CHAPTER XXIV
Upon the terrace, when he was led up the steps, stood a most perfect
little elderly lady in a state of agitation much greater than his own
or his rescuer's. It was an agitation as perfect in its femininity as
she herself was. It expressed its kind tremors in the fashion which
belonged to the puce silk dress and fine bits of collar and
undersleeve the belated gracefulness of which caused her to present
herself to him rather as a figure cut neatly from a book of the styles
he had admired in his young manhood. It was of course Miss Alicia, who
having, with Tembarom, seen the galloping pony from a window, had
followed him when he darted from the room. She came forward, looking
pale with charming solicitude.
"I do so hope you are not hurt," she exclaimed. "It really seemed that
only divine Providence could prevent a terrible accident."
"I am afraid that it was more grotesque than terrible," he answered a
shade breathlessly.
"Let me make you acquainted with the Duke of Stone, Miss Alicia,"
Tembarom said in the formula of Mrs. Bowse's boarders on state
occasions of introduction. "Duke, let me make you acquainted, sir,
with my--relation--Miss Alicia Temple Barholm."
The duke's bow had a remote suggestion of almost including a kissed
hand in its gallant courtesy. Not, however, that Early Victorian
ladies had been accustomed to the kissing of hands; but at the period
when he had best known the type he had daily bent over white fingers
in Continental capitals.
"A glass of wine," Miss Alicia implored. "Pray let me give you a glass
of wine. I am sure you need it very much."
He was taken into the library and made to sit in a most comfortable
easy-chair. Miss Alicia fluttered about him with sympathy still
delicately tinged with alarm. How long, how long, it had been since he
had been fluttered over! Nearly forty years. Ladies did not flutter
now, and he remembered that it was no longer the fashion to call them
"ladies." Only the lower-middle classes spoke of "ladies." But he
found himself mentally using the word again as he watched Miss Alicia.
It had been "ladies" who had fluttered and been anxious about a man in
this quite pretty way.
He could scarcely remove his eyes from her as he sipped his wine. She
felt his escape "providential," and murmured such devout little
phrases concerning it that he was almost consoled for the grotesque
inward vision of himself as an aged peer of the realm tumbling out of
a baby-carriage and rolled over on the grass at the feet of a man on
whom later he had meant to make, in proper state, a formal call. She
put her hand to her side, smiling half apologetically.
"My heart beats quite fast yet," she said. Whereupon a quaintly novel
thing took place, at the sight of which the duke barely escaped
opening his eyes very wide indeed. The American Temple Barholm put his
arm about her in the most casual and informally accustomed way, and
led her to a chair, and put her in it, so to speak.
"Say," he announced with affectionate authority, "you sit down right
away. It's you that needs a glass of wine, and I'm going to give it to
you."
The relations between the two were evidently on a basis not common in
England even among people who were attached to one another. There was
a spontaneous, every-day air of natural, protective petting about it,
as though the fellow was fond of her in his crude fashion, and meant
to take care of her. He was fond of her, and the duke perceived it
with elation, and also understood. He might be the ordinary bestower
of boons, but the protective curve of his arm included other things.
In the blank dullness of his unaccustomed splendors he had somehow
encountered this fine, delicately preserved little relic of other
days, and had seized on her and made her his own.
"I have not seen anything as delightful as Miss Temple Barholm for
many a year," the duke said when Miss Alicia was called from the room
and left them together.
"Ain't she great?" was Tembarom's reply. "She's just great."
"It's an exquisite survival of type," said the duke. "She belongs to
my time, not yours," he added, realizing that "survival of type" might
not clearly convey itself.
"Well, she belongs to mine now," answered Tembarom. "I wouldn't lose
her for a farm."
"The voice, the phrases, the carriage might survive,- they do in
remote neighborhoods, I suppose--but the dress is quite delightfully
incredible. It is a work of art," the duke went on. She had seemed too
good to be true. Her clothes, however, had certainly not been dug out
of a wardrobe of forty years ago.
"When I went to talk to the head woman in the shop in Bond Street I
fixed it with 'em hard and fast that she was not to spoil her. They
were to keep her like she was. She's like her little cap, you know,
and her little mantles and tippets. She's like them," exclaimed
Tembarom.
Did he see that? What an odd feature in a man of his sort! And how
thoroughly New Yorkish it was that he should march into a fashionable
shop and see that he got what he wanted and the worth of his money!
There had been no rashness in the hope that the unexplored treasure
might be a rich one. The man's simplicity was an actual complexity. He
had a boyish eye and a grin, but there was a business-like line about
his mouth which was strong enough to have been hard if it had not been
good-natured.
"That was confoundedly clever of you," his grace commented heartily--
"confoundedly. I should never have had the wit to think of it myself,
or the courage to do it if I had. Shop-women make me shy."
