After this came a pause. Each man sat thinking his own thoughts, which,
while marked with difference in form, were doubtless subtly alike in
the line they followed. During the silence T. Tembarom looked out at the
late afternoon shadows lengthening themselves in darkening velvet across
the lawns.
At last he said:
“I never told you that I've been reading some of the 'steen thousand
books in the library. I started it about a month ago. And somehow
they've got me going.”
The slightly lifted eyebrows of his host did not express surprise so
much as questioning interest. This man, at least, had discovered that
one need find no cause for astonishment in any discovery that he
had been doing a thing for some time for some reason or through some
prompting of his own, and had said nothing whatever about it until he
was what he called “good and ready.” When he was “good and ready” he
usually revealed himself to the duke, but he was not equally expansive
with others.
“No, you have not mentioned it,” his grace answered, and laughed a
little. “You frequently fail to mention things. When first we knew each
other I used to wonder if you were naturally a secretive fellow; but you
are not. You always have a reason for your silences.”
“It took about ten years to kick that into me--ten good years, I should
say.” T. Tembarom looked as if he were looking backward at many episodes
as he said it. “Naturally, I guess, I must have been an innocent,
blab-mouthed kid. I meant no harm, but I just didn't know. Sometimes
it looks as if just not knowing is about the worst disease you can be
troubled with. But if you don't get killed first, you find out in time
that what you've got to hold on to hard and fast is the trick of 'saying
nothing and sawing wood.'”
The duke took out his memorandum-book and began to write hastily. T.
Tembarom was quite accustomed to this. He even repeated his axiom for
him.
“Say nothing and saw wood,” he said. “It's worth writing down. It means
'shut your mouth and keep on working.'”
“Thank you,” said the duke. “It is worth writing down. Thank you.”
“I did not talk about the books because I wanted to get used to them
before I began to talk,” Tembarom explained. “I wanted to get somewhere.
I'd never read a book through in my life before. Never wanted to.
Never had one and never had time. When night came, I was dog-tired and
dog-ready to drop down and sleep.”
Here was a situation of interest. A young man of odd, direct shrewdness,
who had never read a book through in his existence, had plunged suddenly
into the extraordinarily varied literary resources of the Temple Barholm
library. If he had been a fool or a genius one might have guessed at the
impression made on him; being T. Tembarom, one speculated with secret
elation. The primitiveness he might reveal, the profundities he might
touch the surface of, the unexpected ends he might reach, suggested the
opening of vistas.
“I have often thought that if books attracted you the library would help
you to get through a good many of the hundred and thirty-six hours a day
you've spoken of, and get through them pretty decently,” commented the
duke.
“That's what's happened,” Tembarom answered. “There's not so many now. I
can cut 'em off in chunks.”
“How did it begin?”
He listened with much pleasure while Tembarom told him how it had begun
and how it had gone on.
“I'd been having a pretty bad time one day. Strangeways had been
worse--a darned sight worse--just when I thought he was better. I'd
been trying to help him to think straight; and suddenly I made a break,
somehow, and must have touched exactly the wrong spring. It seemed as if
I set him nearly crazy. I had to leave him to Pearson right away. Then
it poured rain steady for about eight hours, and I couldn't get out and
`take a walk.' Then I went wandering into the picture-gallery and found
Lady Joan there, looking at Miles Hugo. And she ordered me out, or
blamed near it.”
“You are standing a good deal,” said the duke.
“Yes, I am--but so is she.” He set his hard young jaw and nursed his
knee, staring once more at the velvet shadows. “The girl in the book I
picked up--” he began.
“The first book?” his host inquired.
Tembarom nodded.
“The very first. I was smoking my pipe at night, after every one else
had gone to bed, and I got up and began to wander about and stare at the
names of the things on the shelves. I was thinking over a whole raft of
things--a whole raft of them--and I didn't know I was doing it, until
something made me stop and read a name again. It was a book called
`Good-by, Sweetheart, Good-by,' and it hit me straight. I wondered what
it was about, and I wondered where old Temple Barholm had fished up a
thing like that. I never heard he was that kind.”
