T. Tembarom Part 43

"Oh, I see. You were asking whether the family is a t.i.tled one. No; it is a good old name, quite old, in fact, but no t.i.tle goes with the estate."

"Who are the t.i.tled people about here?" Tembarom asked, quite unabashed.

"The Earl of Pevensy at Pevensy Park, the Duke of Stone at Stone Hover, Lord Hambrough at Doone. Doone is in the next county, just over the border."

"Have they all got daughters?"

Captain Palliser found it expedient to clear his throat before speaking.

"Lord Pevensy has daughters, so has the duke. Lord Hambrough has three sons."

"How many daughters are there--in a bunch?" Mr. Temple Barholm suggested liberally.

There Captain Palliser felt it safe to allow himself to smile, as though taking it with a sense of humor.

"'In a bunch' is an awfully good way of putting it," he said. "It happens to apply perhaps rather unfortunately well; both families are much poorer than they should be, and daughters must be provided for.

Each has four. 'In a bunch' there are eight: Lady Alice, Lady Edith, Lady Ethel, and Lady Celia at Stone Hover; Lady Beatrice, Lady Gwynedd, Lady Honora, and Lady Gwendolen at Pevensy Park. And not a fortune among them, poor girls!"

"It's not the money that matters so much," said the astounding foreigner, "it's the t.i.tles."

Captain Palliser stopped short in the garden path for a moment. He could scarcely believe his ears. The crude grotesqueness of it so far got the better of him that if he had not coughed he would have betrayed himself.

"I've had a confounded cold lately," he said. "Excuse me; I must get it over."

He turned a little aside and coughed energetically.

After watching him a few seconds Tembarom slipped two fingers into his waistcoat pocket and produced a small tube of tablets.

"Take two of these," he said as soon as the cough stopped. "I always carry it about with me. It's a New York thing called 'G. Destroyer.' G stands for grippe."

Palliser took it.

"Thanks. With water? No? Just dissolve in the mouth. Thanks awfully."

And he took two, with tears still standing in his eyes.

"Don't taste bad, do they?" Mr. Temple Barholm remarked encouragingly.

"Not at all. I think I shall be all right now. I just needed the relief. I have been trying to restrain it."

"That's a mistake," said Tembarom. They strolled on a pace or so, and he began again, as though he did not mean to let the subject drop.

"It's the t.i.tles," he said, "and the kind. How many of them are good- lookers?"

Palliser reflected a moment, as though making mental choice.

"Lady Alice and Lady Celia are rather plain," he said, "and both of them are invalidish. Lady Ethel is tall and has handsome eyes, but Lady Edith is really the beauty of the family. She rides and dances well and has a charming color."

"And the other ones," Tembaron suggested as he paused--"Lady Beatrice and Lady Gwynedd and Lady Honora and Lady Gwendolen."

"You remember their names well," Palliser remarked with a half-laugh.

"Oh, I shall remember them all right," Tembarom answered. "I earned twenty-five per in New York by getting names down fine."

"The Talchesters are really all rather taking. Talchester is Lord Pevensy's family name," Palliser explained. "They are girls who have pretty little noses and bright complexions and eyes. Lady Gwynedd and Lady Honora both have quite fascinating dimples."

"Dimples!" exclaimed his companion. "Good business."

"Do you like dimples particularly?" Palliser inquired with an impartial air.

"I'd always make a bee-line for a dimple," replied Mr. Temple Barholm.

"Clear the way when I start."

This was New York phrasing, and was plainly humorous; but there was something more than humor in his eye and smile--something hinting distantly at recollection.

"You'll find them at Pevensy Park," said Palliser.

"What about Lady Joan Fayre?" was the next inquiry.

Palliser's side glance at him was observant indeed. He asked himself how much the man could know. Taking the past into consideration, Lady Joan might turn out to be a subject requiring delicate handling. It was not the easiest thing in the world to talk at all freely to a person with whom one desired to keep on good terms, about a young woman supposed still to cherish a tragic pa.s.sion for the dead man who ought to stand at the present moment in the person's, figuratively speaking, extremely ill-fitting shoes.

"Lady Joan has been from her first season an undeniable beauty," he replied.

"She and the old lady are going to stay at a place called a.s.shawe Holt. I think they're going next week," Tembarom said.

"The old lady?" repeated Captain Palliser.

"I mean her mother. The one that's the Countess of Mallowe."

"Have you met Lady Mallowe?" Palliser inquired with a not wholly repressed smile. A vision of Lady Mallowe over-hearing their conversation arose before him.

"No, I haven't. What's she like?"

"She is not the early- or mid-Victorian old lady," was Palliser's reply. "She wears Gainsborough hats, and looks a quite possible eight and thirty. She is a handsome person herself."

He was not aware that the term "old lady" was, among Americans of the cla.s.s of Mrs. Bowse's boarders, a sort of generic term signifying almost anything maternal which had pa.s.sed thirty.

Tembarom proceeded.

"After they get through at the a.s.shawe Holt place, I've asked them to come here."

"Indeed," said Palliser, with an inward start. The man evidently did not know what other people did. After all, why should he? He had been selling something or other in the streets of New York when the thing happened, and he knew nothing of London.

"The countess called on Miss Alicia when we were in London," he heard next. "She said we were relations."

"You are--as we are. The connection is rather distant, but it is near enough to form a sort of link."

"I've wanted to see Lady Joan," explained Tembarom. "From what I've heard, I should say she was one of the 'Lady's Pictorial' kind."

"I am afraid--" Palliser's voice was slightly unsteady for the moment- -"I have not studied the type sufficiently to know. The 'Pictorial' is so exclusively a women's periodical."