T. Tembarom Part 69

Best let him alone and give him time to get used to the newness, he thought. Nothing must happen that could give him a jolt. Let things sort of sink into him, and perhaps they'd set him to thinking and lead him somewhere. Strangeways himself evidently did not want talk. He never wanted it unless he was excited. He was not excited now, and had settled down as if he was comfortable. Having finished one cigar he took another, and began to smoke it much more slowly than he had smoked his first. The slowness began to arrest Tembarom's attention.

This was the smoking of a man who was either growing sleepy or sinking into deep thought, becoming oblivious to what he was doing. Sometimes he held the cigar absently between his strong, fine fingers, seeming to forget it. Tembarom watched him do this until he saw it go out, and its white ash drop on the rug at his feet. He did not notice it, but sat sinking deeper and deeper into his own being, growing more remote.

What was going on under his absorbed stillness? Tembarom would not have moved or spoken "for a block of Fifth Avenue," he said internally. The dark eyes seemed to become darker until there was only a pin's point of light to be seen in their pupils. It was as if he were looking at something at a distance--at a strangely long distance.

Twice he turned his head and appeared to look slowly round the room, but not as normal people look-- as if it also was at the strange, long distance from him, and he were somewhere outside its walls. It was an uncanny thing to be a spectator to.

"How dead still the room is!" Tembarom found himself thinking.

It was "dead still." And it was a queer deal sitting, not daring to move--just watching. Something was bound to happen, sure! What was it going to be?

Strangeways' cigar dropped from his fingers and appeared to rouse him.

He looked puzzled for a moment, and then stooped quite naturally to pick it up.

"I forgot it altogether. It's gone out," he remarked.

"Have another," suggested Tembarom, moving the box nearer to him.

"No, thank you." He rose and crossed the room to the wall of book- shelves. And Tembarom's eye was caught again by the fineness of movement and line the evening clothes made manifest. "What a swell he looked when he moved about like that! What a swell, by jings!"

He looked along the line of shelves and presently took a book down and opened it. He turned over its leaves until something arrested his attention, and then he fell to reading. He read several minutes, while Tembarom watched him. The silence was broken by his laughing a little.

"Listen to this," he said, and began to read something in a language totally unknown to his hearer. "A man who writes that sort of thing about a woman is an old bounder, whether he's a poet or not. There's a small, biting spitefulness about it that's cattish."

"Who did it?" Tembarom inquired softly. It might be a good idea to lead him on.

"Horace. In spite of his genius, he sometimes makes you feel he was rather a blackguard."

"Horace!" For the moment T. Tembarom forgot himself. "I always heard he was a sort of Y.M.C.A. old guy--old Horace Greeley. The Tribune was no yellow journal when he had it."

He was sorry he had spoken the next moment. Strangeways looked puzzled.

"The Tribune," he hesitated. "The Roman Tribune?"

"No, New York. He started it--old Horace did. But perhaps we're not talking of the same man."

Strangeways hesitated again.

"No, I think we're not," he answered politely.

"I've made a break," thought Tembarom. "I ought to have kept my mouth shut. I must try to switch him back."

Strangeways was looking down at the back of the book he held in his hand.

"This one was the Latin poet, Quintus Horatius Flaccus, 65 B. C. You know him," he said.

"Oh, that one!" exclaimed Tembarom, as if with an air of immense relief. "What a fool I was to forget! I'm glad it's him. Will you go on reading and let me hear some more? He's a winner from Winnersville- - that Horace is."

Perhaps it was a sort of miracle, accomplished by his great desire to help the right thing to happen, to stave off any shadow of the wrong thing. Whatsoever the reason, Strangeways waited only a moment before turning to his book again. It seemed to be a link in some chain slowly forming itself to drag him back from his wanderings. And T. Tembarom, lightly sweating as a frightened horse will, sat smoking another pipe and listening intently to "Satires" and "Lampoons," read aloud in the Latin of 65 B. C.

"By gee!" he said faithfully, at intervals, when he saw on the reader's face that the moment was ripe. "He knew it all-- old Horace-- didn't he?"

