CHAPTER XXXIX
It was Mr. Hutchinson who, having an eye on the window, first
announced an arriving carriage.
"Some of 'em's comin' from the station," he remarked. "There's no
young woman with 'em, that I can see from here."
"I thought I heard wheels." Miss Alicia went to look out, agitatedly.
"It is the gentlemen. Perhaps Lady Joan--" she turned desperately to
the duke. "I don't know what to say to Lady Joan. I don't know what
she will say to me. I don't know what she is coming for, Little Ann,
do keep near me!"
It was a pretty thing to see Little Ann stroke her hand and soothe
her.
"Don't be frightened, Miss Temple Barholm. All you've got to do is to
answer questions," she said.
"But I might say things that would be wrong--things that would harm
him."
"No, you mightn't, Miss Temple Barholm. He's not done anything that
could bring harm on him."
The Duke of Stone, who had seated himself in T. Tembarom's favorite
chair, which occupied a point of vantage, seemed to Mr. Palford and
Mr. Grimby when they entered the room to wear the aspect of a sort of
presidiary audience. The sight of his erect head and clear-cut, ivory-
tinted old face, with its alert, while wholly unbiased, expression,
somewhat startled them both. They had indeed not expected to see him,
and did not know why he had chosen to come. His presence might mean
any one of several things, and the fact that he enjoyed a reputation
for quite alarming astuteness of a brilliant kind presented elements
of probable embarrassment. If he thought that they had allowed
themselves to be led upon a wild-goose chase, he would express his
opinions with trying readiness of phrase.
His manner of greeting them, however, expressed no more than a lightly
agreeable detachment from any view whatsoever. Captain Palliser felt
this curiously, though he could not have said what he would have
expected from him if he had known it would be his whim to appear.
"How do you do? How d' you do?" His Grace shook hands with the amiable
ease which scarcely commits a man even to casual interest, after which
he took his seat again.
"How d' do, Miss Hutchinson?" said Palliser. "How d' do, Mr.
Hutchinson? Mr. Palford will be glad to find you here."
Mr. Palford shook hands with correct civility.
"I am, indeed," he said. "It was in your room in New York that I first
saw Mr. Temple Temple Barholm."
"Aye, it was," responded Hutchinson, dryly.
"I thought Lady Joan was coming," Miss Alicia said to Palliser.
"She will be here presently. She came down in our train, but not with
us."
"What--what is she coming for?" faltered Miss Alicia.
"Yes," put in the duke, "what, by the way, is she coming for?"
"I wrote and asked her to come," was Palliser's reply. "I have reason
to believe she may be able to recall something of value to the inquiry
which is being made."
"That's interesting," said his Grace, but with no air of participating
particularly. She doesn't like him, though, does she? Wouldn't do to
put her on the jury."
He did not wait for any reply, but turned to Mr. Palford.
"All this is delightfully portentous. Do you know it reminds me of a
scene in one of those numerous plays where the wrong man has murdered
somebody--or hasn't murdered somebody--and the whole company must be
cross-examined because the curtain cannot be brought down until the
right man is unmasked. Do let us come into this, Mr. Palford; what we
know seems so inadequate."
Mr. Palford and Mr. Grimby each felt that there lurked in this manner
a possibility that they were being regarded lightly. All the
objections to their situation loomed annoyingly large.
"It is, of course, an extraordinary story," Mr. Palford said, "but if
we are not mistaken in our deductions, we may find ourselves involved
in a cause celebre which will set all England talking."
"I am not mistaken," Palliser presented the comment with a short and
dry laugh.
"Tha seems pretty cock-sure!" Hutchinson thrust in.
"I am. No one knew Jem Temple Barbolm better than I did in the past.
We were intimate--enemies." And he laughed again.
"Tha says tha'll swear th' chap tha saw through th' window was him?"
said Hutchinson.
"I'd swear it," with composure.
The duke was reflecting. He was again tapping with his cane the gaiter
covering his slender, shining boot.
"If Mr. Temple Temple Barholm had remained here his actions would have
seemed less suspicious?" he suggested.
It was Palliser who replied.
"Or if he hadn't whisked the other man away. He lost his head and
played the fool."
"He didn't lose his head, that chap. It's screwed on th' right way--
his head is," grunted Hutchinson.
