T. Tembarom — Chapter 15
CHAPTER XV
To employ the figure of Burrill, Tembarom was indeed “as pleased as Punch.
” He was one of the large number of men who, apart from all sentimental relations, are made particularly happy by the kindly society of women; who expand with quite unconscious rejoicing when a woman begins to take care of them in one way or another.
The unconsciousness is a touching part of the condition.
The feminine nearness supplies a primeval human need.
The most complete of men, as well as the weaklings, feel it.
It is a survival of days when warm arms held and protected, warm hands served, and affectionate voices soothed.
An accomplished male servant may perform every domestic service perfectly, but the fact that he cannot be a woman leaves a sense of lack.
An accustomed feminine warmth in the surrounding daily atmosphere has caused many a man to marry his housekeeper or even his cook, as circumstances prompted.
Tembarom had known no woman well until he had met Little Ann.
His feeling for Mrs. Bowse herself had verged on affection, because he would have been fond of any woman of decent temper and kindliness, especially if she gave him opportunities to do friendly service.
Little Ann had seemed the apotheosis of the feminine, the warmly helpful, the subtly supporting, the kind.
She had been to him an amazement and a revelation.
She had continually surprised him by revealing new characteristics which seemed to him nicer things than he had ever known before, but which, if he had been aware of it, were not really surprising at all.
They were only the characteristics of a very nice young feminine creature.
The presence of Miss Alicia, with the long-belated fashion of her ringlets and her little cap, was delightful to him.
He felt as though he would like to take her in his arms and hug her.
He thought perhaps it was partly because she was a little like Ann, and kept repeating his name in Ann's formal little way.
Her delicate terror of presuming or intruding he felt in its every shade.
Mentally she touched him enormously.
He wanted to make her feel that she need not be afraid of him in the least, that he liked her, that in his opinion she had more right in the house than he had.
He was a little frightened lest through ignorance he should say things the wrong way, as he had said that thing about wanting to know what she expected him to do.
What he ought to have said was, “You're not expecting me to let that sort of thing go on.
” It had made him sick when he saw what a break he'd made and that she thought he was sort of insulting her.
The room seemed all right now that she was in it.
Small and unassuming as she was, she seemed to make it less over-sized.
He didn't so much mind the loftiness of the ceiling, the depth and size of the windows, and the walls covered with thousands of books he knew nothing whatever about.
The innumerable books had been an oppressing feature.
If he had been one of those “college guys” who never could get enough of books, what a “cinch” the place would have been for him--good as the Astor Library!
He hadn't a word to say against books,--good Lord!
no;--but even if he'd had the education and the time to read, he didn't believe he was naturally that kind, anyhow.
You had to be “that kind” to know about books.
He didn't suppose she--meaning Miss Alicia--was learned enough to make you throw a fit.
She didn't look that way, and he was mighty glad of it, because perhaps she wouldn't like him much if she was.
It would worry her when she tried to talk to him and found out he didn't know a darned thing he ought to.
They'd get on together easier if they could just chin about common sort of every-day things.
But though she didn't look like the Vassar sort, he guessed that she was not like himself: she had lived in libraries before, and books didn't frighten her.
She'd been born among people who read lots of them and maybe could talk about them.
That was why she somehow seemed to fit into the room.
He was aware that, timid as she was and shabby as her neat dress looked, she fitted into the whole place, as he did not.
She'd been a poor relative and had been afraid to death of old Temple Barholm, but she'd not been afraid of him because she wasn't his sort.
She was a lady; that was what was the matter with her.
It was what made things harder for her, too.
It was what made her voice tremble when she'd tried to seem so contented and polite when she'd talked about going into one of those “decayed alms-houses.
” As if the old ladies were vegetables that had gone wrong, by gee!
he thought.
He liked her little, modest, delicate old face and her curls and her little cap with the ribbons so much that he smiled with a twinkling eye every time he looked at her.
He wanted to suggest something he thought would be mighty comfortable, but he was half afraid he might be asking her to do something which wasn't “her job,” and it might hurt her feelings.
But he ventured to hint at it.
“Has Burrill got to come back and pour that out?
” he asked, with an awkward gesture toward the tea-tray.
“Has he just GOT to?
” “Oh, no, unless you wish it,” she answered.
“Shall--may I give it to you?
” “Will you?
” he exclaimed delightedly.
“That would be fine.
I shall feel like a regular Clarence.