He had steered his charge back. Things were coming along the line to him. He'd learned Latin at one of these big English schools. Boys always learned Latin, the duke had told him. They just had to. Most of them hated it like thunder, and they used to be caned when they didn't recite it right. Perhaps if he went on he'd begin to remember the school. A queer part of it was that he did not seem to notice that he was not reading his own language.

He did not, in fact, seem to remember anything in particular, but went on quite naturally for some minutes. He had replaced Horace on the shelf and was on the point of taking down another volume when he paused, as if recalling something else.

"Weren't we going to see the picture-gallery?" he inquired. "Isn't it getting late? I should like to see the portraits."

"No hurry," answered T. Tembarom. "I was just waiting till you were ready. But we'll go right away, if you like."

They went without further ceremony. As they walked through the hall and down the corridors side by side, an imaginative person might have felt that perhaps the eyes of an ancient darkling portrait or so looked down at the pair curiously: the long, loosely built New Yorker rather slouching along by the soldierly, almost romantic figure which, in a measure, suggested that others not unlike it might have trod the same oaken floor, wearing ruff and doublet, or lace jabot and sword.

There was a far cry between the two, but they walked closely in friendly union. When they entered the picture-gallery Strangeways paused a moment again, and stood peering down its length.

"It is very dimly lighted. How can we see?" he said.

"I told Pearson to leave it dim," Tembarom answered. "I wanted it just that way at first."

He tried--and succeeded tolerably well--to say it casually, as he led the way ahead of them. He and the duke had not talked the scheme over for nothing. As his grace had said, they had "worked the thing up." As they moved down the gallery, the men and women in their frames looked like ghosts staring out to see what was about to happen.

"We'll turn up the lights after a while," T. Tembarom explained, still casually. "There's a picture here I think a good deal of. I've stood and looked at it pretty often. It reminded me of some one the first day I set eyes on it; but it was quite a time before I made up my mind who it was. It used to drive me half dotty trying to think it out."

"Which one was it?" asked Strangeways.

"We're coming to it. I want to see if it reminds you of any one. And I want you to see it sudden." "It's got to be sudden," he had said to the duke. "If it's going to pan out, I believe it's got to be sudden."

"That's why I had the rest of 'em left dim. I told Pearson to leave a lamp I could turn up quick," he said to Strangeways.

The lamp was on a table near by and was shaded by a screen. He took it from the shadow and lifted it suddenly, so that its full gleam fell upon the portrait of the handsome youth with the lace collar and the dark, drooping eyes. It was done in a second, with a dramatically unexpected swiftness. His heart jumped up and down.

"Who's that?" he demanded, with abruptness so sharp-pitched that the gallery echoed with the sound. "Who's that?"

He heard a hard, quick gasp, a sound which was momentarily a little horrible, as if the man's soul was being jerked out of his body's depths.

"Who is he?" he cried again. "Tell me."

After the gasp, Strangeways stood still and stared. His eyes were glued to the canvas, drops of sweat came out on his forehead, and he was shuddering. He began to back away with a look of gruesome struggle. He backed and backed, and stared and stared. The gasp came twice again, and then his voice seemed to tear itself loose from some power that was holding it back.

"Th--at!" he cried. "It is--it--is Miles Hugo!"

The last words were almost a shout, and he shook as if he would have fallen. But T. Tembarom put his hand on his shoulder and held him, breathing fast himself. Gee! if it wasn't like a thing in a play!

"Page at the court of Charles the Second," he rattled off. "Died of smallpox when he was nineteen. Miles Hugo! Miles Hugo! You hold on to that for all your worth. And hold on to me. I'll keep you steady. Say it again."

"Miles Hugo." The poor majestic-looking fellow almost sobbed it.

"Where am I? What is the name of this place?"

"It's Temple Barholm in the county of Lancas.h.i.+re, England. Hold on to that, too--like thunder!"

Strangeways held the young man's arm with hands that clutched. He dragged at him. His nightmare held him yet; Tembarom saw it, but flashes of light were blinding him.

"Who"--he pleaded in a shaking and hollow whisper--"are you?"

Here was a stumper! By jings! By jings! And not a minute to think it out. But the answer came all right--all right!