To employ the figure of Burrill, Tembarom was indeed “as pleased as
Punch.” He was one of the large number of men who, apart from all
sentimental relations, are made particularly happy by the kindly
society of women; who expand with quite unconscious rejoicing when
a women begins to take care of them in one way or another. The
unconsciousness is a touching part of the condition. The feminine
nearness supplies a primeval human need. The most complete of men, as
well as the weaklings, feel it. It is a survival of days when warm arms
held and protected, warm hands served, and affectionate voices soothed.
An accomplished male servant may perform every domestic service
perfectly, but the fact that he cannot be a women leaves a sense of
lack. An accustomed feminine warmth in the surrounding daily atmosphere
has caused many a man to marry his housekeeper or even his cook, as
circumstances prompted.
Tembarom had known no woman well until he had met Little Ann. His
feeling for Mrs. Bowse herself had verged on affection, because he
would have been fond of any woman of decent temper and kindliness,
especially if she gave him opportunities to do friendly service. Little
Ann had seemed the apotheosis of the feminine, the warmly helpful,
the subtly supporting, the kind. She had been to him an amazement
and a revelation. She had continually surprised him by revealing new
characteristics which seemed to him nicer things than he had ever
known before, but which, if he had been aware of it, were not really
surprising at all. They were only the characteristics of a very nice
young feminine creature.
The presence of Miss Alicia, with the long-belated fashion of her
ringlets and her little cap, was delightful to him. He felt as though
he would like to take her in his arms and hug her. He thought perhaps
it was partly because she was a little like Ann, and kept repeating
his name in Ann’s formal little way. Her delicate terror of presuming
or intruding he felt in its every shade. Mentally she touched him
enormously. He wanted to make her feel that she need not be afraid of
him in the least, that he liked her, that in his opinion she had more
right in the house than he had. He was a little frightened lest through
ignorance he should say things the wrong way, as he had said that thing
about wanting to know what she expected him to do. What he ought to
have said was, “You’re not expecting me to let that sort of thing go
on.” It had made him sick when he saw what a break he’d made and that
she thought he was sort of insulting her. The room seemed all right
now that she was in it. Small and unassuming as she was, she seemed to
make it less over-sized. He didn’t so much mind the loftiness of the
ceiling, the depth and size of the windows, and the walls covered with
thousands of books he knew nothing whatever about. The innumerable
books had been an oppressing feature. If he had been one of those
“college guys” who never could get enough of books, what a “cinch” the
place would have been for him--good as the Astor Library! He hadn’t a
word to say against books,--good Lord! no,--but even if he’d had the
education and the time to read, he didn’t believe he was naturally that
kind, anyhow. You had to be “that kind” to know about books. He didn’t
suppose she--meaning Miss Alicia--was learned enough to make you throw
a fit. She didn’t look that way, and he was mighty glad of it, because
perhaps she wouldn’t like him much if she was. It would worry her when
she tried to talk to him and found out he didn’t know a darned thing he
ought to.
They’d get on together easier if they could just chin about common sort
of every-day things. But though she didn’t look like the Vassar sort,
he guessed that she was not like himself: she had lived in libraries
before, and books didn’t frighten her. She’d been born among people
who read lots of them and maybe could talk about them. That was why
she somehow seemed to fit into the room. He was aware that, timid
as she was and shabby as her neat dress looked, she fitted into the
whole place, as he did not. She’d been a poor relative and had been
afraid to death of old Temple Barholm, but she’d not been afraid of
him because she wasn’t his sort. She was a lady; that was what was
the matter with her. It was what made thing harder for her, too. It
was what made her voice tremble when she’d tried to seem so contented
and polite when she’d talked about going into one of those “decayed
almshouses.” As if the old ladies were vegetables that had gone wrong,
by gee! he thought.
He liked her little, modest, delicate old face and her curls and her
little cap with the ribbons so much that he smiled with a twinkling eye
every time he looked at her. He wanted to suggest something he thought
would be mighty comfortable, but he was half afraid he might be asking
her to do something which wasn’t “her job,” and it might hurt her
feelings. But he ventured to hint at it.
“Has Burrill got to come back and pour that out?” he asked, with an
awkward gesture toward the tea-tray.
“Oh, no, unless you wish it,” she answered. “Shall--may I give it to
you?”
“Will you?” he exclaimed delightedly. “That would be fine. I shall feel
like a regular Clarence.”