” She was going to sit at the table in a straight-backed chair, but he sprang at her.
“This big one is more comfortable,” he said, and he dragged it forward and made her sit in it.
“You ought to have a footstool,” he added, and he got one and put it under her feet.
“There, that's all right.
” A footstool, as though she were a royal personage and he were a gentleman in waiting, only probably gentlemen in waiting did not jump about and look so pleased.
The cheerful content of his boyish face when he himself sat down near the table was delightful.
“Now,” he said, “we can ring up for the first act.
” She filled the tea-pot and held it for a moment, and then set it down as though her feelings were too much for her.
“I feel as if I were in a dream,” she quavered happily.
“I do indeed.
” “But it's a nice one, ain't it?
” he answered.
“I feel as if I was in two.
Sitting here in this big room with all these fine things about me, and having afternoon tea with a relation!
It just about suits me.
It didn't feel like this yesterday, you bet your life!
” “Does it seem--nicer than yesterday?
” she ventured.
“Really, Mr. Temple Barholm?
” “Nicer!
” he ejaculated.
“It's got yesterday beaten to a frazzle.
” It was beyond all belief.
He was speaking as though the advantage, the relief, the happiness, were all on his side.
She longed to enlighten him.
“But you can't realize what it is to me,” she said gratefully, “to sit here, not terrified and homeless and--a beggar any more, with your kind face before me.
Do forgive me for saying it.
You have such a kind young face, Mr. Temple Barholm.
And to have an easy-chair and cushions, and actually a buffet brought for my feet!
” She suddenly recollected herself.
“Oh, I mustn't let your tea get cold,” she added, taking up the tea-pot apologetically.
“Do you take cream and sugar, and is it to be one lump or two?
” “I take everything in sight,” he replied joyously, “and two lumps, please.
” She prepared the cup of tea with as delicate a care as though it had been a sacramental chalice, and when she handed it to him she smiled wistfully.
“No one but you ever thought of such a thing as bringing a buffet for my feet--no one except poor little Jem,” she said, and her voice was wistful as well as her smile.
She was obviously unaware that she was introducing an entirely new acquaintance to him.
Poor little Jem was supposed to be some one whose whole history he knew.
“Jem?
” he repeated, carefully transferring a piece of hot buttered crumpet to his plate.
“Jem Temple Barholm,” she answered.
“I say little Jem because I remember him only as a child.
I never saw him after he was eleven years old.
” “Who was he?
” he asked.
The tone of her voice, and her manner of speaking made him feel that he wanted to hear something more.
She looked rather startled by his ignorance.
“Have you--have you never heard of him?
” she inquired.
“No. Is he another distant relation?
” Her hesitation caused him to neglect his crumpet, to look up at her.
He saw at once that she wore the air of a sensitive and beautifully mannered elderly lady who was afraid she had made a mistake and said something awkward.
“I am so sorry,” she apologized.
“Perhaps I ought not to have mentioned him.
” “Why shouldn't he be mentioned?
” She was embarrassed.
She evidently wished she had not spoken, but breeding demanded that she should ignore the awkwardness of the situation, if awkwardness existed.
“Of course--I hope your tea is quite as you like it--of course there is no real reason.
But--shall I give you some more cream?
No?
You see, if he hadn't died, he--he would have inherited Temple Barholm.
” Now he was interested.
This was the other chap.
“Instead of me?
” he asked, to make sure.
She endeavored not to show embarrassment and told herself it didn't really matter--to a thoroughly nice person.
But-- “He was the next of kin--before you.
I'm so sorry I didn't know you hadn't heard of him.
It seemed natural that Mr. Palford should have mentioned him.
” “He did say that there was a young fellow who had died, but he didn't tell me about him.
I guess I didn't ask.
There were such a lot of other things.
I'd like to hear about him.
You say you knew him?
” “Only when he was a little fellow.
Never after he grew up.
Something happened which displeased my father.
I'm afraid papa was very easily displeased.
Mr. Temple Barholm disliked him, too.
He would not have him at Temple Barholm.
” “He hadn't much luck with his folks, had he?
” remarked Tembarom.
“He had no luck with any one.
I seemed to be the only person who was fond of him, and of course I didn't count.
” “I bet you counted with him,” said Tembarom.
“I do think I did.
Both his parents died quite soon after he was born, and people who ought to have cared for him were rather jealous because he stood so near to Temple Barholm.
