint
+of a businesslike pursuit of a fixed object which you must beware
+of. The Lady Gwynedds might not enjoy the situation if they began to
+suspect. If they decided to flout you,--'to throw you down,' I ought to
+say--where would little Miss Hutchinson be?"
+
+Tembarom looked startled and disturbed.
+
+"Say," he exclaimed, "do I ever look that way? I must do better than
+that. Anyhow, it ain't all put on. I'm doing my stunt, of course, but I
+like them. They're mighty nice to me when you consider what they're up
+against. And those two with the dimples,--Lady Gwynned and Lady Honora,
+are just peaches. Any fellow might"--he stopped and looked serious
+again--"That's why they'd count," he added.
+
+They were having one of their odd long talks under a particularly
+splendid copper beech which provided the sheltered out-of-door corner
+his grace liked best. When they took their seats together in this
+retreat, it was mysteriously understood that they were settling
+themselves down to enjoyment of their own, and must not be disturbed.
+
+"When I am comfortable and entertained," Moffat, the house steward, had
+quoted his master as saying, "you may mention it if the castle is in
+flames; but do not annoy me with excitement and flurry. Ring the bell in
+the courtyard, and call up the servants to pass buckets; but until the
+lawn catches fire, I must insist on being left alone."
+
+"What dear papa talks to him about, and what he talks about to dear
+papa," Lady Celia had more than once murmured in her gently remote,
+high-nosed way, "I cannot possibly imagine. Sometimes when I have passed
+them on my way to the croquet lawn I have really seen them both look as
+absorbed as people in a play. Of course it is very good for papa. It has
+had quite a marked effect on his digestion. But isn't it odd!"
+
+"I wish," Lady Edith remarked almost wistfully, "that I could get on
+better with him myself conversationally. But I don't know what to talk
+about, and it makes me nervous."
+
+Their father, on the contrary, found in him unique resources, and this
+afternoon it occurred to him that he had never so far heard him express
+himself freely on the subject of Palliser. If led to do so, he would
+probably reveal that he had views of Captain Palliser of which he might
+not have been suspected, and the manner in which they would unfold
+themselves would more than probably be illuminating. The duke was, in
+fact, serenely sure that he required neither warning nor advice, and he
+had no intention of offering either. He wanted to hear the views.
+
+"Do you know," he said as he stirred his tea, "I've been thinking about
+Palliser, and it has occurred to me more than once that I should like to
+hear just how he strikes you?"
+
+"What I got on to first was how I struck him," answered Tembarom, with a
+reasonable air. "That was dead easy."
+
+There was no hint of any vaunt of superior shrewdness. His was merely
+the level-toned manner of an observer of facts in detail.
+
+"He has given you an opportunity of seeing a good deal of him," the duke
+added. "What do you gather from him--unless he has made up his mind that
+you shall not gather anything at all?"
+
+"A fellow like that couldn't fix it that way, however much he wanted
+to," Tembarom answered again reasonably. "Just his trying to do it would
+give him away."
+
+"You mean you have gathered things?"
+
+"Oh, I've gathered enough, though I didn't go after it. It hung on the
+bushes. Anyhow, it seemed to me that way. I guess you run up against
+that kind everywhere. There's stacks of them in New York--different
+shapes and sizes."
+
+"If you met a man of his particular shape and size in New York, how
+would you describe him?" the duke asked.
+
+"I should never have met him when I was there. He wouldn't have come
+my way. He'd have been on Wall Street, doing high-class bucket-shop
+business, or he'd have had a swell office selling copper-mines--any old
+kind of mine that's going to make ten million a minute, the sort of
+deal he's in now. If he'd been the kind I might have run up against,"
+he added with deliberation, "he wouldn't have been as well dressed or
+as well spoken. He'd have been either flashy or down at heel. You'd have
+called him a crook."
+
+The duke seemed pleased with his tea as, after having sipped it, he put
+it down on the table at his side.
+
+"A crook?" he repeated. "I wonder if that word is altogether American?"
+
+"It's not complimentary, but you asked me," said Tembarom. "But I don't
+believe you asked me because you thought I wasn't on to him."
+
+"Frankly speaking, no," answered the duke. "Does he talk to you about
+the mammoth mines and the rubber forests?"
+
+"Say, that's where he wins out with me," Tembarom replied admiringly.
+"He gets in such fine work that I switch him on to it whenever I want
+cheering up. It makes me sorter forget things that worry me just to see
+a man act the part right up to the top notch the way he does it. The
+very way his clothes fit, the style he's got his hair brushed, and that
+swell, careless lounge of his, are half of the make-up. You see, most of
+us couldn't mistake him for anything else but just what he looks like--a
+gentleman visiting round among his friends and a million miles from
+wanting to butt in with business. The thing that first got me interested
+was watching how he slid in the sort of guff he wanted you to get worked
+up about and think over. Why, if I'd been what I look like to him, he'd
+have had my pile long ago, and he wouldn't be loafing round here any
+more."
+
+"What do you think you look like to him?" his host inquired.
+
+"I look as if I'd eat out of his hand," Tembarom answered, quite
+unbiased by any touch of wounded vanity. "Why shouldn't I? And I'm not
+trying to wake him up, either. I like to look that way to him and to
+his sort. It gives me a chance to watch and get wise to things. He's a
+high-school education in himself. I like to hear him talk. I asked him
+to come and stay at the house so that I could hear him talk."
+
+"Did he introduce the mammoth mines in his first call?" the duke
+inquired.
+
+"Oh, I don't mean that kind of talk. I didn't know how much good I was
+going to get out of him at first. But he was the kind I hadn't known,
+and it seemed like he was part of the whole thing--like the girls with
+title that Ann said I must get next to. And an easy way of getting next
+to the man kind was to let him come and stay. He wanted to, all right.
+I guess that's the way he lives when he's down on his luck, getting
+invited to stay at places. Like Lady Mallowe," he added, quite without
+prejudice.
+
+"You do sum them up, don't you?" smiled the duke.
+
+"Well, I don't see how I could help it," he said impartially. "They're
+printed in sixty-four point black-face, seems to me."
+
+"What is that?" the duke inquired with interest. He thought it might be
+a new and desirable bit of slang. "I don't know that one."
+
+"Biggest type there is," grinned Tembarom. "It's the kind that's used
+for head-lines. That's newspaper-office talk."
+
+"Ah, technical, I see. What, by the way, is the smallest lettering
+called?" his grace followed up.
+
+"Brilliant," answered Tembarom.
+
+"You," remarked the duke, "are not printed in sixty-four-point
+black-face so far as they are concerned. You are not even brilliant.
+They don't find themselves able to sum you up. That fact is one of my
+recreations."
+
+"I'll tell you why," Tembarom explained with his clearly unprejudiced
+air. "There's nothing much about me to sum up, anyhow. I'm too sort of
+plain sailing and ordinary. I'm not making for anywhere they'd think I'd
+want to go. I'm not hiding anything they'd be sure I'd want to hide."
+
+"By the Lord! you're not!" exclaimed the duke.
+
+"When I first came here, every one of them had a fool idea I'd want
+to pretend I'd never set eyes on a newsboy or a boot-black, and that I
+couldn't find my way in New York when I got off Fifth Avenue. I used
+to see them thinking they'd got to look as if they believed it, if they
+wanted to keep next. When I just let out and showed I didn't care a darn
+and hadn't sense enough to know that it mattered, it nearly made them
+throw a fit. They had to turn round and fix their faces all over again
+and act like it was 'interesting.' That's what Lady Mallowe calls it.
+She says it's so 'interesting!'"
+
+"It is," commented the duke.
+
+"Well, you know that, but she doesn't. Not on your life! I guess it
+makes her about sick to think of it and have to play that it's just what
+you'd want all your men friends to have done. Now, Palliser--" he paused
+and grinned again. He was sitting in a most casual attitude, his hands
+clasped round one up-raised knee, which he nursed, balancing himself. It
+was a position of informal ease which had an air of assisting enjoyable
+reflection.
+
+"Yes, Palliser? Don't let us neglect Palliser," his host encouraged him.
+
+"He's in a worse mix-up than the rest because he's got more to lose. If
+he could work this mammoth-mine song and dance with the right people,
+there'd be money enough in it to put him on Easy Street. That's where
+he's aiming for. The company's just where it has to have a boost.
+It's just GOT to. If it doesn't, there'll be a bust up that may end in
+fitting out a high-toned promoter or so in a striped yellow-and-black
+Jersey suit and set him to breaking rocks or playing with oakum. I'll
+tell you, poor old Palliser gets the Willies sometimes after he's read
+his mail. He turns the color of ecru baby Irish. That's a kind of lace I
+got a dressmaker to tell me about when I wrote up receptions and dances
+for the Sunday Earth. Ecru baby Irish--that's Palliser's color after
+he's read his letters."
+
+"I dare say the fellow's in a devil of a mess, if the truth were known,"
+the duke said.
+
+"And here's 'T. T.,' hand-made and hand-painted for the part of the kind
+of sucker he wants." T. Tembarom's manner was almost sympathetic in its
+appreciation. "I can tell you I'm having a real good time with Palliser.
+It looked like I'd just dropped from heaven when he first saw me. If
+he'd been the praying kind, I'd have been just the sort he'd have prayed
+for when he said his `Now-I-lay-me's' before he went to bed. There
+wasn't a chance in a hundred that I wasn't a fool that had his head
+swelled so that he'd swallow any darned thing if you handed it to him
+smooth enough. First time he called he asked me a lot of questions about
+New York business. That was pretty smart of him. He wanted to find out,
+sort of careless, how much I knew--or how little."
+
+The duke was leaning back luxuriously in his chair and gazing at him as
+he might have gazed at the work of an old master of which each line and
+shade was of absorbing interest.
+
+"I can see him," he said. "I can see him."
+
+"He found out I knew nothing," Tembarom continued. "And what was to
+hinder him trying to teach me something, by gee! Nothing on top of the
+green earth. I was there, waiting with my mouth open, it seemed like."
+
+"And he has tried--in his best manner?" said his grace.
+
+"What he hasn't tried wouldn't be worthy trying," Tembarom answered
+cheerfully. "Sometimes it seems like a shame to waste it. I've got so
+I know how to start him when he doesn't know I'm doing it. I tell you,
+he's fine. Gentlemanly--that's his way, you know. High-toned friend that
+just happens to know of a good thing and thinks enough of you in a sort
+of reserved way to feel like it's a pity not to give you a chance to
+come in on the ground floor, if you've got the sense to see the favor
+he's friendly enough to do you. It's such a favor that it'd just disgust
+a man if you could possibly turn it down. But of course you're to take
+it or leave it. It's not to his interest to push it. Lord, no! Whatever
+you did his way is that he'd not condescend to say a darned word.
+High-toned silence, that's all."
+
+The Duke of Stone was chuckling very softly. His chuckles rather broke
+his words when he spoke.
+
+"By--by--Jove!" he said. "You--you do see it, don't you? You do see it."
+
+Tembarom nursed his knee comfortably.
+
+"Why," he said, "it's what keeps me up. You know a lot more about me
+than any one else does, but there's a whole raft of things I think about
+that I couldn't hang round any man's neck. If I tried to hang them round
+yours, you'd know that I would be having a hell of a time here, if I'd
+let myself think too much. If I didn't see it, as you call it, if I
+didn't see so many things, I might begin to get sorry for myself." There
+was a pause of a second. "Gee!" he said, "Gee! this not hearing a thing
+about Ann!--"
+
+
+"Good Lord! my dear fellow," the duke said hastily, "I know. I know."
+
+Tembarom turned and looked at him.
+
+"You've been there," he remarked. "You've been there, I bet."
+
+"Yes, I've been there," answered the duke. "I've been there--and come
+back. But while it's going on--you have just described it. A man can
+have a hell of a time."
+
+"He can," Tembarom admitted unreservedly. "He's got to keep going to
+stand it. Well, Strangeways gives me some work to do. And I've got
+Palliser. He's a little sunbeam."
+
+A man-servant approaching to suggest a possible need of hot tea started
+at hearing his grace break into a sudden and plainly involuntary crow
+of glee. He had not heard that one before either. Palliser as a little
+sunbeam brightening the pathway of T. Tembarom, was, in the particular
+existing circumstances, all that could be desired of fine humor. It
+somewhat recalled the situation of the "Ladies" of the noble houses of
+Pevensy, Talchester, and Stone unconsciously passing in review for
+the satisfaction of little Miss Hutchinson. Tembarom laughed a little
+himself, but he went on with a sort of seriousness,
+
+"There's one thing sure enough. I've got on to it by listening and
+working out what he would do by what he doesn't know he says. If he
+could put the screws on me in any way, he wouldn't hold back. It'd be
+all quite polite and gentlemanly, but he'd do it all the same. And he's
+dead-sure that everybody's got something they'd like to hide--or get.
+That's what he works things out from."
+
+"Does he think you have something to hide--or get?" the duke inquired
+rather quickly.
+
+"He's sure of it. But he doesn't know yet whether it's get or hide. He
+noses about. Pearson's seen him. He asks questions and plays he ain't
+doing it and ain't interested, anyhow."
+
+"He doesn't like you, he doesn't like you," the duke said rather
+thoughtfully. "He has a way of conveying that you are far more subtle
+than you choose to look. He is given to enlarging on the fact that an
+air of entire frankness is one of the chief assets of certain promoters
+of huge American schemes."
+
+Tembarom smiled the smile of recognition.
+
+"Yes," he said, "it looks like that's a long way round, doesn't it? But
+it's not far to T. T. when you want to hitch on the connection. Anyhow,
+that's the way he means it to look. If ever I was suspected of being in
+any mix-up, everybody would remember he'd said that."
+
+"It's very amusin'," said the duke. "It's very amusin'."
+
+They had become even greater friends and intimates by this time than the
+already astonished neighborhood suspected them of being. That they spent
+much time together in an amazing degree of familiarity was the talk
+of the country, in fact, one of the most frequent resources of
+conversation. Everybody endeavored to find reason for the situation,
+but none had been presented which seemed of sufficiently logical
+convincingness. The duke was eccentric, of course. That was easy to
+hit upon. He was amiably perverse and good-humoredly cynical. He was
+of course immensely amused by the incongruity of the acquaintance. This
+being the case, why exactly he had never before chosen for himself a
+companion equally out of the picture it was not easy to explain. There
+were plow-boys or clerks out of provincial shops who would surely have
+been quite as incongruous when surrounded by ducal splendors. He might
+have got a young man from Liverpool or Blackburn who would have known
+as little of polite society as Mr. Temple Barholm; there were few, of
+course, who could know less. But he had never shown the faintest desire
+to seek one out. Palliser, it is true, suggested it was Tembarom's
+"cheek" which stood him in good stead. The young man from behind the
+counter in a Liverpool or Blackburn shop would probably have been
+frightened to death and afraid to open his mouth in self-revelation,
+whereas Temple Barholm was so entirely a bounder that he did not know
+he was one, and was ready to make an ass of himself to any extent. The
+frankest statement of the situation, if any one had so chosen to put it,
+would have been that he was regarded as a sort of court fool without cap
+or bells.
+
+No one was aware of the odd confidences which passed between the weirdly
+dissimilar pair. No one guessed that the old peer sat and listened
+to stories of a red-headed, slim-bodied girl in a dingy New York
+boarding-house, that he liked them sufficiently to encourage their
+telling, that he had made a mental picture of a certain look in a pair
+of maternally yearning and fearfully convincing round young eyes, that
+he knew the burnished fullness and glow of the red hair until he could
+imagine the feeling of its texture and abundant warmth in the hand.
+And this subject was only one of many. And of others they talked with
+interest, doubt, argument, speculation, holding a living thrill.
+
+The tap of croquet mallets sounded hollow and clear from the sunken
+lawn below the mass of shrubs between them and the players as the duke
+repeated.
+
+"It's hugely amusin'," dropping his "g," which was not one of his usual
+affectations.
+
+"Confound it!" he said next, wrinkling the thin, fine skin round his
+eyes in a speculative smile, "I wish I had had a son of my own just like
+you."
+
+All of Tembarom's white teeth revealed themselves.
+
+"I'd have liked to have been in it," he replied, "but I shouldn't have
+been like me."
+
+"Yes, you would." The duke put the tips of his fingers delicately
+together. "You are of the kind which in all circumstances is like
+itself." He looked about him, taking in the turreted, majestic age
+and mass of the castle. "You would have been born here. You would have
+learned to ride your pony down the avenue. You would have gone to Eton
+and to Oxford. I don't think you would have learned much, but you would
+have been decidedly edifying and companionable. You would have had
+a sense of humor which would have made you popular in society and at
+court. A young fellow who makes those people laugh holds success in his
+hand. They want to be made to laugh as much as I do. Good God! how they
+are obliged to be bored and behave decently under it! You would have
+seen and known more things to be humorous about than you know now. I
+don't think you would have been a fool about women, but some of them
+would have been fools about you, because you've got a way. I had one
+myself. It's all the more dangerous because it's possibility suggesting
+without being sentimental. A friendly young fellow always suggests
+possibilities without being aware of it.
+
+"Would I have been Lord Temple Temple Barholm or something of that
+sort?" Tembarom asked.
+
+"You would have been the Marquis of Belcarey," the duke replied, looking
+him over thoughtfully, "and your name would probably have been Hugh
+Lawrence Gilbert Henry Charles Adelbert, or words to that effect."
+
+"A regular six-shooter," said Tembarom.
+
+The duke was following it up with absorption in his eyes.
+
+"You'd have gone into the Guards, perhaps," he said, "and drill would
+have made you carry yourself better. You're a good height. You'd have
+been a well-set-up fellow. I should have been rather proud of you. I can
+see you riding to the palace with the rest of them, sabres and chains
+clanking and glittering and helmet with plumes streaming. By Jove!
+I don't wonder at the effect they have on nursery-maids. On a sunny
+morning in spring they suggest knights in a fairytale."
+
+"I should have liked it all right if I hadn't been born in Brooklyn,"
+grinned Tembarom. "But that starts you out in a different way. Do you
+think, if I'd been born the Marquis of Bel--what's his name--I should
+have been on to Palliser's little song and dance, and had as much fun
+out of it?"
+
+"On my soul, I believe you would," the duke answered. "Brooklyn or
+Stone Hover Castle, I'm hanged if you wouldn't have been YOU."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX
+
+
+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.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX
+
+
+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.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI
+
+
+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 to _me_. 'When a man's
+dead, it's too late.'"
+
+"It _is_ too 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 it _is_ your 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 even
+_know_ that 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."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII
+
+
+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.
+
+"Horace. In spite of his genius, he sometimes makes you feel he was
+rather a blackguard."
+
+"Horace!" For the moment T. Tembarom forgot himself. "I always heard he
+was a sort of Y.M.C.A. old guy--old Horace Greeley. The Tribune was no
+yellow journal when he had it."
+
+He was sorry he had spoken the next moment. Strangeways looked puzzled.
+
+"The Tribune," he hesitated. "The Roman Tribune?"
+
+"No, New York. He started it--old Horace did. But perhaps we're not
+talking of the same man."
+
+Strangeways hesitated again.
+
+"No, I think we're not," he answered politely.
+
+"I've made a break," thought Tembarom. "I ought to have kept my mouth
+shut. I must try to switch him back."
+
+Strangeways was looking down at the back of the book he held in his
+hand.
+
+"This one was the Latin poet, Quintus Horatius Flaccus, 65 B. C. You
+know him," he said.
+
+"Oh, that one!" exclaimed Tembarom, as if with an air of immense relief.
+"What a fool I was to forget! I'm glad it's him. Will you go on reading
+and let me hear some more? He's a winner from Winnersville--that Horace
+is."
+
+Perhaps it was a sort of miracle, accomplished by his great desire to
+help the right thing to happen, to stave off any shadow of the wrong
+thing. Whatsoever the reason, Strangeways waited only a moment before
+turning to his book again. It seemed to be a link in some chain slowly
+forming itself to drag him back from his wanderings. And T. Tembarom,
+lightly sweating as a frightened horse will, sat smoking another pipe
+and listening intently to "Satires" and "Lampoons," read aloud in the
+Latin of 65 B. C.
+
+"By gee!" he said faithfully, at intervals, when he saw on the reader's
+face that the moment was ripe. "He knew it all--old Horace--didn't he?"
+
+He had steered his charge back. Things were coming along the line to
+him. He'd learned Latin at one of these big English schools. Boys always
+learned Latin, the duke had told him. They just had to. Most of them
+hated it like thunder, and they used to be caned when they didn't recite
+it right. Perhaps if he went on he'd begin to remember the school. A
+queer part of it was that he did not seem to notice that he was not
+reading his own language.
+
+He did not, in fact, seem to remember anything in particular, but went
+on quite naturally for some minutes. He had replaced Horace on the shelf
+and was on the point of taking down another volume when he paused, as if
+recalling something else.
+
+"Weren't we going to see the picture-gallery?" he inquired. "Isn't it
+getting late? I should like to see the portraits."
+
+"No hurry," answered T. Tembarom. "I was just waiting till you were
+ready. But we'll go right away, if you like."
+
+They went without further ceremony. As they walked through the hall and
+down the corridors side by side, an imaginative person might have felt
+that perhaps the eyes of an ancient darkling portrait or so looked
+down at the pair curiously: the long, loosely built New Yorker rather
+slouching along by the soldierly, almost romantic figure which, in a
+measure, suggested that others not unlike it might have trod the same
+oaken floor, wearing ruff and doublet, or lace jabot and sword. There
+was a far cry between the two, but they walked closely in friendly
+union. When they entered the picture-gallery Strangeways paused a moment
+again, and stood peering down its length.
+
+"It is very dimly lighted. How can we see?" he said.
+
+"I told Pearson to leave it dim," Tembarom answered. "I wanted it just
+that way at first."
+
+He tried--and succeeded tolerably well--to say it casually, as he led
+the way ahead of them. He and the duke had not talked the scheme over
+for nothing. As his grace had said, they had "worked the thing up." As
+they moved down the gallery, the men and women in their frames looked
+like ghosts staring out to see what was about to happen.
+
+"We'll turn up the lights after a while," T. Tembarom explained, still
+casually. "There's a picture here I think a good deal of. I've stood and
+looked at it pretty often. It reminded me of some one the first day I
+set eyes on it; but it was quite a time before I made up my mind who it
+was. It used to drive me half dotty trying to think it out."
+
+"Which one was it?" asked Strangeways.
+
+"We're coming to it. I want to see if it reminds you of any one. And I
+want you to see it sudden." "It's got to be sudden," he had said to
+the duke. "If it's going to pan out, I believe it's got to be sudden."
+"That's why I had the rest of 'em left dim. I told Pearson to leave a
+lamp I could turn up quick," he said to Strangeways.
+
+The lamp was on a table near by and was shaded by a screen. He took it
+from the shadow and lifted it suddenly, so that its full gleam fell upon
+the portrait of the handsome youth with the lace collar and the dark,
+drooping eyes. It was done in a second, with a dramatically unexpected
+swiftness. His heart jumped up and down.
+
+"Who's that?" he demanded, with abruptness so sharp-pitched that the
+gallery echoed with the sound. "Who's that?"
+
+He heard a hard, quick gasp, a sound which was momentarily a little
+horrible, as if the man's soul was being jerked out of his body's
+depths.
+
+"Who is he?" he cried again. "Tell me."
+
+After the gasp, Strangeways stood still and stared. His eyes were glued
+to the canvas, drops of sweat came out on his forehead, and he was
+shuddering. He began to back away with a look of gruesome struggle. He
+backed and backed, and stared and stared. The gasp came twice again,
+and then his voice seemed to tear itself loose from some power that was
+holding it back.
+
+"Th--at!" he cried. "It is--it--is Miles Hugo!"
+
+The last words were almost a shout, and he shook as if he would have
+fallen. But T. Tembarom put his hand on his shoulder and held him,
+breathing fast himself. Gee! if it wasn't like a thing in a play!
+
+"Page at the court of Charles the Second," he rattled off. "Died of
+smallpox when he was nineteen. Miles Hugo! Miles Hugo! You hold on to
+that for all your worth. And hold on to me. I'll keep you steady. Say it
+again."
+
+"Miles Hugo." The poor majestic-looking fellow almost sobbed it. "Where
+am I? What is the name of this place?"
+
+"It's Temple Barholm in the county of Lancashire, England. Hold on to
+that, too--like thunder!"
+
+Strangeways held the young man's arm with hands that clutched. He
+dragged at him. His nightmare held him yet; Tembarom saw it, but flashes
+of light were blinding him.
+
+"Who"--he pleaded in a shaking and hollow whisper--"are you?"
+
+Here was a stumper! By jings! By jings! And not a minute to think it
+out. But the answer came all right--all right!
+
+"My name's Tembarom. T. Tembarom." And he grinned his splendid grin from
+sheer sense of relief. "I'm a New Yorker--Brooklyn. I was just forked
+in here anyhow. Don't you waste time thinking over me. You sit down here
+and do your durndest with Miles Hugo."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII
+
+
+Tembarom did not look as though he had slept particularly well, Miss
+Alicia thought, when they met the next morning; but when she asked him
+whether he had been disappointed in his last night's experiment, he
+answered that he had not. The experiment had come out all right, but
+Strangeways had been a good deal worked up, and had not been able
+to sleep until daylight. Sir Ormsby Galloway was to arrive in the
+afternoon, and he'd probably give him some-thing quieting. Had the
+coming downstairs seemed to help him to recall anything? Miss Alicia
+naturally inquired. Tembarom thought it had. He drove to Stone Hover and
+spent the morning with the duke; he even lunched with him. He returned
+in time to receive Sir Ormsby Galloway, however, and until that great
+personage left, they were together in Mr. Strangeways' rooms.
+
+"I guess I shall get him up to London to the place where Sir Ormsby
+wants him," he said rather nervously, after dinner. "I'm not going to
+miss any chances. If he'll go, I can get him away quietly some time when
+I can fix it so there's no one about to worry him."
+
+She felt that he had no inclination to go much into detail. He had never
+had the habit of entering into the details connected with his strange
+charge. She believed it was because he felt the subject too abnormal not
+to seem a little awesome to her sympathetic timidity. She did not ask
+questions because she was afraid she could not ask them intelligently.
+In fact, the knowledge that this unknown man was living through his
+struggle with his lost past in the remote rooms of the west wing, almost
+as though he were a secret prisoner, did seem a little awesome when one
+awoke in the middle of the dark night and thought of it.
+
+During the passage of the next few weeks, Tembarom went up to London
+several times. Once he seemed called there suddenly, as it was only
+during dinner that he told her he was going to take a late train, and
+should leave the house after she had gone to bed. She felt as though
+something important must have happened, and hoped it was nothing
+disturbing.
+
+When he had said that Captain Palliser would return to visit them, her
+private impression, despite his laugh, had been that it must surely be
+some time before this would occur. But a little more than three weeks
+later he appeared, preceded only half an hour by a telegram asking
+whether he might not spend a night with them on his way farther north.