"Oh, well, I just put it up to them," Tembarom answered easily.
"I believe," cautiously translated the duke, "that you mean that you
made them feel that they alone were responsible."
"Yes, I do," assented Tembarom, the grin slightly in evidence. "Put it
up to them's the short way of saying it."
"Would you mind my writing that down?" said the duke. "I have a fad
for dialects and new phrases." He hastily scribbled the words in a
tablet that he took from his pocket. "Do you like living in England?"
he asked in course of time.
"I should like it if I'd been born here," was the answer.
"I see, I see."
"If it had not been for finding Miss Alicia, and that I made a promise
I'd stay for a year, anyhow, I'd have broken loose at the end of the
first week and worked my passage back if I hadn't had enough in my
clothes to pay for it." He laughed, but it was not real laughter.
There was a thing behind it. The situation was more edifying than one
could have hoped. "I made a promise, and I'm going to stick it out,"
he said.
He was going to stick it out because he had promised to endure for a
year Temple Barholm and an income of seventy thousand pounds! The duke
gazed at him as at a fond dream realized.
"I've nothing to do," Tembarom added.
"Neither have I," replied the Duke of Stone.
"But you're used to it, and I'm not. I'm used to working 'steen hours
a day, and dropping into bed as tired as a dog, but ready to sleep
like one and get up rested."
"I used to play twenty hours a day once," answered the duke, "but I
didn't get up rested. That's probably why I have gout and rheumatism
combined. Tell me how you worked, and I will tell you how I played."
It was worth while taking this tone with him. It had been worth while
taking it with the chestnut-gathering peasants in the Apennines,
sometimes even with a stone-breaker by an English roadside. And this
one was of a type more unique and distinctive than any other--a fellow
who, with the blood of Saxon kings and Norman nobles in his veins, had
known nothing but the street life of the crudest city in the world,
who spoke a sort of argot, who knew no parallels of the things which
surrounded him in the ancient home he had inherited and in which he
stood apart, a sort of semi-sophisticated savage. The duke applied
himself with grace and finished ability to drawing him out. The
questions he asked were all seemingly those of a man of the world
charmingly interested in the superior knowledge of a foreigner of
varied experience. His method was one which engaged the interest of
Tembarom himself. He did not know that he was not only questioned,
but, so to speak, delicately cross-examined and that before the end of
the interview the Duke of Stone knew more of him, his past existence
and present sentiments, than even Miss Alicia knew after their long
and intimate evening talks. The duke, however, had the advantage of
being a man and of cherishing vivid recollections of the days of his
youth, which, unlike as it had been to that of Tembarom, furnished a
degree of solid foundation upon which go to build conjecture.
"A young man of his age," his grace reflected astutely, "has always
just fallen out of love, is falling into it, or desires vaguely to do
so. Ten years later there would perhaps be blank spaces, lean years
during which he was not in love at all; but at his particular period
there must be a young woman somewhere. I wonder if she is employed in
one of the department stores he spoke of, and how soon he hopes to
present her to us. His conversation has revealed so far, to use his
own rich simile, 'neither hide nor hair' of her."
On his own part, he was as ready to answer questions as to ask them.
In fact, he led Tembarom on to asking.
"I will tell you how I played" had been meant. He made a human
document of the history he enlarged, he brilliantly diverged, he
included, he made pictures, and found Tembarom's point of view or lack
of it gave spice and humor to relations he had thought himself tired
of. To tell familiar anecdotes of courts and kings to a man who had
never quite believed that such things were realities, who almost found
them humorous when they were casually spoken of, was edification
indeed. The novel charm lay in the fact that his class in his country
did not include them as possibilities. Peasants in other countries,
plowmen, shopkeepers, laborers in England--all these at least they
knew of, and counted them in as factors in the lives of the rich and
great; but this dear young man--!
"What's a crown like? I'd like to see one. How much do you guess such
a thing would cost--in dollars?"
"Did not Miss Temple Barholm take you to see the regalia in the Tower
of London? I am quite shocked," said the duke. He was, in fact, a
trifle disappointed. With the puce dress and undersleeves and little
fringes she ought certainly to have rushed with her pupil to that seat
of historical instruction on their first morning in London,
immediately after breakfasting on toast and bacon and marmalade and
eggs.
"She meant me to go, but somehow it was put off. She almost cried on
our journey home when she suddenly remembered that we'd forgotten it,
after all."
"I am sure she said it was a wasted opportunity," suggested his grace.
"Yes, that was what hit her so hard. She'd never been to London
before, and you couldn't make her believe she could ever get there
again, and she said it was ungrateful to Providence to waste an
opportunity. She's always mighty anxious to be grateful to Providence,
bless her!"
