The popularity of Captain Palliser's story of the “Ladies” had been
great at the outset, but with the passage of time it had oddly waned.
This had resulted from the story's ceasing to develop itself, as the
simplest intelligence might have anticipated, by means of the only
person capable of its proper development. The person in question was of
course T. Tembarom. Expectations, amusing expectations, of him had been
raised, and he had singularly failed in the fulfilling of them. The
neighborhood had, so to speak, stood upon tiptoe,--the feminine portion
of it, at least,--looking over shoulders to get the first glimpses of
what would inevitably take place.
As weeks flew by, the standing on tiptoe became a thing of the past. The
whole thing flattened out most disappointingly. No attack whatever was
made upon the “Ladies.” That the Duke of Stone had immensely taken up
Mr. Temple Barholm had of course resulted in his being accepted in such
a manner as gave him many opportunities to encounter one and all. He
appeared at dinners, teas, and garden parties. Miss Alicia, whom he had
in some occult manner impressed upon people until they found themselves
actually paying a sort of court to her, was always his companion.
“One realizes one cannot possibly leave her out of anything,” had been
said. “He has somehow established her as if she were his mother or his
aunt--or his interpreter. And such clothes, my dear, one doesn't behold.
Worth and Paquin and Doucet must go sleepless for weeks to invent them.
They are without a flaw in shade or line or texture.” Which was true,
because Mrs. Mellish of the Bond Street shop had become quite obsessed
by her idea and committed extravagances Miss Alicia offered up contrite
prayer to atone for, while Tembarom, simply chortling in his glee,
signed checks to pay for their exquisite embodiment. That he was not
reluctant to avail himself of social opportunities was made manifest by
the fact that he never refused an invitation. He appeared upon any spot
to which hospitality bade him, and unashamedly placed himself on record
as a neophyte upon almost all occasions. His well-cut clothes began in
time to wear more the air of garments belonging to him, but his hat
made itself remarked by its trick of getting pushed back on his head
or tilted on side, and his New York voice and accent rang out sharp and
finely nasal in the midst of low-pitched, throaty, or mellow English
enunciations. He talked a good deal at times because he found himself
talked to by people who either wanted to draw him out or genuinely
wished to hear the things he would be likely to say.
That the hero of Palliser's story should so comport himself as to
provide either diversion or cause for haughty displeasure would have
been only a natural outcome of his ambitions. In a brief period of time,
however, every young woman who might have expected to find herself
an object of such ambitions realized that his methods of approach and
attack were not marked by the usual characteristics of aspirants of his
class. He evidently desired to see and be seen. He presented himself, as
it were, for inspection and consideration, but while he was attentive,
he did not press attentions upon any one. He did not make advances in
the ordinary sense of the word. He never essayed flattering or even
admiring remarks. He said queer things at which one often could not help
but laugh, but he somehow wore no air of saying them with the intention
of offering them as witticisms which might be regarded as allurements.
He did not ogle, he did not simper or shuffle about nervously and turn
red or pale, as eager and awkward youths have a habit of doing under
the stress of unrequited admiration. In the presence of a certain
slightingness of treatment, which he at the outset met with not
infrequently, he conducted himself with a detached good nature which
seemed to take but small account of attitudes less unoffending than his
own. When the slightingness disappeared from sheer lack of anything to
slight, he did not change his manner in any degree.
“He is not in the least forward,” Beatrice Talchester said, the time
arriving when she and her sisters occasionally talked him over with
their special friends, the Granthams, “and he is not forever under one's
feet, as the pushing sort usually is. Do you remember those rich
people from the place they called Troy--the ones who took Burnaby for
a year--and the awful eldest son who perpetually invented excuses for
calling, bringing books and ridiculous things?”
“This one never makes an excuse,” Amabel Grantham put in.
“But he never declines an invitation. There is no doubt that he wants
to see people,” said Lady Honora, with the pretty little nose and the
dimples. She had ceased to turn up the pretty little nose, and she
showed a dimple as she added: “Gwynedd is tremendously taken with him.
She is teaching him to play croquet. They spend hours together.”
“He's beginning to play a pretty good game,” said Gwynedd. “He's not
stupid, at all events.”