"The curious fellow has a number of friends," the duke remarked to
Palford and Grimby, in his impartial tone. "I am hoping you are not
thinking of cross-examining me. I have always been convinced that
under cross-examination I could be induced to innocently give evidence
condemnatory to both sides of any case whatever. But would you mind
telling me what the exact evidence is so far? "
Mr. Palford had been opening a budget of papers.
"It is evidence which is cumulative, your Grace," he said. "Mr. Temple
Temple Barholm's position would have been a far less suspicious one--
as you yourself suggested--if he had remained, or if he hadn't
secretly removed Mr.--Mr. Strangeways."
"The last was Captain Palliser's suggestion, I believe," smiled the
duke. "Did he remove him secretly? How secretly, for instance?"
"At night," answered Palliser. "Miss Temple Barholm herself did not
know when it happened. Did you?" turning to Miss Alicia, who at once
flushed and paled.
"He knew that I was rather nervous where Mr. Strangeways was
concerned. I am sorry to say he found that out almost at once. He even
told me several times that I must not think of him--that I need hear
nothing about him." She turned to the duke, her air of appeal plainly
representing a feeling that he would understand her confession. "I
scarcely like to say it, but wrong as it was I couldn't help feeling
that it was like having a--a lunatic in the house. I was afraid he
might be more--ill--than Temple realized, and that he might some time
become violent. I never admitted so much of course, but I was."
"You see, she was not told," Palliser summed it up succinctly.
"Evidently," the duke admitted. "I see your point." But he seemed to
disengage himself from all sense of admitting implications with entire
calmness, as he turned again to Mr. Palford and his papers.
"You were saying that the exact evidence was--?"
Mr. Palford referred to a sheet of notes.
"That--whether before or shortly after his arrival here is not at all
certain--Mr. Temple Temple Barholm began strongly to suspect the
identity of the person then known as Strangeways--"
Palliser again emitted the short and dry laugh, and both the duke and
Mr. Palford looked at him inquiringly.
"He had `got on to' it before he brought him," he answered their
glances. "Be sure of that."
"Then why did he bring him?" the duke suggested lightly.
"Oh, well," taking his cue from the duke, and assuming casual
lightness also, "he was obliged to come himself, and was jolly well
convinced that he had better keep his hand on the man, also his eye.
It was a good-enough idea. He couldn't leave a thing like that
wandering about the States. He could play benefactor safely in a house
of the size of this until he was ready for action."
The duke gave a moment to considering the matter--still detachedly.
"It is, on the whole, not unlikely that something of the sort might
suggest itself to the criminal mind," he said. And his glance at Mr.
Palford intimated that he might resume his statement.
"We have secured proof that he applied himself to secret
investigation. He is known to have employed Scotland Yard to make
certain inquiries concerning the man said to have been killed in the
Klondike. Having evidently reached more than suspicion he began to
endeavor to persuade Mr. Strangeways to let him take him to London.
This apparently took some time. The mere suggestion of removal threw
the invalid into a state of painful excitement--"
"Did Pearson tell you that? " the duke inquired.
"Captain Palliser himself in passing the door of the room one day
heard certain expressions of terrified pleading," was Mr. Palford's
explanation.
"I heard enough," Palliser took it up carelessly, "to make it worth
while to question Pearson--who must have heard a great deal more.
Pearson was ordered to hold his tongue from the first, but he will
have to tell the truth when he is asked."
The duke did not appear to resent his view.
"Pearson would be likely to know what went on," he remarked. "He's an
intelligent little fellow."
"The fact remains that in spite of his distress and reluctance Mr.
Strangeways was removed privately, and there our knowledge ends. He
has not been seen since--and a few hours after, Captain Palliser
expressed his conviction, that the person he had seen through the West
Room window was Mr. James Temple Barholm, Mr. Temple Temple Barholm
left the house taking a midnight train, and leaving no clue as to his
where-abouts or intentions."
"Disappeared! " said the duke. "Where has he been looked for?"
The countenance of both Mr. Palford and his party expressed a certain
degree of hesitance.
"Principally in asylums and so-called sanatoriums," Mr. Grimby
admitted with a hint of reluctance.
"Places where the curiosity of outsiders is not encouraged," said
Palliser languidly. "And where if a patient dies in a fit of mania
there are always respectable witnesses to explain that his case was
hopeless from the first."
Mr. Hutchinson had been breathing hard occasionally as he sat and
listened, and now he sprang up uttering a sound dangerously near a
violent snort.