"She regards you as Providence," remarked the duke, enraptured. With a
touch here and there, the touch of a master, he had gathered the whole
little story of Miss Alicia, and had found it of a whimsical
exquisiteness and humor.
"She's a lot too good to me," answered Tembarom. "I guess women as
nice as her are always a lot too good to men. She's a kind of little
old angel. What makes me mad is to think of the fellows that didn't
get busy and marry her thirty-five years ago."
"Were there--er--many of 'em?" the duke inquired.
"Thousands of 'em, though most of 'em never saw her. I suppose you
never saw her then. If you had, you might have done it."
The duke, sitting with an elbow on each arm of his chair, put the tips
of his fine, gouty fingers together and smiled with a far-reaching
inclusion of possibilities.
"So I might," he said; "so I might. My loss entirely-- my abominable
loss."
They had reached this point of the argument when the carriage from
Stone Hover arrived. It was a stately barouche the coachman and
footman of which equally with its big horses seemed to have hastened
to an extent which suggested almost panting breathlessness. It
contained Lady Edith and Lady Celia, both pale, and greatly agitated
by the news which had brought them horrified from Stone Hover without
a moment's delay.
They both ascended in haste and swept in such alarmed anxiety up the
terrace steps and through the hall to their father's side that they
had barely a polite gasp for Miss Alicia and scarcely saw Tembarom at
all.
"Dear Papa!" they cried when he revealed himself in his chair in the
library intact and smiling. "How wicked of you, dear! How you have
frightened us!"
"I begged you to be good, dearest," said Lady Edith, almost in tears.
"Where was George? You must dismiss him at once. Really--really--"
"He was half a mile away, obeying my orders, "said the duke. "A groom
cannot be dismissed for obeying orders. It is the pony who must be
dismissed, to my great regret; or else we must overfeed him until he
is even fatter than he is and cannot run away."
Were his arms and legs and his ribs and collar-bones and head quite
right? Was he sure that he had not received any internal injury when
he fell out of the pony-carriage? They could scarcely be convinced,
and as they hung over and stroked and patted him, Tembarom stood aside
and watched them with interest. They were the girls he had to please
Ann by "getting next to," giving himself a chance to fall in love with
them, so that she'd know whether they were his kind or not. They were
nice-looking, and had a way of speaking that sounded rather swell, but
they weren't ace high to a little slim, redheaded thing that looked at
you like a baby and pulled your heart up into your throat.
"Don't poke me any more, dear children. I am quite, quite sound," he
heard the duke say. "In Mr. Temple Barholm you behold the preserver of
your parent. Filial piety is making you behave with shocking
ingratitude."
They turned to Tembarom at once with a pretty outburst of apologies
and thanks. Lady Celia wasn't, it is true, "a looker," with her narrow
shoulders and rather long nose, but she had an air of breeding, and
the charming color of which Palliser had spoken, returning to Lady
Edith's cheeks, illuminated her greatly.
They both were very polite and made many agreeably grateful speeches,
but in the eyes of both there lurked a shade of anxiety which they
hoped to be able to conceal. Their father watched them with a wicked
pleasure. He realized clearly their well-behaved desire to do and say
exactly the right thing and bear themselves in exactly the right
manner, and also their awful uncertainty before an entirely unknown
quantity. Almost any other kind of young man suddenly uplifted by
strange fortune they might have known some parallel for, but a newsboy
of New York! All the New Yorkers they had met or heard of had been so
rich and grand as to make them feel themselves, by contrast, mere
country paupers, quite shivering with poverty and huddling for
protection in their barely clean rags, so what was there to go on? But
how dreadful not to be quite right, precisely right, in one's
approach--quite familiar enough, and yet not a shade too familiar,
which of course would appear condescending! And be it said the
delicacy of the situation was added to by the fact that they had heard
something of Captain Palliser's extraordinary little story about his
determination to know "ladies." Really, if Willocks the butcher's boy
had inherited Temple Barholm, it would have been easier to know where
one stood in the matter of being civil and agreeable to him. First
Lady Edith, made perhaps bold by the suggestion of physical advantage
bestowed by the color, talked to him to the very best of her ability;
and when she felt herself fearfully flagging, Lady Celia took him up
and did her very well-conducted best. Neither she nor her sister were
brilliant talkers at any time, and limited by the absence of any
common familiar topic, effort was necessary. The neighborhood he did
not know; London he was barely aware of; social functions it would be
an impertinence to bring in; games he did not play; sport he had
scarcely heard of. You were confined to America, and if you knew next
to nothing of American life, there you were.
Tembarom saw it all,--he was sharp enough for that,--and his habit of
being jocular and wholly unashamed saved him from the misery of
awkwardness that Willocks would have been sure to have writhed under.
