T. Tembarom by Frances Hodgson Burnett (page 8)

means ‘shut your mouth and keep on working.'”

“Thank you,” said the duke. “It is worth writing down. Thank you.”

“I did not talk about the books because I wanted to get used to them before I began to talk,” Tembarom explained. “I wanted to get somewhere. I’d never read a book through in my life before. Never wanted to. Never had one and never had time. When night came, I was dog-tired and dog-ready to drop down and sleep.”

Here was a situation of interest. A young man of odd, direct shrewdness, who had never read a book through in his existence, had plunged suddenly into the extraordinarily varied literary resources of the Temple Barholm library. If he had been a fool or a genius one might have guessed at the impression made on him; being T. Tembarom, one speculated with secret elation. The primitiveness he might reveal, the profundities he might touch the surface of, the unexpected ends he might reach, suggested the opening of vistas.

“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.

“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 nursed his knee, staring once more at the velvet shadows. “The girl in the book I picked up–” he began.

“The first book? ” his host inquired.

Tembarom nodded.

“The very first. I was smoking my pipe at night, after every one else had gone to bed, and I got up and began to wander about and stare at the names of the things on the shelves. I was thinking over a whole raft of things–a whole raft of them–and I didn’t know I was doing it, until something made me stop and read a name again. It was a book called `Good-by, Sweetheart, Good-by,’ and it hit me straight. I wondered what it was about, and I wondered where old Temple Barholm had fished up a thing like that. I never heard he was that kind.”

“He was a cantankerous old brute,” said the Duke of Stone with candor, “but he chanced to be an omnivorous novel-reader. Nothing was too sentimental for him in his later years.”

“I took the thing out and read it,” Tembarom went on, uneasily, the emotion of his first novel-reading stirring him as he talked. “It kept me up half the night, and I hadn’t finished it then. I wanted to know the end.”

“Benisons upon the books of which one wants to know the end!” the duke murmured.

Tembarom’s interest had plainly not terminated with “the end.” Its freshness made it easily revived. There was a hint of emotional indignation in his relation of the plot.

“It was about a couple of fools who were dead stuck on each other– dead. There was no mistake about that. It was all real. But what do they do but work up a fool quarrel about nothing, and break away from each other. There was a lot of stuff about pride. Pride be damned! How’s a man going to be proud and put on airs when he loves a woman? How’s a woman going to be proud and stick out about things when she loves a man? At least, that’s the way it hit me.”

“That’s the way it hit me–once,” remarked his grace.

“There is only once,” said Tembarom, doggedly.

“Occasionally,” said his host. “Occasionally.”

Tembarom knew what he meant.

“The fellow went away, and neither of them would give in. It’s queer how real it was when you read it. You were right there looking on, and swallowing hard every few minutes– though you were as mad as hops. The girl began to die–slow –and lay there day after day, longing for him to come back, and knowing he wouldn’t. At the very end, when there was scarcely a breath left in her, a young fellow who was crazy about her himself, and always had been, put out after the hard-headed fool to bring him to her anyhow. The girl had about given in then. And she lay and waited hour after hour, and the youngster came back by himself. He couldn’t bring the man he’d gone after. He found him getting married to a nice girl he didn’t really care a darn for. He’d sort of set his teeth and done it–just because he was all in and down and out, and a fool. The girl just dropped her head back on the pillow and lay there, dead! What do you think of that?” quite fiercely. “I guess it was sentimental all right, but it got you by the throat.”

“‘Good-bye, Sweetheart, Good-bye,”‘ his grace quoted. “First-class title. We are all sentimental. And that was the first, was it?”

“Yes, but it wasn’t the last. I began to read the others. I’ve been reading them ever since. I tell you, for a fellow that knows nothing it’s an easy way of finding out a lot of things. 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. There was one that stirred me all up–but it wasn’t like that first one. It was about a man “–he spoke slowly, as if searching for words and parallels –“well, I guess he was one of the early savages here. It read as if they were like the first Indians in America, only stronger and fiercer. When Palford was explaining things to me he’d jerk in every now and then something about ‘coming over with the Conqueror’ or being here ‘before the Conqueror.’ I didn’t know what it meant. I found out in this book I’m telling about. It gave me the whole thing so that you SAW it. Here was this little country, with no one in it but these first savage fellows it’d always belonged to. They thought it was the world.” There was a humorous sense of illumination in his half-laugh. “It was their New York, by jings,” he put in. “Their little old New York that they’d never been outside of! And then first one lot slams in, and then another, and another, and tries to take it from them. Julius Caesar was the first Mr. Buttinski; and they fought like hell. They were fighters from Fightersville, anyhow. They fought each other, took each other’s castles and lands and wives and jewelry–just any old thing they wanted. The only jails were private ones meant for their particular friends. And a man was hung only when one of his neighbors got mad enough at him, and then he had to catch him first and run the risk of being strung up himself, or have his head chopped off and stuck up on a spike somewhere for ornament. But fight! Good Lord! They were at it day and night. Did it for fun, just like folks go to the show. They didn’t know what fear was. Never heard of it. They’d go about shouting and bragging and swaggering, with their heads hanging half off. And the one in this book was the bulliest fighter of the lot. I guess I don’t know how to pronounce his name. It began with H.”

“Was it Hereward the Wake, by chance?” exclaimed his auditor. “Hereward the Last of the English?”

“That’s the man,” cried Tembarom.

“An engaging ruffian and thief and murderer, and a touching one also,” commented the duke. “You liked him?” He really wanted to know.

