Part 19

“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 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 far-sightedness. 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. Somehow she would have cleared him, if she’d had to fight tooth and nail till she was eighty.

“They say she has grown very bitter and haughty in her manner. I’m afraid Lady Mallowe is a very worldly woman. One hears they don’t get on together, and that she is bitterly disappointed because her daughter has not made a good match. It appears that she might have made several, but she is so hard and cynical that men are afraid of her. I wish I had known her a little--if she really loved Jem.”

Tembarom had thrust his hands into his pockets, and was standing deep in thought, looking at the huge bank of red coals in the fire-grate. Miss Alicia hastily wiped her eyes.

“Do excuse me,” she said.

“I’ll excuse you all right,” he replied, still looking into the coals. “I guess I shouldn’t excuse you as much if you didn’t.” He let her cry in her gentle way while he stared, lost in reflection.

“And if he hadn’t fired that valet chap, he would be here with you now--instead of me. Instead of me,” he repeated.

And Miss Alicia did not know what to say in reply. There seemed to be nothing which, with propriety and natural feeling, one could say.

* * * * *

“It makes me feel just fine to know I’m not going to have my dinner all by myself,” he said to her before she left the library.

She had a way of blushing about things he noticed, when she was shy or moved or didn’t know exactly what to say. Though she must have been sixty, she did it as though she were sixteen. And she did it when he said this, and looked as though suddenly she was in some sort of trouble.

“You are going to have dinner with me,” he said, seeing that she hesitated--“dinner and breakfast and lunch and tea and supper and every old thing that goes. You can’t turn me down after me staking out that claim.”

“I’m afraid--” she said. “You see, I have lived such a secluded life. I scarcely ever left my rooms except to take a walk. I’m sure you understand. It would not have been necessary even if I could have afforded it, which I really couldn’t--I’m afraid I have nothing--quite _suitable_--for evening wear.”

“You haven’t!” he exclaimed gleefully. “I don’t know what is suitable for evening wear, but I haven’t got it either. Pearson told me so with tears in his eyes. It never was necessary for me either. I’ve got to get some things to quiet Pearson down, but until I do I’ve got to eat my dinner in a tweed cutaway; and what I’ve caught on to is that it’s unsuitable enough to throw a man into jail. That little black dress you’ve got on and that little cap are just ’way out of sight, they’re so becoming. Come down just like you are.”

She felt a little as Pearson had felt when confronting his new employer’s entire cheerfulness in face of a situation as exotically hopeless as the tweed cutaway, and nothing else by way of resource. But there was something so nice about him, something which was almost as though he was actually a gentleman, something which absolutely, if one could go so far, stood in the place of his being a gentleman. It was impossible to help liking him more and more at every queer speech he made. Still, there were of course things he did not realize, and perhaps one ought in kindness to give him a delicate hint.

“I’m afraid,” she began quite apologetically. “I’m afraid that the servants, Burrill and the footmen, you know, will be--will think--”

“Say,” he took her up, “let’s give Burrill and the footmen the Willies out and out. If they can’t stand it, they can write home to their mothers and tell ’em they’ve got to take ’em away. Burrill and the footmen needn’t worry. They’re suitable enough, and it’s none of their funeral, anyhow.”

He wasn’t upset in the least. Miss Alicia, who, as a timid dependent either upon “poor dear papa” or Mr. Temple Barholm, had been secretly, in her sensitive, ladylike little way, afraid of superior servants all her life, knowing that they realized her utterly insignificant helplessness, and resented giving her attention because she was not able to show her appreciation of their services in the proper manner--Miss Alicia saw that it had not occurred to him to endeavor to propitiate them in the least, because somehow it all seemed a joke to him, and he didn’t care. After the first moment of being startled, she regarded him with a novel feeling, almost a kind of admiration. Tentatively she dared to wonder if there was not something even rather--rather _aristocratic_ in his utter indifference.

If he had been a duke, he would not have regarded the servants’ point of view; it wouldn’t have mattered what they thought. Perhaps, she hastily decided, he was like this because, though he was not a duke, and boot-blacking in New York notwithstanding, he was a Temple Barholm. There were few dukes as old of blood as a Temple Barholm. That must be it. She was relieved.

Whatsoever lay at the root of his being what he was and as he was, he somehow changed the aspect of things for her, and without doing anything but be himself, cleared the atmosphere of her dread of the surprise and mental reservations of the footmen and Burrill when she came down to dinner in her high-necked, much-cleaned, and much-repaired black silk, and with no more distinguishing change in her toilet than a white lace cap instead of a black one, and with “poor dear mama’s” hair bracelet with the gold clasp on her wrist, and a weeping-willow made of “poor dear papa’s” hair in a brooch at her collar.