“He was a cantankerous old brute,” said the Duke of Stone with candor,
“but he chanced to be an omnivorous novel-reader. Nothing was too
sentimental for him in his later years.”
“I took the thing out and read it,” Tembarom went on, uneasily, the
emotion of his first novel-reading stirring him as he talked. “It kept
me up half the night, and I hadn't finished it then. I wanted to know
the end.”
“Benisons upon the books of which one wants to know the end!” the duke
murmured.
Tembarom's interest had plainly not terminated with “the end.” Its
freshness made it easily revived. There was a hint of emotional
indignation in his relation of the plot.
“It was about a couple of fools who were dead stuck on each other--dead.
There was no mistake about that. It was all real. But what do they
do but work up a fool quarrel about nothing, and break away from each
other. There was a lot of stuff about pride. Pride be damned! How's a
man going to be proud and put on airs when he loves a woman? How's a
woman going to be proud and stick out about things when she loves a man?
At least, that's the way it hit me.”
“That's the way it hit me--once,” remarked his grace.
“There is only once,” said Tembarom, doggedly.
“Occasionally,” said his host. “Occasionally.”
Tembarom knew what he meant.
“The fellow went away, and neither of them would give in. It's queer
how real it was when you read it. You were right there looking on, and
swallowing hard every few minutes--though you were as mad as hops. The
girl began to die--slow--and lay there day after day, longing for him
to come back, and knowing he wouldn't. At the very end, when there was
scarcely a breath left in her, a young fellow who was crazy about her
himself, and always had been, put out after the hard-headed fool to
bring him to her anyhow. The girl had about given in then. And she lay
and waited hour after hour, and the youngster came back by himself. He
couldn't bring the man he'd gone after. He found him getting married to
a nice girl he didn't really care a darn for. He'd sort of set his teeth
and done it--just because he was all in and down and out, and a fool.
The girl just dropped her head back on the pillow and lay there, dead!
What do you think of that?” quite fiercely. “I guess it was sentimental
all right, but it got you by the throat.”
“'Good-bye, Sweetheart, Good-bye,”' his grace quoted. “First-class
title. We are all sentimental. And that was the first, was it?”
“Yes, but it wasn't the last. I began to read the others. I've been
reading them ever since. I tell you, for a fellow that knows nothing
it's an easy way of finding out a lot of things. You find out what
different kinds of people there are, and what different kinds of ways.
If you've lived in one place, and been up against nothing but earning
your living, you think that's all there is of it--that it's the whole
thing. But it isn't, by gee!” His air became thoughtful. “I've begun
to kind of get on to what all this means”--glancing about him--“to you
people; and how a fellow like T. T. must look to you. I've always sort
of guessed, but reading a few dozen novels has helped me to see WHY
it's that way. I've yelled right out laughing over it many a time.
That fellow called Thackeray--I can't read his things right straight
through--but he 's an eye-opener.”
“You have tried nothing BUT novels?” his enthralled hearer inquired.
“Not yet. I shall come to the others in time. I'm sort of hungry for
these things about PEOPLE. It's the ways they're different that gets
me going. There was one that stirred me all up--but it wasn't like that
first one. It was about a man “--he spoke slowly, as if searching for
words and parallels--“well, I guess he was one of the early savages
here. It read as if they were like the first Indians in America, only
stronger and fiercer. When Palford was explaining things to me he'd jerk
in every now and then something about 'coming over with the Conqueror'
or being here 'before the Conqueror.' I didn't know what it meant. I
found out in this book I'm telling about. It gave me the whole thing
so that you SAW it. Here was this little country, with no one in it but
these first savage fellows it'd always belonged to. They thought it
was the world.” There was a humorous sense of illumination in his
half-laugh. “It was their New York, by jings,” he put in. “Their little
old New York that they'd never been outside of! And then first one lot
slams in, and then another, and another, and tries to take it from them.