“I like the way he went after what he wanted to get, and the way he fought for his bit of England. By gee! When he went rushing into a fight, shouting and boasting and swinging his sword, I got hot in the collar. It was his England. What was old Bill doing there anyhow, darn him! Those chaps made him swim in their blood before they let him put the thing over. Good business! I’m glad they gave him all that was coming to him–hot and strong.”

His sharp face had reddened and his voice rose high and nasal. There was a look of roused blood in him.

“Are you a fighter from Fightersville?” the duke asked, far from unstirred himself. These things had become myths to most people, but here was Broadway in the midst of them unconsciously suggesting that it might not have done ill in the matter of swinging “Brain-Biter” itself. The modern entity slipped back again through the lengthened links of bygone centuries–back until it became T. Tembarom once more- – casual though shrewd; ready and jocular. His eyes resumed their dry New York humor of expression as they fixed themselves on his wholly modern questioner.

“I’ll fight,” he said, “for what I’ve got to fight for, but not for a darned thing else. Not a darned thing.”

“But you would fight,” smiled the duke, grimly. “Did you happen to remember that blood like that has come down to you? It was some drop of it which made you `hot in the collar’ over that engaging savage roaring and slashing about him for his `bit of England.”‘

Tembarom seemed to think it out interestedly.

“No, I did not,” he answered. “But I guess that’s so. I guess it’s so. Great Jakes! Think of me perhaps being sort of kin to fellows just like that. Some way, you couldn’t help liking him. He was always making big breaks and bellowing out `The Wake! The Wake!’ in season and out of season; but the way he got there–just got there!”

He was oddly in sympathy with “the early savages here,” and as understandingly put himself into their places as he had put himself into Galton’s. His New York comprehension of their berserker furies was apparently without limit. Strong partizan as he was of the last of the English, however, he admitted that William of Normandy had “got in some good work, though it wasn’t square.”

“He was a big man,” he ended. “If he hadn’t been the kind he was I don’t know how I should have stood it when the Hereward fellow knelt down before him, and put his hands between his and swore to be his man. That’s the way the book said it. I tell you that must have been tough–tough as hell!”

From “Good-bye, Sweetheart” to “Hereward the Last of the English” was a far cry, but he had gathered a curious collection of ideas by the way, and with characteristic everyday reasoning had linked them to his own experiences.

“The women in the Hereward book made me think of Lady Joan,” he remarked, suddenly.

“Torfreda? ” the duke asked.

He nodded quite seriously.

“She had ways that reminded me of her, and I kept thinking they must both have had the same look in their eyes–sort of fierce and hungry. Torfreda had black hair and was a winner as to looks; but people were afraid of her and called her a witch. Hereward went mad over her and she went mad over him. That part of it was ‘way out of sight, it was so fine. She helped him with his fights and told him what to do, and tried to keep him from drinking and bragging. Whatever he did, she never stopped being crazy about him. She mended his men’s clothes, and took care of their wounds, and lived in the forest with him when he was driven out.”

“That sounds rather like Miss Hutchinson,” his host suggested, “though the parallel between a Harlem flat and an English forest in the eleventh century is not exact.”

“I thought that, too,” Tembarom admitted. “Ann would have done the same things, but she’d have done them in her way. If that fellow had taken his wife’s advice, he wouldn’t have ended with his head sticking on a spear.”

“Another lady, if I remember rightly,” said the duke.

“He left her, the fool! ” Tembarom answered. “And there’s where I couldn’t get away from seeing Lady Joan; Jem Temple Barholm didn’t go off with another woman, but what Torfreda went through, this one has gone through, and she’s going through it yet. She can’t dress herself in sackcloth, and cut off her hair, and hide herself away with a bunch of nuns, as the other one did. She has to stay and stick it out, however bad it is. That’s a darned sight worse. The day after I’d finished the book, I couldn’t keep my eyes off her. I tried to stop it, but it was no use. I kept hearing that Torfreda one screaming out, `Lost! Lost! Lost!’ It was all in her face.”

“But, my good fellow,” protested the duke, despite feeling a touch of the thrill again, “unfortunately, she would not suspect you of looking at her because you were recalling Torfreda and Hereward the Wake. Men stare at her for another reason.”

“That’s what I know about half as well again as I know anything else,” answered Tembarom. He added, with a deliberation holding its own meaning, “That’s what I’m coming to.”

The duke waited. What was it he was coming to?

“Reading that novel put me wise to things in a new way. She’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 that night 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 inquired.

“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 he was coming to.

“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.

CHAPTER XXX

The visits of Lady Mallowe and Captain Palliser had had their features. Neither of the pair had come to one of the most imposing “places” in Lancashire to live a life of hermit-like seclusion and dullness. They had arrived with the intention of availing themselves of all such opportunities for entertainment as could be guided in their direction by the deftness of experience. As a result, there had been hospitalities at Temple Barholm such as it had not beheld during the last generation at least. T. Tembarom had looked on, an interested spectator, as these festivities had been adroitly arranged and managed for him. He had not, however, in the least resented acting as a sort of figurehead in the position of sponsor and host.

“They think I don’t know I’m not doing it all myself,” was his easy mental summing-up. “They’ve got the idea that I’m pleased because I believe I’m It. But that’s all to the merry. It’s what I’ve set my mind on having going on here, and I couldn’t have started it as well myself. I shouldn’t have known how. They’re teaching me. All I hope is that Ann’s grandmother is keeping tab.”

“Do you and Rose know old Mrs. Hutchinson?” he had inquired of Pearson the night before the talk with the duke.

“Well, not to say exactly know her, sir, but everybody knows of her. She is a most remarkable old person, sir.” Then, after watching his face for a moment or so, he added tentatively, “Would you perhaps wish us to make her acquaintance for– for any reason?”

