In a certain sense Joan had been dragged to the place by her mother.
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. Lady Mallowe’s 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 mother’s mind a direct
intervention of Providence, and it was only Joan herself who could rob
her of the benefits and reliefs he could provide. So she was capable
to-day of inflicting upon her latest victim 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.
But though her deliberate intention had been so to conduct herself
that he would be put to absolute flight, she had also come for another
reason. She had never seen Temple Barholm, and she knew that Jem 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. Her brief dream of young joy had
been the one reality in 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.
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. 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 Rowcroft 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. 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 Rowcroft.”
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.”
“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.
“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 them. 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 side glance of subtle
appreciation of the fact exasperated her almost beyond endurance. 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, and
she herself had been convinced that he could not possibly retreat. She
had worked desperately that season. And never had Joan been so superb;
her beauty 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?
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. It 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. 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.”
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.” He left the room at once.
Palliser took one of the good cigars, and in taking it exchanged a
glance with Burrill which distantly conveyed the meaning 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,” but
always 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.