"Art tha accusin' that lad o' bein' black villain enough to be ready
to do bloody murder?" he cried out.
"He was in a very tight place, Hutchinson," Palliser shrugged his
shoulders as he said it. "But one makes suggestions at this stage--not
accusations."
That Hutchinson had lost his head was apparent to his daughter at
least.
"Tha'd be in a tight place, my fine chap, if I had my way," he flung
forth irately. "I'd like to get thy head under my arm."
The roll of approaching wheels reached Miss Alicia.
"There's another carriage," was her agitated exclamation. "Oh, dear!
It must be Lady Joan!"
Little Ann left her seat to make her father return to his.
"Father, you'd better sit down," she said, gently pushing him in the
right direction. "When you can't prove a thing's a lie, it's just as
well to keep quiet until you can." And she kept quiet herself, though
she turned and stood before Palliser and spoke with clear
deliberateness. "What you pretend to believe is not true, Captain
Palliser. It's just not true," she gave to him.
They were facing and looking at each other when Burrill announced Lady
Joan Fayre. She entered rather quickly and looked round the room with
a sweeping glance, taking them all in. She went to the duke first, and
they shook hands.
"I am glad you are here! " she said.
"I would not have been out of it, my dear young lady," he answered,
"`for a farm' That's a quotation."
"I know," she replied, giving her hand to Miss Alicia, and taking in
Palliser and the solicitors with a bow which was little more than a
nod. Then she saw Little Ann, and walked over to her to shake hands.
"I am glad you are here. I rather felt you would be," was her
greeting. "I am glad to see you."
"Whether tha 'rt glad to see me or not I'm glad I'm here," said
Hutchinson bluntly. "I've just been speaking a bit o' my mind."
"Now, Father love!" Little Ann put her hand on his arm.
Lady Joan looked him over. Her hungry eyes were more hungry than ever.
She looked like a creature in a fever and worn by it.
"I think I am glad you are here too," she answered.
Palliser sauntered over to her. He had approved the duke's air of
being at once detached and inquiring, and he did not intend to wear
the aspect of the personage who plays the unpleasant part of the
pursuer and avenger. What he said was:
"It was good of you to come, Lady Joan."
"Did you think I would stay away?" was her answer. "But I will tell
you that I don't believe it is true."
"You think that it is too good to be true?"
Her hot eyes had records in them it would have been impossible for him
to read or understand. She had been so torn; she had passed through
such hours since she had been told this wild thing.
"Pardon my not telling you what I think," she said. "Nothing matters,
after all, if he is alive!"
"Except that we must find him," said Palliser.
"If he is in the same world with me I shall find him," fiercely. Then
she turned again to Ann. "You are the girl T. Tembarom loves?" she put
it to her.
"Yes, my lady."
"If he was lost, and you knew he was on the earth with you, don't you
know that you would find him?"
"I should know he'd come back to me," Little Ann answered her. "That's
what--" her small face looked very fine as in her second of hesitation
a spirited flush ran over it, "that's what your man will do," quite
firmly.
It was amazing to see how the bitter face changed, as if one word had
brought back a passionate softening memory.
"My man!" Her voice mellowed until it was deep and low. "Did you call
T. Tembarom that, too? Oh, I understand you! Keep near me while I talk
to these people." She made her sit down by her.
"I know every detail of your letters." She addressed Palliser as well
as Palford & Grimby, sweeping all details aside. "What is it you want
to ask me?"
"This is our position, your ladyship," Mr. Palford fumbled a little
with his papers in speaking. "Mr. Temple Temple Barholm and the person
known as Mr. Strangeways have been searched for so far without result.
In the meantime we realize that the more evidence we obtain that Mr.
Temple Temple Barholm identified Strangeways and acted from motive,
the more solid the foundation upon which Captain Palliser's conviction
rests. Up to this point we have only his statement which he is
prepared to make on oath. Fortunately, however, he on one occasion
overheard something said to you which he believes will be
corroborative evidence."
"What did you overhear?" she inquired of Palliser.
Her tone was not pacific considering that, logically, she must be on
the side of the investigators. But it was her habit, as Captain
Palliser remembered, to seem to put most people on the defensive. He
meant to look as uninvolved as the duke, but it was not quite within
his power. His manner was sufficiently deliberate.