Tembarom thought the matter over speculatively. He had learned that his first liking for Pearson had been founded upon a rock. He was always to be trusted to understand, and also to apply a quite unusual intelligence to such matters as he became aware of without having been told about them.

“What I’d like would be for her to hear that there’s plenty doing at Temple Barholm; that people are coming and going all the time; and that there’s ladies to burn–and most of them lookers, at that,” was his answer.

How Pearson had discovered the exotic subtleties of his master’s situation and mental attitude toward it, only those of his class and gifted with his occult powers could explain in detail. The fact exists that Pearson did know an immense number of things his employer had not mentioned to him, and held them locked in his bosom in honored security, like a little gentleman. He made his reply with a polite conviction which carried weight.

“It would not be necessary for either Rose or me to make old Mrs. Hutchinson’s acquaintance with a view to informing her of anything which occurs on the estate or in the village, sir,” he remarked. “Mrs. Hutchinson knows more of things than any one ever tells her. She sits in her cottage there, and she just knows things and sees through people in a way that’d be almost unearthly, if she wasn’t a good old person, and so respectable that there’s those that touches their hats to her as if she belonged to the gentry. She’s got a blue eye, sir–“

“Has she?” exclaimed Tembarom.

“Yes, sir. As blue as a baby’s, sir, and as clear, though she’s past eighty. And they tell me there’s a quiet, steady look in it that ill- doers downright quail before. It’s as if she was a kind of judge that sentenced them without speaking. They can’t stand it. Oh, sir! you can depend upon old Mrs. Hutchinson as to who’s been here, and even what they’ve thought about it. The village just flocks to her to tell her the news and get advice about things. She’d know.”

It was as a result of this that on his return from Stone Hover he dismissed the carriage at the gates and walked through them to make a visit in the village. Old Mrs. Hutchinson, sitting knitting in her chair behind the abnormally flourishing fuchsias, geraniums, and campanula carpaticas in her cottage-window, looked between the banked- up flower-pots to see that Mr. Temple Barholm had opened her wicket- gate and was walking up the clean bricked path to her front door. When he knocked she called out in the broad Lancashire she had always spoken, “Coom in!” When he entered he took off his hat and looked at her, friendly but hesitant, and with the expression of a young man who has not quite made up his mind as to what he is about to encounter.

“I’m Temple Temple Barholm, Mrs. Hutchinson,” he announced.

“I know that,” she answered. “Not that tha looks loike th’ Temple Barholms, but I’ve been watchin’ thee walk an’ drive past here ever since tha coom to th’ place.”

She watched him steadily with an astonishingly limpid pair of old eyes. They were old and young at the same time; old because they held deeps of wisdom, young because they were so alive and full of question.

“I don’t know whether I ought to have come to see you or not,” he said.

“Well, tha’st coom,” she replied, going on with her knitting. “Sit thee doun and have a bit of a chat.”

“Say!” he broke out. “Ain’t you going to shake hands with me?” He held his hand out impetuously. He knew he was all right if she’d shake hands.

“Theer’s nowt agen that surely,” she answered, with a shrewd bit of a smile. She gave him her hand. “If I was na stiff in my legs, it’s my place to get up an’ mak’ thee a curtsey, but th’ rheumatics has no respect even for th’ lord o’ th’ manor.”

“If you got up and made me a curtsey,” Tembarom said, “I should throw a fit. Say, Mrs. Hutchinson, I bet you know that as well as I do.”

The shrewd bit of a smile lighted her eyes as well as twinkled about her mouth.

“Sit thee doun,” she said again.

So he sat down and looked at her as straight as she looked at him.

“Tha ‘d give a good bit,” she said presently, over her flashing needles, “to know how much Little Ann’s tow’d me about thee.”

“I’d give a lot to know how much it’d be square to ask you to tell me about her,” he gave back to her, hesitating yet eager.

“What does tha mean by square?” she demanded.

“I mean `fair.’ Can I talk to you about her at all? I promised I’d stick it out here and do as she said. She told me she wasn’t going to write to me or let her father write. I’ve promised, and I’m not going to fall down when I’ve said a thing.”

“So tha coom to see her grandmother?”

He reddened, but held his head up.

“I’m not going to ask her grandmother a thing she doesn’t want me to be told. But I’ve been up against it pretty hard lately. I read some things in the New York papers about her father and his invention, and about her traveling round with him and helping him with his business.”

“In Germany they wur,” she put in, forgetting herself. “They’re havin’ big doin’s over th’ invention. What Joe ‘u’d do wi’out th’ lass I canna tell. She’s doin’ every bit o’ th’ managin’ an’ contrivin’ wi’ them furriners–but he’ll never know it. She’s got a chap to travel wi’ him as can talk aw th’ languages under th’ sun.”

Her face flushed and she stopped herself sharply.

“I’m talkin’ about her to thee!” she said. “I would na ha’ believed o’ mysen’.”

He got up from his chair.

“I guess I oughtn’t to have come,” he said, restlessly. “But you haven’t told me more than I got here and there in the papers. That was what started me. It was like watching her. I could hear her talking and see the way she was doing things till it drove me half crazy. All of a sudden, I just got wild and made up my mind I’d come here. I’ve wanted to do it many a time, but I’ve kept away.”

“Tha showed sense i’ doin’ that,” remarked Mrs. Hutchinson. “She’d not ha’ thowt well o’ thee if tha’d coom runnin’ to her grandmother every day or so. What she likes about thee is as she thinks tha’s got a strong backbone o’ thy own.”

She looked up at him over her knitting, looked straight into his eyes, and there was that in her own which made him redden and feel his pulse quicken. It was actually something which even remotely suggested that she was not–in the deeps of her strong old mind–as wholly unswerving as her words might imply. It was something more subtle than words. She was not keeping him wholly in the dark when she said “What she likes about thee.” If Ann said things like that to her, he was pretty well off.

