T. Tembarom Part 58

"When I am comfortable and entertained," Moffat, the house steward, had quoted his master as saying, "you may mention it if the castle is in flames; but do not annoy me with excitement and flurry. Ring the bell in the courtyard, and call up the servants to pa.s.s buckets; but until the lawn catches fire, I must insist on being left alone."

"What dear papa talks to him about, and what he talks about to dear papa," Lady Celia had more than once murmured in her gently remote, high-nosed way, "I cannot possibly imagine. Sometimes when I have pa.s.sed them on my way to the croquet lawn I have really seen them both look as absorbed as people in a play. Of course it is very good for papa. It has had quite a marked effect on his digestion. But isn't it odd!"

"I wish," Lady Edith remarked almost wistfully, "that I could get on better with him myself conversationally. But I don't know what to talk about, and it makes me nervous."

Their father, on the contrary, found in him unique resources, and this afternoon it occurred to him that he had never so far heard him express himself freely on the subject of Palliser. If led to do so, he would probably reveal that he had views of Captain Palliser of which he might not have been suspected, and the manner in which they would unfold themselves would more than probably be illuminating. The duke was, in fact, serenely sure that he required neither warning nor advice, and he had no intention of offering either. He wanted to hear the views.

"Do you know," he said as he stirred his tea, "I've been thinking about Palliser, and it has occurred to me more than once that I should like to hear just how he strikes you?"

"What I got on to first was how I struck him," answered Tembarom, with a reasonable air. "That was dead easy."

There was no hint of any vaunt of superior shrewdness. His was merely the level-toned manner of an observer of facts in detail.

"He has given you an opportunity of seeing a good deal of him," the duke added. "What do you gather from him-- unless he has made up his mind that you shall not gather anything at all?"

"A fellow like that couldn't fix it that way, however much he wanted to," Tembarom answered again reasonably. "Just his trying to do it would give him away."

"You mean you have gathered things?"

"Oh, I've gathered enough, though I didn't go after it. It hung on the bushes. Anyhow, it seemed to me that way. I guess you run up against that kind everywhere. There's stacks of them in New York--different shapes and sizes."

"If you met a man of his particular shape and size in New York, how would you describe him?" the duke asked.

"I should never have met him when I was there. He wouldn't have come my way. He'd have been on Wall Street, doing high-cla.s.s bucket-shop business, or he'd have had a swell office selling copper-mines--any old kind of mine that's going to make ten million a minute, the sort of deal he's in now. If he'd been the kind I might have run up against," he added with deliberation, "he wouldn't have been as well dressed or as well spoken. He'd have been either flashy or down at heel. You'd have called him a crook."

The duke seemed pleased with his tea as, after having sipped it, he put it down on the table at his side.

"A crook?" he repeated. "I wonder if that word is altogether American?"

"It's not complimentary, but you asked me," said Tembarom. "But I don't believe you asked me because you thought I wasn't on to him."

"Frankly speaking, no," answered the duke. "Does he talk to you about the mammoth mines and the rubber forests?"

"Say, that's where he wins out with me," Tembarom replied admiringly.

"He gets in such fine work that I switch him on to it whenever I want cheering up. It makes me sorter forget things that worry me just to see a man act the part right up to the top notch the way he does it.

The very way his clothes fit, the style he's got his hair brushed, and that swell, careless lounge of his, are half of the make-up. You see, most of us couldn't mistake him for anything else but just what he looks like--a gentleman visiting round among his friends and a million miles from wanting to b.u.t.t in with business. The thing that first got me interested was watching how he slid in the sort of guff he wanted you to get worked up about and think over. Why, if I'd been what I look like to him, he'd have had my pile long ago, and he wouldn't be loafing round here any more."

"What do you think you look like to him?" his host inquired.

"I look as if I'd eat out of his hand," Tembarom answered, quite unbiased by any touch of wounded vanity. "Why shouldn't I? And I'm not trying to wake him up, either. I like to look that way to him and to his sort. It gives me a chance to watch and get wise to things. He's a high-school education in himself. I like to hear him talk. I asked him to come and stay at the house so that I could hear him talk."

"Did he introduce the mammoth mines in his first call?" the duke inquired.

"Oh, I don't mean that kind of talk. I didn't know how much good I was going to get out of him at first. But he was the kind I hadn't known, and it seemed like he was part of the whole thing--like the girls with t.i.tle that Ann said I must get next to. And an easy way of getting next to the man kind was to let him come and stay. He wanted to, all right. I guess that's the way he lives when he's down on his luck, getting invited to stay at places. Like Lady Mallowe," he added, quite without prejudice.

"You do sum them up, don't you?" smiled the duke.

"Well, I don't see how I could help it," he said impartially. "They're printed in sixty-four point black-face, seems to me."

"What is that?" the duke inquired with interest. He thought it might be a new and desirable bit of slang. "I don't know that one."

"Biggest type there is," grinned Tembarom. "It's the kind that's used for head-lines. That's newspaper-office talk."

