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 ladyship’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.
[Illustration]
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 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 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 hear 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, 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 overlooked 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 restrain a 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 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. 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 it. He felt quite hot
more than once. He watched her 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 her 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, and the Litany baffled him by changing from “miserable
sinners” to “Spare us Good Lord.” If he could have found the place he
would have been all right, but his anxiety 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 the attention of a religious enthusiast.