“Happen a look at a lass’s grandmother–when tha conna get at th’ lass hersen–is a bit o’ comfort,” she added. “But don’t tha go walkin’ by here to look in at th’ window too often. She would na think well o’ that either.”

“Say! There’s one thing I’m going to get off my chest before I go,” he announced, “just one thing. She can go where she likes and do what she likes, but I’m going to marry her when she’s done it–unless something knocks me on the head and finishes me. I’m going to marry her.”

“Tha art, art tha?” laconically; but her eyes were still on his, and the something in their depths by no means diminished.

“I’m keeping up my end here, and it’s no slouch of a job, but I’m not forgetting what she promised for one minute! And I’m not forgetting what her promise means,” he said obstinately.

“Tha’d like me to tell her that?” she said.

“If she doesn’t know it, you telling her wouldn’t cut any ice,” was his reply. “I’m saying it because I want you to know it, and because it does me good to say it out loud. I’m going to marry her.”

“That’s for her and thee to settle,” she commented, impersonally.

“It is settled,” he answered. “There ‘s no way out of it. Will you shake hands with me again before I go?”

“Aye,” she consented, “I will.”

When she took his hand she held it a minute. Her own was warm, and there was no limpness about it. The secret which had seemed to conceal itself behind her eyes had some difficulty in keeping itself wholly in the background.

“She knows aw tha’ does,” she said coolly, as if she were not suddenly revealing immensities. “She knows who cooms an’ who goes, an’ what they think o’ thee, an’ how tha gets on wi’ ’em. Now get thee gone, lad, an’ dunnot tha coom back till her or me sends for thee.”

Within an hour of this time the afternoon post brought to Lady Mallowe a letter which she read with an expression in which her daughter recognized relief. It was in fact a letter for which she had waited with anxiety, and the invitation it contained was a tribute to her social skill at its highest watermark. In her less heroic moments, she had felt doubts of receiving it, which had caused shudders to run the entire length of her spine.

“I’m going to Broome Haughton,” she announced to Joan.

“When?” Joan inquired.

“At the end of the week. I am invited for a fortnight.”

“Am I going?” Joan asked.

“No. You will go to London to meet some friends who are coming over from Paris.”

Joan knew that comment was unnecessary. Both she and her mother were on intimate terms with these hypothetical friends who so frequently turned up from Paris or elsewhere when it was necessary that she should suddenly go back to London and live in squalid seclusion in the unopened house, with a charwoman to provide her with underdone or burnt chops, and eggs at eighteen a shilling, while the shutters of the front rooms were closed, and dusty desolation reigned. She knew every detail of the melancholy squalor of it, the dragging hours, the nights of lying awake listening to the occasional passing of belated cabs, or the squeaks and nibbling of mice in the old walls.

“If you had conducted yourself sensibly you need not have gone,” continued her mother. “I could have made an excuse and left you here. You would at least have been sure of good food and decent comforts.”

“After your visit, are we to return here?” was Lady Joan’s sole reply.

“Don’t look at me like that,” said Lady Mallowe. “I thought the country would freshen your color at least; but you are going off more every day. You look like the Witch of Endor sometimes.”

Joan smiled faintly. This was the brandishing of an old weapon, and she understood all its significance. It meant that the time for opportunities was slipping past her like the waters of a rapid river.

“I do not know what will happen when I leave Broome Haughton,” her mother added, a note of rasped uncertainty in her voice. “We may be obliged to come here for a short time, or we may go abroad.”

“If I refuse to come, would you let me starve to death in Piers Street?” Joan inquired.

Lady Mallowe looked her over, feeling a sort of frenzy at the sight of her. In truth, the future was a hideous thing to contemplate if no rescue at all was in sight. It would be worse for her than for Joan, because Joan did not care what happened or did not happen, and she cared desperately. She had indeed arrived at a maddening moment.

“Yes,” she snapped, fiercely.

And when Joan faintly smiled again she understood why women of the lower orders beat one another until policemen interfere. She knew perfectly well that the girl had somehow found out that Sir Moses Monaldini was to be at Broome Haughton, and that when he left there he was going abroad. She knew also that she had not been able to conceal that his indifference had of late given her some ghastly hours, and that her play for this lagging invitation had been a frantically bold one. That the most ingenious efforts and devices had ended in success only after such delay made it all the more necessary that no straw must remain unseized on.

“I can wear some of your things, with a little alteration,” she said. “Rose will do it for me. Hats and gloves and ornaments do not require altering. I shall need things you will not need in London. Where are your keys?”

Lady Joan rose and got them for her. She even flushed slightly. They were often obliged to borrow each other’s possessions, but for a moment she felt herself moved by a sort of hard pity.

“We are like rats in a trap,” she remarked. “I hope you will get out.”

“If I do, you will be left inside. Get out yourself! Get out yourself!” said Lady Mallowe in a fierce whisper.

