When Tembarom repeated the words “and you’re going to listen,” Lady
Joan began to stare at him. It was not the ridiculous boyish drop
in his voice which arrested her attention. It was a fantastic,
incongruous, wholly different thing. He had suddenly dropped his
slouch, and stood upright. Did he realize that he had slung his words
at her as if they were an order given with the ring of authority?
“I’ve not bucked against anything you’ve said or done since you’ve been
here,” he went on, speaking fast and grimly. “I didn’t mean to. I had
my reasons. There were things that I’d have given a good deal to say to
you and ask you about, but you wouldn’t let me. You wouldn’t give me a
chance to square things for you--if they could be squared. You threw
me down every time I tried.”
He was too wildly incomprehensible with his changes from humanness
to folly. Remembering what he had attempted to say on the day he had
followed her in the avenue, she was inflamed again.
“What in the name of New York slang does that mean?” she demanded.
“Never mind New York,” he answered, cool as well as grim. “A fellow
that’s learned slang in the streets has learned something else as well.
He’s learned to keep his eyes open. He’s on to a way of seeing things.
And what I’ve seen is that you’re so doggone miserable that--that
you’re almost down and out.”
This time she spoke to him in the voice with the quality of deadliness
in it which she had used to her mother.
“Do you think that because you are in your own house you can be as
intrusively insulting as you choose?” she said.
“No, I don’t,” he answered. “What I think is quite different. I think
that if a man _has_ a house of his own, and there’s any one in big
trouble under the roof of it,--a woman most of all,--he’s a cheap skate
if he doesn’t get busy and try to help--just plain, straight _help_.”
He saw in her eyes all her concentrated disdain of him, but he went on,
still obstinate and cool and grim.
“I guess ‘help’ is too big a word just yet. That may come later, and
it mayn’t. What I’m going to have a try at now is making it easier for
you--just easier.”
Her contemptuous gesture registered no impression on him, as he paused
a moment and looked fixedly at her.
“You just hate me, don’t you?” It was a mere statement which couldn’t
have been more impersonal to himself if he had been made of wood.
“That’s all right. I seem like a low-down intruder to you. Well, that’s
all right, too. But what _ain’t_ all right is what your mother has set
you on to thinking about me. You’d never have thought it yourself.
You’d have known better.”
“What,” she said fiercely, “is that?”
“That I’m mutt enough to have a mash on you.”
The common slangy crassness of it was a kind of shock. She caught her
breath and merely stared at him. But he was not staring at her; he was
simply looking straight into her face, and it amazingly flashed upon
her that the extraordinary words were so entirely unembarrassed and
direct that they were actually not offensive. He was merely telling her
something in his own way, not caring the least about his own effect,
but absolutely determined that she should hear and understand it.
Her caught breath ended in something which was like a half-laugh. His
queer, sharp, incomprehensible face, his queer, unmoved voice, were too
extraordinarily unlike anything she had ever seen or heard before.
“I don’t want to be brash, and what I want to say may seem kind of that
way to you; but it ain’t. Anyhow, I guess it’ll relieve your mind. Lady
Joan, you’re a looker--you’re a beaut from Beautsville. If I were your
kind, and things were different, I’d be crazy about you--crazy. But I’m
_not_ your kind--and things _are_ different.” He drew a step nearer
still to her in his intentness. “They’re _this_ different: why, Lady
Joan, I’m dead stuck on another girl!”
She caught her breath again, leaning forward.
“Another--”
“She says she’s not a lady; she threw me down just because all
this darned money came to me,” he hastened on, and suddenly he was
imperturbable no longer, but flushed and boyish, and more of New York
than ever. “She’s a little bit of a quiet thing, and she drops her h’s;
but gee! You’re a looker--you’re a queen, and she’s not. But little Ann
Hutchinson--Why, Lady Joan, as far as this boy’s concerned,”--and he
oddly touched himself on the breast,--“she makes you look like thirty
cents.”
Joan quickly sat down on the chair she had just left. She rested an
elbow on the table and shaded her face with her hand. She was not
laughing; she scarcely knew what she was doing or feeling.
“You are in love with Ann Hutchinson,” she said, in a low voice.
“Am I?” he answered hotly. “Well, I should smile!” He disdained to say
more.
Then she began to know what she felt. There came back to her in flashes
scenes from the past weeks in which she had done her worst by him; in
which she had swept him aside, loathed him, set her feet on him, used
the devices of an ingenious demon to discomfit and show him at his
poorest and least ready. And he had not been giving a thought to the
thing for which she had striven to punish him. And he plainly did not
even hate her. His mind was clear, as water is clear. He had come back
to her this evening to do her a good turn--a good turn! Knowing what
she was capable of in the way of arrogance and villainous temper, he
had determined, despite herself, to do her a good turn.