+He could not at all understand why the telegram, which he said he had
+sent the day before, had been delayed.
+
+A certain fatigued haggardness in his countenance caused Miss Alicia to
+ask whether he had been ill, and he admitted that he had at least
+not been well, as a result of long and too hurried journeys, and the
+strenuousness of extended and profoundly serious interviews with his
+capitalist and magnates.
+
+"No man can engineer gigantic schemes to success without feeling the
+reaction when his load drops from his shoulders," he remarked.
+
+"You've carried it quite through?" inquired Tembarom.
+
+"We have set on foot one of the largest, most substantially capitalized
+companies in the European business world," Palliser replied, with the
+composure which is almost indifference.
+
+"Good!" said Tembarom cheerfully.
+
+He watched his guest a good deal during the day. He was a bad color for
+a man who had just steered clear of all shoals and reached the highest
+point of success. He had a haggard eye as well as a haggard face. It
+was a terrified eye when its desperate determination to hide its
+terrors dropped from it for an instant, as a veil might drop. A certain
+restlessness was manifest in him, and he talked more than usual. He
+was going to make a visit in Northumberland to an elderly lady of
+great possessions. It was to be vaguely gathered that she was somewhat
+interested in the great company--the Cedric. She was a remarkable old
+person who found a certain agreeable excitement in dabbling in stocks.
+She was rich enough to be in a position to regard it as a sort of game,
+and he had been able on several occasions to afford her entertainment.
+He would remain a few days, and spend his time chiefly in telling her
+the details of the great scheme and the manner in which they were to be
+developed.
+
+"If she can play with things that way, she'll be sure to want stock in
+it," Tembarom remarked.
+
+"If she does, she must make up her mind quickly," Palliser smiled, "or
+she will not be able to get it. It is not easy to lay one's hands on
+even now."
+
+Tembarom thought of certain speculators of entirely insignificant
+standing of whom he had chanced to see and hear anecdotes in New York.
+Most of them were youths of obscure origin who sold newspapers or
+blacked boots, or "swapped" articles the value of which lay in the
+desire they could excite in other persons to possess them. A popular
+method known as "bluff" was their most trusted weapon, and even at
+twelve and fifteen years of age Tembarom had always regarded it as
+singularly obvious. He always detested "bluff," whatsoever its disguise,
+and was rather mystified by its ingenious faith in itself.
+
+"He's got badly stung," was his internal comment as he sucked at
+his pipe and smiled urbanely at Palliser across the room as they sat
+together. "He's come here with some sort of deal on that he knows he
+couldn't work with any one but just such a fool as he thinks I am. I
+guess," he added in composed reflectiveness, "I don't really know how
+big a fool I do look."
+
+Whatsoever the deal was, he would be likely to let it be known in time.
+
+"He'll get it off his chest if he's going away to-morrow," decided
+Tembarom. "If there's anything he's found out, he'll use it. If it
+doesn't pan out as he thinks it will he'll just float away to his old
+lady."
+
+He gave Palliser every chance, talking to him and encouraging him to
+talk, even asking him to let him look over the prospectus of the new
+company and explain details to him, as he was going to explain them to
+the old lady in Northumberland. He opened up avenues; but for a time
+Palliser made no attempt to stroll down them. His walk would be a
+stroll, Tembarom knew, being familiar with his methods. His aspect would
+be that of a man but little concerned. He would be capable of a slightly
+rude coldness if he felt that concern on his part was in any degree
+counted as a factor. Tembarom was aware, among other things, that
+innocent persons would feel that it was incumbent upon them to be very
+careful in their treatment of him. He seemed to be thinking things over
+before he decided upon the psychological moment at which he would begin,
+if he began. When a man had a good deal to lose or to win, Tembarom
+realized that he would be likely to hold back until he felt something
+like solid ground under him.
+
+After Miss Alicia had left them for the night, perhaps he felt, as a
+result of thinking the matter over, that he had reached a foothold of a
+firmness at least somewhat to be depended upon.
+
+"What a change you have made in that poor woman's life!" he said,
+walking to the side-table and helping himself to a brandy and soda.
+"What a change!"
+
+"It struck me that a change was needed just about the time I dropped
+in," answered his host.
+
+"All the same," suggested Palliser, tolerantly, "you were immensely
+generous. She wasn't entitled to expect it, you know."
+
+"She didn't expect anything, not a darned thing," said Tembarom. "That
+was what hit me."
+
+Palliser smiled a cold, amiable smile. His slim, neatly fitted person
+looked a little shrunken and less straight than was its habit, and its
+slackness suggested itself as being part of the harry and fatigue which
+made his face and eyes haggard under his pale, smooth hair.
+
+"Do you purpose to provide for the future of all your indigent relatives
+even to the third and fourth generation, my dear chap?" he inquired.
+
+"I won't refuse till I'm asked, anyhow," was the answer.
+
+"Asked!" Palliser repeated. "I'm one of them, you know, and Lady Mallowe
+is another. There are lots of us, when we come out of our holes. If it's
+only a matter of asking, we might all descend on you."
+
+Tembarom, smiling, wondered whether they hadn't descended already, and
+whether the descent had so far been all that they had anticipated.
+
+Palliser strolled down his opened avenue with an incidental air
+which was entirely creditable to his training of himself. T. Tembarom
+acknowledged that much.
+
+"You are too generous," said Palliser. "You are the sort of fellow
+who will always need all he has, and more. The way you go among the
+villagers! You think you merely slouch about and keep it quiet, but you
+don't. You've set an example no other landowner can expect to live up
+to, or intends to. It's too lavish. It's pernicious, dear chap. I have
+heard all about the cottage you are doing over for Pearson and his
+bride. You had better invest in the Cedric."
+
+Tembarom wanted him to go on, if there was anything in it. He made his
+face look as he knew Palliser hoped it would look when the psychological
+moment came. Its expression was not a deterrent; in fact, it had a
+character not unlikely to lead an eager man, or one who was not as
+wholly experienced as he believed he was, to rush down a steep hill into
+the sea, after the manner of the swine in the parable.
+
+Heaven knew Palliser did not mean to rush, and was not aware when the
+rush began; but he had reason to be so much more eager than he professed
+to be that momentarily he swerved, despite himself, and ceased to be
+casual.
+
+"It is an enormous opportunity," he said--"timber lands in Mexico, you
+know. If you had spent your life in England, you would realize that
+timber has become a desperate necessity, and that the difficulties which
+exist in the way of supplying the demand are almost insuperable. These
+forests are virtually boundless, and the company which controls them--"
+
+"That's a good spiel!" broke in Tembarom.
+
+It sounded like the crudely artless interruption of a person whose
+perceptions left much to be desired. T. Tembarom knew what it sounded
+like. If Palliser lost his temper, he would get over the ground faster,
+and he wanted him to get over the ground.
+
+"I'm afraid I don't understand," he replied rather stiffly.
+
+"There was a fellow I knew in New York who used to sell type-writers,
+and he had a thing to say he used to reel off when any one looked like a
+customer. He used to call it his 'spiel.'"
+
+Palliser's quick glance at him asked questions, and his stiffness did
+not relax itself.
+
+"Is this New York chaff?" he inquired coldly.
+
+"No," Tembarom said. "You're not doing it for ten per. He was"
+
+"No, not exactly," said Palliser. "Neither would you be doing it for ten
+per if you went into it." His voice changed. He became slightly haughty.
+"Perhaps it was a mistake on my part to think you might care to connect
+yourself with it. You have not, of course, been in the position to
+comprehend such matters."
+
+"If I was what I look like, that'd stir me up and make me feel bad,"
+thought T. Tembarom, with cheerful comprehension of this, at least. "I'd
+have to rush in and try to prove to him that I was as accustomed to big
+business as he is, and that it didn't rattle me. The way to do it that
+would come most natural would be to show I was ready to buy as big a
+block of stock as any other fellow."
+
+But the expression of his face did not change. He only gave a
+half-awkward sort of laugh.
+
+"I guess I can learn," he said.
+
+Palliser felt the foothold become firmer. The bounder was interested,
+but, after a bounder's fashion, was either nervous or imagined that
+a show of hesitation looked shrewd. The slight hit made at his
+inexperience in investment had irritated him and made him feel less
+cock-sure of himself. A slightly offended manner might be the best
+weapon to rely upon.
+
+"I thought you might care to have the thing made clear to you," he
+continued indifferently. "I meant to explain. You may take the chance or
+leave it, as you like, of course. That is nothing to me at this stage of
+the game. But, after all, we are as I said, relatives of a sort, and it
+is a gigantic opportunity. Suppose we change the subject. Is that the
+Sunday Earth I see by you on the table?" He leaned forward to take the
+paper, as though the subject really were dropped; but, after a seemingly
+nervous suck or two at his pipe, Tembarom came to his assistance. It
+wouldn't do to let him quiet down too much.
+
+"I'm no Van Morganbilt," he said hesitatingly, "but I can see that
+it's a big opportunity--for some one else. Let's have a look over the
+prospectus again."
+
+Palliser paused in his unconcerned opening of the copy of the Sunday
+Earth. His manner somewhat disgustedly implied indecision as to whether
+it was worth while to allow oneself to be dropped and taken up by turns.
+
+"Do you really mean that?" he asked with a certain chill of voice.
+
+"Yes. I don't mind trying to catch on to what's doing in any big
+scheme."
+
+Palliser did not lay aside his suggestion of cold semi-reluctance more
+readily than any man who knew his business would have laid it aside. His
+manner at the outset was quite perfect. His sole ineptitude lay in his
+feeling a too great confidence in the exact quality of his companion's
+type, as he summed it up. He did not calculate on the variations from
+all type sometimes provided by circumstances.
+
+He produced his papers without too obvious eagerness. He spread them
+upon the table, and coolly examined them himself before beginning his
+explanation. There was more to explain to a foreigner and one unused
+to investment than there would be to a man who was an Englishman and
+familiar with the methods of large companies, he said. He went into
+technicalities, so to speak, and used rapidly and lightly some imposing
+words and phrases, to which T. Tembarom listened attentively, but
+without any special air of illumination. He dealt with statistics and
+the resulting probabilities. He made apparent the existing condition
+of England's inability to supply an enormous and unceasing demand for
+timber. He had acquired divers excellent methods of stating his case to
+the party of the second part.
+
+"He made me feel as if a fellow had better hold on to a box of matches
+like grim death, and that the time wasn't out of sight when you'd
+have to give fifty-seven dollars and a half for a toothpick," Tembarom
+afterwards said to the duke.
+
+What Tembarom was thinking as he listened to him was that he was
+not getting over the ground with much rapidity, and that it was time
+something was doing. He had not watched him for weeks without learning
+divers of his idiosyncrasies.
+
+"If he thought I wanted to know what he thinks I'd a heap rather NOT
+know, he'd never tell me," he speculated. "If he gets a bit hot in the
+collar, he may let it out. Thing is to stir him up. He's lost his nerve
+a bit, and he'll get mad pretty easy."
+
+He went on smoking and listening, and asking an unenlightened question
+now and then, in a manner which was as far from being a deterrent as the
+largely unilluminated expression of his face was.
+
+"Of course money is wanted," Palliser said at length. "Money is always
+wanted, and as much when a scheme is a success as when it isn't.
+Good names, with a certain character, are wanted. The fact of your
+inheritance is known everywhere; and the fact that you are an American
+is a sort of guaranty of shrewdness."
+
+"Is it?" said T. Tembarom. "Well," he added slowly, "I guess Americans
+are pretty good business men."
+
+Palliser thought that this was evolving upon perfectly natural lines, as
+he had anticipated it would. The fellow was flattered and pleased. You
+could always reach an American by implying that he was one of those who
+specially illustrate enviable national characteristics.
+
+He went on in smooth, casual laudation:
+
+"No American takes hold of a scheme of this sort until he knows jolly
+well what he's going to get out of it. You were shrewd enough," he added
+significantly, "about Hutchinson's affair. You `got in on the ground
+floor' there. That was New York forethought, by Jove!"
+
+Tembarom shuffled a little in his chair, and grinned a faint, pleased
+grin.
+
+"I'm a man of the world, my boy--the business world," Palliser
+commented, hoping that he concealed his extreme satisfaction. "I know
+New York, though I haven't lived there. I'm only hoping to. Your air of
+ingenuous ignorance is the cleverest thing about you," which agreeable
+implication of the fact that he had been privately observant and
+impressed ought to have fetched the bounder if anything would.
+
+T. Tembarom's grin was no longer faint, but spread itself. Palliser's
+first impression was that he had "fetched" him. But when he answered,
+though the very crudeness of his words seemed merely the result of
+his betrayal into utter tactlessness by soothed vanity, there was
+something--a shade of something--not entirely satisfactory in his face
+and nasal twang.
+
+"Well, I guess," he said, "New York DID teach a fellow not to buy a gold
+brick off every con man that came along."
+
+Palliser was guilty of a mere ghost of a start. Was there something
+in it, or was he only the gross, blundering fool he had trusted to his
+being? He stared at him a moment, and saw that there WAS something under
+the words and behind his professedly flattered grin--something which
+must be treated with a high hand.
+
+"What do you mean?" he exclaimed haughtily. "I don't like your tone. Do
+you take ME for what you call a `con man'?"
+
+"Good Lord, no!" answered Tembarom; and he looked straight at Palliser
+and spoke slowly. "You're a gentleman, and you're paying me a visit. You
+could no more try on a game to do me in my own house than--well, than
+I could TELL you if I'd got on to you if I saw you doing it. You're a
+gentleman."
+
+Palliser glared back into his infuriatingly candid eyes. He was a far
+cry from being a dullard himself; he was sharp enough to "catch on" to
+the revelation that the situation was not what he had thought it, the
+type was more complex than he had dreamed. The chap had been playing a
+part; he had absolutely been "jollying him along," after the New York
+fashion. He became pale with humiliated rage, though he knew his only
+defense was to control himself and profess not to see through the trick.
+Until he could use his big lever, he added to himself.
+
+"Oh, I see," he commented acridly. "I suppose you don't realize that
+your figures of speech are unfortunate."
+
+"That comes of New York streets, too," Tembarom answered with
+deliberation. "But you can't live as I've lived and be dead easy--not
+DEAD easy."
+
+Palliser had left his chair, and stood in contemptuous silence.
+
+"You know how a fellow hates to be thought DEAD easy"--Tembarom actually
+went to the insolent length of saying the words with a touch of cheerful
+confidingness--"when he's NOT. And I'm not. Have another drink."
+
+There was a pause. Palliser began to see, or thought he began to see,
+where he stood. He had come to Temple Barholm because he had been driven
+into a corner and had a dangerous fight before him. In anticipation of
+it he had been following a clue for some time, though at the outset it
+had been one of incredible slightness. Only his absolute faith in his
+theory that every man had something to gain or lose, which he concealed
+discreetly, had led him to it. He held a card too valuable to be used
+at the beginning of a game. Its power might have lasted a long time, and
+proved an influence without limit. He forbore any mental reference to
+blackmail; the word was absurd. One used what fell into one's hands.
+If Tembarom had followed his lead with any degree of docility, he would
+have felt it wiser to save his ammunition until further pressure was
+necessary. But behind his ridiculous rawness, his foolish jocularity,
+and his professedly candid good humor, had been hidden the Yankee
+trickster who was fool enough to think he could play his game through.
+Well, he could not.
+
+During the few moments' pause he saw the situation as by a photographic
+flashlight. He leaned over the table and supplied himself with a fresh
+brandy and soda from the tray of siphons and decanters. He gave himself
+time to take the glass up in his hand.
+
+"No," he answered, "you are not `dead easy.' That's why I am going to
+broach another subject to you."
+
+Tembarom was refilling his pipe.
+
+"Go ahead," he said.
+
+"Who, by the way, is Mr. Strangeways?"
+
+He was deliberate and entirely unemotional. So was T. Tembarom when,
+with match applied to his tobacco, he replied between puffs as he
+lighted it:
+
+"You can search me. You can search him, too, for that matter. He doesn't
+know who he is himself."
+
+"Bad luck for him!" remarked Palliser, and allowed a slight pause again.
+After it he added, "Did it ever strike you it might be good luck for
+somebody else?"
+
+"Somebody else?" Tembarom puffed more slowly, perhaps because his pipe
+was lighted.
+
+Palliser took some brandy in his soda.
+
+"There are men, you know," he suggested, "who can be spared by their
+relatives. I have some myself, by Jove!" he added with a laugh. "You
+keep him rather dark, don't you?"
+
+"He doesn't like to see people."
+
+"Does he object to people seeing him? I saw him once myself."
+
+"When you threw the gravel at his window?"
+
+Palliser stared contemptuously.
+
+"What are you talking about? I did not throw stones at his window," he
+lied. "I'm not a school-boy."
+
+"That's so," Tembarom admitted.
+
+"I saw him, nevertheless. And I can tell you he gave me rather a start."
+
+"Why?"
+
+Palliser half laughed again. He did not mean to go too quickly; he would
+let the thing get on Tembarom's nerves gradually.
+
+"Well, I'm hanged if I didn't take him for a man who is dead."
+
+"Enough to give any fellow a jolt," Tembarom admitted again.
+
+"It gave me a `jolt.' Good word, that. But it would give you a bigger
+one, my dear fellow, if he was the man he looked like."
+
+"Why?" Tembarom asked laconically.
+
+"He looked like Jem Temple Barholm."
+
+He saw Tembarom start. There could be no denying it.
+
+"You thought that? Honest?" he said sharply, as if for a moment he had
+lost his head. "You thought that?"
+
+"Don't be nervous. Perhaps I couldn't have sworn to it. I did not see
+him very close."
+
+T. Tembarom puffed rapidly at his pipe, and only, ejaculated:
+
+"Oh!"
+
+"Of course he's dead. If he wasn't,"--with a shrug of his
+shoulders,--"Lady Joan Fayre would be Lady Joan Temple Barholm, and the
+pair would be bringing up an interesting family here." He looked about
+the room, and then, as if suddenly recalling the fact, added, "By
+George! you'd be selling newspapers, or making them--which was it?--in
+New York!"
+
+It was by no means unpleasing to see that he had made his hit there.
+T. Tembarom swung about and walked across the room with a suddenly
+perturbed expression.
+
+"Say," he put it to him, coming back, "are you in earnest, or are you
+just saying it to give me a jolt?"
+
+Palliser studied him. The American sharpness was not always so keen as
+it sometimes seemed. His face would have betrayed his uneasiness to the
+dullest onlooker.
+
+"Have you any objection to my seeing him in his own room?" Palliser
+inquired.
+
+"It does him harm to see people," Tembarom said, with nervous
+brusqueness. "It worries him."
+
+Palliser smiled a quiet but far from agreeable smile. He enjoyed what he
+put into it.
+
+"Quite so; best to keep him quiet," he returned. "Do you know what my
+advice would be? Put him in a comfortable sanatorium. A lot of stupid
+investigations would end in nothing, of course, but they'd be a
+frightful bore."
+
+He thought it extraordinarily stupid in T. Tembarom to come nearer to
+him with an anxious eagerness entirely unconcealed, if he really knew
+what he was doing.
+
+"Are you sure that if you saw him close you'd KNOW, so that you could
+swear to him?" he demanded.
+
+"You're extremely nervous, aren't you?" Palliser watched him with
+smiling coolness. "Of course Jem Temple Barholm is dead; but I've no
+doubt that if I saw this man of yours, I could swear he had remained
+dead--if I were asked."
+
+"If you knew him well, you could make me sure. You could swear one way
+or another. I want to be SURE," said Tembarom.
+
+"So should I in your place; couldn't be too sure. Well, since you
+ask me, I COULD swear. I knew him well enough. He was one of my most
+intimate enemies. What do you say to letting me see him?"
+
+"I would if I could," Tembarom replied, as if thinking it over. "I would
+if I could."
+
+Palliser treated him to the far from pleasing smile again.
+
+"But it's quite impossible at present?" he suggested. "Excitement is
+not good for him, and all that sort of thing. You want time to think it
+over."
+
+Tembarom's slowly uttered answer, spoken as if he were still considering
+the matter, was far from being the one he had expected.
+
+"I want time; but that's not the reason you can't see him right now. You
+can't see him because he's not here. He's gone."
+
+Then it was Palliser who started, taken totally unaware in a manner
+which disgusted him altogether. He had to pull himself up.
+
+"He's gone!" he repeated. "You are quicker than I thought. You've got
+him safely away, have you? Well, I told you a comfortable sanatorium
+would be a good idea."
+
+"Yes, you did." T. Tembarom hesitated, seeming to be thinking it over
+again. "That's so." He laid his pipe aside because it had gone out.
+
+He suddenly sat down at the table, putting his elbows on it and his face
+in his hands, with a harried effect of wanting to think it over in
+a sort of withdrawal from his immediate surroundings. This was as it
+should be. His Yankee readiness had deserted him altogether.
+
+"By Jove! you are nervous!" Palliser commented. "It's not surprising,
+though. I can sympathize with you." With a markedly casual air he
+himself sat down and drew his documents toward him. "Let us talk of
+something else," he said. He preferred to be casual and incidental, if
+he were allowed. It was always better to suggest things and let them
+sink in until people saw the advantage of considering them and you. To
+manage a business matter without open argument or too frank a display of
+weapons was at once more comfortable and in better taste.
+
+"You are making a great mistake in not going into this," he suggested
+amiably. "You could go in now as you went into Hutchinson's affair, `on
+the ground floor.' That's a good enough phrase, too. Twenty thousand
+pounds would make you a million. You Americans understand nothing less
+than millions."
+
+But T. Tembarom did not take him up. He muttered in a worried way from
+behind his shading hands, "We'll talk about that later."
+
+"Why not talk about it now, before anything can interfere?" Palliser
+persisted politely, almost gently.
+
+Tembarom sprang up, restless and excited. He had plainly been planning
+fast in his temporary seclusion.
+
+"I'm thinking of what you said about Lady Joan," he burst forth. "Say,
+she's gone through all this Jem Temple Barholm thing once; it about half
+killed her. If any one raised false hopes for her, she'd go through it
+all again. Once is enough for any woman."
+
+His effect at professing heat and strong feeling made a spark of
+amusement show itself in Palliser's eye. It struck him as being
+peculiarly American in its affectation of sentiment and chivalry.
+
+"I see," he said. "It's Lady Joan you're disturbed about. You want to
+spare her another shock, I see. You are a considerate fellow, as well as
+a man of business."
+
+"I don't want her to begin to hope if--"
+
+"Very good taste on your part." Palliser's polite approval was
+admirable, but he tapped lightly on the paper after expressing it. "I
+don't want to seem to press you about this, but don't you feel inclined
+to consider it? I can assure you that an investment of this sort would
+be a good thing to depend on if the unexpected happened. If you gave
+me your check now, it would be Cedric stock to-morrow, and quite safe.
+Suppose you--"
+
+"I--I don't believe you were right--about what you thought." The
+sharp-featured face was changing from pale to red. "You'd have to be
+able to swear to it, anyhow, and I don't believe you can." He looked at
+Palliser in eager and anxious uncertainty. "If you could," he dragged
+out, "I shouldn't have a check-book. Where would you be then?"
+
+"I should be in comfortable circumstances, dear chap, and so would you
+if you gave me the money to-night, while you possess a check-book. It
+would be only a sort of temporary loan in any case, whatever turned up.
+The investment would quadruple itself. But there is no time to be lost.
+Understand that."
+
+T. Tembarom broke out into a sort of boyish resentment.
+
+"I don't believe he did look like him, anyhow," he cried. "I believe
+it's all a bluff." His crude-sounding young swagger had a touch of final
+desperation in it as he turned on Palliser. "I'm dead sure it's a bluff.
+What a fool I was not to think of that! You want to bluff me into
+going into this Cedric thing. You could no more swear he was like him
+than--than I could."
+
+The outright, presumptuous, bold stripping bare of his phrases
+infuriated Palliser too suddenly and too much. He stepped up to him and
+looked into his eyes.
+
+"Bluff you, you young bounder!" he flung out at him. "You're losing
+your head. You're not in New York streets here. You are talking to a
+gentleman. No," he said furiously, "I couldn't swear that he was like
+him, but what I can swear in any court of justice is that the man I saw
+at the window was Jem Temple Barholm, and no other man on earth."
+
+When he had said it, he saw the astonishing dolt change his expression
+utterly again, as if in a flash. He stood up, putting his hands in his
+pockets. His face changed, his voice changed.
+
+"Fine!" he said. "First-rate! That's what I wanted to get on to."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV
+
+
+After this climax the interview was not so long as it was interesting.
+Two men as far apart as the poles, as remote from each other in mind
+and body, in training and education or lack of it, in desires and
+intentions, in points of view and trend of being, as nature and
+circumstances could make them, talked in a language foreign to each
+other of a wildly strange thing. Palliser's arguments and points of
+aspect were less unknown to T. Tembarom than his own were to Palliser.
+He had seen something very like them before, though they had developed
+in different surroundings and had been differently expressed. The
+colloquialism "You're not doing that for your health" can be made
+to cover much ground in the way of the stripping bare of motives for
+action. This was what, in excellent and well-chosen English, Captain
+Palliser frankly said to his host. Of nothing which T. Tembarom said
+to him in his own statement did he believe one word or syllable. The
+statement in question was not long or detailed. It was, of course,
+Palliser saw, a ridiculously impudent flinging together of a farrago
+of nonsense, transparent in its effort beyond belief. Before he had
+listened five minutes with the distinctly "nasty" smile, he burst out
+laughing.
+
+"That is a good `spiel,' my dear chap," he said. "It's as good a `spiel'
+as your typewriter friend used to rattle off when he thought he saw a
+customer; but I'm not a customer."
+
+Tembarom looked at him interestedly for about ten seconds. His hands
+were thrust into his trousers pockets, as was his almost invariable
+custom. Absorption and speculation, even emotion and excitement, were
+usually expressed in this unconventional manner.
+
+
+
+"You don't believe a darned word of it," was his sole observation.
+
+"Not a darned word," Palliser smiled. "You are trying a `bluff,' which
+doesn't do credit to your usual sharpness. It's a bluff that is actually
+silly. It makes you look like an ass."
+
+"Well, it's true," said Tembarom; "it's true."
+
+Palliser laughed again.
+
+"I only said it made you look like an ass," he remarked. "I don't
+profess to understand you altogether, because you are a new species.
+Your combination of ignorance and sharpness isn't easy to calculate on.
+But there is one thing I have found out, and that is, that when you want
+to play a particular sharp trick you are willing to let people take
+you for a fool. I'll own you've deceived me once or twice, even when I
+suspected you. I've heard that's one of the most successful methods used
+in the American business world. That's why I only say you look like an
+ass. You are an ass in some respects; but you are letting yourself look
+like one now for some shrewd end. You either think you'll slip out of
+danger by it when I make this discovery public, or you think you'll
+somehow trick me into keeping my mouth shut."
+
+"I needn't trick you into keeping your mouth shut," Tembarom suggested.
