T. Tembarom Part 42

"It strikes you in that way, too?" said Miss Alicia, shyly. "I used to wonder if it was--not quite nice of me to think of it. But it did seem that if any one did look at one like that--" Maidenly shyness overcame her. "Poor Lady Joan!" she sighed.

"There's a sort of cleft in his chin, though it's a good, square chin," he suggested. "And that smile of his--Were Jem's--?"

"Yes, they were. The likeness was quite odd sometimes-- quite."

"Those are things that wouldn't be likely to change much when he grew up," Tembarom said, drawing a little closer to the picture. "Poor Jem!

He was up against it hard and plenty. He had it hardest. This chap only died."

There was no mistaking his sympathy. He asked so many questions that they sat down and talked instead of going through the gallery. He was interested in the detail of all that had occurred after the ghastly moment when Jem had risen from the card-table and stood looking around, like some baited dying animal, at the circle of cruel faces drawing in about him. How soon had he left London? Where had he gone first? How had he been killed? He had been buried with others beneath a fall of earth and stones. Having heard this much, Tembarom saw he could not ask more questions. Miss Alicia became pale, and her hands trembled. She could not bear to discuss details so harrowing.

"Say, I oughtn't to let you talk about that," he broke out, and he patted her hand and made her get up and finish their walk about the gallery. He held her elbow in his own odd, nice way as he guided her, and the things he said, and the things he pretended to think or not to understand, were so amusing that in a short time he had made her laugh. She knew him well enough by this time to be aware that he was intentionally obliging her to forget what it only did her harm to remember. That was his practical way of looking at it.

"Getting a grouch on or being sorry for what you can't help cuts no ice," he sometimes said. "When it does, me for getting up at daybreak and keeping at it! But it doesn't, you bet your life on that."

She could see that he had really wanted to hear about Jem, but he knew it was bad for her to recall things, and he would not allow her to dwell on them, just as she knew he would not allow himself to dwell on little Miss Hutchinson, remotely placed among the joys of his beloved New York.

Two other incidents besides the visit to Miles Hugo afterward marked that day when Miss Alicia looked back on it. The first was his unfolding to her his plans for the house-party, which was characteristic of his habit of thinking things over and deciding them before he talked about them.

"If I'm going to try the thing out, as Ann says I must," he began when they had gone back to the library after lunch, "I've got to get going.

I'm not seeing any of those Pictorial girls, and I guess I've got to see some."

"You will be invited to dine at places," said Miss Alicia, -- "presently," she added bravely, in fact, with an air of greater conviction than she felt.

"If it's not the law that they've got to invite me or go to jail,"

said Tembarom, "I don't blame 'em for not doing it if they're not stuck on me. And they're not; and it's natural. But I've got to get in my fine work, or my year'll be over before I've 'found out for myself,' as Ann called it. There's where I'm at, Miss Alicia--and I've been thinking of Lady Joan and her mother. You said you thought they'd come and stay here if they were properly asked."

"I think they would," answered Miss Alicia with her usual delicacy. "I thought I gathered from Lady Mallowe that, as she was to be in the neighborhood, she would like to see you and Temple Barholm, which she greatly admires."

"If you'll tell me what to do, I'll get her here to stay awhile," he said, "and Lady Joan with her. You'd have to show me how to write to ask them; but perhaps you'd write yourself."

"They will be at a.s.shawe Holt next week," said Miss Alicia, "and we could go and call on them together. We might write to them in London before they leave."

"We'll do it," answered Tembarom. His manner was that of a practical young man attacking matter-of-fact detail. "From what I hear, Lady Joan would satisfy even Ann. They say she's the best-looker on the slate. If I see her every day I shall have seen the blue-ribbon winner. Then if she's here, perhaps others of her sort'll come, too; and they'll have to see me whether they like it or not--and I shall see them. Good Lord!" he added seriously, "I'd let 'em swarm all over me and bite me all summer if it would fix Ann."

He stood up, with his hands thrust deep in his pockets, and looked down at the floor.

"I wish she knew T. T. like T. T. knows himself," he said. It was quite wistful.

It was so wistful and so boyish that Miss Alicia was thrilled as he often thrilled her.

"She ought to be a very happy girl," she exclaimed.

"She's going to be," he answered, "sure as you're alive. But whatever she does, is right, and this is as right as everything else. So it just goes."

They wrote their letters at once, and sent them off by the afternoon post. The letter Miss Alicia composed, and which Tembarom copied, he read and reread, with visions of Jim Bowles and Julius looking over his shoulder. If they picked it up on Broadway, with his name signed to it, and read it, they'd throw a fit over it, laughing. But he supposed she knew what you ought to write.

It had not, indeed, the masculine touch. When Lady Mallowe read it, she laughed several times. She knew quite well that he had not known what to say, and, allowing Miss Alicia to instruct him, had followed her instructions to the letter. But she did not show the letter to Joan, who was difficult enough to manage without being given such material to comment upon.

The letters had just been sent to the post when a visitor was announced--Captain Palliser. Tembarom remembered the name, and recalled also certain points connected with him. He was the one who was a promoter of schemes--"One of the smooth, clever ones that get up companies," Little Ann had said.

That in a well-bred and not too p.r.o.nounced way he looked smooth and clever might be admitted. His effect was that of height, finished slenderness of build, and extremely well-cut garments. He was no longer young, and he had smooth, thin hair and a languidly observant gray eye.

