It was business of serious importance which was to bring Captain
Palliser's visit to a close. He explained it perfectly to Miss Alicia a
day or so after Lady Mallowe and her daughter left them. He had lately
been most amiable in his manner toward Miss Alicia, and had given
her much valuable information about companies and stocks. He rather
unexpectedly found it imperative that he should go to London and Berlin
to “see people”--dealers in great financial schemes who were deeply
interested in solid business speculations, such as his own, which were
fundamentally different from all others in the impeccable firmness of
their foundations.
“I suppose he will be very rich some day,” Miss Alicia remarked the
first morning she and T. Tembarom took their breakfast alone together
after his departure. “It would frighten me to think of having as much
money as he seems likely to have quite soon.”
“It would scare me to death,” said Tembarom. She knew he was making
a sort of joke, but she thought the point of it was her tremor at the
thought of great fortune.
“He seemed to think that it would be an excellent thing for you to
invest in--I'm not sure whether it was the India Rubber Tree Company,
or the mahogany forests or the copper mines that have so much gold and
silver mixed in them that it will pay for the expense of the digging--”
she went on.
“I guess it was the whole lot,” put in Tembarom.
“Perhaps it was. They are all going to make everybody so rich that it is
quite bewildering. He is very clever in business matters. And so kind.
He even said that if I really wished it he might be able to invest my
income for me and actually treble it in a year. But of course I told him
that my income was your generous gift to me, and that it was far more
than sufficient for my needs.”
Tembarom put down his coffee-cup so suddenly to look at her that she
was fearful that she had appeared to do Captain Palliser some vague
injustice.
“I am sure he meant to be most obliging, dear,” she explained. “I was
really quite touched. He said most sympathetically and delicately that
when women were unmarried, and unaccustomed to investment, sometimes a
business man could be of use to them. He forgot”--affectionately--“that
I had you.”
Tembarom regarded her with tender curiosity. She often opened up vistas
for him as he himself opened them for the Duke of Stone.
“If you hadn't had me, would you have let him treble your income in a
year?” he asked.
Her expression was that of a soft, woodland rabbit or a trusting
spinster dove.
“Well, of course, if one were quite alone in the world and had only a
small income, it would be nice to have it wonderfully added to in such
a short time,” she answered. “But it was his friendly solicitude which
touched me. I have not been accustomed to such interested delicacy on
the part of--of gentlemen.” Her hesitance before the last word being the
result of training, which had made her feel that it was a little bold
for “ladies” to refer quite openly to “gentlemen.”
“You sometimes read in the newspapers,” said Tembarom, buttering his
toast, “about ladies who are all alone in the world with a little
income, but they're not often left alone with it long. It's like you
said--you've got me; but if the time ever comes when you haven't got me
just you make a dead-sure thing of it that you don't let any solicitous
business gentleman treble your income in a year. If it's an income that
comes to more than five cents, don't you hand it over to be made into
fifteen. Five cents is a heap better--just plain five.”
“Temple!” gasped Miss Alicia. “You--you surely cannot mean that you do
not think Captain Palliser is--sincere!”
Tembarom laughed outright, his most hilarious and comforting laugh. He
had no intention of enlightening her in such a manner as would lead her
at once to behold pictures of him as the possible victim of appalling
catastrophes. He liked her too well as she was.
“Sincere?” he said. “He's sincere down to the ground--in what he's
reaching after. But he's not going to treble your income, nor mine. If
he ever makes that offer again, you just tell him I'm interested, and
that I'll talk it over with him.”
“I could not help saying to him that I didn't think you could want any
more money when you had so much,” she added, “but he said one never knew
what might happen. He was greatly interested when I told him you had
once said the very same thing yourself.”
Their breakfast was at an end, and he got up, laughing again, as he
came to her end of the table and put his arm around her shoulders in the
unconventional young caress she adored him for.
“It's nice to be by ourselves again for a while,” he said. “Let us go
for a walk together. Put on the little bonnet and dress that are the
color of a mouse. Those little duds just get me. You look so pretty in
them.”
