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.”