"I have been staying at Detchworth Grange," he explained when he had shaken hands with the new Temple Barholm and Miss Alicia. "It gave me an excellent opportunity to come and pay my respects."

There was a hint of uncertainty in the observant gray eye. The fact was that he realized in the s.p.a.ce of five minutes that he knew his ground even less than he had supposed he did. He had not spent his week at Detchworth Grange without making many quiet investigations, but he had found out nothing whatever. The new man was an ignoramus, but no one had yet seemed to think him exactly a fool. He was not excited by the new grandeurs of his position and he was not ashamed of himself. Captain Palliser wondered if he was perhaps sharp--one of those New Yorkers shrewd even to light-fingeredness in clever scheming. Stories of a newly created method of business dealing involving an air of candor and almost primitive good nature--an American method--had attracted Captain Palliser's attention for some time. A certain Yankee rawness of manner played a part as a factor, a crudity which would throw a man off guard if he did not recognize it.

The person who employed the method was of philosophical non- combativeness. The New York phrase was that "He jollied a man along."

Immense schemes had been carried through in that way. Men in London, in England, were not sufficiently light of touch in their jocularity.

He wondered if perhaps this young fellow, with his ready laugh and rather loose-jointed, casual way of carrying himself, was of this dangerous new school.

What, however, could he scheme for, being the owner of Temple Barholm's money? It may be mentioned at once that Captain Palliser's past had been such as had fixed him in the belief that every one was scheming for something. People with money wanted more or were privately arranging schemes to prevent other schemers from getting any shade the better of them. Debutantes with shy eyes and slim figures had their little plans to engineer delicately. Sometimes they were larger plans than the uninitiated would have suspected as existing in the brains of creatures in their 'teens, sometimes they were mere fantastic little ideas connected with das.h.i.+ng young men or innocent dances which must be secured or lovely young rivals who must be evaded. Young men had also deft things to do-- people to see or not to see, reasons for themselves being seen or avoiding observation. As years increased, reasons for schemes became more numerous and amazingly more varied. Women with daughters, with sons, with husbands, found in each relations.h.i.+p a necessity for active, if quiet, manoeuvering. Women like Lady Mallowe--good heaven! by what schemes did not that woman live and have her being--and her daughter's--from day to day! Without money, without a friend who was an atom more to be relied on than she would have been herself if an acquaintance had needed her aid, her outwardly well-to-do and fas.h.i.+onable existence was a hand-to-hand fight. No wonder she had turned a still rather brilliant eye upon Sir Moses Monaldini, the great Israelite financier.

All of these types pa.s.sed rapidly before his mental vision as he talked to the American Temple Barholm. What could he want, by chance?

He must want something, and it would be discreet to find out what it chanced to be.

If it was social success, he would be better off in London, where in these days you could get a good run for your money and could swing yourself up from one rung of the ladder to another if you paid some one to show you how. He himself could show him how. A youngster who had lived the beastly hard life he had lived would be likely to find exhilaration in many things not difficult to purchase. It was an odd thing, by the way, the fancy he had taken to the little early- Victorian spinster. It was not quite natural. It perhaps denoted tendencies--or lack of tendencies--it would also be well to consider.

Palliser was a sufficiently finished product himself to be struck greatly by the artistic perfection of Miss Alicia, and to wonder how much the new man understood it.

He did not talk to him about schemes. He talked to him of New York, which he had never seen and hoped sometime shortly to visit. The information he gained was not of the kind he most desired, but it edified him. Tembarom's knowledge of high finance was a street lad's knowledge of it, and he himself knew its limitations and probable unreliability. Such of his facts as rested upon the foundation of experience did not include multimillionaires and their resources.

Captain Palliser pa.s.sed lightly to Temple Barholm and its neighborhood. He knew places and names, and had been to Detchworth more than once. He had never visited Temple Barholm, and his interest suggested that he would like to walk through the gardens. Tembarom took him out, and they strolled about for some time. Even an alert observer would not have suspected the fact that as they strolled, Tembarom slouching a trifle and with his hands in his pockets, Captain Palliser bearing himself with languid distinction, each man was summing up the other and considering seriously how far and in what manner he could be counted as an a.s.set.

"You haven't been to Detchworth yet?" Palliser inquired.

"No, not yet," answered Tembarom. The Granthams were of those who had not yet called.

"It's an agreeable house. The Granthams are agreeable people."

"Are there any young people in the family? " Tembarom asked.

"Young people? Male or female? " Palliser smilingly put it. Suddenly it occurred to him that this might give him a sort of lead.

"Girls," said Tembarom, crudely--" just plain girls."

Palliser laughed. Here it was, perhaps.

"They are not exactly 'plain' girls, though they are not beauties.

There are four Misses Grantham. Lucy is the prettiest. Amabel is quite tremendous at tennis."

"Are they ladies?" inquired Tembarom.

Captain Palliser turned and involuntarily stared at him. What was the fellow getting at?

"I'm afraid I don't quite understand," he said.

The new Temple Barholm looked quite serious. He did not, amazing to relate, look like a fool even when he gave forth his extraordinary question. It was his almost business-like seriousness which saved him.

"I mean, do you call them Lady Lucy and Lady Amabel?" he answered.

If he had been younger, less hardened, or less finished, Captain Palliser would have laughed outright. But he answered without self- revelation.