She was going to sit at the table in a straight-backed chair, but he
sprang at her.
“This big one is more comfortable,” he said, and he dragged it forward
and made her sit in it. “You ought to have a footstool,” he added, and
he got one and put it under her feet. “There, that’s all right.”
A footstool, as though she were a royal personage and he were a
gentleman in waiting, only probably gentlemen in waiting did not jump
about and look so pleased. The cheerful content of his boyish face when
he himself sat down near the table was delightful.
“Now,” he said, “we can ring up for the first act.”
She filled the tea-pot and held it for a moment, and then set it down
as though her feelings were too much for her.
“I feel as if I were in a dream,” she quavered happily. “I do indeed.”
“But it’s a nice one, ain’t it?” he answered. “I feel as if I was in
two. Sitting here in this big room with all these fine things about me,
and having afternoon tea with a relation! It just about suits me. It
didn’t feel like this yesterday, you bet your life!”
“Does it seem--nicer than yesterday?” she ventured. “Really, Mr. Temple
Barholm?”
“Nicer!” he ejaculated. “It’s got yesterday beaten to a frazzle.”
It was beyond all belief. He was speaking as though the advantage, the
relief, the happiness, were all on his side. She longed to enlighten
him.
“But you can’t realize what it is to me,” she said gratefully, “to sit
here, not terrified and homeless and--a beggar any more, with your
kind face before me. Do forgive me for saying it. You have such a kind
young face, Mr. Temple Barholm. And to have an easy-chair and cushions,
and actually a buffet brought for your feet!” She suddenly recollected
herself. “Oh, I mustn’t let your tea get cold,” she added, taking up
the tea-pot apologetically. “Do you take cream and sugar, and is it to
be one lump or two?”
“I take everything in sight,” he replied joyously, “and two lumps,
please.”
She prepared the cup of tea with as delicate a care as though it had
been a sacramental chalice, and when she handed it to him she smiled
wistfully.
“No one but you ever thought of such a thing as bringing a buffet for
my feet--no one except poor little Jem,” she said, and her voice was
wistful as well as her smile.
She was obviously unaware that she was introducing an entirely new
acquaintance to him. Poor little Jem was supposed to be some one whose
whole history he knew.
“Jem?” he repeated, carefully transferring a piece of hot buttered
crumpet to his plate.
“Jem Temple Barholm,” she answered. “I say little Jem because I
remember him only as a child. I never saw him after he was eleven years
old.”
“Who was he?” he asked. The tone of her voice and her manner of
speaking made him feel that he wanted to hear something more.
She looked rather startled by his ignorance. “Have you--have you never
heard of him?” she inquired.
“No. Is he another distant relation?”
Her hesitation caused him to neglect his crumpet, to look up at her.
He saw at once that she wore the air of a sensitive and beautifully
mannered elderly lady who was afraid she had made a mistake and said
something awkward.
“I am so sorry,” she apologized. “Perhaps I ought not to have mentioned
him.”
“Why shouldn’t he be mentioned?”
She was embarrassed. She evidently wished she had not spoken, but
breeding demanded that she should ignore the awkwardness of the
situation, if awkwardness existed.
“Of course--I hope your tea is quite as you like it--of course there is
no real reason. But--shall I give you some more cream? No? You see, if
he hadn’t died, he--he would have inherited Temple Barholm.”
Now he was interested. This was the other chap.
“Instead of me?” he asked, to make sure. She endeavored not to show
embarrassment and told herself it didn’t really matter--to a thoroughly
nice person. But--
“He was the next of kin--before you. I’m so sorry I didn’t know you
hadn’t heard of him. It seemed natural that Mr. Palford should have
mentioned him.”
“He did say that there was a young fellow who had died, but he didn’t
tell me about him. I guess I didn’t ask. There were such a lot of other
things. I’d like to hear about him. You say you knew him?”
“Only when he was a little fellow. Never after he grew up. Something
happened which displeased my father. I’m afraid papa was very easily
displeased. Mr. Temple Barholm disliked him, too. He would not have him
at Temple Barholm.”
“He hadn’t much luck with his folks, had he?” remarked Tembarom.
“He had no luck with any one. I seemed to be the only person who was
fond of him, and of course I didn’t count.”
“I bet you counted with him,” said Tembarom.