“I believe you are the first choice, if he is really choosing,” Amabel
Grantham decided. “I should like to ask you a question.”
“Ask it, by all means,” said Gwynedd.
“Does he ever ask you to show him how to hold his mallet, and then do
idiotic things, such as managing to touch your hand?”
“Never,” was Gwynedd's answer. “The young man from Troy used to do it,
and then beg pardon and turn red.”
“I don't understand him, or I don't understand Captain Palliser's
story,” Amabel Grantham argued. “Lucy and I are quite out of the
running, but I honestly believe that he takes as much notice of us as
he does of any of you. If he has intentions, he 'doesn't act the part,'
which is pure New York of the first water.”
“He said, however, that the things that mattered were not only titles,
but looks. He asked how many of us were 'lookers.' Don't be modest,
Amabel. Neither you nor Lucy are out of the running,” Beatrice amiably
suggested.
“Ladies first,” commented Amabel, pertly. There was no objection to
being supported in one's suspicion that, after all, one was a “looker.”
“There may be a sort of explanation,” Honora put the idea forward
somewhat thoughtfully. “Captain Palliser insists that he is much
shrewder than he seems. Perhaps he is cautious, and is looking us all
over before he commits himself.”
“He is a Temple Barholm, after all,” said Gwynedd, with boldness. “He's
rather good looking. He has the nicest white teeth and the most cheering
grin I ever saw, and he's as 'rich as grease is,' as I heard a
housemaid say one day. I'm getting quite resigned to his voice, or it
is improving, I don't know which. If he only knew the mere A B C of
ordinary people like ourselves, and he committed himself to me, I
wouldn't lay my hand on my heart and say that one might not think him
over.”
“I told you she was tremendously taken with him,” said her sister. “It's
come to this.”
“But,” said Lady Gwynedd, “he is not going to commit himself to any of
us, incredible as it may seem. The one person he stares at sometimes is
Joan Fayre, and he only looks at her as if he were curious and wouldn't
object to finding out why she treats him so outrageously. He isn't
annoyed; he's only curious.”
“He's been adored by salesladies in New York,” said Honora, “and he
can't understand it.”
“He's been liked,” Amabel Grantham summed him up. “He's a likable thing.
He's even rather a dear. I've begun to like him myself.”
“I hear you are learning to play croquet,” the Duke of Stone remarked to
him a day or so later. “How do you like it?”
“Lady Gwynedd Talchester is teaching me,” Tembarom answered. “I'd learn
to iron shirt-waists if she would give me lessons. She's one of the two
that have dimples,” he added, reflection in his tone. “I guess that'll
count. Shouldn't you think it would?”
“Miss Hutchinson?” queried the duke.
Tembarom nodded.
“Yes, it's always her,” he answered without a ray of humor. “I just want
to stack 'em up.”
“You are doing it,” the duke replied with a slightly twisted mouth.
There were, in fact, moments when he might have fallen into fits of
laughter while Tembarom was seriousness itself. “I must, however, call
your attention to the fact that there is sometimes in your manner a hint
of a businesslike pursuit of a fixed object which you must beware
of. The Lady Gwynedds might not enjoy the situation if they began to
suspect. If they decided to flout you,--'to throw you down,' I ought to
say--where would little Miss Hutchinson be?”
Tembarom looked startled and disturbed.
“Say,” he exclaimed, “do I ever look that way? I must do better than
that. Anyhow, it ain't all put on. I'm doing my stunt, of course, but I
like them. They're mighty nice to me when you consider what they're up
against. And those two with the dimples,--Lady Gwynned and Lady Honora,
are just peaches. Any fellow might”--he stopped and looked serious
again--“That's why they'd count,” he added.
They were having one of their odd long talks under a particularly
splendid copper beech which provided the sheltered out-of-door corner
his grace liked best. When they took their seats together in this
retreat, it was mysteriously understood that they were settling
themselves down to enjoyment of their own, and must not be disturbed.
“When I am comfortable and entertained,” Moffat, the house steward, had
quoted his master as saying, “you may mention it if the castle is in
flames; but do not annoy me with excitement and flurry. Ring the bell in
the courtyard, and call up the servants to pass buckets; but until the
lawn catches fire, I must insist on being left alone.”