+"There's a straightway to do that, ain't there?" And he indelicately
+waved his hand toward the documents pertaining to the Cedric Company.
+
+It was stupid as well as gross, in his hearer's opinion. If he had known
+what was good for him he would have been clever enough to ignore the
+practical presentation of his case made half an hour or so earlier.
+
+"No, there is not," Palliser replied, with serene mendacity. "No
+suggestion of that sort has been made. My business proposition was given
+out on an entirely different basis. You, of course, choose to put your
+personal construction upon it."
+
+"Gee whiz!" ejaculated T. Tembarom. "I was 'way off, wasn't I?"
+
+"I told you that professing to be an ass wouldn't be good enough in this
+case. Don't go on with it," said Palliser, sharply.
+
+"You're throwing bouquets. Let a fellow be natural," said Tembarom.
+
+"That is bluff, too," Palliser replied more sharply still. "I am not
+taken in by it, bold as it is. Ever since you came here, you have been
+playing this game. It was your fool's grin and guffaw and pretense of
+good nature that first made me suspect you of having something up your
+sleeve. You were too unembarrassed and candid."
+
+"So you began to look out," Tembarom said, considering him curiously,
+"just because of that." Then suddenly he laughed outright, the fool's
+guffaw.
+
+It somehow gave Palliser a sort of puzzled shock. It was so hearty that
+it remotely suggested that he appeared more secure than seemed possible.
+He tried to reply to him with a languid contempt of manner.
+
+"You think you have some tremendously sharp `deal' in your hand," he
+said, "but you had better remember you are in England where facts are
+like sledge-hammers. You can't dodge from under them as you can in
+America. I dare say you won't answer me, but I should like to ask you
+what you propose to do."
+
+"I don't know what I'm going to do any more than you do," was the
+unilluminating answer. "I don't mind telling you that."
+
+"And what do you think he will do?"
+
+"I've got to wait till I find out. I'm doing it. That was what I told
+you. What are you going to do?" he added casually.
+
+"I'm going to Lincoln's Inn Fields to have an interview with Palford &
+Grimby."
+
+"That's a good enough move," commented Tembarom, "if you think you can
+prove what you say. You've got to prove things, you know. I couldn't, so
+I lay low and waited, just like I told you."
+
+"Of course, of course," Palliser himself almost grinned in his derision.
+"You have only been waiting."
+
+"When you've got to prove a thing, and haven't much to go on, you've got
+to wait," said T. Tembarom--"to wait and keep your mouth shut, whatever
+happens, and to let yourself be taken for a fool or a horse-thief isn't
+as gilt-edged a job as it seems. But proof's what it's best to have
+before you ring up the curtain. You'd have to have it yourself. So
+would Palford & Grimby before it'd be stone-cold safe to rush things and
+accuse a man of a penitentiary offense."
+
+He took his unconventional half-seat on the edge of the table, with one
+foot on the floor and the other one lightly swinging.
+
+"Palford & Grimby are clever old ducks, and they know that much. Thing
+they'd know best would be that to set a raft of lies going about a
+man who's got money enough to defend himself, and to make them pay big
+damages for it afterward, would be pretty bum business. I guess they
+know all about what proof stands for. They may have to wait; so may you,
+same as I have."
+
+Palliser realized that he was in the position of a man striking at an
+adversary whose construction was of India-rubber. He struck home, but
+left no bruise and drew no blood, which was an irritating thing. He lost
+his temper.
+
+"Proof!" he jerked out. "There will be proof enough, and when it is made
+public, you will not control the money you threaten to use."
+
+"When you get proof, just you let me hear about it," T. Tembarom said.
+"And all the money I'm threatening on shall go where it belongs, and
+I'll go back to New York and sell papers if I have to. It won't come as
+hard as you think."
+
+The flippant insolence with which he brazened out his pretense that he
+had not lied, that his ridiculous romance was actual and simple truth,
+suggested dangerous readiness of device and secret knowledge of power
+which could be adroitly used.
+
+"You are merely marking time," said Palliser, rising, with cold
+determination to be juggled with no longer. "You have hidden him away
+where you think you can do as you please with a man who is an invalid.
+That is your dodge. You've got him hidden somewhere, and his friends had
+better get at him before it is too late."
+
+"I'm not answering questions this evening, and I'm not giving addresses,
+though there are no witnesses to take them down. If he's hidden away,
+he's where he won't be disturbed," was T. Tembarom's rejoinder. "You may
+lay your bottom dollar on that."
+
+Palliser walked toward the door without speaking. He had almost reached
+it when he whirled about involuntarily, arrested by a shout of laughter.
+
+"Say," announced Tembarom, "you mayn't know it, but this lay-out would
+make a first-rate turn in a vaudeville. You think I'm lying, I look like
+I'm lying, I guess every word I say sounds like I'm lying. To a fellow
+like you, I guess it couldn't help but sound that way. And I'm not
+lying. That's where the joke comes in. I'm not lying. I've not told you
+all I know because it's none of your business and wouldn't help; but
+what I have told you is the stone-cold truth."
+
+He was keeping it up to the very end with a desperate determination
+not to let go his hold of his pose until he had made his private shrewd
+deal, whatsoever it was. At least, so it struck Palliser, who merely
+said:
+
+"I 'm leaving the house by the first train to-morrow morning." He fixed
+a cold gray eye on the fool's grin.
+
+"Six forty-five," said T. Tembarom. "I'll order the carriage. I might go
+up myself."
+
+The door closed.
+
+
+Tembarom was looking cheerful enough when he went into his bedroom. He
+had become used to its size and had learned to feel that it was a good
+sort of place. It had the hall bedroom at Mrs. Bowse's boarding-house
+"beaten to a frazzle." There was about everything in it that any man
+could hatch up an idea he'd like to have. He had slept luxuriously
+on the splendid carved bed through long nights, he had lain awake
+and thought out things on it, he had lain and watched the fire-light
+flickering on the ceiling, as he thought about Ann and made plans, and
+"fixed up" the Harlem flat which could be run on fifteen per. He had
+picked out the pieces of furniture from the Sunday Earth advertisement
+sheet, and had set them in their places. He always saw the six-dollar
+mahogany-stained table set for supper, with Ann at one end and himself
+at the other. He had grown actually fond of the old room because of the
+silence and comfort of it, which tended to give reality to his dreams.
+Pearson, who had ceased to look anxious, and who had acquired fresh
+accomplishments in the form of an entirely new set of duties, was
+waiting, and handed him a telegram.
+
+"This just arrived, sir," he explained. "James brought it here because
+he thought you had come up, and I didn't send it down because I heard
+you on the stairs."
+
+"That's right. Thank you, Pearson," his master said.
+
+He tore the yellow envelop, and read the message. In a moment Pearson
+knew it was not an ordinary message, and therefore remained more than
+ordinarily impassive of expression. He did not even ask of himself what
+it might convey.
+
+Mr. Temple Barholm stood still a few seconds, with the look of a man who
+must think and think rapidly.
+
+"What is the next train to London, Pearson?" he asked.
+
+"There is one at twelve thirty-six, sir," he answered. "It's the last
+till six in the morning. You have to change at Crowley."
+
+"You're always ready, Pearson," returned Mr. Temple Barholm. "I want to
+get that train."
+
+Pearson was always ready. Before the last word was quite spoken he had
+turned and opened the bedroom door.
+
+"I'll order the dog-cart; that's quickest, sir," he said. He was out of
+the room and in again almost immediately. Then he was at the wardrobe
+and taking out what Mr. Temple Barholm called his "grip," but what
+Pearson knew as a Gladstone bag. It was always kept ready packed for
+unexpected emergencies of travel.
+
+Mr. Temple Barholm sat at the table and drew pen and paper toward him.
+He looked excited; he looked more troubled than Pearson had seen him
+look before.
+
+"The wire's from Sir Ormsby Galloway, Pearson," he said.
+
+"It's about Mr. Strangeways. He's done what I used to be always watching
+out against: he's disappeared."
+
+"Disappeared, sir!" cried Pearson, and almost dropped the Gladstone bag.
+"I beg pardon, sir. I know there's no time to lose." He steadied the bag
+and went on with his task without even turning round.
+
+His master was in some difficulty. He began to write, and after dashing
+off a few words, stopped, and tore them up.
+
+"No," he muttered, "that won't do. There's no time to explain." Then he
+began again, but tore up his next lines also.
+
+"That says too much and not enough. It'd frighten the life out of her."
+
+He wrote again, and ended by folding the sheet and putting it into an
+envelop.
+
+"This is a message for Miss Alicia," he said to Pearson. "Give it to
+her in the morning. I don't want her to worry because I had to go in
+a hurry. Tell her everything's going to be all right; but you needn't
+mention that anything's happened to Mr. Strangeways."
+
+"Yes, sir," answered Pearson.
+
+Mr. Temple Barholm was already moving about the room, doing odd things
+for himself rapidly, and he went on speaking.
+
+"I want you and Rose to know," he said, "that whatever happens, you are
+both fixed all right--both of you. I've seen to that."
+
+"Thank you, sir," Pearson faltered, made uneasy by something new in his
+tone. "You said whatever happened, sir--"
+
+"Whatever old thing happens," his master took him up.
+
+"Not to you, sir. Oh, I hope, sir, that nothing--"
+
+Mr. Temple Barholm put a cheerful hand on his shoulder.
+
+"Nothing's going to happen that'll hurt any one. Things may change,
+that's all. You and Rose are all right, Miss Alicia's all right, I'm all
+right. Come along. Got to catch that train."'
+
+In this manner he took his departure.
+
+Miss Alicia had from necessity acquired the habit of early rising at
+Rowcroft vicarage, and as the next morning was bright, she was clipping
+roses on a terrace before breakfast when Pearson brought her the note.
+
+"Mr. Temple Barholm received a telegram from London last night, ma'am,"
+he explained, "and he was obliged to take the midnight train. He hadn't
+time to do any more than leave a few lines for you, but he asked me to
+tell you that nothing disturbing had occurred. He specially mentioned
+that everything was all right."
+
+"But how very sudden!" exclaimed Miss Alicia, opening her note and
+beginning to read it. Plainly it had been written hurriedly indeed. It
+read as though he had been in such haste that he hadn't had time to be
+clear.
+
+
+Dear little Miss Alicia:
+
+I've got to light out of here as quick as I can make it. I can't even
+stop to tell you why. There's just one thing--don't get rattled, Miss
+Alicia. Whatever any one says or does, just don't let yourself get
+rattled.
+
+Yours affectionately,
+
+T. TEMBAROM.
+
+
+"Pearson," Miss Alicia exclaimed, again looking up, "are you sure
+everything is all right?"
+
+"That was what he said, ma'am. `All right,' ma'am."
+
+"Thank you, Pearson. I am glad to hear it."
+
+She walked to and fro in the sunshine, reading the note and rereading
+it.
+
+"Of course if he said it was all right, it was all right," she murmured.
+"It is only the phrasing that makes me slightly nervous. Why should he
+ask me not to get rattled?" The term was by this time as familiar to her
+as any in Dr. Johnson's dictionary. "Of course he knows I do get rattled
+much too easily; but why should I be in danger of getting rattled now
+if nothing has happened?" She gave a very small start as she remembered
+something. "Could it be that Captain Palliser--But how could he? Though
+I do not like Captain Palliser."
+
+Captain Palliser, her distaste for whom at the moment quite agitated
+her, was this morning an early riser also, and as she turned in her walk
+she found him coming toward her.
+
+"I find I am obliged to take an early train to London this morning,"
+he said, after their exchange of greetings. "It is quite unexpected. I
+spoke to Mr. Temple Barholm about it last night."
+
+Perhaps the unexpectedness, perhaps a certain suggestion of coincidence,
+caused Miss Alicia's side ringlets to appear momentarily tremulous.
+
+"Then perhaps we had better go in to breakfast at once," she said.
+
+"Is Mr. Temple Barholm down?" he inquired as they seated themselves at
+the breakfast-table.
+
+"He is not here," she answered. "He, too, was called away unexpectedly.
+He went to London by the midnight train."
+
+She had never been so aware of her unchristian lack of liking for
+Captain Palliser as she was when he paused a moment before he made any
+comment. His pause was as marked as a start, and the smile he indulged
+in was, she felt, most singularly disagreeable. It was a smile of the
+order which conceals an unpleasant explanation of itself.
+
+"Oh," he remarked, "he has gone first, has he?"
+
+"Yes," she answered, pouring out his coffee for him. "He evidently had
+business of importance."
+
+They were quite alone, and she was not one of the women one need disturb
+oneself about. She had been browbeaten into hypersensitive timidity
+early in life, and did not know how to resent cleverly managed polite
+bullying. She would always feel herself at fault if she was tempted to
+criticize any one. She was innocent and nervous enough to betray herself
+to any extent, because she would feel it rude to refuse to answer
+questions, howsoever far they exceeded the limits of polite curiosity.
+He had learned a good deal from her in the past. Why not try what could
+be startled out of her now? Thus Captain Palliser said:
+
+"I dare say you feel a little anxious at such an extraordinarily sudden
+departure," he suggested amiably. "Bolting off in the middle of the
+night was sudden, if he did not explain himself."
+
+"He had no time to explain," she answered.
+
+"That makes it appear all the more sudden. But no doubt he left you
+a message. I saw you were reading a note when I joined you on the
+terrace."
+
+Lightly casual as he chose to make the words sound, they were an
+audacity he would have known better than to allow himself with any one
+but a timid early-Victorian spinster whose politeness was hypersensitive
+in its quality.
+
+"He particularly desired that I should not be anxious," she said. "He is
+always considerate."
+
+"He would, of course, have explained everything if he had not been so
+hurried?"
+
+"Of course, if it had been necessary," answered Miss Alicia, nervously
+sipping her tea.
+
+"Naturally," said Captain Palliser. "His note no doubt mentioned that he
+went away on business connected with his friend Mr. Strangeways?"
+
+There was no question of the fact that she was startled.
+
+"He had not time enough," she said. "He could only write a few lines.
+Mr. Strangeways?"
+
+"We had a long talk about him last night. He told me a remarkable
+story," Captain Palliser went on. "I suppose you are quite familiar with
+all the details of it?"
+
+"I know how he found him in New York, and I know how generous he has
+been to him."
+
+"Have you been told nothing more?"
+
+"There was nothing more to tell. If there was anything, I am sure he had
+some good reason for not telling me," said Miss Alicia, loyally. "His
+reasons are always good."
+
+Palliser's air of losing a shade or so of discretion as a result of
+astonishment was really well done.
+
+"Do you mean to say that he has not even hinted that ever since he
+arrived at Temple Barholm he has strongly suspected Strangeways'
+identity--that he has even known who he is?" he exclaimed.
+
+Miss Alicia's small hands clung to the table-cloth.
+
+"He has not known at all. He has been most anxious to discover. He has
+used every endeavor," she brought out with some difficulty.
+
+"You say he has been trying to find out?" Palliser interposed.
+
+"He has been more than anxious," she protested. "He has been to London
+again and again; he has gone to great expense; he has even seen people
+from Scotland Yard. I have sometimes almost thought he was assuming more
+responsibility than was just to himself. In the case of a relative or an
+old friend, but for an entire stranger--Oh, really, I ought not to seem
+to criticize. I do not presume to criticize his wonderful generosity and
+determination and goodness. No one should presume to question him."
+
+"If he knows that you feel like this--" Palliser began.
+
+"He knows all that I feel," Miss Alicia took him up with a pretty,
+rising spirit. "He knows that I am full of unspeakable gratitude to him
+for his beautiful kindness to me; he knows that I admire and respect and
+love him in a way I could never express, and that I would do anything in
+the world he could wish me to do."
+
+"Naturally," said Captain Palliser. "I was only about to express my
+surprise that since he is aware of all this he has not told you who he
+has proved Strangeways to be. It is a little odd, you know."
+
+"I think "--Miss Alicia was even gently firm in her reply--"that you
+are a little mistaken in believing Mr. Temple Barholm has proved Mr.
+Strangeways to be anybody. When he has proof, he will no doubt think
+proper to tell me about it. Until then I should prefer--"
+
+Palliser laughed as he finished her sentence.
+
+"Not to know. I was not going to betray him, Miss Alicia. He evidently
+has one of his excellent reasons for keeping things to himself. I may
+mention, however, that it is not so much he who has proof as I myself."
+
+"You!" How could she help quite starting in her seat when his gray eyes
+fixed themselves on her with such a touch of finely amused malice?
+
+"I offered him the proof last night, and it rather upset him," he said.
+"He thought no one knew but himself, and he was not inclined to tell the
+world. He was upset because I said I had seen the man and could swear to
+his identity. That was why he went away so hurriedly. He no doubt went
+to see Strangeways and talk it over."
+
+"See Mr. Strangeways? But Mr. Strangeways--" Miss Alicia rose and rang
+the bell.
+
+"Tell Pearson I wish to see him at once," she said to the footman.
+
+Palliser took in her mood without comment. He had no objection to being
+present when she made inquiries of Pearson.
+
+"I hear the wheels of the dog-cart," he remarked. "You see, I must catch
+my train."
+
+Pearson stood at the door.
+
+"Is not Mr. Strangeways in his room, Pearson?" Miss Alicia asked.
+
+"Mr. Temple Barholm took him to London when he last went, ma'am,"
+answered Pearson. "You remember he went at night. The doctor thought it
+best."
+
+"He did not tell you that, either?" said Palliser, casually.
+
+"The dog-cart is at the door, sir," announced Pearson.
+
+Miss Alicia's hand was unsteady when the departing guest took it.
+
+"Don't be disturbed," he said considerately, "but a most singular thing
+has happened. When I asked so many questions about Temple Barholm's Man
+with the Iron Mask I asked them for curious reasons. That must be my
+apology. You will hear all about it later, probably from Palford &
+Grimby."
+
+When he had left the room Miss Alicia stood upon the hearth-rug as the
+dog-cart drove away, and she was pale. Her simple and easily disturbed
+brain was in a whirl. She could scarcely remember what she had heard,
+and could not in the least comprehend what it had seemed intended to
+imply, except that there had been concealed in the suggestions some
+disparagement of her best beloved.
+
+Singular as it was that Pearson should return without being summoned,
+when she turned and found that he mysteriously stood inside the
+threshold again, as if she had called him, she felt a great sense of
+relief.
+
+"Pearson," she faltered, "I am rather upset by certain things which
+Captain Palliser has said. I am afraid I do not understand."
+
+She looked at him helplessly, not knowing what more to say. She wished
+extremely that she could think of something definite.
+
+The masterly finish of Pearson's reply lay in its neatly restrained hint
+of unobtrusively perceptive sympathy.
+
+"Yes, Miss. I was afraid so. Which is why I took the liberty of stepping
+into the room again. I myself do not understand, but of course I do not
+expect to. If I may be so bold as to say it, Miss, whatever we don't
+understand, we both understand Mr. Temple Barholm. My instructions were
+to remind you, Miss, that everything would be all right."
+
+Miss Alicia took up her letter from the table where she had laid it
+down.
+
+"Thank you, Pearson," she said, her forehead beginning to clear itself
+a little. "Of course, of course. I ought not to--He told me not to--get
+rattled," she added with plaintive ingenuousness, "and I ought not to,
+above all things."
+
+"Yes, Miss. It is most important that you should not."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXV
+
+
+The story of the adventures, experiences, and journeyings of Mr. Joseph
+Hutchinson, his daughter, and the invention, if related in detail, would
+prove reading of interest; but as this is merely a study of the manner
+in which the untrained characteristics and varied limitations of one man
+adjusted or failed to adjust themselves to incongruous surroundings and
+totally unprepared-for circumstances, such details, whatsoever their
+potential picturesqueness, can be touched upon but lightly. No new idea
+of value to the world of practical requirements is presented to the
+public at large without the waking of many sleeping dogs, and the
+stirring of many snapping fish, floating with open ears and eyes in
+many pools. An uneducated, blustering, obstinate man of one idea, having
+resentfully borne discouragement and wounded egotism for years, and
+suddenly confronting immense promise of success, is not unlikely to be
+prey easily harpooned. Joseph Hutchinson's rebound from despair to high
+and well-founded hope made of him exactly what such a man is always
+made by such rebound. The testimony to his genius and judgment which
+acknowledgment of the value of his work implied was naturally, in his
+opinion, only a proper tribute which the public had been a bull-headed
+fool not to lay at his feet years before. So much time lost, and so much
+money for it, as well as for him, and served 'em all damned well right,
+he said. If Temple Barholm hadn't come into his money, and hadn't
+had more sense than the rest of them, where would they all have been?
+Perhaps they'd never have had the benefit of the thing he'd been telling
+them about for years. He prided himself immensely on the possession of a
+business shrewdness which was an absolute defense against any desire
+on the part of the iniquitous to overreach him. He believed it to be a
+peculiarly Lancashire characteristic, and kept it in view constantly.
+
+"Lancashire's not easy to do," he would say hilariously, "Them that can
+do a Lancashire chap has got to look out that they get up early in the
+morning and don't go to bed till late."
+
+Smooth-mannered and astute men of business who knew how to make a man
+talk were given diffuse and loud-voiced explanations of his methods and
+long-acknowledged merits and characteristics. His life, his morals, and
+his training, or rather lack of it, were laid before them as examples
+of what a man might work himself up to if "he had it in him." Education
+didn't do it. He had never been to naught but a village school, where
+he'd picked up precious little but the three R's. It had to be born in a
+man. Look at him! His invention promised to bring him in a fortune like
+a duke's, if he managed it right and kept his eyes open for sharpers.
+This company and that company were after him, but Lancashire didn't snap
+up things without going into 'em, and under 'em, and through 'em, for
+the matter of that.
+
+The well-mannered gentlemen of business stimulated him greatly by their
+appreciative attention. He sometimes lost his head a trifle and almost
+bullied them, but they did not seem to mind it. Their apparently
+old-time knowledge of and respect for Lancashire business sagacity
+seemed invariably a marked thing. Men of genius and powerful character
+combined with practical shrewdness of outlook they intimated, were of
+enormous value to the business world. They were to be counted upon as
+important factors. They could see and deal with both sides of a proposal
+as those of weaker mind could not.
+
+"That they can," Hutchinson would admit, rolling about in his chair and
+thrusting his hands in his pockets. "They've got some bottom to stand
+on." And he would feel amenable to reason.
+
+Little Ann found her duties and responsibilities increasing daily. Many
+persons seemed to think it necessary to come and talk business, and
+father had so much to think of and reason out, so that he could be
+sure that he didn't make any mistakes. In a quiet, remote, and darkened
+corner of her mind, in which were stored all such things as it was well
+to say little or nothing about, there was discreetly kept for reference
+the secretly acquired knowledge that father did not know so much about
+business ways and business people as he thought he did. Mother had
+learned this somewhat important fact, and had secluded it in her own
+private mental store-room with much affectionate delicacy.
+
+"Father's a great man and a good man, Ann love," she had confided to
+her, choosing an occasion when her husband was a hundred miles away,
+"and he IS right-down Lancashire in his clever way of seeing through
+people that think themselves sharp; but when a man is a genius and
+noble-minded he sometimes can't see the right people's faults and
+wickedness. He thinks they mean as honest as he does. And there's times
+when he may get taken in if some one, perhaps not half as clever as
+he is, doesn't look after him. When the invention's taken up, and
+everybody's running after him to try to cheat him out of his rights, if
+I'm not there, Ann, you must just keep with him and watch every minute.
+I've seen these sharp, tricky ones right-down flinch and quail when
+there was a nice, quiet-behaved woman in the room, and she just fixed
+her eye steady and clear-like on them and showed she'd took in every
+word and was like to remember. You know what I mean, Ann; you've got
+that look in your own eye."
+
+She had. The various persons who interviewed Mr. Hutchinson became
+familiar with the fact that he had an unusual intimacy with and
+affection for his daughter. She was present on all occasions. If she had
+not been such a quiet and entirely unobtrusive little thing, she
+might have been an obstacle to freedom of expression. But she seemed a
+childish, unsophisticated creature, who always had a book with her when
+she waited in an office, and a trifle of sewing to occupy herself with
+when she was at home. At first she so obliterated herself that she was
+scarcely noticed; but in course of time it became observed by some that
+she was curiously pretty. The face usually bent over her book or work
+was tinted like a flower, and she had quite magnificent red hair. A
+stout old financier first remarked her eyes. He found one day that she
+had quietly laid her book on her lap, and that they were resting upon
+him like unflinching crystals as he talked to her father. Their serenity
+made him feel annoyed and uncomfortable. It was a sort of recording
+serenity. He felt as though she would so clearly remember every word he
+had said that she would be able to write it down when she went home; and
+he did not care to have it written down. So he began to wander somewhat
+in his argument, and did not reach his conclusions.
+
+"I was glad, Father, to see how you managed that gentleman this
+afternoon," Little Ann said that night when Hutchinson had settled
+himself with his pipe after an excellent dinner.
+
+"Eh?" he exclaimed. "Eh?"
+
+"The one," she exclaimed, "that thought he was so sure he was going to
+persuade you to sign that paper. I do wonder he could think you'd listen
+to such a poor offer, and tie up so much. Why, even I could see he
+was trying to take advantage, and I know nothing in the world about
+business."
+
+The financier in question had been a brilliant and laudatory
+conversationalist, and had so soothed and exhilarated Mr. Hutchinson
+that such perils had beset him as his most lurid imaginings could never
+have conceived in his darkest moments of believing that the entire
+universe had ceased all other occupation to engage in that of defrauding
+him of his rights and dues. He had been so uplifted by the admiration of
+his genius so properly exhibited, and the fluency with which his future
+fortunes had been described, that he had been huffed when the arguments
+seemed to dwindle away. Little Ann startled him, but it was not he
+who would show signs of dismay at the totally unexpected expression of
+adverse opinion. He had got into the habit of always listening, though
+inadvertently, as it were, to Ann as he had inadvertently listened to
+her mother.
+
+"Rosenthal?" he said. "Are you talking about him?"
+
+"Yes, I am," Little Ann answeered, smiling approvingly over her bit of
+sewing. "Father, I wish you'd try and teach me some of the things you
+know about business. I've learned a little by just listening to you
+talk; but I should so like to feel as if I could follow you when you
+argue. I do so enjoy hearing you argue. It's just an education."
+
+"Women are not up to much at business," reflected Hutchinson. "If you'd
+been a boy, I'd have trained you same as I've trained myself. You're a
+sharp little thing, Ann, but you're a woman. Not but what a woman's the
+best thing on earth," he added almost severely in his conviction--"the
+best thing on earth in her place. I don't know what I'd ever have done
+without you, Ann, in the bad times."
+
+He loved her, blundering old egotist, just as he had loved her mother.
+Ann always knew it, and her own love for him warmed all the world about
+them both. She got up and went to him to kiss him, and pat him, and
+stuff a cushion behind his stout back.