"One evening, before you left for London, I was returning from the
billiard-room, and heard you engaged in animated conversation with--
our host. My attention was arrested, first because--" a sketch of a
smile ill-concealed itself, "you usually scarcely deigned to speak to
him, and secondly because I heard Jem Temple Barholm's name."
"And you--?" neither eyes nor manner omitted the word listened.
But the slight lift of his shoulders was indifferent enough.
"I listened deliberately. I was convinced that the fellow was a
criminal impostor, and I wanted evidence."
"Ah! come now," remarked the duke amiably. "Now we are getting on. Did
you gain any?"
"I thought so. Merely of the cumulative order, of course," Palliser
answered with moderation. "Those were early days. He asked you,"
turning to Lady Joan again, "if you knew any one--any one--who had any
sort of a photograph of Jem. You had one and you showed it to him!"
She was quite silent for a moment. The hour came back to her--the
extraordinary hour when he had stood in his lounging fashion before
her, and through some odd, uncivilized but absolutely human force of
his own had made her listen to him --and had gone on talking in his
nasal voice until with one common, crude, grotesque phrase he had
turned her hideous world upside down--changed the whole face of it--
sent the stone wall rising before her crumbling into dust, and seemed
somehow to set her free. For the moment he had lifted a load from her
the nature of which she did not think he could understand--a load of
hatred and silence. She had clutched his hand, she had passionately
wept on it, she could have kissed it. He had told her she could come
back and not be afraid. As the strange episode rose before her detail
by detail, she literally stared at Palliser.
"You did, didn't you?" he inquired.
"Yes," she answered.
Her mind was in a riot, because in the midst of things which must be
true, something was false. But with the memory of a myriad subtle
duplicities in her brain, she had never seen anything which could have
approached a thing like that. He had made her feel more human than any
one in the world had ever made her feel--but Jem. He had been able to
do it because he was human himself--human. "I'm friendly," he had said
with his boy's laugh--"just friendly."
"I saw him start, though you did not," Palliser continued. "He stood
and studied the locket intently."
She remembered perfectly. He had examined it so closely that he had
unconsciously knit his brows.
"He said something in a rather low voice," Palliser took it up. "I
could not quite catch it all. It was something about `knowing the face
again.' I can see you remember, Lady Joan. Can you repeat the exact
words?"
He did not understand the struggle he saw in her face. It would have
been impossible for him to understand it. What she felt was that if
she lost hold on her strange belief in the honesty of this one decent
thing she had seen and felt so close to her that it cleared the air
she breathed, it would be as if she had fallen into a bottomless
abyss. Without knowing why she did it, she got up from her chair as if
she were a witness in a court.
"Yes, I can," she said. "Yes, I can; but I wish to make a statement
for myself. Whether Jem Temple Barholm is alive or dead, Captain
Palliser, T. Tembarom has done him no harm."
The duke sat up delicately alert. He had evidently found her worth
looking at and listening to from the outset.
"Hear! Hear!" he said pleasantly.
"What were the exact words?" suggested Palliser.
Miss Alicia who had been weeping on Little Ann's shoulder --almost on
her lap--lifted her head to listen. Hutchinson set his jaw and
grunted, and Mr. Palford cleared his throat mechanically.
"He said," and no one better than herself realized how ominously
"cumulative" the words sounded, "that a man would know a face like
that again--wherever he saw it."
"Wherever he saw it!" ejaculated Mr. Grimby.
There ensued a moment of entire pause. It was inevitable. Having
reached this point a taking of breath was necessary. Even the duke
ceased to appear entirely detached. As Mr. Palford turned to his
papers again there was perhaps a slight feeling of awkwardness in the
air. Miss Alicia had dropped, terror smitten, into new tears.
The slight awkwardness was, on the whole, rather added to by T.
Tembarom--as if serenely introduced by the hand of drama itself--
opening the door and walking into the room. He came in with a matter-
of-fact, but rather obstinate, air, and stopped in their midst,
looking round at them as if collectedly taking them all in.
Hutchinson sprang to his feet with a kind of roar, his big hands
plunging deep into his trousers pockets.
"Here he is! Danged if he isn't!" he bellowed. "Now, lad, tha let 'em
have it!"
What he was to let them have did not ensue, because his attitude was
not one of assault.
"Say, you are all here, ain't you!" he remarked obviously. "Good
business!"
Miss Alicia got up from the sofa and came trembling toward him as one
approaches one risen from the dead, and he made a big stride toward
her and took her in his arms, patting her shoulder in reproachful
consolation.