“I do think I did. Both his parents died quite soon after he was born,
and people who ought to have cared for him were rather jealous because
he stood so near to Temple Barholm. If Mr. Temple Barholm had not been
so eccentric and bitter, everything would have been done for him;
but as it was, he seemed to belong to no one. When he came to the
vicarage it used to make me so happy. He used to call me Aunt Alicia,
and he had such pretty ways.” She hesitated and looked quite tenderly
at the tea-pot, a sort of shyness in her face. “I am sure,” she burst
forth, “I feel quite sure that you will understand and won’t think it
indelicate; but I had thought so often that I should like to have a
little boy--if I had married,” she added in hasty tribute to propriety.
Tembarom’s eyes rested on her in a thoughtfulness openly touched with
affection. He put out his hand and patted hers two or three times in
encouraging sympathy.
“Say,” he said frankly, “I just believe every woman that’s the real
thing’d like to have a little boy--or a little girl--or a little
something or other. That’s why pet cats and dogs have such a cinch of
it. And there’s men that’s the same way. It’s sort of nature.”
“He had such a high spirit and such pretty ways,” she said again.
“One of his pretty ways was remembering to do little things to make
one comfortable, like thinking of giving one a cushion or a buffet
for one’s feet. I noticed so much because I had never seen boys or
men wait upon women. My own dear papa was used to having women wait
upon him--bring his slippers, you know, and give him the best chair.
He didn’t like Jem’s ways. He said he liked a boy who was a boy and
not an affected nincompoop. He wasn’t really quite just.” She paused
regretfully and sighed as she looked back into a past doubtlessly
enriched with many similar memories of “dear papa.” “Poor Jem! Poor
Jem!” she breathed softly.
Tembarom thought that she must have felt the boy’s loss very much,
almost as much as though she had really been his mother; perhaps more
pathetically because she had not been his mother or anybody’s mother.
He could see what a good little mother she would have made, looking
after her children and doing everything on earth to make them happy and
comfortable, just the kind of mother Ann would make, though she had not
Ann’s steady wonder of a little head or her shrewd far-sightedness. Jem
would have been in luck if he had been her son. It was a darned pity he
hadn’t been. If he had, perhaps he would not have died young.
“Yes,” he answered sympathetically, “it’s hard for a young fellow to
die. How old was he, anyhow? I don’t know.”
“Not much older than you are now. It was seven years ago. And if he had
only died, poor dear! There are things so much worse than death.”
“Worse!”
“Awful disgrace is worse,” she faltered. She was plainly trying to keep
moisture out of her eyes.
“Did he get into some bad mix-up, poor fellow?” If there had been
anything like that, no wonder it broke her up to think of him.
It surely did break her up. She flushed emotionally.
“The cruel thing was that he didn’t really do what he was accused of,”
she said.
“He didn’t?”
“No; but he was a ruined man, and he went away to the Klondike because
he could not stay in England. And he was killed--killed, poor boy! And
afterward it was found out that he was innocent--too late.”
“Gee!” Tembarom gasped, feeling hot and cold. “Could you beat that for
rotten luck! What was he accused of?”
Miss Alicia leaned forward and spoke in a whisper. It was too dreadful
to speak of aloud.
“Cheating at cards--a gentleman playing with gentlemen. You know what
that means.”
Tembarom grew hotter and colder. No wonder she looked that way, poor
little thing!
“But,”--He hesitated before he spoke,--“but he wasn’t that kind, was
he? Of course he wasn’t.”
“No, no. But, you see,”--She hesitated herself here,--“everything
looked so much against him. He had been rather wild.” She dropped her
voice even lower in making the admission.
Tembarom wondered how much she meant by that.
“He was so much in debt. He knew he was to be rich in the future, and
he was poor just in those reckless young days when it seemed unfair.
And he had played a great deal and had been very lucky. He was so
lucky that sometimes his luck seemed uncanny. Men who had played with
him were horrible about it afterward.”
“They would be,” put in Tembarom. “They’d be sore about it, and bring
it up.”
They both forgot their tea. Miss Alicia forgot everything as she poured
forth her story in the manner of a woman who had been forced to keep
silent and was glad to put her case into words. It was her case. To
tell the truth of this forgotten wrong was again to offer justification
of poor handsome Jem whom everybody seemed to have dropped talk of, and
even preferred not to hear mentioned.