+
+"And now the good times have come," she said, bestowing on him two or
+three special little pats which were caresses of her own invention, "and
+people see what you are and always have been, as they ought to have seen
+long ago, I don't want to feel as if I couldn't keep up with you and
+understand your plans. Perhaps I've got a little bit of your cleverness,
+and you might teach me to use it in small ways. I've got a good memory
+you know, Father love, and I might recollect things people say and make
+bits of notes of them to save you trouble. And I can calculate. I once
+got a copy of Bunyan's `Pilgrim's Progress' for a prize at the village
+school just for sums."
+
+The bald but unacknowledged fact that Mr. Hutchinson had never exhibited
+gifts likely to entitle him to receive a prize for "sums" caused this
+suggestion to be one of some practical value. When business men talked
+to him of per cents., and tenth shares or net receipts, and expected him
+to comprehend their proportions upon the spot without recourse to
+pencil and paper, he felt himself grow hot and nervous and red, and was
+secretly terrified lest the party of the second part should detect that
+he was tossed upon seas of horrible uncertainty. T. Tembarom in the same
+situation would probably have said, "This is the place where T. T. sits
+down a while to take breath and count things up on his fingers. I am not
+a sharp on arithmetic, and I need time--lots of it."
+
+Mr. Hutchinson's way was to bluster irritatedly.
+
+"Aye, aye, I see that, of course, plain enough. I see that." And feel
+himself breaking into a cold perspiration. "Eh, this English climate
+is a damp un," he would add when it became necessary to mop his red
+forehead somewhat with his big clean handkerchief.
+
+Therefore he found it easy to receive Little Ann's proposition with
+favor.
+
+"There's summat i' that," he acknowledged graciously, dropping into
+Lancashire. "That's one of the little things a woman can do if she's
+sharp at figures. Your mother taught me that much. She always said women
+ought to look after the bits of things as was too small for a man to
+bother with."
+
+"Men have the big things to look after. That's enough for anybody,"
+said Little Ann. "And they ought to leave something for women to do.
+If you'll just let me keep notes for you and remember things and answer
+your letters, and just make calculations you're too busy to attend to, I
+should feel right-down happy, Father."
+
+"Eh!" he said relievedly, "tha art like thy mother."
+
+"That would make me happy if there was nothing else to do it," said Ann,
+smoothing his shoulder.
+
+"You're her girl," he said, warmed and supported.
+
+"Yes, I'm her girl, and I'm yours. Now, isn't there some little thing
+I could begin with? Would you mind telling me if I was right in what I
+thought you thought about Mr. Rosenthal's offer?"
+
+"What did you think I thought about it?" He was able to put affectionate
+condescension into the question.
+
+She went to her work-basket and took out a sheet of paper. She came back
+and sat cozily on the arm of his chair.
+
+"I had to put it all down when I came home," she said. "I wanted to make
+sure I hadn't forgotten. I do hope I didn't make mistakes."
+
+She gave it to him to look at, and as he settled himself down to its
+careful examination, she kept her blue eyes upon him. She herself did
+not know that it was a wonderful little document in its neatly jotted
+down notes of the exact detail most important to his interests.
+
+There were figures, there were calculations of profits, there were
+records of the gist of his replies, there were things Hutchinson
+himself could not possibly have fished out of the jumbled rag-bag of his
+uncertain recollections.
+
+"Did I say that?" he exclaimed once.
+
+"Yes, Father love, and I could see it upset him. I was watching his face
+because it wasn't a face I took to."
+
+Joseph Hutchinson began to chuckle--the chuckle of a relieved and
+gratified stout man.
+
+"Tha kept thy eyes open, Little Ann," he said. "And the way tha's put
+it down is a credit to thee. And I'll lay a sovereign that tha made no
+mistakes in what tha thought I was thinking."
+
+He was a little anxious to hear what it had been. The memorandum had
+brought him up with a slight shock, because it showed him that he had
+not remembered certain points, and had passed over others which were of
+dangerous importance. Ann slipped her warm arm about his neck, as she
+nearly always did when she sat on the arm of his chair and talked things
+over with him. She had never thought, in fact she was not even aware,
+that her soft little instincts made her treat him as the big, good,
+conceited, blundering child nature had created him.
+
+"What I was seeing all the time was the way you were taking in his
+trick of putting whole lots of things in that didn't really matter, and
+leaving out things that did," she explained. "He kept talking about
+what the invention would make in England, and how it would make it, and
+adding up figures and per cents. and royalties until my head was buzzing
+inside. And when he thought he'd got your mind fixed on England so that
+you'd almost forget there was any other country to think of, he read out
+the agreement that said `All rights,' and he was silly enough to think
+he could get you to sign it without reading it over and over yourself,
+and showing it to a clever lawyer that would know that as many tricks
+can be played by things being left out of a paper as by things being put
+in."
+
+Small beads of moisture broke out on the bald part of Joseph
+Hutchinson's head. He had been first so flattered and exhilarated by the
+quoting of large figures, and then so flustrated and embarrassed by his
+inability to calculate and follow argument, and again so soothed and
+elated and thrilled by his own importance in the scheme and the honors
+which his position in certain companies would heap upon him, that an
+abyss had yawned before him of which he had been wholly unaware. He was
+not unaware of it now. He was a vainglorious, ignorant man, whose life
+had been spent in common work done under the supervision of those who
+knew what he did not know. He had fed himself upon the comforting belief
+that he had learned all the tricks of any trade. He had been openly
+boastful of his astuteness and experience, and yet, as Ann's soft little
+voice went on, and she praised his cleverness in seeing one point after
+another, he began to quake within himself before the dawning realization
+that he had seen none of them, that he had been carried along exactly
+as Rosenthal had intended that he should be, and that if luck had not
+intervened, he had been on the brink of signing his name to an agreement
+that would have implied a score of concessions he would have bellowed
+like a bull at the thought of making if he had known what he was doing.
+
+"Aye, lass," he gulped out when he could speak--"aye, lass, tha wert
+right enow. I'm glad tha wert there and heard it, and saw what I was
+thinking. I didn't say much. I let the chap have rope enow to hang
+himself with. When he comes back I'll give him a bit o' my mind as'll
+startle him. It was right-down clever of thee to see just what I had i'
+my head about all that there gab about things as didn't matter, an' the
+leavin' out them as did--thinking I wouldn't notice. Many's the time
+I've said, `It is na so much what's put into a contract as what's left
+out.' I'll warrant tha'st heard me say it thysen."
+
+"I dare say I have," answered Ann, "and I dare say that was why it came
+into my mind."
+
+"That was it," he answered. "Thy mother was always tellin' me of things
+I'd said that I'd clean forgot myself."
+
+He was beginning to recover his balance and self-respect. It would have
+been so like a Lancashire chap to have seen and dealt shrewdly with a
+business schemer who tried to outwit him that he was gradually convinced
+that he had thought all that had been suggested, and had comported
+himself with triumphant though silent astuteness. He even began to rub
+his hands.
+
+"I'll show him," he said, "I'll send him off with a flea in his ear."
+
+"If you'll help me, I'll study out the things I've written down on this
+paper," Ann said, "and then I'll write down for you just the things you
+make up your mind to say. It will be such a good lesson for me, if you
+don't mind, Father. It won't be much to write it out the way you'll say
+it. You know how you always feel that in business the fewer words the
+better, and that, however much a person deserves it, calling names and
+showing you're angry is only wasting time. One of the cleverest things
+you ever thought was that a thief doesn't mind being called one if he's
+got what he wanted out of you; he'll only laugh to see you in a rage
+when you can't help yourself. And if he hasn't got what he wanted, it's
+only waste of strength to work yourself up. It's you being what you are
+that makes you know that temper isn't business."
+
+"Well," said Hutchinson, drawing a long and deep breath, "I was almost
+hot enough to have forgot that, and I'm glad you've reminded me. We'll
+go over that paper now, Ann. I'd like to give you your lesson while
+we've got a bit o' time to ourselves and what I've said is fresh in your
+mind. The trick is always to get at things while they're fresh in your
+mind."
+
+The little daughter with the red hair was present during Rosenthal's
+next interview with the owner of the invention. The fellow, he told
+himself, had been thinking matters over, had perhaps consulted a lawyer;
+and having had time for reflection, he did not present a mass of mere
+inflated and blundering vanity as a target for adroit aim. He seemed a
+trifle sulky, but he did not talk about himself diffusely, and lose
+his head when he was smoothed the right way. He had a set of curiously
+concise notes to which he referred, and he stuck to his points with a
+bulldog obstinacy which was not to be shaken. Something had set him on
+a new tack. The tricks which could be used only with a totally ignorant
+and readily flattered and influenced business amateur were no longer in
+order. This was baffling and irritating.
+
+The worst feature of the situation was that the daughter did not read a
+book, as had seemed her habit at other times. She sat with a tablet and
+pencil on her knee, and, still as unobtrusively as ever, jotted down
+notes.
+
+"Put that down, Ann," her father said to her more than once. "There's no
+objections to having things written down, I suppose?" he put it bluntly
+to Rosenthal. "I've got to have notes made when I'm doing business.
+Memory's all well enough, but black and white's better. No one can go
+back of black and white. Notes save time."
+
+There was but one attitude possible. No man of business could resent
+the recording of his considered words, but the tablet and pencil and the
+quietly bent red head were extraordinary obstacles to the fluidity of
+eloquence. Rosenthal found his arguments less ready and his methods
+modifying themselves. The outlook narrowed itself. When he returned to
+his office and talked the situation over with his partner, he sat and
+bit his nails in restless irritation.
+
+"Ridiculous as it seems, outrageously ridiculous, I've an idea," he
+said, "I've more than an idea that we have to count with the girl."
+
+"Girl? What girl?"
+
+"Daughter. Well-behaved, quiet bit of a thing, who sits in a corner
+and listens while she pretends to sew or read. I'm certain of it. She's
+taken to making notes now, and Hutchinson's turned stubborn. You need
+not laugh, Lewis. She's in it. We've got to count with that girl, little
+female mouse as she looks."
+
+This view, which was first taken by Rosenthal and passed on to his
+partner, was in course of time passed on to others and gradually
+accepted, sometimes reluctantly and with much private protest,
+sometimes with amusement. The well-behaved daughter went with
+Hutchinson wheresoever his affairs called him. She was changeless in the
+unobtrusiveness of her demeanor, which was always that of a dutiful and
+obedient young person who attended her parent because he might desire
+her humble little assistance in small matters.
+
+"She's my secretary," Hutchinson began to explain, with a touch of
+swagger. "I've got to have a secretary, and I'd rather trust my private
+business to my own daughter than to any one else. It's safe with her."
+
+It was so safe with her steady demureness that Hutchinson found himself
+becoming steady himself. The "lessons" he gave to Little Ann, and the
+notes made as a result, always ostensibly for her own security and
+instruction, began to form a singularly firm foundation for statement
+and argument. He began to tell himself that his memory was improving.
+Facts were no longer jumbled together in his mind. He could better
+follow a line of logical reasoning. He less often grew red and hot and
+flustered.
+
+"That's the thing I've said so often--that temper's got naught to do wi'
+business, and only upsets a man when he wants all his wits about
+him. It's the truest thing I ever worked out," he not infrequently
+congratulated himself. "If a chap can keep his temper, he'll be like to
+keep his head and drive his bargain. I see it plainer every day o' my
+life."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVI
+
+
+It was in the course of the "lessons" that he realized that he had
+always argued that the best way to do business was to do it face to face
+with people. To stay in England, and let another chap make your bargains
+for you in France or Germany or some other outlandish place, where
+frog-eating foreigners ran loose, was a fool's trick. He'd said it often
+enough. "Get your eye on 'em, and let them know you've got it on them,
+and they'd soon find out they were dealing with Lancashire, and not with
+foreign knaves and nincompoops." So, when it became necessary to deal
+with France, Little Ann packed him up neatly, so to speak, and in the
+role of obedient secretarial companion took him to that country, having
+for weeks beforehand mentally confronted the endless complications
+attending the step. She knew, in the first place, what the effect of the
+French language would be upon his temper: that it would present itself
+to him as a wall deliberately built by the entire nation as a means of
+concealing a deep duplicity the sole object of which was the baffling,
+thwarting, and undoing of Englishmen, from whom it wished to wrest their
+honest rights. Apoplexy becoming imminent, as a result of his impotent
+rage during their first few days in Paris, she paid a private visit to a
+traveler's agency, and after careful inquiry discovered that it was not
+impossible to secure the attendance and service of a well-mannered young
+man who spoke most of the languages employed by most of the inhabitants
+of the globe. She even found that she might choose from a number of such
+persons, and she therefore selected with great care.
+
+"One that's got a good temper, and isn't easy irritated," she said to
+herself, in summing up the aspirants, "but not one that's easy-tempered
+because he's silly. He must have plenty of common sense as well as be
+willing to do what he's told."
+
+When her father discovered that he himself had been considering the
+desirability of engaging the services of such a person, and had, indeed
+already, in a way, expressed his intention of sending her to "the agency
+chap" to look him up, she was greatly relieved.
+
+"I can try to teach him what you've taught me, Father," she said, "and
+of course he'll learn just by being with you."
+
+The assistant engaged was a hungry young student who had for weeks,
+through ill luck, been endeavoring to return with some courage the gaze
+of starvation, which had been staring him in the face.
+
+His name was Dudevant, and with desperate struggles he had educated
+himself highly, having cherished literary ambitions from his infancy. At
+this juncture it had become imperative that he should, for a few months
+at least, obtain food. Ann had chosen well by instinct. His speech had
+told her that he was intelligent, his eyes had told her that he would do
+anything on earth to earn his living.
+
+From the time of his advent, Joseph Hutchinson had become calmer and had
+ceased to be in peril of apoplectic seizure. Foreign nations became
+less iniquitous and dangerous, foreign languages were less of a barrier,
+easier to understand. A pleasing impression that through great facility
+he had gained a fair practical knowledge of French, German, and Italian,
+supported and exhilarated him immensely.
+
+"It's right-down wonderful how a chap gets to understand these fellows'
+lingo after he's listened to it a bit," he announced to Ann. "I wouldn't
+have believed it of myself that I could see into it as quick as I have.
+I couldn't say as I understand everything they say just when they're
+saying it; but I understand it right enough when I've had time to
+translate like. If foreigners didn't talk so fast and run their words
+one into another, and jabber as if their mouths was full of puddin',
+it'd be easier for them as is English. Now, there's `wee' and `nong.' I
+know 'em whenever I hear 'em, and that's a good bit of help."
+
+"Yes," answered Ann, "of course that's the chief thing you want to know
+in business, whether a person is going to say `yes' or `no.'"
+
+He began to say "wee" and "nong" at meals, and once broke forth "Passy
+mor le burr" in a tone so casually Parisian that Ann was frightened,
+because she did not understand immediately, and also because she saw
+looming up before her a future made perilous by the sudden interjection
+of unexpected foreign phrases it would be incumbent upon her and
+Dudevant to comprehend instantaneously without invidious hesitation.
+
+"Don't you understand? Pass the butter. Don't you understand a bit o'
+French like that?" he exclaimed irritatedly. "Buy yourself one o' these
+books full of easy sentences and learn some of 'em, lass. You oughtn't
+to be travelin' about with your father in foreign countries and learnin'
+nothin'. It's not every lass that's gettin' your advantages."
+
+Ann had not mentioned the fact that she spent most of her rare leisure
+moments in profound study of phrase-books and grammars, which she kept
+in her trunk and gave her attention to before she got up in the morning,
+after she went to her room at night, and usually while she was dressing.
+You can keep a book open before you when you are brushing your hair.
+Dudevant gave her a lesson or so whenever time allowed. She was as
+quick to learn as her father thought he was, and she was desperately
+determined. It was really not long before she understood much more than
+"wee and nong" when she was present at a business interview.
+
+"You are a wonderful young lady," Dudevant said, with that well-known
+yearning in his eyes. "You are most wonderful."
+
+"She's just a wonder," Mrs. Bowse and her boarders had said. And the
+respectful yearning in the young Frenchman's eyes and voice were well
+known to her because she had seen it often before, and remembered it,
+in Jem Bowles and Julius Steinberger. That this young man had without an
+hour of delay fallen abjectly in love with her was a circumstance with
+which she dealt after her own inimitably kind and undeleterious method,
+which in itself was an education to any amorous youth.
+
+"I can understand all you tell me," she said when he reached the point
+of confiding his hard past to her. "I can understand it because I knew
+some one who had to fight for himself just that way, only perhaps it was
+harder because he wasn't educated as you are."
+
+"Did he--confide in you?" Dudevant ventured, with delicate hesitation.
+"You are so kind I am sure he did, Mademoiselle."
+
+"He told me about it because he knew I wanted to hear," she answered.
+"I was very fond of him," she added, and her kind gravity was quite
+unshaded by any embarrassment. "I was right-down fond of him."
+
+His emotion rendered him for a moment indiscreet, to her immediate
+realization and regret, as was evident by his breaking off in the midst
+of his question.
+
+"And now--are you?"
+
+"Yes, I always shall be, Mr. Dudevant."
+
+His adoration naturally only deepened itself as all hope at once
+receded, as it could not but recede before the absolute pellucid truth
+of her.
+
+"However much he likes me, he will get over it in time. People do, when
+they know how things stand," she was thinking, with maternal sympathy.
+
+It did him no bitter harm to help her with her efforts at learning
+what she most needed, and he found her intelligence and modest power
+of concentration remarkable. A singularly clear knowledge of her own
+specialized requirements was a practical background to them both. She
+had no desire to shine; she was merely steadily bent on acquiring as
+immediately as possible a comprehension of nouns, verbs, and phrases
+that would be useful to her father. The manner in which she applied
+herself, and assimilated what it was her quietly fixed intention to
+assimilate, bespoke her possession of a brain the powers of which being
+concentrated on large affairs might have accomplished almost startling
+results. There was, however, nothing startling in her intentions, and
+ambition did not touch her. Yet, as she went with Hutchinson from one
+country to another, more than one man of affairs had it borne in upon
+him that her young slimness and her silence represented an unanticipated
+knowledge of points under discussion which might wisely be considered
+as a factor in all decisions for or against. To realize that a
+soft-cheeked, child-eyed girl was an element to regard privately in
+discussions connected with the sale of, or the royalties paid on, a
+valuable patent appeared in some minds to be a situation not without
+flavor. She was the kind of little person a man naturally made love to,
+and a girl who was made love to in a clever manner frequently became
+amenable to reason, and might be persuaded to use her influence in the
+direction most desired. But such male financiers as began with this idea
+discovered that they had been led into errors of judgment through lack
+of familiarity with the variations of type. One personable young man
+of title, who had just been disappointed in a desirable marriage with
+a fortune, being made aware that the invention was likely to arrive at
+amazing results, was sufficiently rash to approach Mr. Hutchinson with
+formal proposals. Having a truly British respect for the lofty in
+place, and not being sufficiently familiar with titled personages to
+discriminate swiftly between the large and the small, Joseph Hutchinson
+was somewhat unduly elated.
+
+"The chap's a count, lass," he said. "Tha'u'd go back to Manchester a
+countess."
+
+"I've heard they're nearly all counts in these countries," commented
+Ann. "And there's countesses that have to do their own washing, in a
+manner of speaking. You send him to me, Father."
+
+When the young man came, and compared the fine little nose of Miss
+Hutchinson with the large and bony structure dominating the countenance
+of the German heiress he had lost, also when he gazed into the clearness
+of the infantile blue eyes, his spirits rose. He felt himself en veine;
+he was equal to attacking the situation. He felt that he approached it
+with alluring and chivalric delicacy. He almost believed all that he
+said.
+
+But the pellucid blueness of the gaze that met his was confusingly
+unstirred by any shade of suitable timidity or emotion. There
+was something in the lovely, sedate little creature, something so
+undisturbed and matter of fact, that it frightened him, because he
+suddenly felt like a fool whose folly had been found out.
+
+"That's downright silly," remarked Little Ann, not allowing him to
+escape from her glance, which unhesitatingly summed up him and his
+situation. "And you know it is. You don't know anything about me, and
+you wouldn't like me if you did. And I shouldn't like you. We're too
+different. Please go away, and don't say anything more about it. I
+shouldn't have patience to talk it over."
+
+"Father," she said that night, "if ever I get married at all, there's
+only one person I'm going to marry. You know that." And she would say no
+more.
+
+By the time they returned to England, the placing of the invention in
+divers countries had been arranged in a manner which gave assurance of
+a fortune for its owners on a foundation not likely to have established
+itself in more adverse circumstances. Mr. Hutchinson had really driven
+some admirable bargains, and had secured advantages which to his last
+hour he would believe could have been achieved only by Lancashire
+shrewdness and Lancashire ability to "see as far through a mile-stone
+as most chaps, an' a bit farther." The way in which he had never allowed
+himself to be "done" caused him at times to chuckle himself almost
+purple with self-congratulation.
+
+"They got to know what they was dealing with, them chaps. They was
+sharp, but Joe was a bit sharper," he would say.
+
+They found letters waiting for them when they reached London.
+
+"There's one fro' thy grandmother," Hutchinson said, in dealing out the
+package. "She's written to thee pretty steady for an old un."
+
+This was true. Letters from her had followed them from one place to
+another. This was a thick one in an envelop of good size.
+
+"Aren't tha going to read it?" he asked.
+
+"Not till you've had your dinner, Father. You've had a long day of it
+with that channel at the end. I want to see you comfortable with your
+pipe."
+
+The hotel was a good one, and the dinner was good. Joseph Hutchinson
+enjoyed it with the appetite of a robust man who has had time to get
+over a not too pleasant crossing. When he had settled down into a stout
+easy-chair with the pipe, he drew a long and comfortable breath as he
+looked about the room.
+
+"Eh, Ann, lass," he said, "thy mother 'd be fine an' set up if she could
+see aw this. Us having the best that's to be had, an' knowin' we can
+have it to the end of our lives, that's what it's come to, tha knows. No
+more third-class railway-carriages for you and me. No more `commercial'
+an' `temperance' hotels. Th' first cut's what we can have--th' upper
+cut. Eh, eh, but it's a good day for a man when he's begun to be
+appreciated as he should be."
+
+"It's a good day for those that love him," said Little Ann. "And I dare
+say mother knows every bit about it."
+
+"I dare say she does," admitted Hutchinson, with tender lenience. "She
+was one o' them as believed that way. And I never knowed her to be wrong
+in aught else, so I'm ready to give in as she was reet about that. Good
+lass she was, good lass."
+
+He had fallen into a contented and utterly comfortable doze in his chair
+when Ann sat down to read her grandmother's letter. The old woman always
+wrote at length, giving many details and recording village events with
+shrewd realistic touches. Throughout their journeyings, Ann had been
+followed by a record of the estate and neighborhood of Temple Barholm
+which had lacked nothing of atmosphere. She had known what the new lord
+of the manor did, what people said, what the attitude of the gentry had
+become; that the visit of the Countess of Mallowe and her daughter had
+extended itself until curiosity and amusement had ceased to comment,
+and passively awaited results. She had heard of Miss Alicia and her
+reincarnation, and knew much of the story of the Duke of Stone, whose
+reputation as a "dommed clever owd chap" had earned for him a sort of
+awed popularity. There had been many "ladies." The new Temple Barholm
+had boldly sought them out and faced them in their strongholds with the
+manner of one who would confront the worst and who revealed no tendency
+to flinch. The one at Stone Hover with the "pretty color" and the one
+with the dimples had appeared frequently upon the scene. Then there had
+been Lady Joan Fayre, who had lived at his elbow, sitting at his table,
+driving in his carriages with the air of cold aloofness which the
+cottagers "could na abide an' had no patience wi'." She had sometimes
+sat and wondered and wondered about things, and sometimes had flushed
+daisy-red instead of daisy-pink; and sometimes she had turned rather
+pale and closed her soft mouth firmly. But, though she had written twice
+a week to her grandmother, she had recorded principally the successes
+and complexities of the invention, and had asked very few questions.
+Old Mrs. Hutchinson would tell her all she must know, and her choice of
+revelation would be made with a far-sightedness which needed no stimulus
+of questioning. The letter she had found awaiting her had been long on
+its way, having missed her at point after point and followed her at last
+to London. It looked and felt thick and solid in its envelop. Little Ann
+opened it, stirred by the suggestion of quickened pulse-beats with which
+she had become familiar. As she bent over it she looked sweetly flushed
+and warmed.
+
+
+
+Joseph Hutchinson's doze had almost deepened into sleep when he was
+awakened by the touch of her hand on his shoulder. She was standing by
+him, holding some sheets of her grandmother's letter, and several other
+sheets were lying on the table. Something had occurred which had changed
+her quiet look.
+
+"Has aught happened to your grandmother?" he asked.
+
+"No, Father, but this letter that's been following me from one place to
+another has got some queer news in it."
+
+"What's up, lass? Tha looks as if summat was up."
+
+"The thing that's happened has given me a great deal to think of," was
+her answer. "It's about Mr. Temple Barholm and Mr. Strangeways."
+
+He became wide-awake at once, sitting up and turning in his chair in
+testy anxiety.
+
+"Now, now," he exclaimed, "I hope that cracked chap's not gone out an'
+out mad an' done some mischief. I towd Temple Barholm it was a foolish
+thing to do, taking all that trouble about him. Has he set fire to th'
+house or has he knocked th' poor lad on th' head?"
+
+"No, he hasn't, Father. He's disappeared, and Mr. Temple Barholm's
+disappeared, too."
+
+"Disappeared?" Hutchinson almost shouted. "What for, i' the Lord's
+name?"
+
+"Nobody knows for certain, and people are talking wild. The village is
+all upset, and all sorts of silly things are being said."
+
+"What sort o' things?"
+
+"You know what servants at big houses are--how they hear bits of
+talk and make much of it," she explained. "They've been curious and
+chattering among themselves about Mr. Strangeways from the first. It was
+Burrill that said he believed he was some relation that was being hid
+away for some good reason. One night Mr. Temple Barholm and Captain
+Palliser were having a long talk together, and Burrill was about--"
+
+"Aye, he'd be about if he thought there was a chance of him hearing
+summat as was none of his business," jerked out Hutchinson, irately.
+
+"They were talking about Mr. Strangeways, and Burrill heard Captain
+Palliser getting angry; and as he stepped near the door he heard him say
+out loud that he could swear in any court of justice that the man he had
+seen at the west room window--it's a startling thing, Father--was Mr.
+James Temple Barholm." For the moment her face was pale.
+
+Hereupon Hutchinson sprang up.
+
+"What!" His second shout was louder than his first. "Th' liar! Th'
+chap's dead, an' he knows it. Th' dommed mischief-makin' liar!"
+
+Her eyes were clear and speculatively thoughtful, notwithstanding her
+lack of color.
+
+"There have been people that have been thought dead that have come
+back to their friends alive. It's happened many a time," she said. "It
+wouldn't be so strange for a man that had no friends to be lost in a
+wild, far-off place where there was neither law nor order, and where
+every man was fighting for his own life and the gold he was mad after.