Julius Caesar was the first Mr. Buttinski; and they fought like hell.
They were fighters from Fightersville, anyhow. They fought each other,
took each other's castles and lands and wives and jewelry--just any
old thing they wanted. The only jails were private ones meant for their
particular friends. And a man was hung only when one of his neighbors
got mad enough at him, and then he had to catch him first and run the
risk of being strung up himself, or have his head chopped off and stuck
up on a spike somewhere for ornament. But fight! Good Lord! They were at
it day and night. Did it for fun, just like folks go to the show. They
didn't know what fear was. Never heard of it. They'd go about shouting
and bragging and swaggering, with their heads hanging half off. And the
one in this book was the bulliest fighter of the lot. I guess I don't
know how to pronounce his name. It began with H.”
“Was it Hereward the Wake, by chance?” exclaimed his auditor. “Hereward
the Last of the English?”
“That's the man,” cried Tembarom.
“An engaging ruffian and thief and murderer, and a touching one also,”
commented the duke. “You liked him?” He really wanted to know.
“I like the way he went after what he wanted to get, and the way he
fought for his bit of England. By gee! When he went rushing into a
fight, shouting and boasting and swinging his sword, I got hot in the
collar. It was his England. What was old Bill doing there anyhow, darn
him! Those chaps made him swim in their blood before they let him put
the thing over. Good business! I'm glad they gave him all that was
coming to him--hot and strong.”
His sharp face had reddened and his voice rose high and nasal. There was
a look of roused blood in him.
“Are you a fighter from Fightersville?” the duke asked, far from
unstirred himself. These things had become myths to most people, but
here was Broadway in the midst of them unconsciously suggesting that it
might not have done ill in the matter of swinging “Brain-Biter” itself.
The modern entity slipped back again through the lengthened links of
bygone centuries--back until it became T. Tembarom once more--casual
though shrewd; ready and jocular. His eyes resumed their dry New York
humor of expression as they fixed themselves on his wholly modern
questioner.
“I'll fight,” he said, “for what I've got to fight for, but not for a
darned thing else. Not a darned thing.”
“But you would fight,” smiled the duke, grimly. “Did you happen to
remember that blood like that has come down to you? It was some drop of
it which made you `hot in the collar' over that engaging savage roaring
and slashing about him for his `bit of England.”'
Tembarom seemed to think it out interestedly.
“No, I did not,” he answered. “But I guess that's so. I guess it's so.
Great Jakes! Think of me perhaps being sort of kin to fellows just like
that. Some way, you couldn't help liking him. He was always making big
breaks and bellowing out `The Wake! The Wake!' in season and out of
season; but the way he got there--just got there!”
He was oddly in sympathy with “the early savages here,” and as
understandingly put himself into their places as he had put himself
into Galton's. His New York comprehension of their berserker furies was
apparently without limit. Strong partizan as he was of the last of the
English, however, he admitted that William of Normandy had “got in some
good work, though it wasn't square.”
“He was a big man,” he ended. “If he hadn't been the kind he was I don't
know how I should have stood it when the Hereward fellow knelt down
before him, and put his hands between his and swore to be his man.
That's the way the book said it. I tell you that must have been
tough--tough as hell!”
From “Good-bye, Sweetheart” to “Hereward the Last of the English” was a
far cry, but he had gathered a curious collection of ideas by the way,
and with characteristic everyday reasoning had linked them to his own
experiences.
“The women in the Hereward book made me think of Lady Joan,” he
remarked, suddenly.
“Torfreda?” the duke asked.
He nodded quite seriously.
“She had ways that reminded me of her, and I kept thinking they must
both have had the same look in their eyes--sort of fierce and hungry.