“There were such piteously cruel things about it,” she went on. “He had
fallen very much in love, and he meant to marry and settle down. Though
we had not seen each other for years, he actually wrote to me and told
me about it. His letter made me cry. He said I would understand and
care about the thing which seemed to have changed everything and made
him a new man. He was so sorry that he had not been better and more
careful. He was going to try all over again. He was not going to play
at all after this one evening when he was obliged to keep an engagement
he had made months before to give his revenge to a man he had won a
great deal of money from. The very night the awful thing happened he
had told Lady Joan, before he went into the card-room, that this was to
be his last game.”
Tembarom had looked deeply interested from the first, but at her last
words a new alertness added itself.
“Did you say Lady Joan?” he asked. “Who was Lady Joan?”
“She was the girl he was so much in love with. Her name was Lady Joan
Fayre.”
“Was she the daughter of the Countess of Mallowe?”
“Yes. Have you heard of her?”
He recalled Ann’s reflective consideration of him before she had said,
“She’ll come after you.” He replied now: “Some one spoke of her to me
this morning. They say she’s a beauty and as proud as Lucifer.”
“She was, and she is yet, I believe. Poor Lady Joan--as well as poor
Jem!”
“She didn’t believe it, did she?” he put in hastily. “She didn’t throw
him down?”
“No one knew what happened between them afterward. She was in the
card-room, looking on, when the awful thing took place.”
She stopped, as though to go on was almost unbearable. She had been
so overwhelmed by the past shame of it that even after the passing
of years the anguish was a living thing. Her small hands clung hard
together as they rested on the edge of the table. Tembarom waited in
thrilled suspense. She spoke in a whisper again:
“He won a great deal of money--a great deal. He had that uncanny luck
again, and of course people in the other rooms heard what was going on,
and a number drifted in to look on. The man he had promised to give his
revenge to almost showed signs of having to make an effort to conceal
his irritation and disappointment. Of course, as he was a gentleman,
he was as cool as possible; but just at the most exciting moment, the
height of the game, Jem made a quick movement, and--and something fell
out of his sleeve.”
“Something,” gasped Tembarom, “fell out of his sleeve!”
Miss Alicia’s eyes overflowed as she nodded her beribboned little cap.
“It”--Her voice was a sob of woe--“it was a marked card. The man he was
playing against snatched it and held it up. And he laughed out loud.”
“Holy cats!” burst from Tembarom; but the remarkable exclamation was
one of genuine horror, and he turned pale, got up from his seat, and
took two or three strides across the room, as though he could not sit
still.
“Yes, he laughed--quite loudly,” repeated Miss Alicia, “as if he had
guessed it all the time. Papa heard the whole story from some one who
was present.”
Tembarom came back to her rather breathless.
“What in thunder did he do--Jem?” he asked.
She actually wrung her poor little hands.
“What could he do? There was a dead silence. People moved just a little
nearer to the table and stood and stared, merely waiting. They say it
was awful to see his face--awful. He sprang up and stood still, and
slowly became as white as if he were dying before their eyes. Some one
thought Lady Joan Fayre took a step toward him, but no one was quite
sure. He never uttered one word, but walked out of the room and down
the stairs and out of the house.”
“But didn’t he speak to the girl?”
“He didn’t even look at her. He passed her by as if she were stone.”
“What happened next?”
“He disappeared. No one knew where at first, and then there was a rumor
that he had gone to the Klondike and had been killed there. And a year
later--only a year! Oh, if he had only waited in England!--a worthless
villain of a valet he had discharged for stealing met with an accident,
and because he thought he was going to die, got horribly frightened,
and confessed to the clergyman that he had tucked the card in poor
Jem’s sleeve himself just to pay him off. He said he did it on the
chance that it would drop out where some one would see it, and a marked
card dropping out of a man’s sleeve anywhere would look black enough,
whether he was playing or not. But poor Jem was in his grave, and no
one seemed to care, though every one had been interested enough in the
scandal. People talked about that for weeks.”
Tembarom pulled at his collar excitedly.
“It makes me sort of strangle,” he said. “You’ve got to stand your own
bad luck, but to hear of a chap that’s had to lie down and take the
worst that could come to him and know it wasn’t his--just _know_ it!
And die before he’s cleared! That knocks me out.”
Almost every sentence he uttered had a mystical sound to Miss Alicia,
but she knew how he was taking it, with what hot, young human sympathy
and indignation. She loved the way he took it, and she loved the
feeling in his next words:
“And the girl--good Lord!--the girl?”
“I never met her, and I know very little of her; but she has never
married.”
“I’m glad of that,” he said. “I’m darned glad of it. How could she?”