His casual frankness, however, for a moment embarrassed Lady Edith to
the bitterest extremity. When you are trying your utmost to make a
queer person oblivious to the fact that his world is one unknown to
you, it is difficult to know where do you stand when he says
"It's mighty hard to talk to a man who doesn't know a thing that
belongs to the kind of world you've spent your life in, ain't it? But
don't you mind me a minute. I'm glad to be talked to anyhow by people
like you. When I don't catch on, I'll just ask. No man was ever
electrocuted for not knowing, and that's just where I am. I don't
know, and I'm glad to be told. Now, there's one thing. Burrill said
'Your Ladyship' to you, I heard him. Ought I to say it, er oughtn't I?"
"Oh, no," she answered, but somehow without distaste in the momentary
stare he had startled her into; "Burrill is--"
"He's a servant," he aided encouragingly. "Well, I've never been a
butler, but I've been somebody's servant all my life, and mighty glad
of the chance. This is the first time I've been out of a job."
What nice teeth he had! What a queer, candid, unresentful creature!
What a good sort of smile! And how odd that it was he who was putting
her more at her ease by the mere way in which he was saying this
almost alarming thing! By the time he had ended, it was not alarming
at all, and she had caught her breath again.
She was actually sorry when the door opened and Lady Joan Fayre came
in, followed almost immediately by Lady Mallowe and Captain Palliser,
who appeared to have just returned from a walk and heard the news.
Lady Mallowe was most sympathetic. Why not, indeed? The Duke of Stone
was a delightful, cynical creature, and Stone Hover was, despite its
ducal poverty, a desirable place to be invited to, if you could manage
it. Her ladyship's method of fluttering was not like Miss Alicia's,
its character being wholly modern; but she fluttered, nevertheless.
The duke, who knew all about her, received her amiabilities with
appreciative smiles, but it was the splendidly handsome, hungry-eyed
young woman with the line between her black brows who engaged his
attention. On the alert, as he always was, for a situation, he
detected one at once when he saw his American address her. She did not
address him, and scarcely deigned a reply when he spoke to her. When
he spoke to others, she conducted herself as though he were not in the
room, so obviously did she choose to ignore his existence. Such a
bearing toward one's host had indeed the charm of being an interesting
novelty. And what a beauty she was, with her lovely, ferocious eyes
and the small, black head poised on the exquisite long throat, which
was on the verge of becoming a trifle too thin! Then as in a flash he
recalled between one breath and another the quite fiendish episode of
poor Jem Temple Barholm--and she was the girl!
Then he became almost excited in his interest. He saw it all. As he
had himself argued must be the case, this poor fellow was in love. But
it was not with a lady in the New York department stores; it was with
a young woman who would evidently disdain to wipe her feet upon him.
How thrilling! As Lady Mallowe and Palliser and the others chattered,
he watched him, observing his manner. He stood the handsome creature's
steadily persistent rudeness very well; he made no effort to push into
the talk when she coolly held him out of it. He waited without
external uneasiness or spasmodic smiles. If he could do that despite
the inevitable fact that he must feel his position uncomfortable, he
was possessed of fiber. That alone would make him worth cultivating.
And if there were persons who were to be made uncomfortable, why not
cut in and circumvent the beauty somewhat and give her a trifle of
unease? It was with the light and adroit touch of accustomedness to
all orders of little situations that his grace took the matter in
hand, with a shade, also, of amiable malice. He drew Tembarom adroitly
into the center of things; he knew how to lead him to make easily the
odd, frank remarks which were sufficiently novel to suggest that he
was actually entertaining. He beautifully edged Lady Joan out of her
position. She could not behave ill to him, he was far too old, he said
to himself, leaving out the fact that a Duke of Stone is a too
respectable personage to be quite waved aside.
Tembarom began to enjoy himself a little more. Lady Celia and Lady
Edith began to enjoy themselves a little more also. Lady Mallowe was
filled with admiring delight. Captain Palliser took in the situation,
and asked himself questions about it. On her part, Miss Alicia was
restored to the happiness any lack of appreciation of her "dear boy"
touchingly disturbed. In circumstances such as these he appeared to
the advantage which in a brief period would surely reveal his
wonderful qualities. She clung so to his "wonderful qualities" because
in all the three-volumed novels of her youth the hero, debarred from
early advantages and raised by the turn of fortune's wheel to
splendor, was transformed at once into a being of the highest
accomplishments and the most polished breeding, and ended in the third
volume a creature before whom emperors paled. And how more than
charmingly cordial his grace's manner was when he left them!
"To-morrow," he said, "if my daughters do not discover that I have
injured some more than vital organ, I shall call to proffer my thanks
with the most immense formality. I shall get out of the carriage in
the manner customary in respectable neighborhoods, not roll out at
your feet. Afterward you will, I hope, come and dine with us. I am
devoured by a desire to become more familiar with The Earth."