Her regrets at the necessity of their leaving Temple Barholm were expressed with fluent touchingness at the dinner-table. The visit had been so delightful. Mr. Temple Barholm and Miss Alicia had been so kind. The loveliness of the whole dear place had so embraced them that they felt as if they were leaving a home instead of ending a delightful visit. It was extraordinary what an effect the house had on one. It was as if one had lived in it always–and always would. So few places gave one the same feeling. They should both look forward– greedy as it seemed–to being allowed some time to come again. She had decided from the first that it was not necessary to go to any extreme of caution or subtlety with her host and Miss Alicia. Her method of paving the way for future visits was perhaps more than a shade too elaborate. She felt, however, that it sufficed. For the most part, Lady Joan sat with lids dropped over her burning eyes. She tried to force herself not to listen. This was the kind of thing which made her sick with humiliation. Howsoever rudimentary these people were, they could not fail to comprehend that a foothold in the house was being bid for. They should at least see that she did not join in the bidding. Her own visit had been filled with feelings at war with one another. There had been hours too many in which she would have been glad–even with the dingy horrors of the closed town house before her- -to have flown from the hundred things which called out to her on every side. In the long-past three months of happiness, Jem had described them all to her–the rooms, gardens, pleached walks, pictures, the very furniture itself. She could enter no room, walk in no spot she did not seem to know, and passionately love in spite of herself. She loved them so much that there were times when she yearned to stay in the place at any cost, and others when she could not endure the misery it woke in her– the pure misery. Now it was over for the time being, and she was facing something new. There were endless varieties of wretchedness. She had been watching her mother for some months, and had understood her varying moods of temporary elation or prolonged anxiety. Each one had meant some phase of the episode of Sir Moses Monaldini. The people who lived at Broome Haughton were enormously rich Hebrews, who were related to him. They had taken the beautiful old country-seat and were filling it with huge parties of their friends. The party which Lady Mallowe was to join would no doubt offer opportunities of the most desirable kind. Among this special class of people she was a great success. Her amazingly achieved toilettes, her ripe good looks, her air of belonging to the great world, impressed themselves immensely.

T. Tembarom thought he never had seen Lady Joan look as handsome as she looked to-night. The color on her cheek burned, her eyes had a driven loneliness in them. She had a wonderfully beautiful mouth, and its curve drooped in a new way. He wished Ann could get her in a corner and sit down and talk sense to her. He remembered what he had said to the duke. Perhaps this was the time. If she was going away, and her mother meant to drag her back again when she was ready, it would make it easier for her to leave the place knowing she need not hate to come back. But the duke wasn’t making any miss hit when he said it wouldn’t be easy. She was not like Ann, who would feel some pity for the biggest fool on earth if she had to throw him down hard. Lady Joan would feel neither compunctions nor relentings. He knew the way she could look at a fellow. If he couldn’t make her understand what he was aiming at, they would both be worse off than they would be if he left things as they were. But–the hard line showed itself about his mouth–he wasn’t going to leave things as they were.

As they passed through the hall after dinner, Lady Mallowe glanced at a side-table on which lay some letters arrived by the late post. An imposing envelope was on the top of the rest. Joan saw her face light as she took it up.

“I think this is from Broome Haughton,” she said. “If you will excuse me, I will go into the library and read it. It may require answering at once.”

She turned hot and cold, poor woman, and went away, so that she might be free from the disaster of an audience if anything had gone wrong. It would be better to be alone even if things had gone right. The letter was from Sir Moses Monaldini. Grotesque and ignoble as it naturally strikes the uninitiated as seeming, the situation had its touch of hideous pathos. She had fought for her own hand for years; she could not dig, and to beg she was not ashamed; but a time had come when even the most adroit begging began to bore people. They saw through it, and then there resulted strained relations, slight stiffness of manner, even in the most useful and amiable persons, lack of desire to be hospitable, or even condescendingly generous. Cold shoulders were turned, there were ominous threatenings of icy backs presenting themselves. The very tradesmen had found this out, and could not be persuaded that the advertisement furnished by the fact that two beautiful women of fashion ate, drank, and wore the articles which formed the items in their unpaid bills, was sufficient return for the outlay of capital required. Even Mrs. Mellish, when graciously approached by the “relative of Miss Temple Barholm, whose perfect wardrobe you supplied,” had listened to all seductions with a civil eye fixed unmovedly and had referred to the “rules of the establishment.” Nearer and nearer the edge of the abyss the years had pushed them, and now if something did not happen–something– something–even the increasingly shabby small house in town would become a thing of the past. And what then? Could any one wonder she said to herself that she could have beaten Joan furiously. It would not matter to any one else if they dropped out of the world into squalid oblivion–oh, she knew that–she knew that with bitter certainty!–but oh, how it would matter to them!–at least to herself. It was all very well for Mudie’s to pour forth streams of sentimental novels preaching the horrors of girls marrying for money, but what were you to do–what in heaven’s name were you to do? So, feeling terrified enough actually to offer up a prayer, she took the imposingly addressed letter into the library.

The men had come into the drawing-room when she returned. As she entered, Joan did not glance up from the book she was reading, but at the first sound of her voice she knew what had occurred.

“I was obliged to dash off a note to Broome Haughton so that it would be ready for the early post,” Lady Mallowe said. She was at her best. Palliser saw that some years had slipped from her shoulders. The moment which relieves or even promises to relieve fears does astonishing things. Tembarom wondered whether she had had good news, and Miss Alicia thought that her evening dress was more becoming than any she had ever seen her wear before. Her brilliant air of social ease returned to her, and she began to talk fluently of what was being done in London, and to touch lightly upon the possibility of taking part in great functions. For some time she had rather evaded talk of the future. Palliser had known that the future had seemed to be closing in upon her, and leaving her staring at a high blank wall. Persons whose fortunate names had ceased to fall easily from her lips appeared again upon the horizon. Miss Alicia was impressed anew with the feeling that she had known every brilliant or important personage in the big world of social London; that she had taken part in every dazzling event. Tembarom somehow realized that she had been afraid of something or other, and was for some reason not afraid any more. Such a change, whatsoever the reason for it, ought to have had some effect on her daughter. Surely she would share her luck, if luck had come to her.

But Lady Joan sat apart and kept her eyes upon her book. This was one of the things she often chose to do, in spite of her mother’s indignant protest.