The sixteen-year-old blush ran up to the roots of her gray
side-ringlets. Just imagine his remembering the color of her dress and
bonnet, and thinking that anything could make her look pretty! She was
overwhelmed with innocent and grateful confusion. There really was no
one else in the least like him.
“You do look well, ma'am,” Rose said, when she helped her to dress.
“You've got such a nice color, and that tiny bit of old rose Mrs.
Mellish put in the bonnet does bring it out.”
“I wonder if it is wrong of me to be so pleased,” Miss Alicia thought.
“I must make it a subject of prayer, and ask to be aided to conquer a
haughty and vain-glorious spirit.”
She was pathetically serious, having been trained to a view of the
Great First Cause as figuratively embodied in the image of a gigantic,
irascible, omnipotent old gentleman, especially wrought to fury by
feminine follies connected with becoming headgear.
“It has sometimes even seemed to me that our Heavenly Father has a
special objection to ladies,” she had once timorously confessed to
Tembarom. “I suppose it is because we are so much weaker than men, and
so much more given to vanity and petty vices.”
He had caught her in his arms and actually hugged her that time. Their
intimacy had reached the point where the affectionate outburst did not
alarm her.
“Say!” he had laughed. “It's not the men who are going to have the
biggest pull with the authorities when folks try to get into the place
where things are evened up. What I'm going to work my passage with is a
list of the few 'ladies' I've known. You and Ann will be at the head
of it. I shall just slide it in at the box-office window and say, 'Just
look over this, will you? These were friends of mine, and they were
mighty good to me. I guess if they didn't turn me down, you needn't. I
know they're in here. Reserved seats. I'm not expecting to be put with
them but if I'm allowed to hang around where they are that'll be heaven
enough for me.'”
“I know you don't mean to be irreverent, dear Temple,” she gasped. “I am
quite sure you don't! It is--it is only your American way of expressing
your kind thoughts. And of course”--quite hastily--“the Almighty must
understand Americans--as he made so many.” And half frightened though
she was, she patted his arm with the warmth of comfort in her soul and
moisture in her eyes. Somehow or other, he was always so comforting.
He held her arm as they took their walk. She had become used to that
also, and no longer thought it odd. It was only one of the ways he had
of making her feel that she was being taken care of. They had not been
able to have many walks together since the arrival of the visitors, and
this occasion was at once a cause of relief and inward rejoicing. The
entire truth was that she had not been altogether happy about him of
late. Sometimes, when he was not talking and saying amusing New York
things which made people laugh, he seemed almost to forget where he was
and to be thinking of something which baffled and tried him. The way
in which he pulled himself together when he realized that any one was
looking at him was, to her mind, the most disturbing feature of his fits
of abstraction. It suggested that if he really had a trouble it was a
private one on which he would not like her to intrude. Naturally, her
adoring eyes watched him oftener than he knew, and she tried to find
plausible and not too painful reasons for his mood. He always made light
of his unaccustomedness to his new life; but perhaps it made him feel
more unrestful than he would admit.
As they walked through the park and the village, her heart was greatly
warmed by the way in which each person they met greeted him. They
greeted no one else in the same way, and yet it was difficult to explain
what the difference was. They liked him--really liked him, though how he
had overcome their natural distrust of his newsboy and bootblack record
no one but himself knew. In fact, she had reason to believe that even he
himself did not know--had indeed never asked himself. They had gradually
begun to like him, though none of them had ever accused him of being
a gentleman according to their own acceptance of the word. Every man
touched his cap or forehead with a friendly grin which spread itself the
instant he caught sight of him. Grin and salute were synchronous. It was
as if there were some extremely human joke between them. Miss Alicia had
delightedly remembered a remark the Duke of Stone had made to her on his
return from one of their long drives.
“He is the most popular man in the county,” he had chuckled. “If war
broke out and he were in the army, he could raise a regiment at his own
gates which would follow him wheresoever he chose to lead it--if it were
into hottest Hades.”
