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.”
“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.”
“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.
[Illustration]
“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 stared once
more at the velvet shadows.
“I tell you, for a fellow that knows nothing this novel-reading is an
easy way of finding out a lot of things,” he resumed. “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.
“Reading novels put me wise to things in a new way. Lady Joan’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 once when 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 asked.
“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 was coming.
“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.