“What dear papa talks to him about, and what he talks about to dear
papa,” Lady Celia had more than once murmured in her gently remote,
high-nosed way, “I cannot possibly imagine. Sometimes when I have passed
them on my way to the croquet lawn I have really seen them both look as
absorbed as people in a play. Of course it is very good for papa. It has
had quite a marked effect on his digestion. But isn't it odd!”
“I wish,” Lady Edith remarked almost wistfully, “that I could get on
better with him myself conversationally. But I don't know what to talk
about, and it makes me nervous.”
Their father, on the contrary, found in him unique resources, and this
afternoon it occurred to him that he had never so far heard him express
himself freely on the subject of Palliser. If led to do so, he would
probably reveal that he had views of Captain Palliser of which he might
not have been suspected, and the manner in which they would unfold
themselves would more than probably be illuminating. The duke was, in
fact, serenely sure that he required neither warning nor advice, and he
had no intention of offering either. He wanted to hear the views.
“Do you know,” he said as he stirred his tea, “I've been thinking about
Palliser, and it has occurred to me more than once that I should like to
hear just how he strikes you?”
“What I got on to first was how I struck him,” answered Tembarom, with a
reasonable air. “That was dead easy.”
There was no hint of any vaunt of superior shrewdness. His was merely
the level-toned manner of an observer of facts in detail.
“He has given you an opportunity of seeing a good deal of him,” the duke
added. “What do you gather from him--unless he has made up his mind that
you shall not gather anything at all?”
“A fellow like that couldn't fix it that way, however much he wanted
to,” Tembarom answered again reasonably. “Just his trying to do it would
give him away.”
“You mean you have gathered things?”
“Oh, I've gathered enough, though I didn't go after it. It hung on the
bushes. Anyhow, it seemed to me that way. I guess you run up against
that kind everywhere. There's stacks of them in New York--different
shapes and sizes.”
“If you met a man of his particular shape and size in New York, how
would you describe him?” the duke asked.
“I should never have met him when I was there. He wouldn't have come
my way. He'd have been on Wall Street, doing high-class bucket-shop
business, or he'd have had a swell office selling copper-mines--any old
kind of mine that's going to make ten million a minute, the sort of
deal he's in now. If he'd been the kind I might have run up against,”
he added with deliberation, “he wouldn't have been as well dressed or
as well spoken. He'd have been either flashy or down at heel. You'd have
called him a crook.”
The duke seemed pleased with his tea as, after having sipped it, he put
it down on the table at his side.
“A crook?” he repeated. “I wonder if that word is altogether American?”
“It's not complimentary, but you asked me,” said Tembarom. “But I don't
believe you asked me because you thought I wasn't on to him.”
“Frankly speaking, no,” answered the duke. “Does he talk to you about
the mammoth mines and the rubber forests?”
“Say, that's where he wins out with me,” Tembarom replied admiringly.
“He gets in such fine work that I switch him on to it whenever I want
cheering up. It makes me sorter forget things that worry me just to see
a man act the part right up to the top notch the way he does it. The
very way his clothes fit, the style he's got his hair brushed, and that
swell, careless lounge of his, are half of the make-up. You see, most of
us couldn't mistake him for anything else but just what he looks like--a
gentleman visiting round among his friends and a million miles from
wanting to butt in with business. The thing that first got me interested
was watching how he slid in the sort of guff he wanted you to get worked
up about and think over. Why, if I'd been what I look like to him, he'd
have had my pile long ago, and he wouldn't be loafing round here any
more.”
“What do you think you look like to him?” his host inquired.
“I look as if I'd eat out of his hand,” Tembarom answered, quite
unbiased by any touch of wounded vanity. “Why shouldn't I? And I'm not
trying to wake him up, either. I like to look that way to him and to
his sort. It gives me a chance to watch and get wise to things. He's a
high-school education in himself. I like to hear him talk. I asked him
to come and stay at the house so that I could hear him talk.”
“Did he introduce the mammoth mines in his first call?” the duke
inquired.