Tembarom was rather silent during the first part of their walk, and when
he spoke it was of Captain Palliser.
“He's a fellow that's got lots of curiosity. I guess he's asked you more
questions than he's asked me,” he began at last, and he looked at her
interestedly, though she was not aware of it.
“I thought--” she hesitated slightly because she did not wish to be
critical--“I sometimes thought he asked me too many.”
“What was he trying to get on to mostly?”
“He asked so many things about you and your life in New York--but more,
I think, about you and Mr. Strangeways. He was really quite persistent
once or twice about poor Mr. Strangeways.”
“What did he ask?”
“He asked if I had seen him, and if you had preferred that I should
not. He calls him your Mystery, and thinks your keeping him here is so
extraordinary.”
“I guess it is--the way he'd look at it,” Tembarom dropped in.
“He was so anxious to find out what he looked like. He asked how old
he was and how tall, and whether he was quite mad or only a little,
and where you picked him up, and when, and what reason you gave for not
putting him in some respectable asylum. I could only say that I really
knew nothing about him, and that I hadn't seen him because he had a
dread of strangers and I was a little timid.”
She hesitated again.
“I wonder,” she said, still hesitating even after her pause, “I wonder
if I ought to mention a rather rude thing I saw him do twice?”
“Yes, you ought,” Tembarom answered promptly; “I've a reason for wanting
to know.”
“It was such a singular thing to do--in the circumstances,” she went on
obediently. “He knew, as we all know, that Mr. Strangeways must not
be disturbed. One afternoon I saw him walk slowly backward and forward
before the west room window. He had something in his hand and kept
looking up. That was what first attracted my attention--his queer way of
looking up. Quite suddenly he threw something which rattled on the
panes of glass--it sounded like gravel or small pebbles. I couldn't help
believing he thought Mr. Strangeways would be startled into coming to
the window.”
Tembarom cleared his throat.
“He did that twice,” he said. “Pearson caught him at it, though Palliser
didn't know he did. He'd have done it three times, or more than that,
perhaps, but I casually mentioned in the smoking-room one night
that some curious fool of a gardener boy had thrown some stones and
frightened Strangeways, and that Pearson and I were watching for him,
and that if I caught him I was going to knock his block off--bing! He
didn't do it again. Darned fool! What does he think he's after?”
“I am afraid he is rather--I hope it is not wrong to say so--but he
is rather given to gossip. And I dare say that the temptation to find
something quite new to talk about was a great one. So few new things
happen in the neighborhood, and, as the duke says, people are so
bored--and he is bored himself.”
“He'll be more bored if he tries it again when he comes back,” remarked
Tembarom.
Miss Alicia's surprised expression made him laugh.
“Do you think he will come back?” she exclaimed. “After such a long
visit?”
“Oh, yes, he'll come back. He'll come back as often as he can until he's
got a chunk of my income to treble--or until I've done with him.”
“Until you've done with him, dear?” inquiringly.
“Oh! well,”--casually--“I've a sort of idea that he may tell me
something I'd like to know. I'm not sure; I'm only guessing. But even if
he knows it he won't tell me until he gets good and ready and thinks I
don't want to hear it. What he thinks he's going to get at by prowling
around is something he can get me in the crack of the door with.”
“Temple”--imploringly--“are you afraid he wishes to do you an injury?”
“No, I'm not afraid. I'm just waiting to see him take a chance on it,”
and he gave her arm an affectionate squeeze against his side. He was
always immensely moved by her little alarms for him. They reminded
him, in a remote way, of Little Ann coming down Mrs. Bowse's staircase
bearing with her the tartan comforter.