"Say, you haven't done what I told you--have you?" he soothed. "You've
let yourself get rattled."
"But I knew it wasn't true," she sobbed. "I knew it wasn't."
"Of course you did, but you got rattled all the same." And he patted
her again.
The duke came forward with a delightfully easy and--could it be almost
jocose?--air of bearing himself. Palford and Grimby remarked it with
pained dismay. He was so unswerving in his readiness as he shook
hands.
"How well done of you!" he said. "How well arranged! But I'm afraid
you didn't arrange it at all. It has merely happened. Where did you
come from?"
"From America; got back yesterday." T. Tembarom's hand-shake was a
robust hearty greeting. "It's all right."
"From America!" The united voices of the solicitors exclaimed it.
Joseph Hutchinson broke into a huge guffaw, and he stamped in
exultation.
"I'm danged if be has na' been to America!" he cried out. "To
America!"
"Oh!" Miss Alicia gasped hysterically, "they go backward and forward
to America like--like lightning!"
Little Ann had not risen at his entrance, but sat still with her hands
clasped tightly on her lap. Her face had somehow the effect of a
flower gradually breaking into extraordinary bloom. Their eyes had
once met and then she remained, her soul in hers which were upon him,
as she drank in every word he uttered. Her time had not yet come.
Lady Joan had remained standing by the chair, which a few moments
before her manner had seemed to transform into something like a
witness stand in a court of justice. Her hungry eyes had grown
hungrier each second, and her breath came and went quickly. The very
face she had looked up at on her last talk with T. Tembarom--the oddly
human face--turned on her as he came to her. It was just as it had
been that night --just as commonly uncommon and believable.
"Say, Lady Joan! You didn't believe all that guff, did you--You
didn't?" he said.
"No--no--no! I couldn't!" she cried fiercely.
He saw she was shaking with suspense, and he pushed her gently into a
chair.
"You'd better sit down a minute. You're about all in," he said.
She might have been a woman with an ague as she caught his arm,
shaking it because her hands themselves so shook.
"Is it true?" was her low cry. "Is he alive--is he alive?"
"Yes, he's alive." And as he answered he drew close and so placed
himself before her that he shielded her from the others in the room.
He seemed to manage to shut them out, so that when she dropped her
face on her arms against the chair-back her shuddering, silent sobbing
was hidden decently. It was not only his body which did it, but some
protecting power which was almost physically visible. She felt it
spread before her.
"Yes, he's alive," he said, "and he's all right--though it's been a
long time coming, by gee!"
"He's alive." They all heard it. For a man of Palliser's make to stand
silent in the midst of mysterious slowly accumulating convictions that
some one--perilously of his own rarely inept type--was on the verge of
feeling appallingly like a fool--was momentarily unendurable. And
nothing had been explained, after all.
"Is this what you call `bluff' in New York?" he demanded. "You've got
a lot to explain. You admit that Jem Temple Barholm is alive?" and
realized his asinine error before the words were fully spoken.
The realization was the result of the square-shouldered swing with
which T. Tembarom turned round, and the expression of his eyes as they
ran over him.
"Admit!" he said. "Admit hell! He's up-stairs," with a slight jerk of
his head in the direction of the ceiling.
The duke alone did not gasp. He laughed slightly.
"We've just got here. He came down from London with me, and Sir Ormsby
Galloway." And he said it not to Palliser but to Palford and Grimby.
"The Sir Ormsby Galloway?" It was an ejaculation from Mr. Palford
himself.
T. Tembarom stood square and gave his explanation to the lot of them,
so to speak, without distinction.
"He's the big nerve specialist. I've had him looking after the case
from the first--before I began to suspect anything. I took orders, and
orders were to keep him quiet and not let any fool butt in and excite
him. That's what I've been giving my mind to. The great stunt was to
get him to go and stay at Sir Ormsby's place." He stopped a moment and
suddenly flared forth as if he had had about enough of it. He almost
shouted at them in exasperation. "All I'm going to tell you is that
for about six months I've been trying to prove that Jem Temple Barholm
was Jem Temple Barholm, and the hardest thing I had to do was to get
him so that he could prove it himself." He strode over to the hearth
and rang a bell. "It's not my place to give orders here now," he said,
"but Jem commissioned me to see this thing through. Sir Ormsby'll tell
you all you want to hear."
