task of differentiating the British from the Americans he can scarcely
fail to note that the mechanical pun, the bare play upon the sound of
a word without any corresponding diversity of idea, is far commoner
in the older branch of the English-speaking race than it is in the
younger. This strikes us at once when we compare the comic papers or
the comic operas of Great Britain with those of the United States.
The transatlantic relish for purely verbal juggling is probably an
inheritance from the Elizabethans, for we find it displayed in even
the mightiest of them, Shakspere. Curious it is, therefore, that we
colonists did not import it in the original package as we imported so
many other Tudor characteristics, some of which are still discoverable
on this side of the Western ocean although on the other they have
fallen into “innocuous desuetude.”
FINIS
BY WILLIAM H. HAYNE
No blood-stains on the polished floor--
Not one drop has been shed--
No wound in heart or brow or breast,
And yet the man is dead.
No dirk or pistol in the room--
No sign of death’s dark goal--
And yet the man who seems alive
Has murdered his own soul.
[Illustration]
T. TEMBAROM
BY FRANCES HODGSON BURNETT
Author of “That Lass o’ Lowrie’s,” “The Shuttle,” etc.
WITH DECORATIVE PICTURES BY CHARLES S. CHAPMAN
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 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 is, 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 just
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 horn 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.
Then 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 rather 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.”