“I came here because you brought me,” she would answer. “I did not come to be entertaining or polite.”

She was reading this evening. She heard every word of Lady Mallowe’s agreeable and slightly excited conversation. She did not know exactly what had happened; but she knew that it was something which had buoyed her up with a hopefulness which exhilarated her almost too much–as an extra glass of wine might have done. Once or twice she even lost her head a little and was a trifle swaggering. T. Tembarom would not recognize the slip, but Joan saw Palliser’s faint smile without looking up from her book. He observed shades in taste and bearing. Before her own future Joan saw the blank wall of stone building itself higher and higher. If Sir Moses had capitulated, she would be counted out. With what degree of boldness could a mother cast her penniless daughter on the world? What unendurable provision make for her? Dare they offer a pound a week and send her to live in the slums until she chose to marry some Hebrew friend of her step-father’s? That she knew would be the final alternative. A cruel little smile touched her lips, as she reviewed the number of things she could not do to earn her living. She could not take in sewing or washing, and there was nothing she could teach. Starvation or marriage. The wall built itself higher and yet higher. What a hideous thing it was for a penniless girl to be brought up merely to be a beauty, and in consequence supposably a great lady. And yet if she was born to a certain rank and had height and figure, a lovely mouth, a delicate nose, unusual eyes and lashes, to train her to be a dressmaker or a housemaid would be a stupid investment of capital. If nothing tragic interfered and the right man wanted such a girl, she had been trained to please him. But tragic things had happened, and before her grew the wall while she pretended to read her book.

T. Tembarom was coming toward her. She had heard Palliser suggest a game of billiards.

“Will you come and play billiards with us?” Tembarom asked. “Palliser says you play splendidly.”

“She plays brilliantly,” put in Lady Mallowe. “Come, Joan.”

“No, thank you,” she answered. “Let me stay here and read.”

Lady Mallowe protested. She tried an air of playful maternal reproach because she was in good spirits. Joan saw Palliser smiling quietly, and there was that in his smile which suggested to her that he was thinking her an obstinate fool.

“You had better show Temple Barholm what you can do,” he remarked. “This will be your last chance, as you leave so soon. You ought never let a last chance slip by. I never do.”

Tembarom stood still and looked down at her from his good height. He did not know what Palliser’s speech meant, but an instinct made him feel that it somehow held an ugly, quiet taunt.

“What I would like to do,” was the unspoken crudity which passed through his mind, “would be to swat him on the mouth. He’s getting at her just when she ought to be let alone.”

“Would you like it better to stay here and read?” he inquired.

“Much better, if you please,” was her reply.

“Then that goes,” he answered, and left her.

He swept the others out of the room with a good-natured promptness which put an end to argument. When he said of anything “Then that goes,” it usually did so.

CHAPTER XXXI

When she was alone Joan sat and gazed not at her wall but at the pictures that came back to her out of a part of her life which seemed to have been lived centuries ago. They were the pictures that came back continually without being called, the clearness of which always startled her afresh. Sometimes she thought they sprang up to add to her torment, but sometimes it seemed as if they came to save her from herself–her mad, wicked self. After all, there were moments when to know that she had been the girl whose eighteen-year-old heart had leaped so when she turned and met Jem’s eyes, as he stood gazing at her under the beech-tree, was something to cling to. She had been that girl and Jem had been–Jem. And she had been the girl who had joined him in that young, ardent vow that they would say the same prayers at the same hour each night together. Ah! how young it had been–how YOUNG! Her throat strained itself because sobs rose in it, and her eyes were hot with the swell of tears.

She could hear voices and laughter and the click of balls from the billiard-room. Her mother and Palliser laughed the most, but she knew the sound of her mother’s voice would cease soon, because she would come back to her. She knew she would not leave her long, and she knew the kind of scene they would pass through together when she returned. The old things would be said, the old arguments used, but a new one would be added. It was a pleasant thing to wait here, knowing that it was coming, and that for all her fierce pride and fierce spirit she had no defense. It was at once horrible and ridiculous that she must sit and listen–and stare at the growing wall. It was as she caught her breath against the choking swell of tears that she heard Lady Mallowe returning. She came in with an actual sweep across the room. Her society air had fled, and she was unadornedly furious when she stopped before Joan’s chair. For a few seconds she actually glared; then she broke forth in a suppressed undertone:

“Come into the billiard-room. I command it!”

Joan lifted her eyes from her book. Her voice was as low as her mother’s, but steadier.

“No,” she answered.

“Is this conduct to continue? Is it?” Lady Mallowe panted.

“Yes,” said Joan, and laid her book on the table near her. There was nothing else to say. Words made things worse.

Lady Mallowe had lost her head, but she still spoke in the suppressed voice.

“You SHALL behave yourself!” she cried, under her breath, and actually made a passionate half-start toward her. “You violent-natured virago! The very look on your face is enough to drive one mad!”

“I know I am violent-natured,” said Joan. “But don’t you think it wise to remember that you cannot make the kind of scene here that you can in your own house? We are a bad-tempered pair, and we behave rather like fishwives when we are in a rage. But when we are guests in other people’s houses–“

Lady Mallowe’s temper was as elemental as any Billingsgate could provide.

“You think you can take advantage of that!” she said. “Don’t trust yourself too far. Do you imagine that just when all might go well for me I will allow you to spoil everything?”

“How can I spoil everything?”

“By behaving as you have been behaving since we came here–refusing to make a home for yourself; by hanging round my neck so that it will appear that any one who takes me must take you also.”

“There are servants outside,” Joan warned her.

“You shall not stop me!” cried Lady Mallowe.