“I don’t understand you,” she faltered.
“I know you don’t. But it’s only because I’m so dead easy to
understand. There’s nothing to find out. I’m just friendly--friendly,
that’s all.”
“You would have been friends with me!” she exclaimed. “You would have
told me, and I wouldn’t let you! Oh!”--with an impulsive flinging out
of her hand to him,--“you good--good fellow!”
“Good be darned!” he answered, taking the hand at once.
“You _are_ good to tell me! I have behaved like a devil to you. But,
oh! if you only knew!”
His face became mature again, but he took a most informal seat on the
edge of the table near her.
“I do know, part of it. That’s _why_ I’ve been trying to be friends
with you all the time.” He said his next words deliberately. “If I was
the woman Jem Temple Barholm had loved, wouldn’t it have driven _me_
mad to see another man in his place--and remember what was done to
him? I never even saw him, but, good God!”--she saw his hand clench
itself,--“when I think of it, I want to kill somebody! I want to kill
half a dozen. Why didn’t they _know_ it couldn’t be true of a fellow
like that!”
She sat up stiffly and watched him.
“Do--_you_--feel like that--about _him_?”
“Do I!” he said hotly. “There were men there that _knew_ him, there
were women there that knew him: why wasn’t there just _one_ to stand
by him? A man that’s been square all his life doesn’t turn into a
card-sharp in a night. Damn fools! I beg your pardon!” he said hastily.
And then, as hastily again: “No, I _mean_ it. Damn fools!”
“Oh!” she gasped just once.
Her passionate eyes were suddenly blinded with tears. She caught at his
clenched hand and dragged it to her, letting her face drop on it and
crying like a child.
The way he took her breakdown was just like him and like no one else.
He put the other hand on her shoulder and spoke to her exactly as he
had spoken to Miss Alicia on that first afternoon.
“Don’t you mind me, Lady Joan,” he said. “Don’t you mind me a bit. I’ll
turn my back. I’ll go into the billiard-room and keep them playing
until you get away up-stairs. Now we understand each other, it’ll be
better for both of us.”
“No, don’t go! Don’t!” she begged. “It is so wonderful to find some one
who sees the cruelty of it.” She spoke fast and passionately. “No one
would listen to any defense of him. My mother simply raved when I said
what you are saying--what you said of him just now.”
“Do you want”--he put it to her with a curious comprehending of her
emotion--“to talk about him? Would it do you good?”
“Yes! yes! I have never talked to any one. There has been no one to
listen.”
“Talk all you want,” he answered with immense gentleness. “I’m here.”
“I can’t understand it even now, but he would not see me,” she broke
out. “I was half mad. I wrote, and he would not answer. I went to his
chambers when I heard he was going to leave England. I went to beg him
to take me with him, married or unmarried. I would have gone on my
knees to him. He was _gone_! Oh, why? Why?”
“You didn’t think he’d gone because he didn’t love you?” he asked her
quite literally and unsentimentally. “You knew better than that?”
“How could I be sure of anything? When he left the room that awful
night he would not _look_ at me! He would not _look_ at me!”
“Since I’ve been here I’ve been reading a lot of novels, and I’ve found
out a lot of things about fellows that are not the common, practical
kind. Now, he wasn’t. He’d lived pretty much like a fellow in a novel,
I guess. What’s struck me about that sort is that they think they
have to make noble sacrifices, and they’ll just walk all over a woman
because they won’t do anything to hurt her. There’s not a bit of sense
in it, but that was what he was doing. He believed he was doing the
square thing by you, and you may bet your life it hurt him like hell. I
beg your pardon; but that’s the word--just plain hell.”
“I was only a girl. He was like iron. He went away alone. He was
killed, and when he was dead the truth was told.”
“That’s what I’ve remembered,” he said quite slowly, “every time I’ve
looked at you. By gee! I’d have stood anything from a woman that had
suffered as much as that.”
It made her cry, his genuineness, and she did not care in the least
that the tears streamed down her cheeks. How he _had_ stood things! How
he had borne, in that odd, unimpressive way, insolence and arrogance
for which she ought to have been blackballed by decent society! She
could scarcely bear it.
“Oh! to think it should have been _you_,” she wept, “just _you_ who
understood!”
“Well,” he answered speculatively, “I mightn’t have understood as well
if it hadn’t been for Ann. By jinks! I used to lie awake at night
sometimes, thinking, ‘Supposing it had been Ann and me!’ That’s why I
understood.”