Ann wouldn’t, he knew. Ann would have gone to her grave unmarried. But
she would have done things first to clear her man’s name. Somehow she
would have cleared him, if she’d had to fight tooth and nail till she
was eighty.
“They say she has grown very bitter and haughty in her manner. I’m
afraid Lady Mallowe is a very worldly woman. One hears they don’t get
on together, and that she is bitterly disappointed because her daughter
has not made a good match. It appears that she might have made several,
but she is so hard and cynical that men are afraid of her. I wish I had
known her a little--if she really loved Jem.”
Tembarom had thrust his hands into his pockets, and was standing deep
in thought, looking at the huge bank of red coals in the fire-grate.
Miss Alicia hastily wiped her eyes.
“Do excuse me,” she said.
“I’ll excuse you all right,” he replied, still looking into the coals.
“I guess I shouldn’t excuse you as much if you didn’t.” He let her cry
in her gentle way while he stared, lost in reflection.
“And if he hadn’t fired that valet chap, he would be here with you
now--instead of me. Instead of me,” he repeated.
And Miss Alicia did not know what to say in reply. There seemed to be
nothing which, with propriety and natural feeling, one could say.
* * * * *
“It makes me feel just fine to know I’m not going to have my dinner all
by myself,” he said to her before she left the library.
She had a way of blushing about things he noticed, when she was shy or
moved or didn’t know exactly what to say. Though she must have been
sixty, she did it as though she were sixteen. And she did it when
he said this, and looked as though suddenly she was in some sort of
trouble.
“You are going to have dinner with me,” he said, seeing that she
hesitated--“dinner and breakfast and lunch and tea and supper and every
old thing that goes. You can’t turn me down after me staking out that
claim.”
“I’m afraid--” she said. “You see, I have lived such a secluded life.
I scarcely ever left my rooms except to take a walk. I’m sure you
understand. It would not have been necessary even if I could have
afforded it, which I really couldn’t--I’m afraid I have nothing--quite
_suitable_--for evening wear.”
“You haven’t!” he exclaimed gleefully. “I don’t know what is suitable
for evening wear, but I haven’t got it either. Pearson told me so with
tears in his eyes. It never was necessary for me either. I’ve got to
get some things to quiet Pearson down, but until I do I’ve got to eat
my dinner in a tweed cutaway; and what I’ve caught on to is that it’s
unsuitable enough to throw a man into jail. That little black dress
you’ve got on and that little cap are just ’way out of sight, they’re
so becoming. Come down just like you are.”
She felt a little as Pearson had felt when confronting his new
employer’s entire cheerfulness in face of a situation as exotically
hopeless as the tweed cutaway, and nothing else by way of resource.
But there was something so nice about him, something which was almost
as though he was actually a gentleman, something which absolutely, if
one could go so far, stood in the place of his being a gentleman. It
was impossible to help liking him more and more at every queer speech
he made. Still, there were of course things he did not realize, and
perhaps one ought in kindness to give him a delicate hint.
“I’m afraid,” she began quite apologetically. “I’m afraid that the
servants, Burrill and the footmen, you know, will be--will think--”
“Say,” he took her up, “let’s give Burrill and the footmen the Willies
out and out. If they can’t stand it, they can write home to their
mothers and tell ’em they’ve got to take ’em away. Burrill and the
footmen needn’t worry. They’re suitable enough, and it’s none of their
funeral, anyhow.”
He wasn’t upset in the least. Miss Alicia, who, as a timid dependent
either upon “poor dear papa” or Mr. Temple Barholm, had been secretly,
in her sensitive, ladylike little way, afraid of superior servants
all her life, knowing that they realized her utterly insignificant
helplessness, and resented giving her attention because she was
not able to show her appreciation of their services in the proper
manner--Miss Alicia saw that it had not occurred to him to endeavor
to propitiate them in the least, because somehow it all seemed a joke
to him, and he didn’t care. After the first moment of being startled,
she regarded him with a novel feeling, almost a kind of admiration.
Tentatively she dared to wonder if there was not something even
rather--rather _aristocratic_ in his utter indifference.
If he had been a duke, he would not have regarded the servants’ point
of view; it wouldn’t have mattered what they thought. Perhaps, she
hastily decided, he was like this because, though he was not a duke,
and boot-blacking in New York notwithstanding, he was a Temple Barholm.
There were few dukes as old of blood as a Temple Barholm. That must be
it. She was relieved.
