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.
That the Duke of Stone had immensely taken up Mr. Temple Barholm had of
course resulted in his being accepted in such a manner 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 often 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 prayers 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. 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. He conducted himself with a detached good nature
which seemed to take but small account of attitudes less unoffending
than his own.
“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.”
[Illustration]
“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 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.”
“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.
“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.
“But,” added 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 a likable thing,” said Amabel Grantham. “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’m doing my stunt, of
course, but I like them,” said he. “They’re mighty nice to me when you
consider what they’re up against. And these two with the dimples, Lady
Gwynedd and Lady Honora, are just peaches.”
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.
“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. 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 sort o’ 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. Well, you are not printed in sixty-four-point
black-face so far as they are concerned. 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 bootblack, 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!’ Now, Palliser--” he paused and
grinned again.
“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 écru 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.’ Écru baby Irish--that’s Palliser’s color
after he 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 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 worth 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.”
“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! I’ve 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 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,
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 says an air of entire frankness is one of
the chief assets of American promoters.”
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.
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.
Palliser, it is true, suggested it was Tembarom’s “cheek” which stood
him in good stead, and his being 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 be 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.”
“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,” grinned Tembarom. “I should have liked it
all right if I hadn’t been born in Brooklyn. 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_.”