+Particularly a man that was shamed and desperate and wanted to hide
+himself. And, most of all, it would be easy, if he was like Mr.
+Strangeways, and couldn't remember, and had lost himself."
+
+As her father listened, the angry redness of his countenance moderated
+its hue. His eyes gradually began to question and his under jaw fell
+slightly.
+
+"Si' thee, lass," he broke out huskily, "does that mean to say tha
+believes it?"
+
+"It's not often you can believe what you don't know," she answered. "I
+don't know anything about it. There's just one thing I believe, because
+I know it. I believe what grandmother does. Read that."
+
+She handed him the final sheet of old Mrs. Hutchinson's letter. It was
+written with very black ink and in an astonishingly bold and clear hand.
+It was easy to read the sentences with which she ended.
+
+
+
+There's a lot said. There's always more saying than doing. But it's
+right-down funny to see how the lad has made hard and fast friends just
+going about in his queer way, and no one knowing how he did it. I
+like him myself. He's one of those you needn't ask questions about. If
+there's anything said that isn't to his credit, it's not true. There's
+no ifs, buts, or ands about that, Ann.
+
+
+
+Little Ann herself read the words as her father read them.
+
+"That's the thing I believe, because I know it," was all she said.
+
+"It's the thing I'd swear to mysel'," her father answered bluffly. "But,
+by Judd--"
+
+She gave him a little push and spoke to him in homely Lancashire
+phrasing, and with some soft unsteadiness of voice.
+
+"Sit thee down, Father love," she said, "and let me sit on thy knee."
+
+He sat down with emotional readiness, and she sat on his stout knee like
+a child. It was a thing she did in tender or troubled moments as much
+in these days as she had done when she was six or seven. Her little
+lightness and soft young ways made it the most natural thing in the
+world, as well as the prettiest. She had always sat on his knee in the
+hours when he had been most discouraged over the invention. She had
+known it made him feel as though he were taking care of her, and as
+though she depended utterly on him to steady the foundations of her
+world. What could such a little bit of a lass do without "a father"?
+
+"It's upset thee, lass," he said. "It's upset thee."
+
+He saw her slim hands curl themselves into small, firm fists as they
+rested on her lap.
+
+"I can't bear to think that ill can be said of him, even by a wastrel
+like Captain Palliser," she said. "He's MINE."
+
+It made him fumble caressingly at her big knot of soft red hair.
+
+"Thine, is he?" he said. "Thine! Eh, but tha did say that just like
+thy mother would ha' said it; tha brings the heart i' my throat now and
+again. That chap's i' luck, I can tell him--same as I was once."
+
+"He's mine now, whatever happens," she went on, with a firmness which
+no skeptic would have squandered time in the folly of hoping to shake.
+"He's done what I told him to do, and it's ME he wants. He's found out
+for himself, and so have I. He can have me the minute he wants me--the
+very minute."
+
+"He can?" said Hutchinson. "That settles it. I believe tha'd rather take
+him when he was i' trouble than when he was out of it. Same as tha'd
+rather take him i' a flat in Harlem on fifteen dollar a week than on
+fifteen hundred."
+
+"Yes, Father, I would. It'd give me more to do for him."
+
+"Eh, eh," he grunted tenderly, "thy mother again. I used to tell her as
+the only thing she had agen me was that I never got i' jail so she could
+get me out an' stand up for me after it. There's only one thing worrits
+me a bit: I wish the lad hadn't gone away."
+
+"I've thought that out, though I've not had much time to reason
+about things," said Little Ann. "If he's gone away, he's gone to get
+something; and whatever it happens to be, he'll be likely to bring it
+back with him, Father."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVII
+
+
+Old Mrs. Hutchinson's letter had supplied much detail, but when her son
+and grand-daughter arrived in the village of Temple Barholm they heard
+much more, the greater part of it not in the least to be relied upon.
+
+"The most of it's lies, as folks enjoys theirsels pretendin' to
+believe," the grand-mother commented. "It's servants'-hall talk and
+cottage gossip, and plenty made itself up out o' beer drunk in th'
+tap-room at th' Wool Park. In a place where naught much happens, people
+get into th' way 'o springin' on a bit o' news, and shakin' and worryin'
+it like a terrier does a rat. It's nature. That lad's given 'em lots to
+talk about ever since he coom. He's been a blessin' to 'em. If he'd been
+gentry, he'd not ha' been nigh as lively. Th' village lads tries to talk
+through their noses like him. Little Tummas Hibblethwaite does it i'
+broad Lancashire."
+
+The only facts fairly authenticated were that the mysterious stranger
+had been taken away very late one night, some time before the interview
+between Mr. Temple Barholm and Captain Palliser, of which Burrill knew
+so much because he had "happened to be about." When a domestic magnate
+of Burrill's type "happens to be about" at a crisis, he is not unlikely
+to hear a great deal. Burrill, it was believed, knew much more than
+he deigned to make public. The entire truth was that Captain Palliser
+himself, in one of his hasty appearances in the neighborhood of Temple
+Barholm, had bestowed a few words of cold caution on him.
+
+"Don't talk too much," he had said. "Proof is required before talk is
+safe. The American was sharp enough to say that to me himself. He was
+sharp enough, too, to keep his man hidden. I was the only person that
+saw him who could have recognized him, and I saw him by chance. Palford
+& Grimby require proof. We are in search of it. Servants will talk;
+but if you don't want to run the risk of getting yourself into trouble,
+don't make absolute statements."
+
+This had been a disappointment to Burrill, who had seen himself
+developing in magnitude; but he was a timid man, and therefore felt it
+wise to convey his knowledge merely through the conviction carried by
+a dignified silence after his first indiscreet revelation of having
+"happened to be about" had been made. It would have been some solace
+to him to intimate to Miss Alicia by his bearing and the manner of his
+services that she had been discovered, so to speak, in the character of
+a sort of accomplice; that her position was a perilously uncertain one,
+which would probably end in utter downfall, leaving her in her old
+and proper place as an elderly, insignificant, and unattractive poor
+relation, without a feature to recommend her. But being, as before
+remarked, a timid man, and recalling the interview between himself
+and his employer held outside the dining-room door, and having also a
+disturbing memory of the sharp, cool, boyish eye and the tone of the
+casual remark that he had "a head on his shoulders" and that it was "up
+to him to make the others understand," it seemed as well to restrain his
+inclinations until the proof Palford & Grimby required was forthcoming.
+
+It was perhaps the moderate and precautionary attitude of Palford &
+Grimby, during their first somewhat startled though reserved interview
+with Captain Palliser, which had prevented the vaguely wild rumors
+from being regarded as more than villagers' exaggerated talk among
+themselves. The "gentry," indeed, knew much less of the cottagers than
+the cottagers knew of the gentry; consequently events furnishing much
+excitement among the village people not infrequently remained unheard
+of by those in the class above them. A story less incredible might
+have been more considered; but the highly colored reasons given for the
+absence of the owner of Temple Barholm would, if heard of, have been
+more than likely to be received and passed over with a smile.
+
+The manner of Mr. Palford and also of Mr. Grimby during the deliberately
+unmelodramatic and carefully connected relation of Captain Palliser's
+singular story, was that of professional gentlemen who for reasons
+of good breeding were engaged in restraining outward expression of
+conviction that they were listening to utter nonsense. Palliser himself
+was aware of this, and upon the whole did not wonder at it in entirely
+unimaginative persons of extremely sober lives. In fact, he had begun
+by giving them some warning as to what they might expect in the way of
+unusualness.
+
+"You will, no doubt, think what I am about to tell you absurd and
+incredible," he had prefaced his statements. "I thought the same myself
+when my first suspicions were aroused. I was, in fact, inclined to laugh
+at my own idea until one link connected itself with another."
+
+Neither Mr. Grimby nor Mr. Palford was inclined to laugh. On the
+contrary, they were extremely grave, and continued to find it necessary
+to restrain their united tendency to indicate facially that the thing
+must be nonsense. It transcended all bounds, as it were. The delicacy
+with which they managed to convey this did them much credit. This
+delicacy was equaled by the moderation with which Captain Palliser drew
+their attention to the fact that it was not the thing likely-to-happen
+on which were founded the celebrated criminal cases of legal history;
+it was the incredible and almost impossible events, the ordinarily
+unbelievable duplicities, moral obliquities and coincidences, which made
+them what they were and attracted the attention of the world. This, Mr.
+Palford and his partner were obviously obliged to admit. What they did
+not admit was that such things never having occurred in one's own world,
+they had been mentally relegated to the world of newspaper and criminal
+record as things that could not happen to oneself. Mr. Palford cleared
+his throat in a seriously cautionary way.
+
+"This is, of course, a matter suggesting too serious an accusation not
+to be approached in the most conservative manner," he remarked.
+
+"Most serious consequences have resulted in cases implying libelous
+assertions which have been made rashly," added Mr. Grimby. "As Mr.
+Temple Barholm intimated to you, a man of almost unlimited means has
+command of resources which it might not be easy to contend with if he
+had reason to feel himself injured."
+
+The fact that Captain Palliser had in a bitterly frustrated moment
+allowed himself to be goaded into losing his temper, and "giving away"
+to Tembarom the discovery on which he had felt that he could rely as
+a lever, did not argue that a like weakness would lead him into more
+dangerous indiscretion. He had always regarded himself as a careful man
+whose defenses were well built about him at such crises in his career
+as rendered entrenchment necessary. There would, of course, be some
+pleasure in following the matter up and getting more than even with a
+man who had been insolent to him; but a more practical feature of the
+case was that if, through his alert observation and shrewd aid, Jem
+Temple Barholm was restored to his much-to-be-envied place in the
+world, a far from unnatural result would be that he might feel suitable
+gratitude and indebted-ness to the man who, not from actual personal
+liking but from a mere sense of justice, had rescued him. As for the
+fears of Messrs. Palford & Grimby, he had put himself on record with
+Burrill by commanding him to hold his tongue and stating clearly that
+proof was both necessary and lacking. No man could be regarded as
+taking risks whose attitude was so wholly conservative and non-accusing.
+Servants will gossip. A superior who reproves such gossip holds an
+unattackable position. In the private room of Palford & Grimby, however,
+he could confidently express his opinions without risk.
+
+"The recognition of a man lost sight of for years, and seen only for a
+moment through a window, is not substantial evidence," Mr. Grimby had
+proceeded. "The incident was startling, but not greatly to be relied
+upon."
+
+"I knew him." Palliser was slightly grim in his air of finality. "He was
+a man most men either liked or hated. I didn't like him. I detested a
+trick he had of staring at you under his drooping lids. By the way, do
+you remember the portrait of Miles Hugo which was so like him?"
+
+Mr. Palford remembered having heard that there was a certain portrait in
+the gallery which Mr. James Temple Barholm had been said to resemble. He
+had no distinct recollection of the ancestor it represented.
+
+"It was a certain youngster who was a page in the court of Charles the
+Second and who died young. Miles Hugo Charles James was his name. He
+is my strongest clue. The American seemed rather keen the first time we
+talked together. He was equally keen about Jem Temple Barholm. He wanted
+to know what he looked like, and whether it was true that he was like
+the portrait."
+
+"Indeed!" exclaimed Palford and Grimby, simultaneously.
+
+"It struck me that there was something more than mere curiosity in his
+manner," Palliser enlarged. "I couldn't make him out then. Later, I
+began to see that he was remarkably anxious to keep every one from
+Strangeways. It was a sort of Man in the Iron Mask affair. Strangeways
+was apparently not only too excitable to be looked at or spoken to, but
+too excitable to be spoken of. He wouldn't talk about him."
+
+"That is exceedingly curious," remarked Mr. Palford, but it was not
+in response to Palliser. A few moments before he had suddenly looked
+thoughtful. He wore now the aspect of a man trying to recall something
+as Palliser continued.
+
+"One day, after I had been to look at a sunset through a particular
+window in the wing where Strangeways was kept, I passed the door of his
+sitting-room, and heard the American arguing with him. He was evidently
+telling him he was to be taken elsewhere, and the poor devil was
+terrified. I heard him beg him for God's sake not to send him away.
+There was panic in his voice. In connection with the fact that he has
+got him away secretly--at midnight-it's an ugly thing to recall."
+
+"It would seem to have significance." Grimby said it uneasily.
+
+"It set me thinking and looking into things," Palliser went on. "Pearson
+was secretive, but the head man, Burrill, made casual enlightening
+remarks. I gathered some curious details, which might or might not have
+meant a good deal. When Strangeways suddenly appeared at his window one
+evening a number of things fitted themselves together. My theory is that
+the American--Tembarom, as he used to call himself--may not have
+been certain of the identity at first, but he wouldn't have brought
+Strangeways with him if he had not had some reason to suspect who he
+was. He daren't lose sight of him, and he wanted time to make sure and
+to lay his plans. The portrait of Miles Hugo was a clue which alarmed
+him, and no doubt he has been following it. If he found it led to
+nothing, he could easily turn Strangeways over to the public charge and
+let him be put into a lunatic asylum. If he found it led to a revelation
+which would make him a pauper again, it would be easy to dispose of
+him."
+
+"Come! Come! Captain Palliser! We mustn't go too far!" ejaculated Mr.
+Grimby, alarmedly. It shocked him to think of the firm being dragged
+into a case dealing with capital crime and possible hangmen! That was
+not its line of the profession.
+
+Captain Palliser's slight laugh contained no hint of being shocked by
+any possibilities whatever.
+
+"There are extremely private asylums and so-called sanatoriums where the
+discipline is strict, and no questions are asked. One sometimes reads
+in the papers of cases in which mild-mannered keepers in defending
+themselves against the attacks of violent patients are obliged to
+use force--with disastrous results. It is in such places that our
+investigations should begin."
+
+"Dear me! Dear me!" Mr. Grimby broke out. "Isn't that going rather far?
+You surely don't think--"
+
+"Mr. Tembarom's chief characteristic was that he was a practical
+and direct person. He would do what he had to do in exactly that
+businesslike manner. The inquiries I have been making have been as
+to the whereabouts of places in which a superfluous relative might be
+placed without attracting attention."
+
+"That is really astute, but--but--what do you think, Palford?" Mr.
+Grimby turned to his partner, still wearing the shocked and disturbed
+expression.
+
+"I have been recalling to mind a circumstance which probably bears upon
+the case," said Mr. Palford. "Captain Palliser's mention of the portrait
+reminded me of it. I remember now that on Mr. Temple Barholm's first
+visit to the picture-gallery he seemed much attracted by the portrait of
+Miles Hugo. He stopped and examined it curiously. He said he felt as
+if he had seen it before. He turned to it once or twice; and finally
+remarked that he might have seen some one like it at a great fancy-dress
+ball which had taken place in New York."
+
+"Had he been invited to the ball?" laughed Palliser.
+
+"I did not gather that," replied Mr. Palford gravely. "He had apparently
+watched the arriving guests from some railings near by--or perhaps it
+was a lamp-post--with other news-boys."
+
+"He recognized the likeness to Strangeways, no doubt, and it gave
+him what he calls a 'jolt,'" said Captain Palliser. "He must have
+experienced a number of jolts during the last few months."
+
+Palford & Grimby's view of the matter continued to be marked by extreme
+distaste for the whole situation and its disturbing and irritating
+possibilities. The coming of the American heir to the estate of Temple
+Barholm had been trying to the verge of extreme painfulness; but,
+sufficient time having lapsed and their client having troubled them but
+little, they had outlived the shock of his first appearance and settled
+once more into the calm of their accustomed atmosphere and routine. That
+he should suddenly reappear upon their dignified horizon as a probable
+melodramatic criminal was a fault of taste and a lack of consideration
+beyond expression. To be dragged-into vulgar detective work, to be
+referred to in news-papers in a connection which would lead to confusing
+the firm with the representatives of such branches of the profession as
+dealt with persons who had committed acts for which in vulgar parlance
+they might possibly "swing," if their legal defenders did not "get them
+off," to a firm whose sole affairs had been the dealing with noble and
+ancient estates, with advising and supporting personages of stately
+name, and with private and weighty family confidences. If the worst came
+to the worst, the affair would surely end in the most glaring and odious
+notoriety: in head-lines and daily reports even in London, in appalling
+pictures of every one concerned in every New York newspaper, even in
+baffled struggles to keep abominable woodcuts of themselves--Mr. Edward
+James Palford and Mr. James Matthew Grimby--from being published in
+sensational journalistic sheets! Professional duty demanded that the
+situation should be dealt with, that investigation should be entered
+into, that the most serious even if conservative steps should be
+taken at once. With regard to the accepted report of Mr. James Temple
+Barholm's tragic death, it could not be denied that Captain Palliser's
+view of the naturalness of the origin of the mistake that had been made
+had a logical air.
+
+"In a region full of rioting derelicts crazed with the lawless
+excitement of their dash after gold," he had said, "identities and
+names are easily lost. Temple Barholm himself was a derelict and in a
+desperate state. He was in no mood to speak of himself or try to make
+friends. He no doubt came and went to such work as he did scarcely
+speaking to any one. A mass of earth and debris of all sorts suddenly
+gives way, burying half-a-dozen men. Two or three are dug out dead, the
+others not reached. There was no time to spare to dig for dead men. Some
+one had seen Temple Barholm near the place; he was seen no more. Ergo,
+he was buried with the rest. At that time, those who knew him in England
+felt it was the best thing that could have happened to him. It would
+have been if his valet had not confessed his trick, and old Temple
+Barholm had not died. My theory is that he may have left the place days
+before the accident without being missed. His mental torment caused some
+mental illness, it does not matter what. He lost his memory and wandered
+about--the Lord knows how or where he lived; he probably never knew
+himself. The American picked him up and found that he had money. For
+reasons of his own, he professed to take care of him. He must have come
+on some clue just when he heard of his new fortune. He was naturally
+panic-stricken; it must have been a big blow at that particular moment.
+He was sharp enough to see what it might mean, and held on to the poor
+chap like grim death, and has been holding on ever since."
+
+"We must begin to take steps," decided Palford & Grimby. "We must of
+course take steps at once, but we must begin with discretion."
+
+After grave private discussion, they began to take the steps in question
+and with the caution that it seemed necessary to observe until they felt
+solid ground under their feet. Captain Palliser was willing to assist
+them. He had been going into the matter himself. He went down to the
+neighborhood of Temple Barholm and quietly looked up data which might
+prove illuminating when regarded from one point or another. It was on
+the first of these occasions that he saw and warned Burrill. It was from
+Burrill he heard of Tummas Hibblethwaite.
+
+"There's an impident little vagabond in the village, sir," he said,
+"that Mr. Temple Barholm used to go and see and take New York newspapers
+to. A cripple the lad is, and he's got a kind of craze for talking about
+Mr. James Temple Barholm. He had a map of the place where he was said
+to be killed. If I may presume to mention it, sir," he added with great
+dignity, "it is my opinion that the two had a good deal of talk together
+on the subject."
+
+"I dare say," Captain Palliser admitted indifferently, and made no
+further inquiry or remark.
+
+He sauntered into the Hibblethwaite cottage, however, late the next
+afternoon.
+
+Tummas was in a bad temper, for reasons quite sufficient for himself,
+and he regarded him sourly.
+
+"What has tha coom for?" he demanded. "I did na ask thee."
+
+"Don't be cheeky!" said Captain Palliser. "I will give you a sovereign
+if you'll let me see the map you and Mr. Temple Barholm used to look at
+and talk so much about."
+
+He laid the sovereign down on the small table by Tummas's sofa, but
+Tummas did not pick it up.
+
+"I know who tha art. Tha'rt Palliser, an' tha wast th' one as said as
+him as was killed in th' Klondike had coom back alive."
+
+"You've been listening to that servants' story, have you?" remarked
+Palliser. "You had better be careful as to what you say. I suppose you
+never heard of libel suits. Where would you find yourself if you were
+called upon to pay Mr. Temple Barholm ten thousand pounds' damages?
+You'd be obliged to sell your atlas."
+
+"Burrill towd as he heard thee say tha'd swear in court as it was th'
+one as was killed as tha'd seen."
+
+"That's Burrill's story, not mine. And Burrill had better keep his mouth
+shut," said Palliser. "If it were true, how would you like it? I've
+heard you were interested in 'th' one as was killed.'"
+
+Tummas's eyes burned troublously.
+
+"I've got reet down taken wi' th' other un," he answered. "He's noan
+gentry, but he's th' reet mak'. I--I dunnot believe as him as was killed
+has coom back."
+
+"Neither do I," Palliser answered, with amiable tolerance. "The American
+gentleman had better come back himself and disprove it. When you used to
+talk about the Klondike, he never said anything to make you feel as if
+he doubted that the other man was dead?"
+
+"Not him," answered Tummas.
+
+"Eh! Tummas, what art tha talkin' about?" exclaimed Mrs. Hibblethwaite,
+who was mending at the other end of the room. "I heerd him say mysel,
+`Suppose th' story hadn't been true an' he was alive somewhere now, it'd
+make a big change, would na' it?' An' he laughed."
+
+"I never heerd him," said Tummas, in stout denial.
+
+"Tha's losin' tha moind," commented his mother. "As soon as I heerd
+th' talk about him runnin' away an' takin' th' mad gentleman wi' him I
+remembered it. An' I remembered as he sat still after it and said nowt
+for a minute or so, same as if he was thinkin' things over. Theer was
+summat a bit queer about it."
+
+"I never heerd him," Tummas asserted, obstinately, and shut his mouth.
+
+"He were as ready to talk about th' poor gentleman as met with th'
+accident as tha wert thysel', Tummas," Mrs. Hibblethwaite proceeded,
+moved by the opportunity offered for presenting her views on the
+exciting topic. "He'd ax thee aw sorts o' questions about what tha'd
+found out wi' pumpin' foak. He'd ax me questions now an' agen about
+what he was loike to look at, an' how tall he wur. Onct he axed me if I
+remembered what soart o' chin he had an' how he spoke."
+
+"It wur to set thee goin' an' please me," volunteered Tummas,
+grudgingly. "He did it same as he'd look at th' map to please me an'
+tell me tales about th' news-lads i' New York."
+
+It had not seemed improbable that a village cripple tied to a sofa would
+be ready enough to relate all he knew, and perhaps so much more that it
+would be necessary to use discretion in selecting statements of value.
+To drop in and give him a sovereign and let him talk had appeared
+simple. Lads of his class liked to be listened to, enjoyed enlarging
+upon and rendering dramatic such material as had fallen into their
+hands. But Tummas was an eccentric, and instinct led him to close like
+an oyster before a remote sense of subtly approaching attack. It was
+his mother, not he, who had provided information; but it was not
+sufficiently specialized to be worth much.
+
+"What did tha say he'd run away fur?" Tummas said to his parent later.
+"He's not one o' th' runnin' away soart."
+
+"He has probably been called away by business," remarked Captain
+Palliser, as he rose to go after a few minutes' casual talk with Mrs.
+Hibblethwaite. "It was a mistake not to leave an address behind him.
+Your mother is mistaken in saying that he took the mad gentleman with
+him. He had him removed late at night some time before he went himself."
+
+"Tak tha sov'rin'," said Tummas, as Palliser moved away. "I did na show
+thee th' atlas. Tha did na want to see it."
+
+"I will leave the sovereign for your mother," said Palliser. "I'm sorry
+you are not in a better humor."
+
+His interest in the atlas had indeed been limited to his idea that it
+would lead to subjects of talk which might cast illuminating side-lights
+and possibly open up avenues and vistas. Tummas, however, having
+instinctively found him displeasing, he had gained but little.
+
+Avenues and vistas were necessary--avenues through which the steps of
+Palford and Grimby might wander, vistas which they might explore
+with hesitating, investigating glances. So far, the scene remained
+unpromisingly blank. The American Temple Barholm had simply disappeared,
+as had his mysterious charge. Steps likely to lead to definite results
+can scarcely be taken hopefully in the case of a person who has seemed
+temporarily to cease to exist. You cannot interrogate him, you cannot
+demand information, whatsoever the foundations upon which rest your
+accusations, if such accusation can be launched only into thin air and
+the fact that there is nobody to reply to--to acknowledge or indignantly
+refute them--is in itself a serious barrier to accomplishment. It was
+also true that only a few weeks had elapsed since the accused had, so to
+speak, dematerialized. It was also impossible to calculate upon what
+an American of his class and peculiarities would be likely to do in any
+circumstances whatever.
+
+In private conference, Palford and Grimby frankly admitted to each other
+that they would almost have preferred that Captain Palliser should have
+kept his remarkable suspicions to himself, for the time being at least.
+Yet when they had admitted this they were confronted by the disturbing
+possibility--suggested by Palliser--that actual crime had been or might
+be committed. They had heard unpleasant stories of private lunatic
+asylums and their like. Things to shudder at might be going on at
+the very moment they spoke to each other. Under this possibility, no
+supineness would be excusable. Efforts to trace the missing man must at
+least be made. Efforts were made, but with no result. Painful as it was
+to reflect on the subject of the asylums, careful private inquiry was
+made, information was quietly collected, there were even visits to
+gruesomely quiet places on various polite pretexts.
+
+"If a longer period of time had elapsed," Mr. Palford remarked several
+times, with some stiffness of manner, "we should feel that we had more
+solid foundation for our premises."
+
+"Perfectly right," Captain Palliser agreed with him, "but it is lapse of
+time which may mean life or death to Jem Temple Barholm; so it's perhaps
+as well to be on the safe side and go on quietly following small clues.
+I dare say you would feel more comfortable yourselves."
+
+Both Mr. Palford and Mr. Grimby, having made an appointment with
+Miss Alicia, arrived one afternoon at Temple Barholm to talk to her
+privately, thereby casting her into a state of agonized anxiety which
+reduced her to pallor.
+
+"Our visit is merely one of inquiry, Miss Temple Barholm," Mr. Palford
+began. "There is perhaps nothing alarming in our client's absence."
+
+"In the note which he left me he asked me to--feel no anxiety," Miss
+Alicia said.
+
+"He left you a note of explanation? I wish we had known this earlier!"
+Mr. Palford's tone had the note of relieved exclamation. Perhaps there
+was an entirely simple solution of the painful difficulty.
+
+But his hope had been too sanguine.
+
+"It was not a note of explanation, exactly. He went away too suddenly to
+have time to explain."
+
+The two men looked at each other disturbedly.
+
+"He had not mentioned to you his intention of going?" asked Mr. Grimby.
+
+"I feel sure he did not know he was going when he said good-night. He
+remained with Captain Palliser talking for some time." Miss Alicia's
+eyes held wavering and anxious question as she looked from one to the
+other. She wondered how much more than herself her visitors knew. "He
+found a telegram when he went to his room. It contained most disquieting
+news about Mr. Strangeways. He--he had got away from the place where--"
+
+"Got away!" Mr. Palford was again exclamatory. "Was he in some
+institution where he was kept under restraint?"
+
+Miss Alicia was wholly unable to explain to herself why some quality in
+his manner filled her with sudden distress.