How could any one--how could any one want to do him an injury? she began
to protest pathetically. But he would not let her go on. He would not
talk any more of Captain Palliser or allow her to talk of him. Indeed,
her secret fear was that he really knew something he did not wish her
to be troubled by, and perhaps thought he had said too much. He began
to make jokes and led her to other subjects. He asked her to go to the
Hibblethwaites' cottage and pay a visit to Tummas. He had learned to
understand his accepted privileges in making of cottage visits by this
time; and when he clicked any wicket-gate the door was open before he
had time to pass up the wicket-path. They called at several cottages,
and he nodded at the windows of others where faces appeared as he passed
by.
They had a happy morning together, and he took her back to Temple
Barholm beaming, and forgetting Captain Palliser's existence, for the
time, at least. In the afternoon they drove out together, and after
dining they read the last copy of the Sunday Earth, which had arrived
that day. He found quite an interesting paragraph about Mr. Hutchinson
and the invention. Little Miss Hutchinson was referred to most
flatteringly by the writer, who almost inferred that she was responsible
not only for the inventor but for the invention itself. Miss Alicia felt
quite proud of knowing so prominent a character, and wondered what it
could be like to read about oneself in a newspaper.
About nine o'clock he laid his sheet of the Earth down and spoke to her.
“I'm going to ask you to do me a favor,” he said. “I couldn't ask it if
we weren't alone like this. I know you won't mind.”
Of course she wouldn't mind. She was made happier by the mere idea of
doing something for him.
“I'm going to ask you to go to your room rather early,” he explained.
“I want to try a sort of stunt on Strangeways. I'm going to bring him
downstairs if he'll come. I'm not sure I can get him to do it; but he's
been a heap better lately, and perhaps I can.”
“Is he so much better as that?” she said. “Will it be safe?”
He looked as serious as she had ever seen him look--even a trifle more
serious.
“I don't know how much better he is,” was his answer. “Sometimes you'd
think he was almost all right. And then--! The doctor says that if he
could get over being afraid of leaving his room it would be a big thing
for him. He wants him to go to his place in London so that he can watch
him.”
“Do you think you could persuade him to go?”
“I've tried my level best, but so far--nothing doing.”
He got up and stood before the mantel, his back against it, his hands in
his pockets.
“I've found out one thing,” he said. “He's used to houses like this.
Every now and again he lets something out quite natural. He knew that
the furniture in his room was Jacobean--that's what he called it--and
he knew it was fine stuff. He wouldn't have known that if he'd been a
piker. I'm going to try if he won't let out something else when he sees
things here--if he'll come.”
“You have such a wonderfully reasoning mind, dear,” said Miss Alicia, as
she rose. “You would have made a great detective, I'm sure.”
“If Ann had been with him,” he said, rather gloomily, “she'd have caught
on to a lot more than I have. I don't feel very chesty about the way
I've managed it.”
Miss Alicia went up-stairs shortly afterward, and half an hour later
Tembarom told the footmen in the hall that they might go to bed. The
experiment he was going to make demanded that the place should be
cleared of any disturbing presence. He had been thinking it over
for sometime past. He had sat in the private room of the great nerve
specialist in London and had talked it over with him. He had talked of
it with the duke on the lawn at Stone Hover. There had been a flush of
color in the older man's cheek-bones, and his eyes had been alight as
he took his part in the discussion. He had added the touch of his own
personality to it, as always happened.
“We are having some fine moments, my good fellow,” he had said, rubbing
his hands. “This is extremely like the fourth act. I'd like to be sure
what comes next.”
“I'd like to be sure myself,” Tembarom answered. “It's as if a flash of
lightning came sometimes, and then things clouded up. And sometimes
when I am trying something out he'll get so excited that I daren't go on
until I've talked to the doctor.”