“Oh, I don't mean that kind of talk. I didn't know how much good I was
going to get out of him at first. But he was the kind I hadn't known,
and it seemed like he was part of the whole thing--like the girls with
title that Ann said I must get next to. And an easy way of getting next
to the man kind was to let him come and stay. He wanted to, all right.
I guess that's the way he lives when he's down on his luck, getting
invited to stay at places. Like Lady Mallowe,” he added, quite without
prejudice.
“You do sum them up, don't you?” smiled the duke.
“Well, I don't see how I could help it,” he said impartially. “They're
printed in sixty-four point black-face, seems to me.”
“What is that?” the duke inquired with interest. He thought it might be
a new and desirable bit of slang. “I don't know that one.”
“Biggest type there is,” grinned Tembarom. “It's the kind that's used
for head-lines. That's newspaper-office talk.”
“Ah, technical, I see. What, by the way, is the smallest lettering
called?” his grace followed up.
“Brilliant,” answered Tembarom.
“You,” remarked the duke, “are not printed in sixty-four-point
black-face so far as they are concerned. You are not even brilliant.
They don't find themselves able to sum you up. That fact is one of my
recreations.”
“I'll tell you why,” Tembarom explained with his clearly unprejudiced
air. “There's nothing much about me to sum up, anyhow. I'm too sort of
plain sailing and ordinary. I'm not making for anywhere they'd think I'd
want to go. I'm not hiding anything they'd be sure I'd want to hide.”
“By the Lord! you're not!” exclaimed the duke.
“When I first came here, every one of them had a fool idea I'd want
to pretend I'd never set eyes on a newsboy or a boot-black, and that I
couldn't find my way in New York when I got off Fifth Avenue. I used
to see them thinking they'd got to look as if they believed it, if they
wanted to keep next. When I just let out and showed I didn't care a darn
and hadn't sense enough to know that it mattered, it nearly made them
throw a fit. They had to turn round and fix their faces all over again
and act like it was 'interesting.' That's what Lady Mallowe calls it.
She says it's so 'interesting!'”
“It is,” commented the duke.
“Well, you know that, but she doesn't. Not on your life! I guess it
makes her about sick to think of it and have to play that it's just what
you'd want all your men friends to have done. Now, Palliser--” he paused
and grinned again. He was sitting in a most casual attitude, his hands
clasped round one up-raised knee, which he nursed, balancing himself. It
was a position of informal ease which had an air of assisting enjoyable
reflection.
“Yes, Palliser? Don't let us neglect Palliser,” his host encouraged him.
“He's in a worse mix-up than the rest because he's got more to lose. If
he could work this mammoth-mine song and dance with the right people,
there'd be money enough in it to put him on Easy Street. That's where
he's aiming for. The company's just where it has to have a boost.
It's just GOT to. If it doesn't, there'll be a bust up that may end in
fitting out a high-toned promoter or so in a striped yellow-and-black
Jersey suit and set him to breaking rocks or playing with oakum. I'll
tell you, poor old Palliser gets the Willies sometimes after he's read
his mail. He turns the color of ecru baby Irish. That's a kind of lace I
got a dressmaker to tell me about when I wrote up receptions and dances
for the Sunday Earth. Ecru baby Irish--that's Palliser's color after
he's read his letters.”
“I dare say the fellow's in a devil of a mess, if the truth were known,”
the duke said.
“And here's 'T. T.,' hand-made and hand-painted for the part of the kind
of sucker he wants.” T. Tembarom's manner was almost sympathetic in its
appreciation. “I can tell you I'm having a real good time with Palliser.
It looked like I'd just dropped from heaven when he first saw me. If
he'd been the praying kind, I'd have been just the sort he'd have prayed
for when he said his `Now-I-lay-me's' before he went to bed. There
wasn't a chance in a hundred that I wasn't a fool that had his head
swelled so that he'd swallow any darned thing if you handed it to him
smooth enough. First time he called he asked me a lot of questions about
New York business. That was pretty smart of him. He wanted to find out,
sort of careless, how much I knew--or how little.”
The duke was leaning back luxuriously in his chair and gazing at him as
he might have gazed at the work of an old master of which each line and
shade was of absorbing interest.
“I can see him,” he said. “I can see him.”