+
+"Oh, I think not! Surely not! Surely nothing of that sort was necessary.
+He was very quiet always, and he was getting better every day. But it
+was important that he should be watched over. He was no doubt under the
+care of a physician in some quiet sanatorium."
+
+"Some quiet sanatorium!" Mr. Palford's disturbance of mind was manifest.
+"But you did not know where?"
+
+"No. Indeed, Mr. Temple Barholm talked very little of Mr. Strangeways. I
+believe he knew that it distressed me to feel that I could be of no real
+assistance as--as the case was so peculiar."
+
+Each perturbed solicitor looked again with rapid question at the other.
+Miss Alicia saw the exchange of glances and, so to speak, broke down
+under the pressure of their unconcealed anxiety. The last few weeks with
+their suggestion of accusation too vague to be met had been too much for
+her.
+
+"I am afraid--I feel sure you know something I do not," she began. "I
+am most anxious and unhappy. I have not liked to ask questions, because
+that would have seemed to imply a doubt of Mr. Temple Barholm. I have
+even remained at home because I did not wish to hear things I could not
+understand. I do not know what has been said. Pearson, in whom I have
+the greatest confidence, felt that Mr. Temple Barholm would prefer that
+I should wait until he returned."
+
+"Do you think he will return?" said Mr. Grimby, amazedly.
+
+"Oh!" the gentle creature ejaculated. "Can you possibly think he will
+not? Why? Why?"
+
+Mr. Palford had shared his partner's amazement. It was obvious that she
+was as ignorant as a babe of the details of Palliser's extraordinary
+story. In her affectionate consideration for Temple Barholm she had
+actually shut herself up lest she should hear anything said against him
+which she could not refute. She stood innocently obedient to his wishes,
+like the boy upon the burning deck, awaiting his return and his version
+of whatsoever he had been accused of. There was something delicately
+heroic in the little, slender old thing, with her troubled eyes and her
+cap and her quivering sideringlets.
+
+"You," she appealed, "are his legal advisers, and will be able to tell
+me if there is anything he would wish me to know. I could not allow
+myself to listen to villagers or servants; but I may ask you."
+
+"We are far from knowing as much as we desire to know," Mr. Palford
+replied.
+
+"We came here, in fact," added Grimby, "to ask questions of you, Miss
+Temple Barholm."
+
+"The fact that Miss Temple Barholm has not allowed herself to be
+prejudiced by village gossip, which is invariably largely unreliable,
+will make her an excellent witness," Mr. Palford said to his partner,
+with a deliberation which held suggestive significance. Each man,
+in fact, had suddenly realized that her ignorance would leave her
+absolutely unbiased in her answers to any questions they might put, and
+that it was much better in cross-examining an emotional elderly lady
+that such should be the case.
+
+"Witness!" Miss Alicia found the word alarming. Mr. Palford's bow was
+apologetically palliative.
+
+"A mere figure of speech, madam," he said.
+
+"I really know so little every one else doesn't know." Miss Alicia's
+protest had a touch of bewilderment in it. What could they wish to ask
+her?
+
+"But, as we understand it, your relations with Mr. Temple Barholm were
+most affectionate and confidential."
+
+"We were very fond of each other," she answered.
+
+"For that reason he no doubt talked to you more freely than to other
+people," Mr. Grimby put it. "Perhaps, Palford, it would be as well to
+explain to Miss Temple Barholm that a curious feature of this matter
+is that it--in a way--involves certain points concerning the late Mr.
+Temple Barholm."
+
+Miss Alicia uttered a pathetic exclamation.
+
+"Poor Jem--who died so cruelly!"
+
+Mr. Palford bent his head in acquiescence.
+
+"Perhaps you can tell me what the present Mr. Temple Barholm knew of
+him--how much he knew?"
+
+"I told him the whole story the first time we took tea together," Miss
+Alicia replied; and, between her recollection of that strangely happy
+afternoon and her wonder at its connection with the present moment, she
+began to feel timid and uncertain.
+
+"How did it seem to impress him?"
+
+She remembered it all so well--his queer, dear New York way of
+expressing his warm-hearted indignation at the cruelty of what had
+happened.
+
+"Oh, he was very much excited. He was so sorry for him. He wanted to
+know everything about him. He asked me what he looked like."
+
+"Oh!" said Palford. "He wanted to know that?"
+
+"He was so full of sympathy," she replied, her explanation gaining
+warmth. "When I told him that the picture of Miles Hugo in the gallery
+was said to look like Jem as a boy, he wanted very much to see it.
+Afterward we went and saw it together. I shall always remember how he
+stood and looked at it. Most young men would not have cared. But he
+always had such a touching interest in poor Jem."
+
+"You mean that he asked questions about him--about his death, and so
+forth?" was Mr. Palford's inquiry.
+
+"About all that concerned him. He was interested especially in his looks
+and manner of speaking and personality, so to speak. And in the awful
+accident which ended his life, though he would not let me talk about
+that after he had asked his first questions."
+
+"What kind of questions?" suggested Grimby.
+
+"Only about what was known of the time and place, and how the sad story
+reached England. It used to touch me to think that the only person who
+seemed to care was the one who--might have been expected to be almost
+glad the tragic thing had happened. But he was not."
+
+Mr. Palford watched Mr. Grimby, and Mr. Grimby gave more than one
+dubious and distressed glance at Palford.
+
+"His interest was evident," remarked Palford, thoughtfully. "And unusual
+under the circumstances."
+
+For a moment he hesitated, then put another question: "Did he ever
+seem--I should say, do you remember any occasion when he appeared to
+think that--there might be any reason to doubt that Mr. James Temple
+Barholm was one of the men who died in the Klondike?"
+
+He felt that through this wild questioning they had at least reached a
+certain testimony supporting Captain Palliser's views; and his interest
+reluctantly increased. It was reluctant because there could be no shadow
+of a question that this innocent spinster lady told the absolute truth;
+and, this being the case, one seemed to be dragged to the verge of
+depths which must inevitably be explored. Miss Alicia's expression was
+that of one who conscientiously searched memory.
+
+"I do not remember that he really expressed doubt," she answered,
+carefully. "Not exactly that, but--"
+
+"But what?" prompted Palford as she hesitated. "Please try to recall
+exactly what he said. It is most important."
+
+The fact that his manner was almost eager, and that eagerness was not
+his habit, made her catch her breath and look more questioning and
+puzzled than before.
+
+"One day he came to my sitting-room when he seemed rather excited," she
+explained. "He had been with Mr. Strangeways, who had been worse than
+usual. Perhaps he wanted to distract himself and forget about it. He
+asked me questions and talked about poor Jem for about an hour. And
+at last he said, `Do you suppose there's any sort of chance that it
+mightn't be true--that story that came from the Klondike?' He said it so
+thoughtfully that I was startled and said, `Do you think there could
+be such a chance--do you?' And he drew a long breath and answered, `You
+want to be sure about things like that; you've got to be sure.' I was
+a little excited, so he changed the subject very soon afterward, and I
+never felt quite certain of what he was really thinking. You see what he
+said was not so much an expression of doubt as a sort of question."
+
+A touch of the lofty condemnatory made Mr. Palford impressive.
+
+"I am compelled to admit that I fear that it was a question of which he
+had already guessed the answer," he said.
+
+At this point Miss Alicia clasped her hands quite tightly together upon
+her knees.
+
+"If you please," she exclaimed, "I must ask you to make things a
+little clear to me. What dreadful thing has happened? I will regard any
+communication as a most sacred confidence."
+
+"I think we may as well, Palford?" Mr. Grimby suggested to his partner.
+
+"Yes," Palford acquiesced. He felt the difficulty of a blank
+explanation. "We are involved in a most trying position," he said.
+"We feel that great discretion must be used until we have reached more
+definite certainty. An extraordinary--in fact, a startling thing has
+occurred. We are beginning, as a result of cumulative evidence, to
+feel that there was reason to believe that the Klondike story was to be
+doubted--"
+
+"That poor Jem--!" cried Miss Alicia.
+
+"One begins to be gravely uncertain as to whether he has not been
+in this house for months, whether he was not the mysterious Mr.
+Strangeways!"
+
+"Jem! Jem!" gasped poor little Miss Temple Barholm, quite white with
+shock.
+
+"And if he was the mysterious Strangeways," Mr. Grimby assisted to
+shorten the matter, "the American Temple Barholm apparently knew the
+fact, brought him here for that reason, and for the same reason kept him
+secreted and under restraint."
+
+"No! No!" cried Miss Alicia. "Never! Never! I beg you not to say such a
+thing. Excuse me--I cannot listen! It would be wrong--ungrateful. Excuse
+me!" She got up from her seat, trembling with actual anger in her sense
+of outrage. It was a remarkable thing to see the small, elderly creature
+angry, but this remarkable thing had happened. It was as though she were
+a mother defending her young.
+
+"I loved poor Jem and I love Temple, and, though I am only a woman who
+never has been the least clever, I know them both. I know neither of
+them could lie or do a wicked, cunning thing. Temple is the soul of
+honor."
+
+It was quite an inspirational outburst. She had never before in her life
+said so much at one time. Of course tears began to stream down her face,
+while Mr. Palford and Mr. Grimby gazed at her in great embarrassment.
+
+"If Mr. Strangeways was poor Jem come back alive, Temple did not
+know--he never knew. All he did for him was done for kindness' sake.
+I--I--" It was inevitable that she should stammer before going to this
+length of violence, and that the words should burst from her: "I would
+swear it!"
+
+It was really a shock to both Palford and Grimby. That a lady of Miss
+Temple Barholm's age and training should volunteer to swear to a thing
+was almost alarming. It was also in rather unpleasing taste.
+
+"Captain Palliser obliged Mr. Temple Temple Barholm to confess that he
+had known for some time," Mr. Palford said with cold regret. "He also
+informed him that he should communicate with us without delay."
+
+"Captain Palliser is a bad man." Miss Alicia choked back a gasp to make
+the protest.
+
+"It was after their interview that Mr. Temple Barholm almost immediately
+left the house."
+
+"Without any explanation whatever," added Grimby.
+
+"He left a few lines for me," defended Miss Alicia.
+
+"We have not seen them." Mr. Palford was still as well as cold. Poor
+little Miss Alicia took them out of her pocket with an unsteady hand.
+They were always with her, and she could not on such a challenge seem
+afraid to allow them to be read. Mr. Palford took them from her with
+a slight bow of thanks. He adjusted his glasses and read aloud, with
+pauses between phrases which seemed somewhat to puzzle him.
+
+
+
+"Dear little Miss Alicia:
+
+"I've got to light out of here as quick as I can make it. I can't even
+stop to tell you why. There's just one thing--don't get rattled, Miss
+Alicia. Whatever any one says or does, don't get rattled.
+
+"Yours affectionately,
+
+"T. TEMBAROM."
+
+
+
+There was a silence, Mr. Palford passed the paper to his partner, who
+gave it careful study. Afterward he refolded it and handed it back to
+Miss Alicia.
+
+"In a court of law," was Mr. Palford's sole remark, "it would not be
+regarded as evidence for the defendant."
+
+Miss Alicia's tears were still streaming, but she held her ringleted
+head well up.
+
+"I cannot stay! I beg your pardon, I do indeed!" she said. "But I must
+leave you. You see," she added, with her fine little touch of dignity,
+"as yet this house is still Mr. Temple Barholm's home, and I am the
+grateful recipient of his bounty. Burrill will attend you and make you
+quite comfortable." With an obeisance which was like a slight curtsey,
+she turned and fled.
+
+In less than an hour she walked up the neat bricked path, and old Mrs.
+Hutchinson, looking out, saw her through the tiers of flower-pots in
+the window. Hutchinson himself was in London, but Ann was reading at the
+other side of the room.
+
+"Here's poor little owd Miss Temple Barholm aw in a flutter," remarked
+her grandmother. "Tha's got some work cut out for thee if tha's going to
+quiet her. Oppen th' door, lass."
+
+Ann opened the door, and stood by it with calm though welcoming dimples.
+
+"Miss Hutchinson "--Miss Alicia began all at once to realize that they
+did not know each other, and that she had flown to the refuge of her
+youth without being at all aware of what she was about to say. "Oh!
+Little Ann!" she broke down with frank tears. "My poor boy! My poor
+boy!"
+
+Little Ann drew her inside and closed the door.
+
+"There, Miss Temple Barholm," she said. "There now Just come in and sit
+down. I'll get you a good cup of tea. You need one."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVIII
+
+
+The Duke of Stone had been sufficiently occupied with one of his
+slighter attacks of rheumatic gout to have been, so to speak, out of the
+running in the past weeks. His indisposition had not condemned him
+to the usual dullness, however. He had suffered less pain than was
+customary, and Mrs. Braddle had been more than usually interesting in
+conversation on those occasions when, in making him very comfortable in
+one way or another, she felt that a measure of entertainment would add
+to his well-being. His epicurean habit of mind tended toward causing
+him to find a subtle pleasure in the hearing of various versions of any
+story whatever. His intimacy with T. Tembarom had furnished forth many
+an agreeable mental repast for him. He had had T. Tembarom's version of
+himself, the version of the county, the version of the uneducated class,
+and his own version. All of these had had varying shades of their own.
+He had found a cynically fine flavor in Palliser's version, which he had
+gathered through talk and processes of exclusion and inclusion.
+
+"There is a good deal to be said for it," he summed it up. "It's
+plausible on ordinary sophisticated grounds. T. Tembarom would say, `It
+looks sort of that way."'
+
+As Mrs. Braddle had done what she could in the matter of expounding her
+views of the uncertainties of the village attitude, he had listened
+with stimulating interest. Mrs. Braddle's version on the passing of T.
+Tembarom stood out picturesquely against the background of the version
+which was his own--the one founded on the singular facts he had shared
+knowledge of with the chief character in the episode. He had not, like
+Miss Alicia, received a communication from Tembarom. This seemed to him
+one of the attractive features of the incident. It provided opportunity
+for speculation. Some wild development had called the youngster away in
+a rattling hurry. Of what had happened since his departure he knew no
+more than the villagers knew. What had happened for some months before
+his going he had watched with the feeling of an intelligently observant
+spectator at a play. He had been provided with varied emotions by the
+fantastic drama. He had smiled; he had found himself moved once or
+twice, and he had felt a good deal of the thrill of curious uncertainty
+as to what the curtain would rise and fall on. The situation was such
+that it was impossible to guess. Results could seem only to float in the
+air. One thing might happen; so might another, so might a dozen more.
+What he wished really to attain was some degree of certainty as to what
+was likely to occur in any case to the American Temple Barholm.
+
+He felt, the first time he drove over to call on Miss Alicia, that
+his indisposition and confinement to his own house had robbed him of
+something. They had deprived him of the opportunity to observe shades of
+development and to hear the expressing of views of the situation as it
+stood. He drove over with views of his own and with anticipations. He
+had reason to know that he would encounter in the dear lady indications
+of the feeling that she had reached a crisis. There was a sense of this
+crisis impending as one mounted the terrace steps and entered the
+hall. The men-servants endeavored to wipe from their countenances any
+expression denoting even a vague knowledge of it. He recognized
+their laudable determination to do so. Burrill was monumental in the
+unconsciousness of his outward bearing.
+
+Miss Alicia, sitting waiting on Fate in the library, wore precisely the
+aspect he had known she would wear. She had been lying awake at night
+and she had of course wept at intervals, since she belonged to the
+period the popular female view of which had been that only the unfeeling
+did not so relieve themselves in crises of the affections. Her eyelids
+were rather pink and her nice little face was tired.
+
+"It is very, very kind of you to come," she said, when they shook hands.
+"I wonder "--her hesitance was touching in its obvious appeal to him
+not to take the wrong side,--"I wonder if you know how deeply troubled I
+have been?"
+
+"You see, I have had a touch of my abominable gout, and my treasure of a
+Braddle has been nursing me and gossiping," he answered. "So, of course
+I know a great deal. None of it true, I dare say. I felt I must come and
+see you, however."
+
+He looked so neat and entirely within the boundaries of finished and
+well-dressed modernity and every-day occurrence, in his perfectly
+fitting clothes, beautifully shining boots, and delicate fawn gaiters,
+that she felt a sort of support in his mere aspect. The mind connected
+such almost dapper freshness and excellent taste only with unexaggerated
+incidents and a behavior which almost placed the stamp of absurdity upon
+the improbable in circumstance. The vision of disorderly and illegal
+possibilities seemed actually to fade into an unreality.
+
+"If Mr. Palford and Mr. Grimby knew him as I know him--as--as you know
+him--" she added with a faint hopefulness.
+
+"Yes, if they knew him as we know him that would make a different matter
+of it," admitted the duke, amiably. But, thought Miss Alicia, he might
+only have put it that way through consideration for her feelings, and
+because he was an extremely polished man who could not easily reveal to
+a lady a disagreeable truth. He did not speak with the note of natural
+indignation which she thought she must have detected if he had felt as
+she felt herself. He was of course a man whose manner had always
+the finish of composure. He did not seem disturbed or even very
+curious--only kind and most polite.
+
+"If we only knew where he was!" she began again. "If we only knew where
+Mr. Strangeways was!"
+
+"My impression is that Messrs. Palford & Grimby will probably find
+them both before long," he consoled her. "They are no doubt exciting
+themselves unnecessarily."
+
+He was not agitated at all; she felt it would have been kinder if he
+had been a little agitated. He was really not the kind of person
+whose feelings appeared very deep, being given to a light and graceful
+cynicism of speech which delighted people; so perhaps it was not natural
+that he should express any particular emotion even in a case affecting
+a friend--surely he had been Temple's friend. But if he had seemed a
+little distressed, or doubtful or annoyed, she would have felt that she
+understood better his attitude. As it was, he might almost have been on
+the other side--a believer or a disbeliever--or merely a person looking
+on to see what would happen. When they sat down, his glance seemed to
+include her with an interest which was sympathetic but rather as if she
+were a child whom he would like to pacify. This seemed especially so
+when she felt she must make clear to him the nature of the crisis which
+was pending, as he had felt when he entered the house.
+
+"You perhaps do not know"--the appeal which had shown itself in her eyes
+was in her voice--"that the solicitors have decided, after a great deal
+of serious discussion and private inquiry in London, that the time has
+come when they must take open steps."
+
+"In the matter of investigation?" he inquired.
+
+"They are coming here this afternoon with Captain Palliser to--to
+question the servants, and some of the villagers. They will question
+me," alarmedly.
+
+"They would be sure to do that,"--he really seemed quite to envelop her
+with kindness--"but I beg of you not to be alarmed. Nothing you could
+have to say could possibly do harm to Temple Barholm." He knew it was
+her fear of this contingency which terrified her.
+
+"You do feel sure of that?" she burst forth, relievedly. "You
+do--because you know him?"
+
+"I do. Let us be calm, dear lady. Let us be calm."
+
+"I will! I will!" she protested. "But Captain Palliser has arranged that
+a lady should come here--a lady who disliked poor Temple very much. She
+was most unjust to him."
+
+"Lady Joan Fayre?" he suggested, and then paused with a remote smile as
+if lending himself for the moment to some humor he alone detected in the
+situation.
+
+"She will not injure his cause, I think I can assure you."
+
+"She insisted on misunderstanding him. I am so afraid--"
+
+The appearance of Pearson at the door interrupted her and caused her to
+rise from her seat. The neat young man was pale and spoke in a nervously
+lowered voice.
+
+"I beg pardon, Miss. I beg your Grace's pardon for intruding, but--"
+
+Miss Alicia moved toward him in such a manner that he himself seemed to
+feel that he might advance.
+
+"What is it, Pearson? Have you anything special to say?"
+
+"I hope I am not taking too great a liberty, Miss, but I did come in for
+a purpose, knowing that his Grace was with you and thinking you might
+both kindly advise me. It is about Mr. Temple Barholm, your Grace--"
+addressing him as if in involuntary recognition of the fact that he
+might possibly prove the greater support.
+
+"Our Mr. Temple Barholm, Pearson? We are being told there are two
+of them." The duke's delicate emphasis on the possessive pronoun was
+delightful, and it so moved and encouraged sensitive little Pearson that
+he was emboldened to answer with modest firmness:
+
+"Yes,--ours. Thank you, your Grace."
+
+"You feel him yours too, Pearson?" a shade more delightfully still.
+
+"I--I take the liberty, your Grace, of being deeply attached to him, and
+more than grateful."
+
+"What did you want to ask advice about?"
+
+"The family solicitors. Captain Palliser and Lady Joan Fayre and Mr. and
+Miss Hutchinson are to be here shortly, and I have been told I am to be
+questioned. What I want to know, your Grace, is--" He paused, and looked
+no longer pale but painfully red as he gathered himself together for his
+anxious outburst--"Must I speak the truth?"
+
+Miss Alicia started alarmedly.
+
+The duke looked down at the delicate fawn gaiters covering his fine
+instep. His fleeting smile was not this time an external one.
+
+"Do you not wish to speak the truth, Pearson?"
+
+Pearson's manner could have been described only as one of obstinate
+frankness.
+
+"No, your Grace. I do not! Your Grace may misunderstand me--but I do
+not!"
+
+His Grace tapped the gaiters with the slight ebony cane he held in his
+hand.
+
+"Is this "--he put it with impartial curiosity--"because the truth might
+be detrimental to our Mr. Temple Barholm?"
+
+"If you please, your Grace," Pearson made a firm step forward, "what is
+the truth?"
+
+"That is what Messrs. Palford & Grimby seem determined to find out.
+Probably only our Mr. Temple Barholm can tell them."
+
+"Your Grace, what I'm thinking of is that if I tell the truth it may
+seem to prove something that's not the truth."
+
+"What kinds of things, Pearson?" still impartially.
+
+"I can be plain with your Grace. Things like this: I was with Mr. Temple
+Barholm and Mr. Strangeways a great deal. They'll ask me about what I
+heard. They'll ask me if Mr. Strangeways was willing to go away to the
+doctor; if he had to be persuaded and argued with. Well, he had and he
+hadn't, your Grace. At first, just the mention of it would upset him so
+that Mr. Temple Barholm would have to stop talking about it and quiet
+him down. But when he improved--and he did improve wonderfully, your
+Grace--he got into the way of sitting and thinking it over and listening
+quite quiet. But if I'm asked suddenly--"
+
+"What you are afraid of is that you may be asked point-blank questions
+without warning?" his Grace put it with the perspicacity of experience.
+
+"That's why I should be grateful for advice. Must I tell the truth, your
+Grace, when it will make them believe things I'd swear are lies--I'd
+swear it, your Grace."
+
+"So would I, Pearson." His serene lightness was of the most baffling,
+but curiously supporting, order. "This being the case, my advice would
+be not to go into detail. Let us tell white lies--all of us--without a
+shadow of hesitancy. Miss Temple Barholm, even you must do your best."
+
+"I will try--indeed, I will try!" And the Duke felt her tremulously
+ardent assent actually delicious.
+
+"There! we'll consider that settled, Pearson," he said.
+
+"Thank you, your Grace. Thank you, Miss," Pearson's relieved gratitude
+verged on the devout. He turned to go, and as he did so his attention
+was arrested by an approach he remarked through a window.
+
+"Mr. and Miss Hutchinson are arriving now, Miss," he announced, hastily.
+
+"They are to be brought in here," said Miss Alicia.
+
+The duke quietly left his seat and went to look through the window with
+frank and unembarrassed interest in the approach. He went, in fact, to
+look at Little Ann, and as he watched her walk up the avenue, her
+father lumbering beside her, he evidently found her aspect sufficiently
+arresting.
+
+"Ah!" he exclaimed softly, and paused. "What a lot of very nice red
+hair," he said next. And then, "No wonder! No wonder!"
+
+"That, I should say," he remarked as Miss Alicia drew near, "is what I
+once heard a bad young man call `a deserving case.'"
+
+He was conscious that she might have been privately a little shocked by
+such aged flippancy, but she was at the moment perturbed by something
+else.
+
+"The fact is that I have never spoken to Hutchinson," she fluttered.
+"These changes are very confusing. I suppose I ought to say Mr.
+Hutchinson, now that he is such a successful person, and Temple--"
+
+"Without a shadow of a doubt!" The duke seemed struck by the happiness
+of the idea. "They will make him a peer presently. He may address me as
+'Stone' at any moment. One must learn to adjust one's self with agility.
+`The old order changeth.' Ah! she is smiling at him and I see the
+dimples."
+
+Miss Alicia made a clean breast of it.
+
+"I went to her--I could not help it!" she confessed. "I was in such
+distress and dare not speak to anybody. Temple had told me that she was
+so wonderful. He said she always understood and knew what to do."
+
+"Did she in this case?" he asked, smiling.
+
+Miss Alicia's manner was that of one who could express the extent of her
+admiration only in disconnected phrases.
+
+"She was like a little rock. Such a quiet, firm way! Such calm
+certainty! Oh, the comfort she has been to me! I begged her to come here
+to-day. I did not know her father had returned."
+
+"No doubt he will have testimony to give which will be of the greatest
+assistance," the duke said most encouragingly. "Perhaps he will be a
+sort of rock."
+
+"I--I don't in the least know what he will be!" sighed Miss Alicia,
+evidently uncertain in her views.
+
+But when the father and daughter were announced she felt that his Grace
+was really enchanting in the happy facility of his manner. He at least
+adjusted himself with agility. Hutchinson was of course lumbering.
+Lacking the support of T. Tembarom's presence and incongruity, he
+himself was the incongruous feature. He would have been obliged to
+bluster by way of sustaining himself, even if he had only found himself
+being presented to Miss Alicia; but when it was revealed to him that he
+was also confronted with the greatest personage of the neighborhood, he
+became as hot and red as he had become during certain fateful business
+interviews. More so, indeed.
+
+"Th' other chaps hadn't been dukes;" and to Hutchinson the old order had
+not yet so changed that a duke was not an awkwardly impressive person to
+face unexpectedly.
+
+The duke's manner of shaking hands with him, however, was even touched
+with an amiable suggestion of appreciation of the value of a man of
+genius. He had heard of the invention, in fact knew some quite technical
+things about it. He realized its importance. He had congratulations for
+the inventor and the world of inventions so greatly benefited.
+
+"Lancashire must be proud of your success, Mr. Hutchinson." How
+agreeably and with what ease he said it!
+
+"Aye, it's a success now, your Grace," Hutchinson answered, "but I might
+have waited a good bit longer if it hadn't been for that lad an' his
+bold backing of me."
+
+"Mr. Temple Barholm?" said the duke.
+
+"Aye. He's got th' way of making folks see things that they can't see
+even when they're hitting them in th' eyes. I'd that lost heart I could
+never have done it myself."
+
+"But now it is done," smiled his Grace. "Delightful!"
+
+"I've got there--same as they say in New York--I've got there," said
+Hutchinson.
+
+He sat down in response to Miss Alicia's invitation. His unease was
+wonderfully dispelled. He felt himself a person of sufficient importance
+to address even a duke as man to man.