Whatsoever lay at the root of his being what he was and as he was,
he somehow changed the aspect of things for her, and without doing
anything but be himself, cleared the atmosphere of her dread of the
surprise and mental reservations of the footmen and Burrill when she
came down to dinner in her high-necked, much-cleaned, and much-repaired
black silk, and with no more distinguishing change in her toilet than a
white lace cap instead of a black one, and with “poor dear mama’s” hair
bracelet with the gold clasp on her wrist, and a weeping-willow made of
“poor dear papa’s” hair in a brooch at her collar.
It was so curious, though still “nice,” but he did not offer her his
arm when they were going into the dining-room, and he took hold of hers
with his hand and affectionately half led, half pushed, her along with
him as they went. And he himself drew back her chair for her at the end
of the table opposite his own. He did not let a footman do it, and he
stood behind it, talking in his cheerful way all the time, and he moved
it to exactly the right place, and then actually bent down and looked
under the table.
“Here,” he said to the nearest man-servant, “where’s there a footstool?
Get one, please,” in that odd, simple, almost aristocratic way. It was
not a rude or dictatorial way, but a casual way, as though he knew the
man was there to do things, and he didn’t expect any time to be wasted.
And it was he himself who arranged the footstool, making it comfortable
for her, and then he went to his own chair at the head of the table
and sat down, smiling at her joyfully across the glass and silver and
flowers.
“Push that thing in the middle on one side, Burrill,” he said. “It’s
too high. I can’t see Miss Alicia.”
Burrill found it difficult to believe the evidence of his hearing.
“The epergne, sir?” he inquired.
“Is that what it’s called, an apern? That’s a new one on me. Yes,
that’s what I mean. Push the apern over.”
“Shall I remove it from the table, sir?” Burrill steeled himself to
exact civility. Of what use to behave otherwise? There always remained
the liberty to give notice if the worst came to the worst, though what
the worst might eventually prove to be it required a lurid imagination
to depict. The epergne was a beautiful thing of crystal and gold, a
celebrated work of art, regarded as an exquisite possession. It was
almost remarkable that Mr. Temple Barholm had not said, “Shove it on
one side,” but Burrill had been spared the poignant indignity of being
required to “shove.”
“Yes, suppose you do. It’s a fine enough thing when it isn’t in the
way, but I’ve got to see you while I talk, Miss Alicia,” said Mr.
Temple Barholm. The episode of the epergne--Burrill’s expression, and
the rigidly restrained mouths of Henry and James as the decoration was
removed, leaving a painfully blank space of table-cloth until Burrill
silently filled it with flowers in a low bowl--these things temporarily
flurried Miss Alicia somewhat, but the pleased smile at the head of the
table calmed even that trying moment.
Then what a delightful meal it was, to be sure! How entertaining and
cheerful and full of interesting conversation! Miss Alicia had always
admired what she reverently termed “conversation.” She had read of the
houses of brilliant people where they had it at table, at dinner and
supper parties, and in drawing-rooms. The French, especially the French
ladies, were brilliant conversationalists. They held “salons” in which
the conversation was wonderful--Mme. de Staël and Mme. Roland, for
instance; and in England, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Sydney Smith, and
Horace Walpole, and surely Miss Fanny Burney, and no doubt L. E. L.,
whose real name was Miss Letitia Elizabeth Landon--what conversation
they must have delighted their friends with and how instructive it
must have been even to sit in the most obscure corner and listen!
Such gifted persons seemed to have been chosen by Providence to delight
and inspire every one privileged to hear them. Such privileges had
been omitted from the scheme of Miss Alicia’s existence. She did not
know, she would have felt it sacrilegious to admit it even if the
fact had dawned upon her, that “dear papa” had been a heartlessly
arrogant, utterly selfish, and tyrannical old blackguard of the most
pronounced type. He had been of an absolute morality as far as social
laws were concerned. He had written and delivered a denunciatory sermon
a week, and had made unbearable by his ministrations the suffering
hours and the last moments of his parishioners during the long years
of his pastorate. When Miss Alicia, in reading records of the helpful
relationship of the male progenitors of the Brontes, Jane Austen, Fanny
Burney, and Mrs. Browning, was frequently reminded of him, she revealed
a perception of which she was not aware. He had combined the virile
qualities of all of them. Consequently, brilliancy of conversation at
table had not been the attractive habit of the household; “poor dear
papa” had confined himself to scathing criticisms of the incompetence
of females who could not teach their menials to “cook a dinner which
was not a disgrace to any decent household.” When not virulently
aspersing the mutton, he was expressing his opinion of muddle-headed
weakness which would permit household bills to mount in a manner which
could only bring ruin and disaster upon a minister of the gospel
who throughout a protracted career of usefulness had sapped his
intellectual manhood in the useless effort to support in silly idleness
a family of brainless and maddening fools. Miss Alicia had heard her
character, her unsuccessful physical appearance, her mind, and her
pitiful efforts at table-talk, described in detail with a choice of
adjective and adverb which had broken into terrified fragments every
atom of courage and will with which she had been sparsely dowered.