It was the excitement he was dubious about to-night. It was not possible
to be quite certain as to the entire safety of the plan; but there might
be a chance--even a big chance--of wakening some cell from its deadened
sleep. Sir Ormsby way had talked to him a good deal about brain cells,
and he had listened faithfully and learned more than he could put into
scientific English. Gradually, during the past months, he had been
coming upon strangely exciting hints of curious possibilities. They
had been mere hints at first, and had seemed almost absurd in their
unbelievableness. But each one had linked itself with another, and
led him on to further wondering and exploration. When Miss Alicia and
Palliser had seen that he looked absorbed and baffled, it had been
because he had frequently found himself, to use his own figures of
speech, “mixed up to beat the band.” He had not known which way to turn;
but he had gone on turning because he could not escape from his own
excited interest, and the inevitable emotion roused by being caught in
the whirl of a melodrama. That was what he'd dropped into--a whacking
big play. It had begun for him when Palford butted in that night and
told him he was a lost heir, with a fortune and an estate in England;
and the curtain had been jerking up and down ever since. But there had
been thrills in it, queer as it was. Something doing all the time, by
gee!
He sat and smoked his pipe and wished Ann were with him because he knew
he was not as cool as he had meant to be. He felt a certain tingling
of excitement in his body; and this was not the time to be excited.
He waited for some minutes before he went up-stairs. It was true that
Strangeways had been much better lately. He had seemed to find it easier
to follow conversation. During the past few days, Tembarom had talked to
him in a matter-of-fact way about the house and its various belongings.
He had at last seemed to waken to an interest in the picture-gallery.
Evidently he knew something of picture-galleries and portraits, and
found himself relieved by his own clearness of thought when he talked of
them.
“I feel better,” he said, two or three times. “Things seem
clearer--nearer.”
“Good business!” exclaimed Tembarom. “I told you it'd be that way. Let's
hold on to pictures. It won't be any time before you'll be remembering
where you've seen some.”
He had been secretly rather strung up; but he had been very gradual in
approaching his final suggestion that some night, when everything was
quiet, they might go and look at the gallery together.
“What you need is to get out of the way of wanting to stay in one
place,” he argued. “The doctor says you've got to have a change, and
even going from one room to another is a fine thing.”
Strangeways had looked at him anxiously for a few moments, even
suspiciously, but his face had cleared after the look. He drew himself
up and passed his hand over his forehead.
“I believe--perhaps he is right,” he murmured.
“Sure he's right!” said Tembarom. “He's the sort of chap who ought to
know. He's been made into a baronet for knowing. Sir Ormsby Galloway, by
jings! That's no slouch of a name Oh, he knows, you bet your life!”
This morning when he had seen him he had spoken of the plan again. The
visitors had gone away; the servants could be sent out of sight and
hearing; they could go into the library and smoke and he could look at
the books. And then they could take a look at the picture-gallery if he
wasn't too tired. It would be a change anyhow.
To-night, as he went up the huge staircase, Tembarom's calmness of being
had not increased. He was aware of a quickened pulse and of a slight
dampness on his forehead. The dead silence of the house added to the
unusualness of things. He could not remember ever having been so anxious
before, except on the occasion when he had taken his first day's “stuff”
to Galton, and had stood watching him as he read it. His forehead had
grown damp then. But he showed no outward signs of excitement when he
entered the room and found Strangeways standing, perfectly attired in
evening dress.
Pearson, setting things in order at the other side of the room, was
taking note of him furtively over his shoulder. Quite in the casual
manner of the ordinary man, he had expressed his intention of dressing
for the evening, and Pearson had thanked his stars for the fact that the
necessary garments were at hand. From the first, he had not infrequently
asked for articles such as only the resources of a complete masculine
wardrobe could supply; and on one occasion he had suddenly wished to
dress for dinner, and the lame excuses it had been necessary to make
had disturbed him horribly instead of pacifying him. To explain that his
condition precluded the necessity of the usual appurtenances would have
been out of the question. He had been angry. What did Pearson mean? What
was the matter? He had said it over and over again, and then had
sunk into a hopelessly bewildered mood, and had sat huddled in his
dressing-gown staring at the fire. Pearson had been so harrowed by the
situation that it had been his own idea to suggest to his master that
all possible requirements should be provided. There were occasions when
it appeared that the cloud over him lifted for a passing moment, and a
gleam of light recalled to him some familiar usage of his past. When he
had finished dressing, Pearson had been almost startled by the amount of
effect produced by the straight, correctly cut lines of black and white.