“He found out I knew nothing,” Tembarom continued. “And what was to
hinder him trying to teach me something, by gee! Nothing on top of the
green earth. I was there, waiting with my mouth open, it seemed like.”
“And he has tried--in his best manner?” said his grace.
“What he hasn't tried wouldn't be worthy trying,” Tembarom answered
cheerfully. “Sometimes it seems like a shame to waste it. I've got so
I know how to start him when he doesn't know I'm doing it. I tell you,
he's fine. Gentlemanly--that's his way, you know. High-toned friend that
just happens to know of a good thing and thinks enough of you in a sort
of reserved way to feel like it's a pity not to give you a chance to
come in on the ground floor, if you've got the sense to see the favor
he's friendly enough to do you. It's such a favor that it'd just disgust
a man if you could possibly turn it down. But of course you're to take
it or leave it. It's not to his interest to push it. Lord, no! Whatever
you did his way is that he'd not condescend to say a darned word.
High-toned silence, that's all.”
The Duke of Stone was chuckling very softly. His chuckles rather broke
his words when he spoke.
“By--by--Jove!” he said. “You--you do see it, don't you? You do see it.”
Tembarom nursed his knee comfortably.
“Why,” he said, “it's what keeps me up. You know a lot more about me
than any one else does, but there's a whole raft of things I think about
that I couldn't hang round any man's neck. If I tried to hang them round
yours, you'd know that I would be having a hell of a time here, if I'd
let myself think too much. If I didn't see it, as you call it, if I
didn't see so many things, I might begin to get sorry for myself.” There
was a pause of a second. “Gee!” he said, “Gee! this not hearing a thing
about Ann!--”
“Good Lord! my dear fellow,” the duke said hastily, “I know. I know.”
Tembarom turned and looked at him.
“You've been there,” he remarked. “You've been there, I bet.”
“Yes, I've been there,” answered the duke. “I've been there--and come
back. But while it's going on--you have just described it. A man can
have a hell of a time.”
“He can,” Tembarom admitted unreservedly. “He's got to keep going to
stand it. Well, Strangeways gives me some work to do. And I've got
Palliser. He's a little sunbeam.”
A man-servant approaching to suggest a possible need of hot tea started
at hearing his grace break into a sudden and plainly involuntary crow
of glee. He had not heard that one before either. Palliser as a little
sunbeam brightening the pathway of T. Tembarom, was, in the particular
existing circumstances, all that could be desired of fine humor. It
somewhat recalled the situation of the “Ladies” of the noble houses of
Pevensy, Talchester, and Stone unconsciously passing in review for
the satisfaction of little Miss Hutchinson. Tembarom laughed a little
himself, but he went on with a sort of seriousness,
“There's one thing sure enough. I've got on to it by listening and
working out what he would do by what he doesn't know he says. If he
could put the screws on me in any way, he wouldn't hold back. It'd be
all quite polite and gentlemanly, but he'd do it all the same. And he's
dead-sure that everybody's got something they'd like to hide--or get.
That's what he works things out from.”
“Does he think you have something to hide--or get?” the duke inquired
rather quickly.
“He's sure of it. But he doesn't know yet whether it's get or hide. He
noses about. Pearson's seen him. He asks questions and plays he ain't
doing it and ain't interested, anyhow.”
“He doesn't like you, he doesn't like you,” the duke said rather
thoughtfully. “He has a way of conveying that you are far more subtle
than you choose to look. He is given to enlarging on the fact that an
air of entire frankness is one of the chief assets of certain promoters
of huge American schemes.”
Tembarom smiled the smile of recognition.
“Yes,” he said, “it looks like that's a long way round, doesn't it? But
it's not far to T. T. when you want to hitch on the connection. Anyhow,
that's the way he means it to look. If ever I was suspected of being in
any mix-up, everybody would remember he'd said that.”
“It's very amusin',” said the duke. “It's very amusin'.”