So, not having herself been gifted with conversational powers to
begin with, and never having enjoyed the exhibition of such powers in
others, her ideals had been high. She was not sure that Mr. Temple
Barholm’s fluent and cheerful talk could be with exactness termed
“conversation.” It was perhaps not sufficiently lofty and intellectual,
and did not confine itself rigorously to one exalted subject. But how
it did raise one’s spirits and open up curious vistas! And how good
tempered and humorous it was, even though sometimes the humor was a
little bewildering! During the whole dinner there never occurred even
one of those dreadful pauses in which dead silence fell, and one tried,
like a frightened hen flying from side to side of a coop, to think of
something to say which would not sound silly, but perhaps might divert
attention from dangerous topics. She had often thought it would be so
interesting to hear a Spaniard or a native Hindu talk about himself
and his own country in English. Tembarom talked about New York and its
people and atmosphere, and he did not know how foreign it all was. He
described the streets--Fifth Avenue and Broadway and Sixth Avenue--and
the street-cars and the elevated railroad, and the way “fellows” had
to “hustle” “to put it over.” He spoke of a boarding-house kept by a
certain Mrs. Bowse, and a presidential campaign, and the election of
a mayor, and a quick-lunch counter, and when President Garfield had
been assassinated, and a department store, and the electric lights, and
the way he had of making a sort of picture of everything was really
instructive and, well, fascinating. She felt as though she had been
taken about the city in one of the vehicles the conductor of which
described things through a megaphone.
Not that Mr. Temple Barholm suggested a megaphone, whatsoever that
might be, but he merely made you feel as if you had seen things.
Never had she been so entertained and enlightened. If she had been a
beautiful girl, he could not have seemed more as though in amusing her
he was also really pleasing himself. He was so very funny sometimes
that she could not help laughing in a way which was almost unladylike,
because she could not stop, and was obliged to put her handkerchief up
to her face and wipe away actual tears of mirth.
Fancy laughing until you cried, and the servants looking on!
Though once Burrill himself was obliged to turn hastily away, and
twice she heard him severely reprove an overpowered young footman in a
rapid undertone.
Tembarom at least felt that the unlifting heaviness of atmosphere which
had surrounded him while enjoying the companionship of Mr. Palford was
a thing of the past.
The thrilled interest, the surprise and delight, of Miss Alicia would
have stimulated a man in a comatose condition, it seemed to him.
The little thing just loved every bit of it--she just “eat it up.” She
asked question after question, sometimes questions which would have
made him shout with laughter if he had not been afraid of hurting her
feelings. She knew as little of New York as he knew of Temple Barholm,
and was, it made him grin to see, allured by it as by some illicit
fascination.
She did not know what to make of it, and sometimes she was obliged
hastily to conceal a fear that it was a sort of Sodom and Gomorrah; but
she wanted to hear more about it, and still more.
And she brightened up until she actually did not look frightened, and
ate her dinner with an excellent appetite.
“I really never enjoyed a dinner so much in my life,” she said when
they went into the drawing-room to have their coffee. “It was the
conversation which made it so delightful. Conversation is such a
stimulating thing!”
She had almost decided that it was “conversation,” or at least a
wonderful substitute.
When she said good night to him and went beaming to bed, looking
forward immensely to breakfast next morning, he watched her go up the
staircase, feeling wonderfully normal and happy.
“Some of these nights, when she’s used to me,” he said as he stuffed
tobacco into his last pipe in the library--“some of these nights I’m
darned if I sha’n’t catch hold of the sweet, little old thing and hug
her in spite of myself. I sha’n’t be able to help it.” He lit his pipe,
and puffed it even excitedly. “Lord!” he said, “there’s some blame’
fool going about the world right now that might have married her. And
he’ll never know what a break he made when he didn’t.”
[Illustration]