+
+"What's all this romancin' talk about th' other Temple Barholm comin'
+back, an' our lad knowin' an' hidin' him away? An' Palliser an' th'
+lawyers an' th' police bein' after 'em both?"
+
+"You have heard the whole story?" from the duke.
+
+"I've heard naught else since I come back."
+
+"Grandmother knew a great deal before we came home," said Little Ann.
+
+The duke turned his attention to her with an engaged smile. His look,
+his bow, his bearing, in the moment of their being presented to each
+other, had seemed to Miss Alicia the most perfect thing. His fine eye
+had not obviously wandered while he talked to her father, but it had
+in fact been taking her in with an inclusiveness not likely to miss
+agreeable points of detail.
+
+"What is her opinion, may I ask?" he said. "What does she say?"
+
+"Grandmother is very set in her ways, your Grace." The limpidity of
+her blue eye and a flickering dimple added much to the quaint
+comprehensiveness of her answer. "She says the world's that full of
+fools that if they were all killed the Lord would have to begin again
+with a new Adam and Eve."
+
+"She has entire faith in Mr. Temple Barholm--as you have," put forward
+his Grace.
+
+"Mine's not faith exactly. I know him," Little Ann answered, her tone as
+limpid as her eyes.
+
+"There's more than her has faith in him," broke forth Hutchinson.
+"Danged if I don't like th' way them village chaps are taking it.
+They're ready to fight over it. Since they've found out what it's come
+to, an' about th' lawyers comin' down, they're talkin' about gettin' up
+a kind o' demonstration."
+
+"Delightful!" ejaculated his Grace again. He leaned forward. "Quite what
+I should have expected. There's a good deal of beer drunk, I suppose."
+
+"Plenty o' beer, but it'll do no harm." Hutchinson began to chuckle.
+"They're talkin' o' gettin' out th' fife an' drum band an' marchin'
+round th' village with a calico banner with `Vote for T. Tembarom'
+painted on it, to show what they think of him."
+
+The duke chuckled also.
+
+"I wonder how he's managed it?" he laughed. "They wouldn't do it for
+any of the rest of us, you know, though I've no doubt we're quite as
+deserving. I am, I know."
+
+Hutchinson stopped laughing and turned on Miss Alicia.
+
+"What's that young woman comin' down here for?" he inquired.
+
+"Lady Joan was engaged to Mr. James Temple Barholm," Miss Alicia
+answered.
+
+"Eh! Eh!" Hutchinson jerked out. "That'll turn her into a wildcat, I'll
+warrant. She'll do all th' harm she can. I'm much obliged to you for
+lettin' us come, ma'am. I want to be where I can stand by him."
+
+"Father," said Little Ann, "what you have got to remember is that you
+mustn't fly into a passion. You know you've always said it never did any
+good, and it only sends the blood to your head."
+
+"You are not nervous, Miss Hutchinson?" the duke suggested.
+
+"About Mr. Temple Barholm? I couldn't be, your Grace. If I was to see
+two policemen bringing him in handcuffed I shouldn't be nervous. I
+should know the handcuffs didn't belong to him, and the policemen would
+look right-down silly to me."
+
+Miss Alicia fluttered over to fold her in her arms.
+
+"Do let me kiss you," she said. "Do let me, Little Ann!"
+
+Little Ann had risen at once to meet her embrace. She put a hand on her
+arm.
+
+"We don't know anything about this really," she said. "We've only heard
+what people say. We haven't heard what he says. I'm going to wait." They
+were all looking at her,--the duke with such marked interest that she
+turned toward him as she ended. "And if I had to wait until I was as old
+as grandmother I'd wait--and nothing would change my mind."
+
+"And I've been lying awake at night!" softly wailed Miss Alicia.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIX
+
+
+It was Mr. Hutchinson who, having an eye on the window, first announced
+an arriving carriage.
+
+"Some of 'em's comin' from the station," he remarked. "There's no young
+woman with 'em, that I can see from here."
+
+"I thought I heard wheels." Miss Alicia went to look out, agitatedly.
+"It is the gentlemen. Perhaps Lady Joan--" she turned desperately to the
+duke. "I don't know what to say to Lady Joan. I don't know what she will
+say to me. I don't know what she is coming for, Little Ann, do keep near
+me!"
+
+It was a pretty thing to see Little Ann stroke her hand and soothe her.
+
+"Don't be frightened, Miss Temple Barholm. All you've got to do is to
+answer questions," she said.
+
+"But I might say things that would be wrong--things that would harm
+him."
+
+"No, you mightn't, Miss Temple Barholm. He's not done anything that
+could bring harm on him."
+
+The Duke of Stone, who had seated himself in T. Tembarom's favorite
+chair, which occupied a point of vantage, seemed to Mr. Palford and
+Mr. Grimby when they entered the room to wear the aspect of a sort
+of presidiary audience. The sight of his erect head and clear-cut,
+ivory-tinted old face, with its alert, while wholly unbiased,
+expression, somewhat startled them both. They had indeed not expected to
+see him, and did not know why he had chosen to come. His presence
+might mean any one of several things, and the fact that he enjoyed a
+reputation for quite alarming astuteness of a brilliant kind presented
+elements of probable embarrassment. If he thought that they had allowed
+themselves to be led upon a wild-goose chase, he would express his
+opinions with trying readiness of phrase.
+
+His manner of greeting them, however, expressed no more than a lightly
+agreeable detachment from any view whatsoever. Captain Palliser felt
+this curiously, though he could not have said what he would have
+expected from him if he had known it would be his whim to appear.
+
+"How do you do? How d' you do?" His Grace shook hands with the amiable
+ease which scarcely commits a man even to casual interest, after which
+he took his seat again.
+
+"How d' do, Miss Hutchinson?" said Palliser. "How d' do, Mr. Hutchinson?
+Mr. Palford will be glad to find you here."
+
+Mr. Palford shook hands with correct civility.
+
+"I am, indeed," he said. "It was in your room in New York that I first
+saw Mr. Temple Temple Barholm."
+
+"Aye, it was," responded Hutchinson, dryly.
+
+"I thought Lady Joan was coming," Miss Alicia said to Palliser.
+
+"She will be here presently. She came down in our train, but not with
+us."
+
+"What--what is she coming for?" faltered Miss Alicia.
+
+"Yes," put in the duke, "what, by the way, is she coming for?"
+
+"I wrote and asked her to come," was Palliser's reply. "I have reason
+to believe she may be able to recall something of value to the inquiry
+which is being made."
+
+"That's interesting," said his Grace, but with no air of participating
+particularly. "She doesn't like him, though, does she? Wouldn't do to put
+her on the jury."
+
+He did not wait for any reply, but turned to Mr. Palford.
+
+"All this is delightfully portentous. Do you know it reminds me of a
+scene in one of those numerous plays where the wrong man has murdered
+somebody--or hasn't murdered somebody--and the whole company must be
+cross-examined because the curtain cannot be brought down until the
+right man is unmasked. Do let us come into this, Mr. Palford; what we
+know seems so inadequate."
+
+Mr. Palford and Mr. Grimby each felt that there lurked in this manner a
+possibility that they were being regarded lightly. All the objections to
+their situation loomed annoyingly large.
+
+"It is, of course, an extraordinary story," Mr. Palford said, "but if we
+are not mistaken in our deductions, we may find ourselves involved in a
+cause celebre which will set all England talking."
+
+"I am not mistaken," Palliser presented the comment with a short and dry
+laugh.
+
+"Tha seems pretty cock-sure!" Hutchinson thrust in.
+
+"I am. No one knew Jem Temple Barbolm better than I did in the past. We
+were intimate--enemies." And he laughed again.
+
+"Tha says tha'll swear th' chap tha saw through th' window was him?"
+said Hutchinson.
+
+"I'd swear it," with composure.
+
+The duke was reflecting. He was again tapping with his cane the gaiter
+covering his slender, shining boot.
+
+"If Mr. Temple Temple Barholm had remained here his actions would have
+seemed less suspicious?" he suggested.
+
+It was Palliser who replied.
+
+"Or if he hadn't whisked the other man away. He lost his head and played
+the fool."
+
+"He didn't lose his head, that chap. It's screwed on th' right way--his
+head is," grunted Hutchinson.
+
+"The curious fellow has a number of friends," the duke remarked to
+Palford and Grimby, in his impartial tone. "I am hoping you are not
+thinking of cross-examining me. I have always been convinced that
+under cross-examination I could be induced to innocently give evidence
+condemnatory to both sides of any case whatever. But would you mind
+telling me what the exact evidence is so far?"
+
+Mr. Palford had been opening a budget of papers.
+
+"It is evidence which is cumulative, your Grace," he said. "Mr. Temple
+Temple Barholm's position would have been a far less suspicious one--as
+you yourself suggested--if he had remained, or if he hadn't secretly
+removed Mr.--Mr. Strangeways."
+
+"The last was Captain Palliser's suggestion, I believe," smiled the
+duke. "Did he remove him secretly? How secretly, for instance?"
+
+"At night," answered Palliser. "Miss Temple Barholm herself did not know
+when it happened. Did you?" turning to Miss Alicia, who at once flushed
+and paled.
+
+"He knew that I was rather nervous where Mr. Strangeways was concerned.
+I am sorry to say he found that out almost at once. He even told me
+several times that I must not think of him--that I need hear nothing
+about him." She turned to the duke, her air of appeal plainly
+representing a feeling that he would understand her confession. "I
+scarcely like to say it, but wrong as it was I couldn't help feeling
+that it was like having a--a lunatic in the house. I was afraid he might
+be more--ill--than Temple realized, and that he might some time become
+violent. I never admitted so much of course, but I was."
+
+"You see, she was not told," Palliser summed it up succinctly.
+
+"Evidently," the duke admitted. "I see your point." But he seemed to
+disengage himself from all sense of admitting implications with entire
+calmness, as he turned again to Mr. Palford and his papers.
+
+"You were saying that the exact evidence was--?"
+
+Mr. Palford referred to a sheet of notes.
+
+"That--whether before or shortly after his arrival here is not at
+all certain--Mr. Temple Temple Barholm began strongly to suspect the
+identity of the person then known as Strangeways--"
+
+Palliser again emitted the short and dry laugh, and both the duke and
+Mr. Palford looked at him inquiringly.
+
+"He had `got on to' it before he brought him," he answered their
+glances. "Be sure of that."
+
+"Then why did he bring him?" the duke suggested lightly.
+
+"Oh, well," taking his cue from the duke, and assuming casual lightness
+also, "he was obliged to come himself, and was jolly well convinced
+that he had better keep his hand on the man, also his eye. It was a
+good-enough idea. He couldn't leave a thing like that wandering about
+the States. He could play benefactor safely in a house of the size of
+this until he was ready for action."
+
+The duke gave a moment to considering the matter--still detachedly.
+
+"It is, on the whole, not unlikely that something of the sort might
+suggest itself to the criminal mind," he said. And his glance at Mr.
+Palford intimated that he might resume his statement.
+
+"We have secured proof that he applied himself to secret investigation.
+He is known to have employed Scotland Yard to make certain inquiries
+concerning the man said to have been killed in the Klondike. Having
+evidently reached more than suspicion he began to endeavor to persuade
+Mr. Strangeways to let him take him to London. This apparently took some
+time. The mere suggestion of removal threw the invalid into a state of
+painful excitement--"
+
+"Did Pearson tell you that?" the duke inquired.
+
+"Captain Palliser himself in passing the door of the room one day
+heard certain expressions of terrified pleading," was Mr. Palford's
+explanation.
+
+"I heard enough," Palliser took it up carelessly, "to make it worth
+while to question Pearson--who must have heard a great deal more.
+Pearson was ordered to hold his tongue from the first, but he will have
+to tell the truth when he is asked."
+
+The duke did not appear to resent his view.
+
+"Pearson would be likely to know what went on," he remarked. "He's an
+intelligent little fellow."
+
+"The fact remains that in spite of his distress and reluctance Mr.
+Strangeways was removed privately, and there our knowledge ends. He has
+not been seen since--and a few hours after, Captain Palliser expressed
+his conviction, that the person he had seen through the West Room window
+was Mr. James Temple Barholm, Mr. Temple Temple Barholm left the house
+taking a midnight train, and leaving no clue as to his where-abouts or
+intentions."
+
+"Disappeared!" said the duke. "Where has he been looked for?"
+
+The countenance of both Mr. Palford and his party expressed a certain
+degree of hesitance.
+
+"Principally in asylums and so-called sanatoriums," Mr. Grimby admitted
+with a hint of reluctance.
+
+"Places where the curiosity of outsiders is not encouraged," said
+Palliser languidly. "And where if a patient dies in a fit of mania there
+are always respectable witnesses to explain that his case was hopeless
+from the first."
+
+Mr. Hutchinson had been breathing hard occasionally as he sat and
+listened, and now he sprang up uttering a sound dangerously near a
+violent snort.
+
+"Art tha accusin' that lad o' bein' black villain enough to be ready to
+do bloody murder?" he cried out.
+
+"He was in a very tight place, Hutchinson," Palliser shrugged his
+shoulders as he said it. "But one makes suggestions at this stage--not
+accusations."
+
+That Hutchinson had lost his head was apparent to his daughter at least.
+
+"Tha'd be in a tight place, my fine chap, if I had my way," he flung
+forth irately. "I'd like to get thy head under my arm."
+
+The roll of approaching wheels reached Miss Alicia.
+
+"There's another carriage," was her agitated exclamation. "Oh, dear! It
+must be Lady Joan!"
+
+Little Ann left her seat to make her father return to his.
+
+"Father, you'd better sit down," she said, gently pushing him in the
+right direction. "When you can't prove a thing's a lie, it's just as
+well to keep quiet until you can." And she kept quiet herself,
+though she turned and stood before Palliser and spoke with clear
+deliberateness. "What you pretend to believe is not true, Captain
+Palliser. It's just not true," she gave to him.
+
+They were facing and looking at each other when Burrill announced Lady
+Joan Fayre. She entered rather quickly and looked round the room with
+a sweeping glance, taking them all in. She went to the duke first, and
+they shook hands.
+
+"I am glad you are here!" she said.
+
+"I would not have been out of it, my dear young lady," he answered,
+"`for a farm' That's a quotation."
+
+"I know," she replied, giving her hand to Miss Alicia, and taking in
+Palliser and the solicitors with a bow which was little more than a nod.
+Then she saw Little Ann, and walked over to her to shake hands.
+
+"I am glad you are here. I rather felt you would be," was her greeting.
+"I am glad to see you."
+
+"Whether tha 'rt glad to see me or not I'm glad I'm here," said
+Hutchinson bluntly. "I've just been speaking a bit o' my mind."
+
+"Now, Father love!" Little Ann put her hand on his arm.
+
+Lady Joan looked him over. Her hungry eyes were more hungry than ever.
+She looked like a creature in a fever and worn by it.
+
+"I think I am glad you are here too," she answered.
+
+Palliser sauntered over to her. He had approved the duke's air of being
+at once detached and inquiring, and he did not intend to wear the
+aspect of the personage who plays the unpleasant part of the pursuer and
+avenger. What he said was:
+
+"It was good of you to come, Lady Joan."
+
+"Did you think I would stay away?" was her answer. "But I will tell you
+that I don't believe it is true."
+
+"You think that it is too good to be true?"
+
+Her hot eyes had records in them it would have been impossible for him
+to read or understand. She had been so torn; she had passed through such
+hours since she had been told this wild thing.
+
+"Pardon my not telling you what I think," she said. "Nothing matters,
+after all, if he is alive!"
+
+"Except that we must find him," said Palliser.
+
+"If he is in the same world with me I shall find him," fiercely. Then
+she turned again to Ann. "You are the girl T. Tembarom loves?" she put
+it to her.
+
+"Yes, my lady."
+
+"If he was lost, and you knew he was on the earth with you, don't you
+know that you would find him?"
+
+"I should know he'd come back to me," Little Ann answered her. "That's
+what--" her small face looked very fine as in her second of hesitation
+a spirited flush ran over it, "that's what your man will do," quite
+firmly.
+
+It was amazing to see how the bitter face changed, as if one word had
+brought back a passionate softening memory.
+
+"My man!" Her voice mellowed until it was deep and low. "Did you call T.
+Tembarom that, too? Oh, I understand you! Keep near me while I talk to
+these people." She made her sit down by her.
+
+"I know every detail of your letters." She addressed Palliser as well
+as Palford & Grimby, sweeping all details aside. "What is it you want to
+ask me?"
+
+"This is our position, your ladyship," Mr. Palford fumbled a little with
+his papers in speaking. "Mr. Temple Temple Barholm and the person known
+as Mr. Strangeways have been searched for so far without result. In the
+meantime we realize that the more evidence we obtain that Mr. Temple
+Temple Barholm identified Strangeways and acted from motive, the more
+solid the foundation upon which Captain Palliser's conviction rests. Up
+to this point we have only his statement which he is prepared to make on
+oath. Fortunately, however, he on one occasion overheard something said
+to you which he believes will be corroborative evidence."
+
+"What did you overhear?" she inquired of Palliser.
+
+Her tone was not pacific considering that, logically, she must be on
+the side of the investigators. But it was her habit, as Captain Palliser
+remembered, to seem to put most people on the defensive. He meant to
+look as uninvolved as the duke, but it was not quite within his power.
+His manner was sufficiently deliberate.
+
+"One evening, before you left for London, I was returning from the
+billiard-room, and heard you engaged in animated conversation with--our
+host. My attention was arrested, first because--" a sketch of a smile
+ill-concealed itself, "you usually scarcely deigned to speak to him, and
+secondly because I heard Jem Temple Barholm's name."
+
+"And you--?" neither eyes nor manner omitted the word listened.
+
+But the slight lift of his shoulders was indifferent enough.
+
+"I listened deliberately. I was convinced that the fellow was a criminal
+impostor, and I wanted evidence."
+
+"Ah! come now," remarked the duke amiably. "Now we are getting on. Did
+you gain any?"
+
+"I thought so. Merely of the cumulative order, of course," Palliser
+answered with moderation. "Those were early days. He asked you," turning
+to Lady Joan again, "if you knew any one--any one--who had any sort of a
+photograph of Jem. You had one and you showed it to him!"
+
+She was quite silent for a moment. The hour came back to her--the
+extraordinary hour when he had stood in his lounging fashion before her,
+and through some odd, uncivilized but absolutely human force of his own
+had made her listen to him--and had gone on talking in his nasal voice
+until with one common, crude, grotesque phrase he had turned her hideous
+world upside down--changed the whole face of it--sent the stone wall
+rising before her crumbling into dust, and seemed somehow to set her
+free. For the moment he had lifted a load from her the nature of which
+she did not think he could understand--a load of hatred and silence. She
+had clutched his hand, she had passionately wept on it, she could have
+kissed it. He had told her she could come back and not be afraid. As the
+strange episode rose before her detail by detail, she literally stared
+at Palliser.
+
+"You did, didn't you?" he inquired.
+
+"Yes," she answered.
+
+Her mind was in a riot, because in the midst of things which must
+be true, something was false. But with the memory of a myriad subtle
+duplicities in her brain, she had never seen anything which could have
+approached a thing like that. He had made her feel more human than any
+one in the world had ever made her feel--but Jem. He had been able to do
+it because he was human himself--human. "I'm friendly," he had said with
+his boy's laugh--"just friendly."
+
+"I saw him start, though you did not," Palliser continued. "He stood and
+studied the locket intently."
+
+She remembered perfectly. He had examined it so closely that he had
+unconsciously knit his brows.
+
+"He said something in a rather low voice," Palliser took it up. "I could
+not quite catch it all. It was something about `knowing the face again.'
+I can see you remember, Lady Joan. Can you repeat the exact words?"
+
+He did not understand the struggle he saw in her face. It would have
+been impossible for him to understand it. What she felt was that if she
+lost hold on her strange belief in the honesty of this one decent
+thing she had seen and felt so close to her that it cleared the air
+she breathed, it would be as if she had fallen into a bottomless abyss.
+Without knowing why she did it, she got up from her chair as if she were
+a witness in a court.
+
+"Yes, I can," she said. "Yes, I can; but I wish to make a statement for
+myself. Whether Jem Temple Barholm is alive or dead, Captain Palliser,
+T. Tembarom has done him no harm."
+
+The duke sat up delicately alert. He had evidently found her worth
+looking at and listening to from the outset.
+
+"Hear! Hear!" he said pleasantly.
+
+"What were the exact words?" suggested Palliser.
+
+Miss Alicia who had been weeping on Little Ann's shoulder--almost on her
+lap--lifted her head to listen. Hutchinson set his jaw and grunted, and
+Mr. Palford cleared his throat mechanically.
+
+"He said," and no one better than herself realized how ominously
+"cumulative" the words sounded, "that a man would know a face like that
+again--wherever he saw it."
+
+"Wherever he saw it!" ejaculated Mr. Grimby.
+
+There ensued a moment of entire pause. It was inevitable. Having reached
+this point a taking of breath was necessary. Even the duke ceased to
+appear entirely detached. As Mr. Palford turned to his papers again
+there was perhaps a slight feeling of awkwardness in the air. Miss
+Alicia had dropped, terror smitten, into new tears.
+
+The slight awkwardness was, on the whole, rather added to by T.
+Tembarom--as if serenely introduced by the hand of drama itself--opening
+the door and walking into the room. He came in with a matter-of-fact,
+but rather obstinate, air, and stopped in their midst, looking round at
+them as if collectedly taking them all in.
+
+Hutchinson sprang to his feet with a kind of roar, his big hands
+plunging deep into his trousers pockets.
+
+"Here he is! Danged if he isn't!" he bellowed. "Now, lad, tha let 'em
+have it!"
+
+What he was to let them have did not ensue, because his attitude was not
+one of assault.
+
+"Say, you are all here, ain't you!" he remarked obviously. "Good
+business!"
+
+Miss Alicia got up from the sofa and came trembling toward him as one
+approaches one risen from the dead, and he made a big stride toward
+her and took her in his arms, patting her shoulder in reproachful
+consolation.
+
+"Say, you haven't done what I told you--have you?" he soothed. "You've
+let yourself get rattled."
+
+"But I knew it wasn't true," she sobbed. "I knew it wasn't."
+
+"Of course you did, but you got rattled all the same." And he patted her
+again.
+
+The duke came forward with a delightfully easy and--could it be almost
+jocose?--air of bearing himself. Palford and Grimby remarked it with
+pained dismay. He was so unswerving in his readiness as he shook hands.
+
+"How well done of you!" he said. "How well arranged! But I'm afraid you
+didn't arrange it at all. It has merely happened. Where did you come
+from?"
+
+"From America; got back yesterday." T. Tembarom's hand-shake was a
+robust hearty greeting. "It's all right."
+
+"From America!" The united voices of the solicitors exclaimed it.
+
+Joseph Hutchinson broke into a huge guffaw, and he stamped in
+exultation.
+
+"I'm danged if he has na' been to America!" he cried out. "To America!"
+
+"Oh!" Miss Alicia gasped hysterically, "they go backward and forward to
+America like--like lightning!"
+
+Little Ann had not risen at his entrance, but sat still with her hands
+clasped tightly on her lap. Her face had somehow the effect of a flower
+gradually breaking into extraordinary bloom. Their eyes had once met and
+then she remained, her soul in hers which were upon him, as she drank in
+every word he uttered. Her time had not yet come.
+
+Lady Joan had remained standing by the chair, which a few moments before
+her manner had seemed to transform into something like a witness stand
+in a court of justice. Her hungry eyes had grown hungrier each second,
+and her breath came and went quickly. The very face she had looked up at
+on her last talk with T. Tembarom--the oddly human face--turned on
+her as he came to her. It was just as it had been that night--just as
+commonly uncommon and believable.
+
+"Say, Lady Joan! You didn't believe all that guff, did you--You didn't?"
+he said.
+
+"No--no--no! I couldn't!" she cried fiercely.
+
+He saw she was shaking with suspense, and he pushed her gently into a
+chair.
+
+"You'd better sit down a minute. You're about all in," he said.
+
+She might have been a woman with an ague as she caught his arm, shaking
+it because her hands themselves so shook.
+
+"Is it true?" was her low cry. "Is he alive--is he alive?"
+
+"Yes, he's alive." And as he answered he drew close and so placed
+himself before her that he shielded her from the others in the room. He
+seemed to manage to shut them out, so that when she dropped her face
+on her arms against the chair-back her shuddering, silent sobbing
+was hidden decently. It was not only his body which did it, but some
+protecting power which was almost physically visible. She felt it spread
+before her.
+
+"Yes, he's alive," he said, "and he's all right--though it's been a long
+time coming, by gee!"
+
+"He's alive." They all heard it. For a man of Palliser's make to stand
+silent in the midst of mysterious slowly accumulating convictions that
+some one--perilously of his own rarely inept type--was on the verge
+of feeling appallingly like a fool--was momentarily unendurable. And
+nothing had been explained, after all.
+
+"Is this what you call `bluff' in New York?" he demanded. "You've got
+a lot to explain. You admit that Jem Temple Barholm is alive?" and
+realized his asinine error before the words were fully spoken.
+
+The realization was the result of the square-shouldered swing with which
+T. Tembarom turned round, and the expression of his eyes as they ran
+over him.
+
+"Admit!" he said. "Admit hell! He's up-stairs," with a slight jerk of
+his head in the direction of the ceiling.
+
+The duke alone did not gasp. He laughed slightly.
+
+"We've just got here. He came down from London with me, and Sir Ormsby
+Galloway." And he said it not to Palliser but to Palford and Grimby.
+
+"The Sir Ormsby Galloway?" It was an ejaculation from Mr. Palford
+himself.
+
+T. Tembarom stood square and gave his explanation to the lot of them, so
+to speak, without distinction.
+
+"He's the big nerve specialist. I've had him looking after the case from
+the first--before I began to suspect anything. I took orders, and orders
+were to keep him quiet and not let any fool butt in and excite him.
+That's what I've been giving my mind to. The great stunt was to get him
+to go and stay at Sir Ormsby's place." He stopped a moment and suddenly
+flared forth as if he had had about enough of it. He almost shouted at
+them in exasperation. "All I'm going to tell you is that for about six
+months I've been trying to prove that Jem Temple Barholm was Jem Temple
+Barholm, and the hardest thing I had to do was to get him so that he
+could prove it himself." He strode over to the hearth and rang a
+bell. "It's not my place to give orders here now," he said, "but Jem
+commissioned me to see this thing through. Sir Ormsby'll tell you all
+you want to hear."
+
+He turned and spoke solely to the duke.
+
+"This is what happened," he said. "I dare say you'll laugh when you hear
+it. I almost laughed myself. What does Jem do, when he thinks things
+over, but get some fool notion in his head about not coming back here
+and pushing me out. And he lights out and leaves the country--leaves
+it--to get time to think it over some more."
+
+The duke did not laugh. He merely smiled--a smile which had a shade of
+curious self-questioning in it.