He turned and spoke solely to the duke.
"This is what happened," he said. "I dare say you'll laugh when you
hear it. I almost laughed myself. What does Jem do, when he thinks
things over, but get some fool notion in his head about not coming
back here and pushing me out. And he lights out and leaves the
country--leaves it--to get time to think it over some more."
The duke did not laugh. He merely smiled--a smile which had a shade of
curious self-questioning in it.
"Romantic and emotional--and quite ridiculous," he commented slowly.
"He'd have awakened to that when he had thought it out `some more.'
The thing couldn't be done."
Burrill had presented himself in answer to the bell, and awaited
orders. His Grace called Tembarom's attention to him, and Tembarom
included Palliser with Palford and Grimby when he gave his gesture of
instruction.
"Take these gentlemen to Sir Ormsby Galloway, and then ask Mr. Temple
Barholm if he'll come down-stairs," he said.
It is possible that Captain Palliser felt himself more irritatingly
infolded in the swathing realization that some one was in a ridiculous
position, and it is certain that Mr. Palford felt it necessary to
preserve an outwardly flawless dignity as the duke surprisingly left
his chair and joined them.
"Let me go, too," he suggested; "I may be able to assist in throwing
light." His including movement in Miss Alicia's direction was
delightfully gracious and friendly. It was inclusive of Mr. Hutchinson
also.
"Will you come with us, Miss Temple Barholm?" he said. "And you too,
Mr. Hutchinson. We shall go over it all in its most interesting
detail, and you must be eager about it. I am myself."
His happy and entirely correct idea was that the impending entrance of
Mr. James Temple Barholm would "come off" better in the absence of
audience.
Hutchinson almost bounced from his chair in his readiness. Miss Alicia
looked at Tembarom.
"Yes, Miss Alicia," he answered her inquiring glance. "You go, too.
You'll get it all over quicker."
Rigid propriety forbade that Mr. Palford should express annoyance, but
the effort to restrain the expression of it was in his countenance.
Was it possible that the American habit of being jocular had actually
held its own in a matter as serious as this? And could even the most
cynical and light-minded of ducal personages have been involved in its
unworthy frivolities? But no one looked jocular--Tembarom's jaw was
set in its hard line, and the duke, taking up the broad ribbon of his
rimless monocle to fix the glass in his eye, wore the expression of a
man whose sense of humor was temporarily in abeyance.
"Are we to understand that your Grace--?"
"Yes," said his Grace a trifle curtly, "I have known about it for some
time."
"But why was nobody told?" put in Palliser.
"Why should people be told? There was nothing sufficiently definite to
tell. It was a waiting game." His Grace wasted no words. "I was told.
Mr. Temple Barholm did not know England or English methods. His idea--
perhaps a mistaken one--was that an English duke ought to be able to
advise him. He came to me and made a clean breast of it. He goes
straight at things, that young fellow. Makes what he calls a `bee
line.' Oh! I've been in it--I 've been in it, I assure you."
It was as they crossed the hall that his Grace slightly laughed.
"It struck me as a sort of wild-goose chase at first. He had only a
ghost of a clue--a mere resemblance to a portrait. But he believed in
it, and he had an instinct." He laughed again. "The dullest and most
unmelodramatic neighborhood in England has been taking part in a
melodrama--but there has been no villain in it--only a matter-of-fact
young man, working out a queer thing in his own queer, matter-of-fact
way."
When the door closed behind them, Tembarom went to Lady Joan. She had
risen and was standing before the window, her back to the room. She
looked tall and straight and tensely braced when she turned round, but
there was endurance, not fierceness in her eyes.
"Did he leave the country knowing I was here--waiting?" she asked. Her
voice was low and fatigued. She had remembered that years had passed,
and that it was perhaps after all only human that long anguish should
blot things out, and dull a hopeless man's memory.
"No," answered Tembarom sharply. "He didn't. You weren't in it then.
He believed you'd married that Duke of Merthshire fellow. This is the
way it was: Let me tell it to you quick. A letter that had been
wandering round came to him the night before the cave-in, when they
thought he was killed. It told him old Temple Barholm was dead. He
started out before daylight, and you can bet he was strung up till he
was near crazy with excitement. He believed that if he was in England
with plenty of money he could track down that cardsharp lie. He
believed you'd help him. Somewhere, while he was traveling he came
across an old paper with a lot of dope about your being engaged."