The mere change of clothes had suddenly changed the man himself--had
“done something to him,” Pearson put it. After his first glance at the
mirror he had straightened himself, as if recognizing the fault of his
own carriage. When he crossed the room it was with the action of a man
who has been trained to move well. The good looks, which had been
almost hidden behind a veil of uncertainty of expression and strained
fearfulness, became obvious. He was tall, and his lean limbs were
splendidly hung together. His head was perfectly set, and the bearing
of his square shoulders was a soldierly thing. It was an extraordinarily
handsome man Tembarom and Pearson found themselves gazing at. Each
glanced involuntarily at the other.
“Now that's first-rate! I'm glad you feel like coming,” Tembarom plunged
in. He didn't intend to give him too much time to think.
“Thank you. It will be a change, as you said,” Strangeways answered.
“One needs change.”
His deep eyes looked somewhat deeper than usual, but his manner was
that of any well-bred man doing an accustomed thing. If he had been an
ordinary guest in the house, and his host had dropped into his room, he
would have comported himself in exactly the same way.
They went together down the corridor as if they had passed down it
together a dozen times before. On the stairway Strangeways looked at the
tapestries with the interest of a familiarized intelligence.
“It is a beautiful old place,” he said, as they crossed the hall. “That
armor was worn by a crusader.” He hesitated a moment when they entered
the library, but it was only for a moment. He went to the hearth and
took the chair his host offered him, and, lighting a cigar, sat
smoking it. If T. Tembarom had chanced to be a man of an analytical or
metaphysical order of intellect he would have found, during the past
month, many things to lead him far in mental argument concerning the
weird wonder of the human mind--of its power where its possessor, the
body, is concerned, its sometime closeness to the surface of sentient
being, its sometime remoteness. He would have known--awed, marveling at
the blackness of the pit into which it can descend--the unknown shades
that may enfold it and imprison its gropings. The old Duke of Stone had
sat and pondered many an hour over stories his favorite companion had
related to him. What curious and subtle processes had the queer fellow
not been watching in the closely guarded quiet of the room where the
stranger had spent his days; the strange thing cowering in its darkness;
the ray of light piercing the cloud one day and seeming lost again the
next; the struggles the imprisoned thing made to come forth--to cry out
that it was but immured, not wholly conquered, and that some hour would
arrive when it would fight its way through at last. Tembarom had not
entered into psychological research. He had been entirely uncomplex in
his attitude, sitting down before his problem as a besieger might have
sat down before a castle. The duke had sometimes wondered whether it
was not a good enough thing that he had been so simple about it, merely
continuing to believe the best with an unswerving obstinacy and lending
a hand when he could. A never flagging sympathy had kept him singularly
alive to every chance, and now and then he had illuminations which would
have done credit to a cleverer man, and which the duke had rubbed his
hands over in half-amused, half-touched elation. How he had kept his
head level and held to his purpose!
T. Tembarom talked but little as he sat in his big chair and smoked.
Best let him alone and give him time to get used to the newness, he
thought. Nothing must happen that could give him a jolt. Let things sort
of sink into him, and perhaps they'd set him to thinking and lead him
somewhere. Strangeways himself evidently did not want talk. He never
wanted it unless he was excited. He was not excited now, and had
settled down as if he was comfortable. Having finished one cigar he took
another, and began to smoke it much more slowly than he had smoked his
first. The slowness began to arrest Tembarom's attention. This was the
smoking of a man who was either growing sleepy or sinking into deep
thought, becoming oblivious to what he was doing. Sometimes he held the
cigar absently between his strong, fine fingers, seeming to forget it.