“You cannot stop yourself,” said Joan. “That is the worst of it. It is bad enough when we stand and hiss at each other in a stage whisper; but when you lose control over yourself and raise your voice–“

“I came in here to tell you that this is your last chance. I shall never give you another. Do you know how old you are?”

“I shall soon be twenty-seven,” Joan answered. “I wish I were a hundred. Then it would all be over.”

“But it will not be over for years and years and years,” her mother flung back at her. “Have you forgotten that the very rags you wear are not paid for?”

“No, I have not forgotten.” The scene was working itself up on the old lines, as Joan had known it would. Her mother never failed to say the same things, every time such a scene took place.

“You will get no more such rags–paid or unpaid for. What do you expect to do? You don’t know how to work, and if you did no decent woman would employ you. You are too good-looking and too bad- tempered.”

Joan knew she was perfectly right. Knowing it, she remained silent, and her silence added to her mother’s helpless rage. She moved a step nearer to her and flung the javelin which she always knew would strike deep.

“You have made yourself a laughing-stock for all London for years. You are mad about a man who disgraced and ruined himself.”

She saw the javelin quiver as it struck; but Joan’s voice as it answered her had a quality of low and deadly steadiness.

“You have said that a thousand times, and you will say it another thousand–though you know the story was a lie and was proved to be one.”

Lady Mallowe knew her way thoroughly.

“Who remembers the denials? What the world remembers is that Jem Temple Barholm was stamped as a cheat and a trickster. No one has time to remember the other thing. He is dead–dead! When a man’s dead it’s too late.”

She was desperate enough to drive her javelin home deeper than she had ever chanced to drive it before. The truth–the awful truth she uttered shook Joan from head to foot. She sprang up and stood before her in heart-wrung fury.

“Oh! You are a hideously cruel woman!” she cried. “They say even tigers care for their young! But you–you can say that to _me_. ‘When a man’s dead, it’s too late.'”

“It _is_ too late–it IS too late!” Lady Mallowe persisted. Why had not she struck this note before? It was breaking her will: “I would say anything to bring you to your senses.”

Joan began to move restlessly to and fro.

“Oh, what a fool I am!” she exclaimed. “As if you could understand–as if you could care!”

Struggle as she might to be defiant, she was breaking, Lady Mallowe repeated to herself. She followed her as a hunter might have followed a young leopardess with a wound in its flank.

“I came here because it _is_ your last chance. Palliser knew what he was saying when he made a joke of it just now. He knew it wasn’t a joke. You might have been the Duchess of Merthshire; you might have been Lady St. Maur, with a husband with millions. And here you are. You know what’s before you–when I am out of the trap.”

Joan laughed. It was a wild little laugh, and she felt there was no sense in it.

“I might apply for a place in Miss Alicia’s Home for Decayed Gentlewomen,” she said.

Lady Mallowe nodded her head fiercely.

“Apply, then. There will be no place for you in the home I am going to live in,” she retorted.

Joan ceased moving about. She was about to hear the one argument that was new.

“You may as well tell me,” she said, wearily.

“I have had a letter from Sir Moses Monaldini. He is to be at Broome Haughton. He is going there purposely to meet me. What he writes can mean only one thing. He means to ask me to marry him. I’m your mother, and I’m nearly twenty years older than you; but you see that I’m out of the trap first.”

“I knew you would be,” answered Joan.

“He detests you,” Lady Mallowe went on. “He will not hear of your living with us–or even near us. He says you are old enough to take care of yourself. Take my advice. I am doing you a good turn in giving it. This New York newsboy is mad over you. If he hadn’t been we should have been bundled out of the house before this. He never has spoken to a lady before in his life, and he feels as if you were a goddess. Go into the billiard-room this instant, and do all a woman can. Go!” And she actually stamped her foot on the carpet.

Joan’s thunder-colored eyes seemed to grow larger as she stared at her. Her breast lifted itself, and her face slowly turned pale. Perhaps–she thought it wildly–people sometimes did die of feelings like this.

“He would crawl at your feet,” her mother went on, pursuing what she felt sure was her advantage. She was so sure of it that she added words only a fool or a woman half hysteric with rage would have added. “You might live in the very house you would have lived in with Jem Temple Barholm, on the income he could have given you.”

She saw the crassness of her blunder the next moment. If she had had an advantage, she had lost it. Wickedly, without a touch of mirth, Joan laughed in her face.

“Jem’s house and Jem’s money–and the New York newsboy in his shoes,” she flung at her. “T. Tembarom to live with until one lay down on one’s deathbed. T. Tembarom!”

Suddenly, something was giving way in her, Lady Mallowe thought again. Joan slipped into a chair and dropped her head and hidden face on the table.

“Oh! Mother! Mother!” she ended. “Oh! Jem! Jem!”

Was she sobbing or trying to choke sobbing back? There was no time to be lost. Her mother had never known a scene to end in this way before.

“Crying!” there was absolute spite in her voice. “That shows you know what you are in for, at all events. But I’ve said my last word. What does it matter to me, after all? You’re in the trap. I’m not. Get out as best you can. I’ve done with you.”

She turned her back and went out of the room–as she had come into it- -with a sweep Joan would have smiled at as rather vulgar if she had seen it. As a child in the nursery, she had often seen that her ladyship was vulgar.

But she did not see the sweep because her face was hidden. Something in her had broken this time, as her mother had felt. That bitter, sordid truth, driven home as it had been, had done it. Who had time to remember denials, or lies proved to be lies? Nobody in the world. Who had time to give to the defense of a dead man? There was not time enough to give to living ones. It was true–true! When a man is dead, it is too late. The wall had built itself until it reached her sky; but it was not the wall she bent her head and sobbed over. It was that suddenly she had seen again Jem’s face as he had stood with slow- growing pallor, and looked round at the ring of eyes which stared at him; Jem’s face as he strode by her without a glance and went out of the room. She forgot everything else on earth. She forgot where she was. She was eighteen again, and she sobbed in her arms as eighteen sobs when its heart is torn from it.