If Mr. Temple Barholm had not been so eccentric and bitter, everything would have been done for him; but as it was, he seemed to belong to no one.
When he came to the vicarage it used to make me so happy.
He used to call me Aunt Alicia, and he had such pretty ways.
” She hesitated and looked quite tenderly at the tea-pot, a sort of shyness in her face.
“I am sure,” she burst forth, “I feel quite sure that you will understand and won't think it indelicate;
but I had thought so often that I should like to have a little boy--if I had married,” she added in hasty tribute to propriety.
Tembarom's eyes rested on her in a thoughtfulness openly touched with affection.
He put out his hand and patted hers two or three times in encouraging sympathy.
“Say,” he said frankly, “I just believe every woman that's the real thing'd like to have a little boy--or a little girl--or a little something or other.
That's why pet cats and dogs have such a cinch of it.
And there's men that's the same way.
It's sort of nature.
” “He had such a high spirit and such pretty ways,” she said again.
“One of his pretty ways was remembering to do little things to make one comfortable, like thinking of giving one a cushion or a buffet for one's feet.
I noticed it so much because I had never seen boys or men wait upon women.
My own dear papa was used to having women wait upon him--bring his slippers, you know, and give him the best chair.
He didn't like Jem's ways.
He said he liked a boy who was a boy and not an affected nincompoop.
He wasn't really quite just.
” She paused regretfully and sighed as she looked back into a past doubtlessly enriched with many similar memories of “dear papa.
” “Poor Jem!
Poor Jem!
” she breathed softly.
Tembarom thought that she must have felt the boy's loss very much, almost as much as though she had really been his mother; perhaps more pathetically because she had not been his mother or anybody's mother.
He could see what a good little mother she would have made, looking after her children and doing everything on earth to make them happy and comfortable, just the kind of mother Ann would make, though she had not Ann's steady wonder of a little head or her shrewd farsightedness.
Jem would have been in luck if he had been her son.
It was a darned pity he hadn't been.
If he had, perhaps he would not have died young.
“Yes,” he answered sympathetically, “it's hard for a young fellow to die.
How old was he, anyhow?
I don't know.
” “Not much older than you are now.
It was seven years ago.
And if he had only died, poor dear!
There are things so much worse than death.
” “Worse!
” “Awful disgrace is worse,” she faltered.
She was plainly trying to keep moisture out of her eyes.
“Did he get into some bad mix-up, poor fellow?
” If there had been anything like that, no wonder it broke her up to think of him.
It surely did break her up.
She flushed emotionally.
“The cruel thing was that he didn't really do what he was accused of,” she said.
“He didn't?
” “No; but he was a ruined man, and he went away to the Klondike because he could not stay in England.
And he was killed--killed, poor boy!
And afterward it was found out that he was innocent--too late.
” “Gee!
” Tembarom gasped, feeling hot and cold.
“Could you beat that for rotten luck!
What was he accused of?
” Miss Alicia leaned forward and spoke in a whisper.
It was too dreadful to speak of aloud.
“Cheating at cards--a gentleman playing with gentlemen.
You know what that means.
” Tembarom grew hotter and colder.
No wonder she looked that way, poor little thing!
“But,”--he hesitated before he spoke,--“but he wasn't that kind, was he?
Of course he wasn't. ” “No, no. But, you see,”--she hesitated herself here,--“everything looked so much against him.
He had been rather wild.
” She dropped her voice even lower in making the admission.
Tembarom wondered how much she meant by that.
“He was so much in debt.
He knew he was to be rich in the future, and he was poor just in those reckless young days when it seemed unfair.
And he had played a great deal and had been very lucky.
He was so lucky that sometimes his luck seemed uncanny.
Men who had played with him were horrible about it afterward.
” “They would be,” put in Tembarom.
“They'd be sore about it, and bring it up.
” They both forgot their tea.
Miss Alicia forgot everything as she poured forth her story in the manner of a woman who had been forced to keep silent and was glad to put her case into words.
It was her case.
To tell the truth of this forgotten wrong was again to offer justification of poor handsome Jem whom everybody seemed to have dropped talk of, and even preferred not to hear mentioned.
“There were such piteously cruel things about it,” she went on.
“He had fallen very much in love, and he meant to marry and settle down.
Though we had not seen each other for years, he actually wrote to me and told me about it.
His letter made me cry.
He said I would understand and care about the thing which seemed to have changed everything and made him a new man.