Tembarom watched him do this until he saw it go out, and its white
ash drop on the rug at his feet. He did not notice it, but sat sinking
deeper and deeper into his own being, growing more remote. What was
going on under his absorbed stillness? Tembarom would not have moved or
spoken “for a block of Fifth Avenue,” he said internally. The dark eyes
seemed to become darker until there was only a pin's point of light to
be seen in their pupils. It was as if he were looking at something at
a distance--at a strangely long distance. Twice he turned his head
and appeared to look slowly round the room, but not as normal people
look--as if it also was at the strange, long distance from him, and
he were somewhere outside its walls. It was an uncanny thing to be a
spectator to.
“How dead still the room is!” Tembarom found himself thinking.
It was “dead still.” And it was a queer deal sitting, not daring to
move--just watching. Something was bound to happen, sure! What was it
going to be?
Strangeways' cigar dropped from his fingers and appeared to rouse him.
He looked puzzled for a moment, and then stooped quite naturally to pick
it up.
“I forgot it altogether. It's gone out,” he remarked.
“Have another,” suggested Tembarom, moving the box nearer to him.
“No, thank you.” He rose and crossed the room to the wall of
book-shelves. And Tembarom's eye was caught again by the fineness of
movement and line the evening clothes made manifest. “What a swell he
looked when he moved about like that! What a swell, by jings!”
He looked along the line of shelves and presently took a book down
and opened it. He turned over its leaves until something arrested his
attention, and then he fell to reading. He read several minutes, while
Tembarom watched him. The silence was broken by his laughing a little.
“Listen to this,” he said, and began to read something in a language
totally unknown to his hearer. “A man who writes that sort of thing
about a woman is an old bounder, whether he's a poet or not. There's a
small, biting spitefulness about it that's cattish.”
“Who did it?” Tembarom inquired softly. It might be a good idea to lead
him on.
“Horace. In spite of his genius, he sometimes makes you feel he was
rather a blackguard.”
“Horace!” For the moment T. Tembarom forgot himself. “I always heard he
was a sort of Y.M.C.A. old guy--old Horace Greeley. The Tribune was no
yellow journal when he had it.”
He was sorry he had spoken the next moment. Strangeways looked puzzled.
“The Tribune,” he hesitated. “The Roman Tribune?”
“No, New York. He started it--old Horace did. But perhaps we're not
talking of the same man.”
Strangeways hesitated again.
“No, I think we're not,” he answered politely.
“I've made a break,” thought Tembarom. “I ought to have kept my mouth
shut. I must try to switch him back.”
Strangeways was looking down at the back of the book he held in his
hand.
“This one was the Latin poet, Quintus Horatius Flaccus, 65 B. C. You
know him,” he said.
“Oh, that one!” exclaimed Tembarom, as if with an air of immense relief.
“What a fool I was to forget! I'm glad it's him. Will you go on reading
and let me hear some more? He's a winner from Winnersville--that Horace
is.”
Perhaps it was a sort of miracle, accomplished by his great desire to
help the right thing to happen, to stave off any shadow of the wrong
thing. Whatsoever the reason, Strangeways waited only a moment before
turning to his book again. It seemed to be a link in some chain slowly
forming itself to drag him back from his wanderings. And T. Tembarom,
lightly sweating as a frightened horse will, sat smoking another pipe
and listening intently to “Satires” and “Lampoons,” read aloud in the
Latin of 65 B. C.
“By gee!” he said faithfully, at intervals, when he saw on the reader's
face that the moment was ripe. “He knew it all--old Horace--didn't he?”
He had steered his charge back. Things were coming along the line to
him. He'd learned Latin at one of these big English schools. Boys always
learned Latin, the duke had told him. They just had to. Most of them
hated it like thunder, and they used to be caned when they didn't recite
it right. Perhaps if he went on he'd begin to remember the school. A
queer part of it was that he did not seem to notice that he was not
reading his own language.
He did not, in fact, seem to remember anything in particular, but went
on quite naturally for some minutes. He had replaced Horace on the shelf
and was on the point of taking down another volume when he paused, as if
recalling something else.
“Weren't we going to see the picture-gallery?” he inquired. “Isn't it
getting late? I should like to see the portraits.”
