Part 20

So, not having herself been gifted with conversational powers to begin with, and never having enjoyed the exhibition of such powers in others, her ideals had been high. She was not sure that Mr. Temple Barholm’s fluent and cheerful talk could be with exactness termed “conversation.” It was perhaps not sufficiently lofty and intellectual, and did not confine itself rigorously to one exalted subject. But how it did raise one’s spirits and open up curious vistas! And how good tempered and humorous it was, even though sometimes the humor was a little bewildering! During the whole dinner there never occurred even one of those dreadful pauses in which dead silence fell, and one tried, like a frightened hen flying from side to side of a coop, to think of something to say which would not sound silly, but perhaps might divert attention from dangerous topics. She had often thought it would be so interesting to hear a Spaniard or a native Hindu talk about himself and his own country in English. Tembarom talked about New York and its people and atmosphere, and he did not know how foreign it all was. He described the streets--Fifth Avenue and Broadway and Sixth Avenue--and the street-cars and the elevated railroad, and the way “fellows” had to “hustle” “to put it over.” He spoke of a boarding-house kept by a certain Mrs. Bowse, and a presidential campaign, and the election of a mayor, and a quick-lunch counter, and when President Garfield had been assassinated, and a department store, and the electric lights, and the way he had of making a sort of picture of everything was really instructive and, well, fascinating. She felt as though she had been taken about the city in one of the vehicles the conductor of which described things through a megaphone.

Not that Mr. Temple Barholm suggested a megaphone, whatsoever that might be, but he merely made you feel as if you had seen things. Never had she been so entertained and enlightened. If she had been a beautiful girl, he could not have seemed more as though in amusing her he was also really pleasing himself. He was so very funny sometimes that she could not help laughing in a way which was almost unladylike, because she could not stop, and was obliged to put her handkerchief up to her face and wipe away actual tears of mirth.

Fancy laughing until you cried, and the servants looking on!

Though once Burrill himself was obliged to turn hastily away, and twice she heard him severely reprove an overpowered young footman in a rapid undertone.

Tembarom at least felt that the unlifting heaviness of atmosphere which had surrounded him while enjoying the companionship of Mr. Palford was a thing of the past.

The thrilled interest, the surprise and delight, of Miss Alicia would have stimulated a man in a comatose condition, it seemed to him.

The little thing just loved every bit of it--she just “eat it up.” She asked question after question, sometimes questions which would have made him shout with laughter if he had not been afraid of hurting her feelings. She knew as little of New York as he knew of Temple Barholm, and was, it made him grin to see, allured by it as by some illicit fascination.

She did not know what to make of it, and sometimes she was obliged hastily to conceal a fear that it was a sort of Sodom and Gomorrah; but she wanted to hear more about it, and still more.

And she brightened up until she actually did not look frightened, and ate her dinner with an excellent appetite.

“I really never enjoyed a dinner so much in my life,” she said when they went into the drawing-room to have their coffee. “It was the conversation which made it so delightful. Conversation is such a stimulating thing!”

She had almost decided that it was “conversation,” or at least a wonderful substitute.

When she said good night to him and went beaming to bed, looking forward immensely to breakfast next morning, he watched her go up the staircase, feeling wonderfully normal and happy.

“Some of these nights, when she’s used to me,” he said as he stuffed tobacco into his last pipe in the library--“some of these nights I’m darned if I sha’n’t catch hold of the sweet, little old thing and hug her in spite of myself. I sha’n’t be able to help it.” He lit his pipe, and puffed it even excitedly. “Lord!” he said, “there’s some blame’ fool going about the world right now that might have married her. And he’ll never know what a break he made when he didn’t.”

[Illustration]

## CHAPTER XVI

A fugitive fine day which had strayed into the month from the approaching spring appeared the next morning, and Miss Alicia was uplifted by the enrapturing suggestion that she should join her new relative in taking a walk, in fact that it should be she who took him to walk and showed him some of his possessions. This, it had revealed itself to him, she could do in a special way of her own, because during her life at Temple Barholm she had felt it her duty to “try to do a little good” among the villagers. She and her long-dead mother and sister had of course been working adjuncts of the vicarage, and had numerous somewhat trying tasks to perform in the way of improving upon “dear papa’s” harrying them into attending church, chivying, the mothers into sending their children to Sunday-school, and being unsparing in severity of any conduct which might be construed into implying lack of appreciation of the vicar or respect for his eloquence.