Joan remembered well how her mother had worked to set the story
afloat--how they had gone through the most awful of their scenes--
almost raving at each other, shut up together in the boudoir in Hill
Street.
"That's all he remembers, except that he thought some one had hit him
a crack on the head. Nothing had hit him. He'd had too much to stand
up under and something gave way in his brain. He doesn't know what
happened after that. He'd wake up sometimes just enough to know he was
wandering about trying to get home. It's been the limit to try to
track him. If he'd not come to himself we could never have been quite
sure. That's why I stuck at it. But he DID come to himself. All of a
sudden. Sir Ormsby will tell you that's what nearly always happens.
They wake up all of a sudden. It's all right; it's all right. I used
to promise him it would be--when I wasn't sure that I wasn't lying."
And for the first time he broke into the friendly grin--but it was
more valiant than spontaneous. He wanted her to know that it was "all
right."
"Oh!" she cried, "oh! you--"
She stopped because the door was opening.
"It's Jem," he said sharply. "Ann, let's go." And that instant Little
Ann was near him.
"No! no! don't go," cried Lady Joan.
Jem Temple Barholm came in through the doorway. Life and sound and
breath stopped for a second, and then the two whirled into each
other's arms as if a storm had swept them there.
"Jem!" she wailed. "Oh, Jem! My man! Where have you been?"
"I've been in hell, Joan--in hell!" he answered, choking, --"and this
wonderful fellow has dragged me out of it."
But Tembarom would have none of it. He could not stand it. This sort
of thing filled up his throat and put him at an overwhelming
disadvantage. He just laid a hand on Jem Temple Barholm's shoulder and
gave him an awkwardly friendly push.
"Say, cut me out of it!" he said. "You get busy," his voice rather
breaking. "You've got a lot to say to her. It was up to me before;--
now, it's up to you."
Little Ann went with him into the next room.
The room they went into was a smaller one, quiet, and its oriel
windows much overshadowed by trees. By the time they stood together in
the center of it Tembarom had swallowed something twice or thrice, and
had recovered himself. Even his old smile had come back as he took one
of her hands in each of his, and holding them wide apart stood and
looked down at her.
"God bless you, Little Ann," he said. "I just knew I should find you
here. I'd have bet my last dollar on it."
The hands he held were trembling just a little, and the dimples
quivered in and out. But her eyes were steady, and a lovely increasing
intensity glowed in them.
"You went after him and brought him back. He was all wrought up, and
he needed some one with good common sense to stop him in time to make
him think straight before he did anything silly," she said.
"I says to him," T. Tembarom made the matter clear; "`Say, you've left
something behind that belongs to you! Comeback and get it.' I meant
Lady Joan. And I says, `Good Lord, man, you're acting like a fellow in
a play. That place doesn't belong to me. It belongs to you. If it was
mine, fair and square, Little Willie'd hang on to it. There'd be no
noble sacrifice in his. You get a brace on.'"
"When they were talking in that silly way about you, and saying you'd
run away," said Little Ann, her face uplifted adoringly as she talked,
"I said to father, `If he's gone, he's gone to get something. And
he'll be likely to bring it back.'"
He almost dropped her hands and caught her to him then. But he saved
himself in time.
"Now this great change has come," he said, "everything will be
different. The men you'll know will look like the pictures in the
advertisements at the backs of magazines--those fellows with chins and
smooth hair. I shall look like a chauffeur among them."
But she did not blench in the least, though she remembered whose words
he was quoting. The intense and lovely femininity in her eyes only
increased. She came closer to him, and so because of his height had to
look up more.
"You will always make jokes--but I don't care. I don't care for
anything but you," she said. "I love your jokes; I love everything
about you: I love your eyes--and your voice --and your laugh. I love
your very clothes." Her voice quivered as her dimples did. "These last
months I've sometimes felt as if I should die of loving you."
It was a wonderful thing--wonderful. His eyes--his whole young being
had kindled as he looked down drinking in every word.
"Is that the kind of quiet little thing you are?" he said.
"Yes, it is," she answered firmly.
"And you're satisfied--you know, who it is I want?-- You're ready to
do what you said you would that last night at Mrs. Bowse's?"
"What do you think?" she said in her clear little voice.
He caught her then in a strong, hearty, young, joyous clutch.
"You come to me, Little Ann. You come right to me," he said.
