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.