It was so curious, though still “nice,” but he did not offer her his arm when they were going into the dining-room, and he took hold of hers with his hand and affectionately half led, half pushed, her along with him as they went. And he himself drew back her chair for her at the end of the table opposite his own. He did not let a footman do it, and he stood behind it, talking in his cheerful way all the time, and he moved it to exactly the right place, and then actually bent down and looked under the table.

“Here,” he said to the nearest man-servant, “where’s there a footstool? Get one, please,” in that odd, simple, almost aristocratic way. It was not a rude or dictatorial way, but a casual way, as though he knew the man was there to do things, and he didn’t expect any time to be wasted.

And it was he himself who arranged the footstool, making it comfortable for her, and then he went to his own chair at the head of the table and sat down, smiling at her joyfully across the glass and silver and flowers.

“Push that thing in the middle on one side, Burrill,” he said. “It’s too high. I can’t see Miss Alicia.”

Burrill found it difficult to believe the evidence of his hearing.

“The epergne, sir?” he inquired.

“Is that what it’s called, an apern? That’s a new one on me. Yes, that’s what I mean. Push the apern over.”

“Shall I remove it from the table, sir?” Burrill steeled himself to exact civility. Of what use to behave otherwise? There always remained the liberty to give notice if the worst came to the worst, though what the worst might eventually prove to be it required a lurid imagination to depict. The epergne was a beautiful thing of crystal and gold, a celebrated work of art, regarded as an exquisite possession. It was almost remarkable that Mr. Temple Barholm had not said, “Shove it on one side,” but Burrill had been spared the poignant indignity of being required to “shove.”

“Yes, suppose you do. It’s a fine enough thing when it isn’t in the way, but I’ve got to see you while I talk, Miss Alicia,” said Mr. Temple Barholm. The episode of the epergne--Burrill’s expression, and the rigidly restrained mouths of Henry and James as the decoration was removed, leaving a painfully blank space of table-cloth until Burrill silently filled it with flowers in a low bowl--these things temporarily flurried Miss Alicia somewhat, but the pleased smile at the head of the table calmed even that trying moment.

Then what a delightful meal it was, to be sure! How entertaining and cheerful and full of interesting conversation! Miss Alicia had always admired what she reverently termed “conversation.” She had read of the houses of brilliant people where they had it at table, at dinner and supper parties, and in drawing-rooms. The French, especially the French ladies, were brilliant conversationalists. They held “salons” in which the conversation was wonderful--Mme. de Staël and Mme. Roland, for instance; and in England, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Sydney Smith, and Horace Walpole, and surely Miss Fanny Burney, and no doubt L. E. L., whose real name was Miss Letitia Elizabeth Landon--what conversation they must have delighted their friends with and how instructive it must have been even to sit in the most obscure corner and listen!

Such gifted persons seemed to have been chosen by Providence to delight and inspire every one privileged to hear them. Such privileges had been omitted from the scheme of Miss Alicia’s existence. She did not know, she would have felt it sacrilegious to admit it even if the fact had dawned upon her, that “dear papa” had been a heartlessly arrogant, utterly selfish, and tyrannical old blackguard of the most pronounced type. He had been of an absolute morality as far as social laws were concerned. He had written and delivered a denunciatory sermon a week, and had made unbearable by his ministrations the suffering hours and the last moments of his parishioners during the long years of his pastorate. When Miss Alicia, in reading records of the helpful relationship of the male progenitors of the Brontes, Jane Austen, Fanny Burney, and Mrs. Browning, was frequently reminded of him, she revealed a perception of which she was not aware. He had combined the virile qualities of all of them. Consequently, brilliancy of conversation at table had not been the attractive habit of the household; “poor dear papa” had confined himself to scathing criticisms of the incompetence of females who could not teach their menials to “cook a dinner which was not a disgrace to any decent household.” When not virulently aspersing the mutton, he was expressing his opinion of muddle-headed weakness which would permit household bills to mount in a manner which could only bring ruin and disaster upon a minister of the gospel who throughout a protracted career of usefulness had sapped his intellectual manhood in the useless effort to support in silly idleness a family of brainless and maddening fools. Miss Alicia had heard her character, her unsuccessful physical appearance, her mind, and her pitiful efforts at table-talk, described in detail with a choice of adjective and adverb which had broken into terrified fragments every atom of courage and will with which she had been sparsely dowered.