+
+"Romantic and emotional--and quite ridiculous," he commented slowly.
+"He'd have awakened to that when he had thought it out `some more.' The
+thing couldn't be done."
+
+Burrill had presented himself in answer to the bell, and awaited orders.
+His Grace called Tembarom's attention to him, and Tembarom included
+Palliser with Palford and Grimby when he gave his gesture of
+instruction.
+
+"Take these gentlemen to Sir Ormsby Galloway, and then ask Mr. Temple
+Barholm if he'll come down-stairs," he said.
+
+It is possible that Captain Palliser felt himself more irritatingly
+infolded in the swathing realization that some one was in a ridiculous
+position, and it is certain that Mr. Palford felt it necessary to
+preserve an outwardly flawless dignity as the duke surprisingly left his
+chair and joined them.
+
+"Let me go, too," he suggested; "I may be able to assist in throwing
+light." His including movement in Miss Alicia's direction was
+delightfully gracious and friendly. It was inclusive of Mr. Hutchinson
+also.
+
+"Will you come with us, Miss Temple Barholm?" he said. "And you too, Mr.
+Hutchinson. We shall go over it all in its most interesting detail, and
+you must be eager about it. I am myself."
+
+His happy and entirely correct idea was that the impending entrance
+of Mr. James Temple Barholm would "come off" better in the absence of
+audience.
+
+Hutchinson almost bounced from his chair in his readiness. Miss Alicia
+looked at Tembarom.
+
+"Yes, Miss Alicia," he answered her inquiring glance. "You go, too.
+You'll get it all over quicker."
+
+Rigid propriety forbade that Mr. Palford should express annoyance, but
+the effort to restrain the expression of it was in his countenance. Was
+it possible that the American habit of being jocular had actually held
+its own in a matter as serious as this? And could even the most cynical
+and light-minded of ducal personages have been involved in its unworthy
+frivolities? But no one looked jocular--Tembarom's jaw was set in its
+hard line, and the duke, taking up the broad ribbon of his rimless
+monocle to fix the glass in his eye, wore the expression of a man whose
+sense of humor was temporarily in abeyance.
+
+"Are we to understand that your Grace--?"
+
+"Yes," said his Grace a trifle curtly, "I have known about it for some
+time."
+
+"But why was nobody told?" put in Palliser.
+
+"Why should people be told? There was nothing sufficiently definite to
+tell. It was a waiting game." His Grace wasted no words. "I was
+told. Mr. Temple Barholm did not know England or English methods. His
+idea--perhaps a mistaken one--was that an English duke ought to be able
+to advise him. He came to me and made a clean breast of it. He goes
+straight at things, that young fellow. Makes what he calls a `bee line.'
+Oh! I've been in it--I 've been in it, I assure you."
+
+It was as they crossed the hall that his Grace slightly laughed.
+
+"It struck me as a sort of wild-goose chase at first. He had only a
+ghost of a clue--a mere resemblance to a portrait. But he believed in
+it, and he had an instinct." He laughed again. "The dullest and most
+unmelodramatic neighborhood in England has been taking part in a
+melodrama--but there has been no villain in it--only a matter-of-fact
+young man, working out a queer thing in his own queer, matter-of-fact
+way."
+
+When the door closed behind them, Tembarom went to Lady Joan. She had
+risen and was standing before the window, her back to the room. She
+looked tall and straight and tensely braced when she turned round, but
+there was endurance, not fierceness in her eyes.
+
+"Did he leave the country knowing I was here--waiting?" she asked. Her
+voice was low and fatigued. She had remembered that years had passed,
+and that it was perhaps after all only human that long anguish should
+blot things out, and dull a hopeless man's memory.
+
+"No," answered Tembarom sharply. "He didn't. You weren't in it then. He
+believed you'd married that Duke of Merthshire fellow. This is the way
+it was: Let me tell it to you quick. A letter that had been wandering
+round came to him the night before the cave-in, when they thought he was
+killed. It told him old Temple Barholm was dead. He started out before
+daylight, and you can bet he was strung up till he was near crazy with
+excitement. He believed that if he was in England with plenty of money
+he could track down that cardsharp lie. He believed you'd help him.
+Somewhere, while he was traveling he came across an old paper with a lot
+of dope about your being engaged."
+
+Joan remembered well how her mother had worked to set the story
+afloat--how they had gone through the most awful of their scenes--almost
+raving at each other, shut up together in the boudoir in Hill Street.
+
+"That's all he remembers, except that he thought some one had hit him
+a crack on the head. Nothing had hit him. He'd had too much to stand up
+under and something gave way in his brain. He doesn't know what happened
+after that. He'd wake up sometimes just enough to know he was wandering
+about trying to get home. It's been the limit to try to track him. If
+he'd not come to himself we could never have been quite sure. That's why
+I stuck at it. But he DID come to himself. All of a sudden. Sir Ormsby
+will tell you that's what nearly always happens. They wake up all of a
+sudden. It's all right; it's all right. I used to promise him it would
+be--when I wasn't sure that I wasn't lying." And for the first time he
+broke into the friendly grin--but it was more valiant than spontaneous.
+He wanted her to know that it was "all right."
+
+"Oh!" she cried, "oh! you--"
+
+She stopped because the door was opening.
+
+"It's Jem," he said sharply. "Ann, let's go." And that instant Little
+Ann was near him.
+
+"No! no! don't go," cried Lady Joan.
+
+Jem Temple Barholm came in through the doorway. Life and sound and
+breath stopped for a second, and then the two whirled into each other's
+arms as if a storm had swept them there.
+
+"Jem!" she wailed. "Oh, Jem! My man! Where have you been?"
+
+"I've been in hell, Joan--in hell!" he answered, choking,--"and this
+wonderful fellow has dragged me out of it."
+
+But Tembarom would have none of it. He could not stand it. This sort of
+thing filled up his throat and put him at an overwhelming disadvantage.
+He just laid a hand on Jem Temple Barholm's shoulder and gave him an
+awkwardly friendly push.
+
+"Say, cut me out of it!" he said. "You get busy," his voice rather
+breaking. "You've got a lot to say to her. It was up to me before;--now,
+it's up to you."
+
+Little Ann went with him into the next room.
+
+
+
+The room they went into was a smaller one, quiet, and its oriel windows
+much overshadowed by trees. By the time they stood together in the
+center of it Tembarom had swallowed something twice or thrice, and had
+recovered himself. Even his old smile had come back as he took one of
+her hands in each of his, and holding them wide apart stood and looked
+down at her.
+
+"God bless you, Little Ann," he said. "I just knew I should find you
+here. I'd have bet my last dollar on it."
+
+The hands he held were trembling just a little, and the dimples quivered
+in and out. But her eyes were steady, and a lovely increasing intensity
+glowed in them.
+
+"You went after him and brought him back. He was all wrought up, and he
+needed some one with good common sense to stop him in time to make him
+think straight before he did anything silly," she said.
+
+"I says to him," T. Tembarom made the matter clear; "`Say, you've left
+something behind that belongs to you! Comeback and get it.' I meant
+Lady Joan. And I says, `Good Lord, man, you're acting like a fellow in
+a play. That place doesn't belong to me. It belongs to you. If it was
+mine, fair and square, Little Willie'd hang on to it. There'd be no
+noble sacrifice in his. You get a brace on.'"
+
+"When they were talking in that silly way about you, and saying you'd
+run away," said Little Ann, her face uplifted adoringly as she talked,
+"I said to father, `If he's gone, he's gone to get something. And he'll
+be likely to bring it back.'"
+
+He almost dropped her hands and caught her to him then. But he saved
+himself in time.
+
+"Now this great change has come," he said, "everything will be
+different. The men you'll know will look like the pictures in the
+advertisements at the backs of magazines--those fellows with chins and
+smooth hair. I shall look like a chauffeur among them."
+
+But she did not blench in the least, though she remembered whose words
+he was quoting. The intense and lovely femininity in her eyes only
+increased. She came closer to him, and so because of his height had to
+look up more.
+
+"You will always make jokes--but I don't care. I don't care for anything
+but you," she said. "I love your jokes; I love everything about you:
+I love your eyes--and your voice--and your laugh. I love your very
+clothes." Her voice quivered as her dimples did. "These last months I've
+sometimes felt as if I should die of loving you."
+
+It was a wonderful thing--wonderful. His eyes--his whole young being had
+kindled as he looked down drinking in every word.
+
+"Is that the kind of quiet little thing you are?" he said.
+
+"Yes, it is," she answered firmly.
+
+"And you're satisfied--you know, who it is I want?--You're ready to do
+what you said you would that last night at Mrs. Bowse's?"
+
+"What do you think?" she said in her clear little voice.
+
+He caught her then in a strong, hearty, young, joyous clutch.
+
+"You come to me, Little Ann. You come right to me," he said.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XL
+
+
+Many an honest penny was turned, with the assistance of the romantic
+Temple Barholm case, by writers of paragraphs for newspapers published
+in the United States. It was not merely a romance which belonged to
+England but was excitingly linked to America by the fact that its
+hero regarded himself as an American, and had passed through all the
+picturesque episodes of a most desirably struggling youth in the very
+streets of New York itself, and had "worked his way up" to the proud
+position of society reporter "on" a huge Sunday paper. It was generally
+considered to redound largely to his credit that refusing "in spite
+of all temptations to belong to other nations," he had been born in
+Brooklyn, that he had worn ragged clothes and shoes with holes in
+them, that he had blacked other people's shoes, run errands, and
+sold newspapers there. If he had been a mere English young man, one
+recounting of his romance would have disposed of him; but as he was
+presented to the newspaper public every characteristic lent itself to
+elaboration. He was, in fact, flaringly anecdotal. As a newly elected
+President who has made boots or driven a canal-boat in his unconsidered
+youth endears himself indescribably to both paragraph reader and
+paragraph purveyor, so did T. Tembarom endear himself. For weeks, he
+was a perennial fount. What quite credible story cannot be related of
+a hungry lad who is wildly flung by chance into immense fortune and the
+laps of dukes, so to speak? The feeblest imagination must be stirred
+by the high color of such an episode, and stimulated to superb effort.
+Until the public had become sated with reading anecdotes depicting the
+extent of his early privations, and dwelling on illustrations which
+presented lumber-yards in which he had slept, and the facades of
+tumble-down tenements in which he had first beheld the light of day,
+he was a modest source of income. Any lumber-yard or any tenement
+sufficiently dilapidated would serve as a model; and the fact that in
+the shifting architectural life of New York the actual original
+scenes of the incidents had been demolished and built upon by
+new apartment-houses, or new railroad stations, or new factories
+seventy-five stories high, was an unobstructing triviality. Accounts
+of his manner of conducting himself in European courts to which he had
+supposedly been bidden, of his immense popularity in glittering circles,
+of his finely democratic bearing when confronted by emperors surrounded
+by their guilty splendors, were the joy of remote villages and towns. A
+thrifty and young minor novelist hastily incorporated him in a serial,
+and syndicated it upon the spot under the title of "Living or Dead."
+Among its especial public it was a success of such a nature as betrayed
+its author into as hastily writing a second romance, which not being
+rendered stimulating by a foundation of fact failed to repeat his
+triumph.
+
+T. Tembarom, reading in the library at Temple Barholm the first
+newspapers sent from New York, smiled widely.
+
+"You see they've got to say something, Jem," he explained. "It's too big
+a scoop to be passed over. Something's got to be turned in. And it means
+money to the fellows, too. It's good copy."
+
+"Suppose," suggested Jem, watching him with interest, "you were to write
+the facts yourself and pass them on to some decent chap who'd be glad to
+get them."
+
+"Glad!" Tembarom flushed with delight. "Any chap would be'way up in the
+air at the chance. It's the best kind of stuff. Wouldn't you mind? Are
+you sure you wouldn't?" He was the warhorse snuffing battle from afar.
+
+Jem Temple Barholm laughed outright at the gleam in his eyes.
+
+"No, I shouldn't care a hang, dear fellow. And the fact that I objected
+would not stop the story."
+
+"No, it wouldn't, by gee! Say, I'll get Ann to help me, and we'll send
+it to the man who took my place on the Earth. It'll mean board and boots
+to him for a month if he works it right. And it'll be doing a good turn
+to Galton, too. I shall be glad to see old Galton when I go back."
+
+"You are quite sure you want to go back?" inquired Jem. A certain glow
+of feeling was always in his eyes when he turned them on T. Tembarom.
+
+"Go back! I should smile! Of course I shall go back. I've got to
+get busy for Hutchinson and I've got to get busy for myself. I guess
+there'll be work to do that'll take me half over the world; but I'm
+going back first. Ann's going with me."
+
+But there was no reference to a return to New York when the Sunday
+Earth and other widely circulated weekly sheets gave prominence to the
+marriage of Mr. Temple Temple Barholm and Miss Hutchinson, only child
+and heiress of Mr. Joseph Hutchinson, the celebrated inventor. From a
+newspaper point of view, the wedding had been rather unfairly quiet,
+and it was necessary to fill space with a revival of the renowned story,
+with pictures of bride and bridegroom, and of Temple Barholm surrounded
+by ancestral oaks. A thriving business would have been done by the
+reporters if an ocean greyhound had landed the pair at the dock some
+morning, and snap-shots could have been taken as they crossed the
+gangway, and wearing apparel described. But hope of such fortune was
+swept away by the closing paragraph, which stated that Mr. and Mrs.
+Temple Barholm would "spend the next two months in motoring through
+Italy and Spain in their 90 h.p. Panhard."
+
+It was T. Tembarom who sent this last item privately to Galton.
+
+"It's not true," his letter added, "but what I'm going to do is nobody's
+business but mine and my wife's, and this will suit people just as
+well." And then he confided to Galton the thing which was the truth.
+
+The St. Francesca apartment-house was a very new one, situated on a
+corner of an as yet sparsely built but rapidly spreading avenue above
+the "100th Streets"--many numbers above them. There was a frankly
+unfinished air about the neighborhood, but here and there a "store"
+had broken forth and valiantly displayed necessities, and even articles
+verging upon the economically ornamental. It was plainly imperative
+that the idea should be suggested that there were on the spot sources
+of supply not requiring the immediate employment of the services of
+the elevated railroad in the achievement of purchase, and also that
+enterprise rightly encouraged might develop into being equal to all
+demands. Here and there an exceedingly fresh and clean "market store,"
+brilliant with the highly colored labels adorning tinned soups and meats
+and edibles in glass jars, alluringly presented itself to the passer-by.
+The elevated railroad perched upon iron supports, and with iron
+stairways so tall that they looked almost perilous, was a prominent
+feature of the landscape. There were stretches of waste ground, and high
+backgrounds of bits of country and woodland to be seen. The rush of New
+York traffic had not yet reached the streets, and the avenue was of
+an agreeable suburban cleanliness and calm. People who lived in upper
+stories could pride themselves on having "views of the river." These
+they laid stress upon when it was hinted that they "lived a long way
+uptown."
+
+The St. Francesca was built of light-brown stone and decorated with
+much ornate molding. It was fourteen stories high, and was supplied with
+ornamental fire-escapes. It was "no slouch of a building." Everything
+decorative which could be done for it had been done. The entrance was
+almost imposing, and a generous lavishness in the way of cement mosaic
+flooring and new and thick red carpet struck the eye at once. The
+grill-work of the elevator was of fresh, bright blackness, picked out
+with gold, and the colored elevator-boy wore a blue livery with brass
+buttons. Persons of limited means who were willing to discard the
+excitements of "downtown" got a good deal for their money, and
+frequently found themselves secretly surprised and uplifted by the
+atmosphere of luxury which greeted them when they entered their
+red-carpeted hall. It was wonderful, they said, congratulating one
+another privately, how much comfort and style you got in a New York
+apartment-house after you passed the "150ths."
+
+On a certain afternoon T. Tembarom, with his hat on the back of his head
+and his arms full of parcels, having leaped off the "L" when it stopped
+at the nearest station, darted up and down the iron stairways until
+he reached the ground, and then hurried across the avenue to the St.
+Francesca. He made long strides, and two or three times grinned as if
+thinking of something highly amusing; and once or twice he began to
+whistle and checked himself. He looked approvingly at the tall building
+and its solidly balustraded entrance-steps as he approached it, and when
+he entered the red-carpeted hall he gave greeting to a small mulatto boy
+in livery.
+
+"Hello, Tom! How's everything?" he inquired, hilariously. "You taking
+good care of this building? Let any more eight-room apartments? You've
+got to keep right on the job, you know. Can't have you loafing because
+you've got those brass buttons."
+
+The small page showed his teeth in gleeful appreciation of their
+friendly intimacy.
+
+"Yassir. That's so," he answered. "Mis' Barom she's waitin' for you.
+Them carpets is come, sir. Tracy's wagon brought 'em 'bout an hour ago.
+I told her I'd help her lay 'em if she wanted me to, but she said you
+was comin' with the hammer an' tacks. 'Twarn't that she thought I was
+too little. It was jest that there wasn't no tacks. I tol' her jest call
+me in any time to do anythin' she want done, an' she said she would."
+
+"She'll do it," said T. Tembarom. "You just keep on tap. I'm just
+counting on you and Light here," taking in the elevator-boy as he
+stepped into the elevator, "to look after her when I'm out."
+
+The elevator-boy grinned also, and the elevator shot up the shaft, the
+numbers of the floors passing almost too rapidly to be distinguished.
+The elevator was new and so was the boy, and it was the pride of his
+soul to land each passenger at his own particular floor, as if he had
+been propelled upward from a catapult. But he did not go too rapidly for
+this passenger, at least, though a paper parcel or so was dropped in the
+transit and had to be picked up when he stopped at floor fourteen.
+
+The red carpets were on the corridor there also, and fresh paint and
+paper were on the walls. A few yards from the elevator he stopped at a
+door and opened it with a latch-key, beaming with inordinate delight.
+
+The door opened into a narrow corridor leading into a small apartment,
+the furniture of which was not yet set in order. A roll of carpet and
+some mats stood in a corner, chairs and tables with burlaps round their
+legs waited here and there, a cot with a mattress on it, evidently to be
+transformed into a "couch," held packages of bafflingly irregular shapes
+and sizes. In the tiny kitchen new pots and pans and kettles, some still
+wrapped in paper, tilted themselves at various angles on the gleaming
+new range or on the closed lids of the doll-sized stationary wash-tubs.
+
+Little Ann had been very busy, and some of the things were unpacked. She
+had been sweeping and mopping floors and polishing up remote corners,
+and she had on a big white pinafore-apron with long sleeves, which
+transformed her into a sort of small female chorister. She came into the
+narrow corridor with a broom in her hand, her periwinkle-blue gaze as
+thrilled as an excited child's when it attacks the arrangement of its
+first doll's house. Her hair was a little ruffled where it showed below
+the white kerchief she had tied over her head. The warm, daisy pinkness
+of her cheeks was amazing.
+
+"Hello!" called out Tembarom at sight of her. "Are you there yet? I
+don't believe it."
+
+"Yes, I'm here," she answered, dimpling at him.
+
+"Not you!" he said. "You couldn't be! You've melted away. Let's see."
+And he slid his parcels down on the cot and lifted her up in the air as
+if she had been a baby. "How can I tell, anyhow?" he laughed out. "You
+don't weigh anything, and when a fellow squeezes you he's got to look
+out what he's doing."
+
+He did not seem to "look out" particularly when he caught her to him in
+a hug into which she appeared charmingly to melt. She made herself part
+of it, with soft arms which went at once round his neck and held him.
+
+"Say!" he broke forth when he set her down. "Do you think I'm not glad
+to get back?"
+
+"No, I don't, Tem," she answered, "I know how glad you are by the way
+I'm glad myself."
+
+"You know just everything!" he ejaculated, looking her over, "just every
+darned thing--God bless you! But don't you melt away, will you? That's
+what I'm afraid of. I'll do any old thing on earth if you'll just stay."
+
+That was his great joke,--though she knew it was not so great a joke as
+it seemed,--that he would not believe that she was real, and believed
+that she might disappear at any moment. They had been married three
+weeks, and she still knew when she saw him pause to look at her that he
+would suddenly seize and hold her fast, trying to laugh, sometimes not
+with entire success.
+
+"Do you know how long it was? Do you know how far away that big place
+was from everything in the world?" he had said once. "And me holding on
+and gritting my teeth? And not a soul to open my mouth to! The old duke
+was the only one who understood, anyhow. He'd been there."
+
+"I'll stay," she answered now, standing before him as he sat down on the
+end of the "couch." She put a firm, warm-palmed little hand on each side
+of his face, and held it between them as she looked deep into his eyes.
+"You look at me, Tem--and see."
+
+"I believe it now," he said, "but I shan't in fifteen minutes."
+
+"We're both right-down silly," she said, her soft, cosy laugh breaking
+out. "Look round this room and see what we've got to do. Let's begin
+this minute. Did you get the groceries?"
+
+He sprang up and began to go over his packages triumphantly.
+
+"Tea, coffee, sugar, pepper, salt, beefsteak," he called out.
+
+"We can't have beefsteak often," she said, soberly, "if we're going to
+do it on fifteen a week."
+
+"Good Lord, no!" he gave back to her, hilariously. "But this is a Fifth
+Avenue feed."
+
+"Let's take them into the kitchen and put them into the cupboard,
+and untie the pots and pans." She was suddenly quite absorbed and
+businesslike. "We must make the room tidy and tack down the carpet, and
+then cook the dinner."
+
+He followed her and obeyed her like an enraptured boy. The wonder of her
+was that, despite its unarranged air, the tiny place was already cleared
+and set for action. She had done it all before she had swept out the
+undiscovered corners. Everything was near the spot to which it belonged.
+There was nothing to move or drag out of the way.
+
+"I got it all ready to put straight," she said, "but I wanted you to
+finish it with me. It wouldn't have seemed right if I'd done it without
+you. It wouldn't have been as much OURS."
+
+Then came active service. She was like a small general commanding an
+army of one. They put things on shelves; they hung things on hooks;
+they found places in which things belonged; they set chairs and tables
+straight; and then, after dusting and polishing them, set them at a more
+imposing angle; they unrolled the little green carpet and tacked down
+its corners; and transformed the cot into a "couch" by covering it
+with what Tracy's knew as a "throw" and adorning one end of it with
+cotton-stuffed cushions. They hung little photogravures on the walls and
+strung up some curtains before the good-sized window, which looked down
+from an enormous height at the top of four-storied houses, and took
+in beyond them the river and the shore beyond. Because there was no
+fireplace Tembarom knocked up a shelf, and, covering it with a scarf
+(from Tracy's), set up some inoffensive ornaments on it and flanked them
+with photographs of Jem Temple Barholm, Lady Joan in court dress, Miss
+Alicia in her prettiest cap, and the great house with its huge terrace
+and the griffins.
+
+"Ain't she a looker?" Tembarom said of Lady Joan. "And ain't Jem a
+looker, too? Gee! they're a pair. Jem thinks this honeymoon stunt of
+ours is the best thing he ever heard of--us fixing ourselves up here
+just like we would have done if nothing had ever happened, and we'd
+HAD to do it on fifteen per. Say," throwing an arm about her, "are you
+getting as much fun out of it as if we HAD to, as if I might lose my job
+any minute, and we might get fired out of here because we couldn't pay
+the rent? I believe you'd rather like to think I might ring you into
+some sort of trouble, so that you could help me to get you out of it."
+
+"That's nonsense," she answered, with a sweet, untruthful little face. "I
+shouldn't be very sensible if I wasn't glad you COULDN'T lose your job.
+Father and I are your job now."
+
+He laughed aloud. This was the innocent, fantastic truth of it. They had
+chosen to do this thing--to spend their honey-moon in this particular
+way, and there was no reason why they should not. The little dream which
+had been of such unattainable proportions in the days of Mrs. Bowse's
+boarding-house could be realized to its fullest. No one in the
+St. Francesca apartments knew that the young honey-mooners in the
+five-roomed apartment were other than Mr. and Mrs. T. Barholm, as
+recorded on the tablet of names in the entrance. Hutchinson knew, and
+Miss Alicia knew, and Jem Temple Barholm, and Lady Joan. The Duke of
+Stone knew, and thought the old-fashionedness of the idea quite the last
+touch of modernity.
+
+"Did you see any one who knew you when you were out?" Little Ann asked.
+
+"No, and if I had they wouldn't have believed they'd seen me, because
+the papers told them that Mr. and Mrs. Temple Barholm are spending their
+honeymoon motoring through Spain in their ninety-horse-power Panhard."
+
+"Let's go and get dinner," said Little Ann.
+
+They went into the doll's-house kitchen and cooked the dinner. Little
+Ann broiled steak and fried potato chips, and T. Tembarom produced a
+wonderful custard pie he had bought at a confectioner's. He set the
+table, and put a bunch of yellow daisies in the middle of it.
+
+"We couldn't do it every day on fifteen per week," he said. "If we
+wanted flowers we should have to grow them in old tomato-cans."
+
+Little Ann took off her chorister's-gown apron and her kerchief, and
+patted and touched up her hair. She was pink to her ears, and had
+several new dimples; and when she sat down opposite him, as she had sat
+that first night at Mrs. Bowse's boarding-house supper, Tembarom stared
+at her and caught his breath.
+
+"You ARE there?" he said, "ain't you?"
+
+"Yes, I am," she answered.
+
+When they had cleared the table and washed the dishes, and had left
+the toy kitchen spick and span, the ten million lights in New York were
+lighted and casting their glow above the city. Tembarom sat down on the
+Adams chair before the window and took Little Ann on his knee. She was
+of the build which settles comfortably and with ease into soft curves
+whose nearness is a caress. Looked down at from the fourteenth story of
+the St. Francesca apartments, the lights strung themselves along lines
+of streets, crossing and recrossing one another; they glowed and blazed
+against masses of buildings, and they hung at enormous heights in
+mid-air here and there, apparently without any support. Everywhere was
+the glow and dazzle of their brilliancy of light, with the distant bee
+hum of a nearing elevated train, at intervals gradually deepening into a
+roar. The river looked miles below them, and craft with sparks or blaze
+of light went slowly or swiftly to and fro.
+
+"It's like a dream," said Little Ann, after a long silence. "And we are
+up here like birds in a nest."
+
+He gave her a closer grip.
+
+"Miss Alicia once said that when I was almost down and out," he said.
+"It gave me a jolt. She said a place like this would be like a nest.
+Wherever we go,--and we'll have to go to lots of places and live in lots
+of different ways,--we'll keep this place, and some time we'll bring her
+here and let her try it. I've just got to show her New York."
+
+"Yes, let us keep it," said Little Ann, drowsily, "just for a nest."
+
+There was another silence, and the lights on the river far below still
+twinkled or blazed as they drifted to and fro.
+
+"You are there, ain't you?" said Tembarom in a half-whisper.
+
+"Yes--I am," murmured Little Ann.
+
+But she had had a busy day, and when he looked down at her, she hung
+softly against his shoulder, fast asleep.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of T. Tembarom, by Frances Hodgson Burnett
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