Torfreda had black hair and was a winner as to looks; but people were
afraid of her and called her a witch. Hereward went mad over her and
she went mad over him. That part of it was 'way out of sight, it was so
fine. She helped him with his fights and told him what to do, and tried
to keep him from drinking and bragging. Whatever he did, she never
stopped being crazy about him. She mended his men's clothes, and took
care of their wounds, and lived in the forest with him when he was
driven out.”
“That sounds rather like Miss Hutchinson,” his host suggested, “though
the parallel between a Harlem flat and an English forest in the eleventh
century is not exact.”
“I thought that, too,” Tembarom admitted. “Ann would have done the same
things, but she'd have done them in her way. If that fellow had taken
his wife's advice, he wouldn't have ended with his head sticking on a
spear.”
“Another lady, if I remember rightly,” said the duke.
“He left her, the fool!” Tembarom answered. “And there's where I
couldn't get away from seeing Lady Joan; Jem Temple Barholm didn't go
off with another woman, but what Torfreda went through, this one has
gone through, and she's going through it yet. She can't dress herself in
sackcloth, and cut off her hair, and hide herself away with a bunch of
nuns, as the other one did. She has to stay and stick it out, however
bad it is. That's a darned sight worse. The day after I'd finished the
book, I couldn't keep my eyes off her. I tried to stop it, but it was no
use. I kept hearing that Torfreda one screaming out, `Lost! Lost! Lost!'
It was all in her face.”
“But, my good fellow,” protested the duke, despite feeling a touch of
the thrill again, “unfortunately, she would not suspect you of looking
at her because you were recalling Torfreda and Hereward the Wake. Men
stare at her for another reason.”
“That's what I know about half as well again as I know anything else,”
answered Tembarom. He added, with a deliberation holding its own
meaning, “That's what I'm coming to.”
The duke waited. What was it he was coming to?
“Reading that novel put me wise to things in a new way. She's been
wiping her feet on me hard for a good while, and I sort of made up my
mind I'd got to let her until I was sure where I was. I won't say I
didn't mind it, but I could stand it. But that night she caught me
looking at her, the way she looked back at me made me see all of a
sudden that it would be easier for her if I told her straight that she
was mistaken.”
“That she is mistaken in thinking--?”
“What she does think. She wouldn't have thought it if the old lady
hadn't been driving her mad by hammering it in. She'd have hated me all
right, and I don't blame her when I think of how poor Jem was treated;
but she wouldn't have thought that every time I tried to be decent and
friendly to her I was butting in and making a sick fool of myself. She's
got to stay where her mother keeps her, and she's got to listen to her.
Oh, hell! She's got to be told!”
The duke set the tips of his fingers together.
“How would you do it?” he inquired.
“Just straight,” replied T. Tembarom. “There's no other way.”
From the old worldling broke forth an involuntary low laugh, which was a
sort of cackle. So this was what he was coming to.
“I cannot think of any devious method,” he said, “which would make it
less than a delicate thing to do. A beautiful young woman, whose host
you are, has flouted you furiously for weeks, under the impression that
you are offensively in love with her. You propose to tell her that
her judgment has betrayed her, and that, as you say, `There's nothing
doing.'”
“Not a darned thing, and never has been,” said T. Tembarom. He looked
quite grave and not at all embarrassed. He plainly did not see it as a
situation to be regarded with humor.
“If she will listen--” the duke began.
“Oh, she'll listen,” put in Tembarom. “I'll make her.”
His was a self-contradicting countenance, the duke reflected, as he took
him in with a somewhat long look. One did not usually see a face built
up of boyishness and maturity, simpleness which was baffling, and a good
nature which could be hard. At the moment, it was both of these last at
one and the same time.
“I know something of Lady Joan and I know something of you,” he said,
“but I don't exactly foresee what will happen. I will not say that I
should not like to be present.”
“There'll be nobody present but just me and her,” Tembarom answered.