He put out his hand and caught hers and frankly squeezed it--squeezed
it hard; and the unconventional clutch was a wonderful thing to her.
“It’s all right now, ain’t it?” he said. “We’ve got it straightened
out. You’ll not be afraid to come back here if your mother wants
you to.” He stopped for a moment and then went on with something of
hesitation: “We don’t want to talk about your mother. We can’t. But I
understand her, too. Folks are different from each other in their ways.
She’s different from you. I’ll--I’ll straighten it out with her if you
like.”
“Nothing will need straightening out after I tell her that you are
going to marry Little Ann Hutchinson,” said Joan, with a half-smile,
“and that you were engaged to her before you saw me.”
“Well, that does sort of finish things up, doesn’t it?” said T.
Tembarom.
He looked at her so speculatively for a moment after this that she
wondered whether he had more to say. He had.
“There’s something I want to ask you,” he ventured.
“Ask anything.”
“Do you know any one--just any one--who has a photo--just any old
photo--of Jem Temple Barholm?”
She was rather puzzled.
“I know a woman who has worn one for eight years. Do you want to see
it?”
“I’d give a good deal to,” he replied. She took a flat locket from her
dress and handed it to him.
“Women don’t wear lockets in these days,”--he could barely hear her
voice, it was so low,--“but I’ve never taken it off. I wanted him near
my heart. It’s _Jem_!”
He held it on the palm of his hand and stood under the light, studying
it as if he wanted to be sure he wouldn’t forget it.
“It’s--sorter like that picture of Miles Hugo, ain’t it?” he suggested.
“Yes; people always said so. That was why you found me in the
picture-gallery the first time we met.”
“I knew that was the reason, and I knew I’d made a break when I butted
in,” he answered. Then, still looking at the photograph, he said:
“You’d know that face again most anywhere you saw it, I guess. A man
would know a face like that again wherever he saw it. Thank you, Lady
Joan.”
He handed back the picture, and she put out her hand again.
“I think I’ll go to my room now,” she said. “You’ve done a strange
thing to me. You’ve taken nearly all the hatred and bitterness out of
my heart. I shall want to come back here whether my mother comes or
not--I shall want to.”
“The sooner the quicker,” he said. “And so long as I’m here, I’ll be
ready and waiting.”
“Don’t go away,” she said softly. “I shall need you.”
“Isn’t that great?” he cried, flushing delightedly. “Isn’t it just
great that we’ve got things straightened so that you can say that. Gee!
This is a queer old world! There’s such a lot to do in it, and so few
hours in the day. Seems like there ain’t time to stop long enough to
hate anybody and keep a grouch on. A fellow’s got to keep hustling not
to miss the things worth while.”
The liking in her eyes was actually wistful.
“That’s your way of thinking, isn’t it?” she said. “Teach it to me if
you can. I wish you could. Good night.” She hesitated a second. “God
_bless_ you!” she added quite suddenly, almost fantastic the words
sounded to her, that she, Joan Fayre, should be calling down devout
benisons on the head of T. Tembarom--T. Tembarom!
* * * * *
Her mother was in her room when she reached it. She had come up
early to look over her possessions and Joan’s before she began
her packing. The bed, the chairs, and the tables were spread with
evening, morning, and walking-dresses, and the millinery collected
from their combined wardrobes. She was examining anxiously a
laces-appliquéd-and-embroidered white coat, and turned a slightly
flushed face toward the opening door.
“I am going over your things as well as my own,” she said. “I shall
take what I can use. You will require nothing in London. What is the
matter?” she said sharply, as she saw her daughter’s face.
Joan came forward, feeling it a strange thing that she was not in the
mood to fight--to lash out and be glad to do it.
“Captain Palliser told me as I came up that Mr. Temple Barholm had
been talking to you,” her mother went on. “He heard you having some
sort of scene as he passed the door. As you have made your decision, of
course I know I needn’t hope that anything has happened.”
“What has happened has nothing to do with my decision. He wasn’t
waiting for that,” Joan answered her. “We were both entirely mistaken,
Mother.”
“What are you talking about?” cried Lady Mallowe. “What do you mean by
mistaken?”
“He doesn’t want me; he never did,” Joan answered again. A shadow of a
smile hovered over her face, and there was no derision in it, only a
warming recollection of his earnestness when he had said the words she
quoted, “He is what they call in New York ’dead stuck on another girl.’”
Lady Mallowe sat down on the chair that held the white coat, and she
did not push the coat aside.
“He told you that in his vulgar slang!” she gasped out. “You--you ought
to have struck him _dead_ with your answer.”
“Except poor Jem Temple Barholm,” was the amazing reply she received,
“he is the only _friend_ I ever had in all my life.”