“Oh Jem! Jem!” she cried. “If you were only in the same world with me! If you were just in the same world!”

She had forgotten all else, indeed. She forgot too long. She did not know how long. It seemed that no more than a few minutes had passed before she was without warning struck with the shock of feeling that some one was in the room with her, standing near her, looking at her. She had been mad not to remember that exactly this thing would be sure to happen, by some abominable chance. Her movement as she rose was almost violent, she could not hold herself still, and her face was horribly wet with shameless, unconcealable tears. Shameless she felt them–indecent–a sort of nudity of the soul. If it had been a servant who had intruded, or if it had been Palliser it would have been intolerable enough. But it was T. Tembarom who confronted her with his common face, moved mysteriously by some feeling she resented even more than she resented his presence. He was too grossly ignorant to know that a man of breeding, having entered by chance, would have turned and gone away, professing not to have seen. He seemed to think–the dolt!–that he must make some apology.

“Say! Lady Joan!” he began. “I beg your pardon. I didn’t want to butt in.”

“Then go away,” she commanded. “Instantly–instantly!”

She knew he must see that she spoke almost through her teeth in her effort to control her sobbing breath. But he made no move toward leaving her. He even drew nearer, looking at her in a sort of meditative, obstinate way.

“N-no,” he replied, deliberately. “I guess–I won’t.”

“You won’t?” Lady Joan repeated after him. “Then I will.”

He made a stride forward and laid his hand on her arm.

“No. Not on your life. You won’t, either–if I can help it. And you’re going to LET me help it.”

Almost any one but herself–any one, at least, who did not resent his very existence–would have felt the drop in his voice which suddenly struck the note of boyish, friendly appeal in the last sentence. “You’re going to LET me,” he repeated.

She stood looking down at the daring, unconscious hand on her arm.

“I suppose,” she said, with cutting slowness, “that you do not even _know_ that you are insolent. Take your hand away,” in arrogant command.

He removed it with an unabashed half-smile.

“I beg your pardon,” he said. “I didn’t even know I’d put it there. It was a break–but I wanted to keep you.”

That he not only wanted to keep her, but intended to do so was apparent. His air was neither rough nor brutal, but he had ingeniously placed himself in the outlet between the big table and the way to the door. He put his hands in his pockets in his vulgar, unconscious way, and watched her.

“Say, Lady Joan!” he broke forth, in the frank outburst of a man who wants to get something over. “I should be a fool if I didn’t see that you’re up against it–hard! What’s the matter?” His voice dropped again.

There was something in the drop this time which–perhaps because of her recent emotion–sounded to her almost as if he were asking the question with the protecting sympathy of the tone one would use in speaking to a child. How dare he! But it came home to her that Jem had once said “What’s the matter?” to her in the same way.

“Do you think it likely that I should confide in you?” she said, and inwardly quaked at the memory as she said it.

“No,” he answered, considering the matter gravely. “It’s not likely– the way things look to you now. But if you knew me better perhaps it would be likely.”

“I once explained to you that I do not intend to know you better,” she gave answer.

He nodded acquiescently.

“Yes. I got on to that. And it’s because it’s up to me that I came out here to tell you something I want you to know before you go away. I’m going to confide in you.”

“Cannot even you see that I am not in the mood to accept confidences?” she exclaimed.

“Yes, I can. But you’re going to accept this one,” steadily. “No,” as she made a swift movement, “I’m not going to clear the way till I’ve done.”

“I insist!” she cried. “If you were–“

He put out his hand, but not to touch her.

“I know what you’re going to say. If I were a gentleman–Well, I’m not laying claim to that–but I’m a sort of a man, anyhow, though you mayn’t think it. And you’re going to listen.”

She 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 don’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 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,” 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 Beautville. 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 to do her–in spite of herself–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!” red-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,” 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 utter breaking down 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.”

“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 put it to 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 “–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 beaten and 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 jings! I used to lie awake at night sometimes thinking `supposing it bad been Ann and me!’ I’d sort of work it out as it might have happened in New York–at the office of the Sunday Earth. Supposing some fellow that’d had a grouch against me had managed it so that Galton thought I’d been getting away with money that didn’t belong to me–fixing up my expense account, or worse. And Galton wouldn’t listen to what I said, and fired me; and I couldn’t get a job anywhere else because I was down and out for good. And nobody would listen. And I was killed without clearing myself. And Little Ann was left to stand it–Little Ann! Old Hutchinson wouldn’t listen, I know that. And it would be all shut up burning in her big little heart–burning. And T. T. dead, and not a word to say for himself. Jehoshaphat!”–taking out his handkerchief and touching his forehead–“it used to make the cold sweat start out on me. It’s doing it now. Ann and me might have been Jem and you. 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 something 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.

“Yes. I know a woman who has worn one for nearly eight years. Do you want to see it?”

“I’d give a good deal to,” was his answer.

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 because it was so low. “But I’ve never taken it off. I want 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, “You’d know this face again most anywhere you saw it, I guess.”

“There are no faces like it anywhere,” said Joan.

“I guess that’s so,” he replied. “And it’s one that wouldn’t change much either. 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 as 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 tables were spread with evening, morning, and walking-dresses, and the millinery collected from their combined wardrobes. She was examining anxiously a lace appliqued 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. You will require nothing anywhere in future. 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, but she temporarily laid the white coat on a chair. “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 it 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 my life.”

CHAPTER XXXII

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