"Ah, technical, I see. What, by the way, is the smallest lettering called?" his grace followed up.

"Brilliant," answered Tembarom.

"You," remarked the duke, "are not printed in sixty-four-point black- face so far as they are concerned. You are not even brilliant. They don't find themselves able to sum you up. That fact is one of my recreations."

"I'll tell you why," Tembarom explained with his clearly unprejudiced air. "There's nothing much about me to sum up, anyhow. I'm too sort of plain sailing and ordinary. I'm not making for anywhere they'd think I'd want to go. I'm not hiding anything they'd be sure I'd want to hide."

"By the Lord! you're not!" exclaimed the duke.

"When I first came here, every one of them had a fool idea I'd want to pretend I'd never set eyes on a newsboy or a boot-black, and that I couldn't find my way in New York when I got off Fifth Avenue. I used to see them thinking they'd got to look as if they believed it, if they wanted to keep next. When I just let out and showed I didn't care a darn and hadn't sense enough to know that it mattered, it nearly made them throw a fit. They had to turn round and fix their faces all over again and act like it was 'interesting.' That's what Lady Mallowe calls it. She says it's so 'interesting!'"

"It is," commented the duke.

"Well, you know that, but she doesn't. Not on your life! I guess it makes her about sick to think of it and have to play that it's just what you'd want all your men friends to have done. Now, Palliser--" he paused and grinned again. He was sitting in a most casual att.i.tude, his hands clasped round one up-raised knee, which he nursed, balancing himself. It was a position of informal ease which had an air of a.s.sisting enjoyable reflection.

"Yes, Palliser? Don't let us neglect Palliser," his host encouraged him.

"He's in a worse mix-up than the rest because he's got more to lose.

If he could work this mammoth-mine song and dance with the right people, there'd be money enough in it to put him on Easy Street.

That's where he's aiming for. The company's just where it has to have a boost. It's just GOT to. If it doesn't, there'll be a bust up that may end in fitting out a high-toned promoter or so in a striped yellow-and-black Jersey suit and set him to breaking rocks or playing with oak.u.m. I'll tell you, poor old Palliser gets the w.i.l.l.i.e.s sometimes after he's read his mail. He turns the color of ecru baby Irish. That's a kind of lace I got a dressmaker to tell me about when I wrote up receptions and dances for the Sunday Earth. Ecru baby Irish--that's Palliser's color after he's read his letters."

"I dare say the fellow's in a devil of a mess, if the truth were known," the duke said.

"And here's 'T. T.,' hand-made and hand-painted for the part of the kind of sucker he wants." T. Tembarom's manner was almost sympathetic in its appreciation. "I can tell you I'm having a real good time with Palliser. It looked like I'd just dropped from heaven when he first saw me. If he'd been the praying kind, I'd have been just the sort he'd have prayed for when he said his `Now-I-lay-me's' before he went to bed. There wasn't a chance in a hundred that I wasn't a fool that had his head swelled so that he'd swallow any darned thing if you handed it to him smooth enough. First time he called he asked me a lot of questions about New York business. That was pretty smart of him. He wanted to find out, sort of careless, how much I knew--or how little."

The duke was leaning back luxuriously in his chair and gazing at him as he might have gazed at the work of an old master of which each line and shade was of absorbing interest.

"I can see him," he said. "I can see him."

"He found out I knew nothing," Tembarom continued. "And what was to hinder him trying to teach me something, by gee! Nothing on top of the green earth. I was there, waiting with my mouth open, it seemed like."

"And he has tried--in his best manner?" said his grace.

"What he hasn't tried wouldn't be worthy trying," Tembarom answered cheerfully. "Sometimes it seems like a shame to waste it. I've got so I know how to start him when he doesn't know I'm doing it. I tell you, he's fine. Gentlemanly --that's his way, you know. High-toned friend that just happens to know of a good thing and thinks enough of you in a sort of reserved way to feel like it's a pity not to give you a chance to come in on the ground floor, if you've got the sense to see the favor he's friendly enough to do you. It's such a favor that it'd just disgust a man if you could possibly turn it down. But of course you're to take it or leave it. It's not to his interest to push it.

Lord, no! Whatever you did his way is that he'd not condescend to say a darned word. High-toned silence, that's all."

The Duke of Stone was chuckling very softly. His chuckles rather broke his words when he spoke.

"By--by--Jove!" he said. "You--you do see it, don't you? You do see it."

Tembarom nursed his knee comfortably.

"Why," he said, "it's what keeps me up. You know a lot more about me than any one else does, but there's a whole raft of things I think about that I couldn't hang round any man's neck. If I tried to hang them round yours, you'd know that I would be having a h.e.l.l of a time here, if I'd let myself think too much. If I didn't see it, as you call it, if I didn't see so many things, I might begin to get sorry for myself. There was a pause of a second. "Gee!" he said, "Gee! this not hearing a thing about Ann!--"