“No hurry,” answered T. Tembarom. “I was just waiting till you were
ready. But we'll go right away, if you like.”
They went without further ceremony. As they walked through the hall and
down the corridors side by side, an imaginative person might have felt
that perhaps the eyes of an ancient darkling portrait or so looked
down at the pair curiously: the long, loosely built New Yorker rather
slouching along by the soldierly, almost romantic figure which, in a
measure, suggested that others not unlike it might have trod the same
oaken floor, wearing ruff and doublet, or lace jabot and sword. There
was a far cry between the two, but they walked closely in friendly
union. When they entered the picture-gallery Strangeways paused a moment
again, and stood peering down its length.
“It is very dimly lighted. How can we see?” he said.
“I told Pearson to leave it dim,” Tembarom answered. “I wanted it just
that way at first.”
He tried--and succeeded tolerably well--to say it casually, as he led
the way ahead of them. He and the duke had not talked the scheme over
for nothing. As his grace had said, they had “worked the thing up.” As
they moved down the gallery, the men and women in their frames looked
like ghosts staring out to see what was about to happen.
“We'll turn up the lights after a while,” T. Tembarom explained, still
casually. “There's a picture here I think a good deal of. I've stood and
looked at it pretty often. It reminded me of some one the first day I
set eyes on it; but it was quite a time before I made up my mind who it
was. It used to drive me half dotty trying to think it out.”
“Which one was it?” asked Strangeways.
“We're coming to it. I want to see if it reminds you of any one. And I
want you to see it sudden.” “It's got to be sudden,” he had said to
the duke. “If it's going to pan out, I believe it's got to be sudden.”
“That's why I had the rest of 'em left dim. I told Pearson to leave a
lamp I could turn up quick,” he said to Strangeways.
The lamp was on a table near by and was shaded by a screen. He took it
from the shadow and lifted it suddenly, so that its full gleam fell upon
the portrait of the handsome youth with the lace collar and the dark,
drooping eyes. It was done in a second, with a dramatically unexpected
swiftness. His heart jumped up and down.
“Who's that?” he demanded, with abruptness so sharp-pitched that the
gallery echoed with the sound. “Who's that?”
He heard a hard, quick gasp, a sound which was momentarily a little
horrible, as if the man's soul was being jerked out of his body's
depths.
“Who is he?” he cried again. “Tell me.”
After the gasp, Strangeways stood still and stared. His eyes were glued
to the canvas, drops of sweat came out on his forehead, and he was
shuddering. He began to back away with a look of gruesome struggle. He
backed and backed, and stared and stared. The gasp came twice again,
and then his voice seemed to tear itself loose from some power that was
holding it back.
“Th--at!” he cried. “It is--it--is Miles Hugo!”
The last words were almost a shout, and he shook as if he would have
fallen. But T. Tembarom put his hand on his shoulder and held him,
breathing fast himself. Gee! if it wasn't like a thing in a play!
“Page at the court of Charles the Second,” he rattled off. “Died of
smallpox when he was nineteen. Miles Hugo! Miles Hugo! You hold on to
that for all your worth. And hold on to me. I'll keep you steady. Say it
again.”
“Miles Hugo.” The poor majestic-looking fellow almost sobbed it. “Where
am I? What is the name of this place?”
“It's Temple Barholm in the county of Lancashire, England. Hold on to
that, too--like thunder!”
Strangeways held the young man's arm with hands that clutched. He
dragged at him. His nightmare held him yet; Tembarom saw it, but flashes
of light were blinding him.
“Who”--he pleaded in a shaking and hollow whisper--“are you?”
Here was a stumper! By jings! By jings! And not a minute to think it
out. But the answer came all right--all right!
“My name's Tembarom. T. Tembarom.” And he grinned his splendid grin from
sheer sense of relief. “I'm a New Yorker--Brooklyn. I was just forked
in here anyhow. Don't you waste time thinking over me. You sit down here
and do your durndest with Miles Hugo.”