They had become even greater friends and intimates by this time than the
already astonished neighborhood suspected them of being. That they spent
much time together in an amazing degree of familiarity was the talk
of the country, in fact, one of the most frequent resources of
conversation. Everybody endeavored to find reason for the situation,
but none had been presented which seemed of sufficiently logical
convincingness. The duke was eccentric, of course. That was easy to
hit upon. He was amiably perverse and good-humoredly cynical. He was
of course immensely amused by the incongruity of the acquaintance. This
being the case, why exactly he had never before chosen for himself a
companion equally out of the picture it was not easy to explain. There
were plow-boys or clerks out of provincial shops who would surely have
been quite as incongruous when surrounded by ducal splendors. He might
have got a young man from Liverpool or Blackburn who would have known
as little of polite society as Mr. Temple Barholm; there were few, of
course, who could know less. But he had never shown the faintest desire
to seek one out. Palliser, it is true, suggested it was Tembarom's
“cheek” which stood him in good stead. The young man from behind the
counter in a Liverpool or Blackburn shop would probably have been
frightened to death and afraid to open his mouth in self-revelation,
whereas Temple Barholm was so entirely a bounder that he did not know
he was one, and was ready to make an ass of himself to any extent. The
frankest statement of the situation, if any one had so chosen to put it,
would have been that he was regarded as a sort of court fool without cap
or bells.
No one was aware of the odd confidences which passed between the weirdly
dissimilar pair. No one guessed that the old peer sat and listened
to stories of a red-headed, slim-bodied girl in a dingy New York
boarding-house, that he liked them sufficiently to encourage their
telling, that he had made a mental picture of a certain look in a pair
of maternally yearning and fearfully convincing round young eyes, that
he knew the burnished fullness and glow of the red hair until he could
imagine the feeling of its texture and abundant warmth in the hand.
And this subject was only one of many. And of others they talked with
interest, doubt, argument, speculation, holding a living thrill.
The tap of croquet mallets sounded hollow and clear from the sunken
lawn below the mass of shrubs between them and the players as the duke
repeated.
“It's hugely amusin',” dropping his “g,” which was not one of his usual
affectations.
“Confound it!” he said next, wrinkling the thin, fine skin round his
eyes in a speculative smile, “I wish I had had a son of my own just like
you.”
All of Tembarom's white teeth revealed themselves.
“I'd have liked to have been in it,” he replied, “but I shouldn't have
been like me.”
“Yes, you would.” The duke put the tips of his fingers delicately
together. “You are of the kind which in all circumstances is like
itself.” He looked about him, taking in the turreted, majestic age
and mass of the castle. “You would have been born here. You would have
learned to ride your pony down the avenue. You would have gone to Eton
and to Oxford. I don't think you would have learned much, but you would
have been decidedly edifying and companionable. You would have had
a sense of humor which would have made you popular in society and at
court. A young fellow who makes those people laugh holds success in his
hand. They want to be made to laugh as much as I do. Good God! how they
are obliged to be bored and behave decently under it! You would have
seen and known more things to be humorous about than you know now. I
don't think you would have been a fool about women, but some of them
would have been fools about you, because you've got a way. I had one
myself. It's all the more dangerous because it's possibility suggesting
without being sentimental. A friendly young fellow always suggests
possibilities without being aware of it.
“Would I have been Lord Temple Temple Barholm or something of that
sort?” Tembarom asked.
“You would have been the Marquis of Belcarey,” the duke replied, looking
him over thoughtfully, “and your name would probably have been Hugh
Lawrence Gilbert Henry Charles Adelbert, or words to that effect.”
“A regular six-shooter,” said Tembarom.
The duke was following it up with absorption in his eyes.
“You'd have gone into the Guards, perhaps,” he said, “and drill would
have made you carry yourself better. You're a good height. You'd have
been a well-set-up fellow. I should have been rather proud of you. I can
see you riding to the palace with the rest of them, sabres and chains
clanking and glittering and helmet with plumes streaming. By Jove!
I don't wonder at the effect they have on nursery-maids. On a sunny
morning in spring they suggest knights in a fairytale.”
“I should have liked it all right if I hadn't been born in Brooklyn,”
grinned Tembarom. “But that starts you out in a different way. Do you
think, if I'd been born the Marquis of Bel--what's his name--I should
have been on to Palliser's little song and dance, and had as much fun
out of it?”
“On my soul, I believe you would,” the duke answered. “Brooklyn or
Stone Hover Castle, I'm hanged if you wouldn't have been YOU.”