T. Tembarom Part 16

"What are you going to do with your Freak? " called out Julius Steinberger.

Tembarom actually started. As things had surged over him, he had had too much to think over. He had not had time to give to his strange responsibility; it had become one nevertheless.

"Are you going to leave him behind when you go to England?"

He leaned forward and put his chin on his hand.

"Why, say," he said, as though he were thinking it out, "he's spoken about England two or three times. He's said he must go there. By jings! I'll take him with me, and see what'll happen."

When Little Ann got up to leave the room he followed her and her father into the hall.

"May I come up and talk it over with you?" he appealed. "I've got to talk to some one who knows something about it. I shall go dotty if I don't. It's too much like a dream."

"Come on up when you're ready," answered Hutchinson. "Ann and me can give you a tip or two."

"I'm going to be putting the last things in the trunks," said Ann, "but I dare say you won't mind that. The express'll be here by eight in the morning."

"0 Lord!" groaned Tembarom.

When he went up to the fourth floor a little later, Hutchinson had fallen into a doze in his chair over his newspaper, and Ann was kneeling by a trunk in the hall, folding small articles tightly, and fitting them into corners. To Tembarom she looked even more than usual like a slight child thing one could s.n.a.t.c.h up in one's arms and carry about or set on one's knee without feeling her weight at all. An inferior gas-jet on the wall just above her was doing its best with the lot of soft, red hair, which would have been an untidy bundle if it had not been hers.

Tembarom sat down on the trunk next to her.

"0 Little Ann!" he broke out under his breath, lest the sound of his voice might check Hutchinson's steady snoring. "0 Little Ann!"

Ann leaned back, sitting upon her small heels, and looked up at him.

"You're all upset, and it's not to be wondered at, Mr. Temple Barholm," she said.

"Upset! You're going away to-morrow morning! And, for the Lord's sake, don't call me that!" he protested.

"You're going away yourself next Wednesday. And you ARE Mr. Temple Barholm. You'll never be called anything else in England.

"How am I going to stand it?" he protested again. "How could a fellow like me stand it! To be yanked out of good old New York, and set down in a place like a museum, with Central Park round it, and called Mr.

Temple Temple Barholm instead of just 'Tem' or 'T. T.'! It's not natural."

"What you must do, Mr. Temple Barholm, is to keep your head clear, that's all," she replied maturely.

"Lord! if I'd got a head like yours!"

She seemed to take him in, with a benign appreciativeness, in his entirety.

"Well, you haven't," she admitted, though quite without disparagement, merely with slight reservation. "But you've got one like your own. And it's a good head--when you try to think steady. Yours is a man's head, and mine's only a woman's."

"It's Little Ann Hutchinson's, by gee!" said Tembarom, with feeling.

"Listen here, Mr. Tem--Temple Barholm," she went on, as nearly disturbed as he had ever seen her outwardly. "It's a wonderful thing that's happened to you. It's like a novel. That splendid place, that splendid name! It seems so queer to think I should ever have talked to a Mr. Temple Barholm as I've talked to you."

He leaned forward a little as though something drew him.

"But"--there was unsteady appeal in his voice--"you have liked me, haven't you, Little Ann?"

Her own voice seemed to drop into an extra quietness that made it remote. She looked down at her hands on her lap.

"Yes, I have liked you. I have told Father I liked you," she answered.

He got up, and made an impetuous rush at his goal.

"Then--say, I'm going in there to wake up Mr. Hutchinson and ask him not to sail to-morrow morning."

"You'd better not wake him up," she answered, smiling; but he saw that her face changed and flushed. "It's not a good time to ask Father anything when he's just been waked up. And we HAVE to go. The express is coming at eight."

"Send it away again; tell 'em you're not going. Tell 'em any old thing. Little Ann, what's the matter with you? Something's the matter.

Have I made a break?"

He had felt the remoteness in her even before he had heard it in her dropped voice. It had been vaguely there even when he sat down on the trunk. Actually there was a touch of reserve about her, as though she was keeping her little place with the self-respecting propriety of a girl speaking to a man not of her own world.

"I dare say I've done some fool thing without knowing it. I don't know where I'm at, anyhow," he said woefully.

"Don't look at me like that, Mr. Temple Barholm," she said--"as if I was unkind. I--I'm NOT."

"But you're different," he implored. "I saw it the minute I came up. I ran up-stairs just crazy to talk to you,--yes, crazy to talk to you-- and you--well, you were different. Why are you, if you're not mad?"

Then she rose and stood holding one of her neatly rolled packages in her hand. Her eyes were soft and clear, and appealed maternally to his reason.

"Because everything's different. You just think a bit," she answered.

He stared at her a few seconds, and then understanding of her dawned upon him. He made a human young dash at her, and caught her arm.

"What!" he cried out. "You mean this Temple Barholm song and dance makes things different? Not on your life! You're not the girl to work that on me, as if it was my fault. You've got to hear me speak my piece. Ann--you've just got to!"

He had begun to tremble a little, and she herself was not steady; but she put a hand on his arm.

"Don't say anything you've not had time to think about," she said.

"I've been thinking of pretty near nothing else ever since I came here. Just as soon as I looked at you across the table that first day I saw my finish, and every day made me surer. I'd never had any comfort or taking care of,--I didn't know the first thing about it,-- and it seemed as if all there was of it in the world was just in YOU."

"Did you think that?" she asked falteringly.

"Did I? That's how you looked to me, and it's how you look now. The way you go about taking care of everybody and just handing out solid little chunks of good sense to every darned fool that needs them, why- -" There was a break in his voice--"why, it just knocked me out the first round." He held her a little away from him, so that he could yearn over her, though he did not know he was yearning. "See, I'd sworn I'd never ask a girl to marry me until I could keep her. Well, you know how it was, Ann. I couldn't have kept a goat, and I wasn't such a fool that I didn't know it. I've been pretty sick when I thought how it was; but I never worried you, did I?"

"No, you didn't."

"I just got busy. I worked like--well, I got busier than I ever was in my life. When I got the page SURE, I let myself go a bit, sort of hoping. And then this Temple Barholm thing hits me."

"That's the thing you've got to think of now," said Little Ann. "I'm going to talk sensible to you."

"Don't, Ann! Good Lord! DON'T!"