He was so sorry that he had not been better and more careful.
He was going to try all over again.
He was not going to play at all after this one evening when he was obliged to keep an engagement he had made months before to give his revenge to a man he had won a great deal of money from.
The very night the awful thing happened he had told Lady Joan, before he went into the card-room, that this was to be his last game.
” Tembarom had looked deeply interested from the first, but at her last words a new alertness added itself.
“Did you say Lady Joan?
” he asked.
“Who was Lady Joan?
” “She was the girl he was so much in love with.
Her name was Lady Joan Fayre.
” “Was she the daughter of the Countess of Mallowe?
” “Yes.
Have you heard of her?
” He recalled Ann's reflective consideration of him before she had said, “She'll come after you.
” He replied now: “Some one spoke of her to me this morning.
They say she's a beauty and as proud as Lucifer.
” “She was, and she is yet, I believe.
Poor Lady Joan--as well as poor Jem!
” “She didn't believe it, did she?
” he put in hastily.
“She didn't throw him down?
” “No one knew what happened between them afterward.
She was in the card-room, looking on, when the awful thing took place.
” She stopped, as though to go on was almost unbearable.
She had been so overwhelmed by the past shame of it that even after the passing of years the anguish was a living thing.
Her small hands clung hard together as they rested on the edge of the table.
Tembarom waited in thrilled suspense.
She spoke in a whisper again: “He won a great deal of money--a great deal.
He had that uncanny luck again, and of course people in the other rooms heard what was going on, and a number drifted in to look on.
The man he had promised to give his revenge to almost showed signs of having to make an effort to conceal his irritation and disappointment.
Of course, as he was a gentleman, he was as cool as possible; but just at the most exciting moment, the height of the game, Jem made a quick movement, and--and something fell out of his sleeve.
” “Something,” gasped Tembarom, “fell out of his sleeve!
” Miss Alicia's eyes overflowed as she nodded her beribboned little cap.
“It”--her voice was a sob of woe--“it was a marked card.
The man he was playing against snatched it and held it up.
And he laughed out loud.
” “Holy cats!
” burst from Tembarom; but the remarkable exclamation was one of genuine horror, and he turned pale, got up from his seat, and took two or three strides across the room, as though he could not sit still.
“Yes, he laughed--quite loudly,” repeated Miss Alicia, “as if he had guessed it all the time.
Papa heard the whole story from some one who was present.
” Tembarom came back to her rather breathless.
“What in thunder did he do--Jem?
” he asked.
She actually wrung her poor little hands.
“What could he do?
There was a dead silence.
People moved just a little nearer to the table and stood and stared, merely waiting.
They say it was awful to see his face--awful.
He sprang up and stood still, and slowly became as white as if he were dying before their eyes.
Some one thought Lady Joan Fayre took a step toward him, but no one was quite sure.
He never uttered one word, but walked out of the room and down the stairs and out of the house.
” “But didn't he speak to the girl?
” “He didn't even look at her.
He passed her by as if she were stone.
” “What happened next?
” “He disappeared.
No one knew where at first, and then there was a rumor that he had gone to the Klondike and had been killed there.
And a year later--only a year!
Oh, if he had only waited in England!
--a worthless villain of a valet he had discharged for stealing met with an accident, and because he thought he was going to die, got horribly frightened, and confessed to the clergyman that he had tucked the card in poor Jem's sleeve himself just to pay him off.
He said he did it on the chance that it would drop out where some one would see it, and a marked card dropping out of a man's sleeve anywhere would look black enough, whether he was playing or not.
But poor Jem was in his grave, and no one seemed to care, though every one had been interested enough in the scandal.
People talked about that for weeks.
” Tembarom pulled at his collar excitedly.
“It makes me sort of strangle,” he said.
“You've got to stand your own bad luck, but to hear of a chap that's had to lie down and take the worst that could come to him and know it wasn't his--just KNOW it!
And die before he's cleared!
That knocks me out.
” Almost every sentence he uttered had a mystical sound to Miss Alicia, but she knew how he was taking it, with what hot, young human sympathy and indignation.
She loved the way he took it, and she loved the feeling in his next words, “And the girl--good Lord!
--the girl?
” “I never met her, and I know very little of her; but she has never married.
” “I'm glad of that,” he said.
“I'm darned glad of it.
How could she?
” Ann wouldn't, he knew.
Ann would have gone to her grave unmarried.
But she would have done things first to clear her man's name.