It had been necessary for them as members of the vicar’s family--always, of course, without adding a sixpence to the household bills--to supply bowls of nourishing broth and arrowroot to invalids and to bestow the aid and encouragement which result in a man of God’s being regarded with affection and gratitude by his parishioners. Many a man’s career in the church, “dear papa” had frequently observed, had been ruined by lack of intelligence and effort on the part of the female members of his family.

“No man could achieve proper results,” he had said, “if he was hampered by the selfish influence and foolishness of his womenkind. Success in the church depends in one sense very much upon the conduct of a man’s female relatives.”

After the deaths of her mother and sister, Miss Alicia had toiled on patiently, fading day by day from a slim, plain, sweet-faced girl to a slim, even plainer and sweeter-faced middle-aged and at last elderly woman. She had by that time read aloud by bedsides a great many chapters in the Bible, had given a good many tracts, and bestowed as much arrowroot, barley-water, and beef-tea as she could possibly encompass without domestic disaster. She had given a large amount of conscientious, if not too intelligent, advice, and had never failed to preside over her Sunday-school class or at mothers’ meetings. But her timid unimpressiveness had not aroused enthusiasm or awakened comprehension. “Miss Alicia,” the cottage women said, “she’s well meanin’, but she’s not one with a head.” “She reminds me,” one of them had summed her up, “of a hen that lays a’ egg every day, but it’s too small for a meal, and it ’u’d never hatch into anythin’.”

During her stay at Temple Barholm she had tentatively tried to do a little “parish work,” but she had had nothing to give, and she was always afraid that if Mr. Temple Barholm found her out, he would be angry, because he would think she was presuming. She was aware that the villagers knew that she was an object of charity herself, and a person who was “a lady” and yet an object of charity was, so to speak, poaching upon their own legitimate preserves. The rector and his wife were rather grand people, and condescended to her greatly on the few occasions of their accidental meetings. She was neither smart nor influential enough to be considered as an asset.

It was she who “conversed” during their walk, and while she trotted by Tembarom’s side, looking more early-Victorian than ever in a neat, fringed mantle and a small black bonnet of a fashion long decently interred by a changing world, Tembarom had never seen anything resembling it in New York; but he liked it and her increasingly at every moment.

It was he who made her converse. He led her on by asking her questions and being greatly interested in every response she made. In fact, though he was quite unaware of the situation, she was creating for him such an atmosphere as he might have found in a book, if he had had the habit of books. Everything she told him was new and quaint and very often rather touching. She remembered things about herself and her poor little past without knowing she was doing it. Before they had talked an hour he had an astonishing clear idea of “poor dear papa” and “dearest Emily” and “poor darling mama” and existence at Rowcroft Vicarage. He “caught on to” the fact that though she was very much given to the word “dear,”--people were “dear,” and so were things and places,--she never even by chance slipped into saying “dear Rowcroft,” which she would certainly have done if she had ever spent a happy moment in it. As she talked to him he realized that her simple accustomedness to English village life and its accompaniments of county surroundings would teach him anything and everything he might want to know. Her obscurity had been surrounded by stately magnificence, with which she had become familiar without touching the merest outskirts of its privileges. She knew names and customs and families and things to be cultivated or avoided, and though she would be a little startled and much mystified by his total ignorance of all she had breathed in since her birth, he felt sure that she would not regard him either with private contempt or with a lessened liking because he was a vandal pure and simple.

And she had such a nice, little, old polite way of saying things. When, in passing a group of children, he failed to understand that their hasty bobbing up and down meant that they were doing obeisance to him as lord of the manor, she spoke with the prettiest apologetic courtesy.

“I’m sure you won’t mind touching your hat when they make their little curtsies, or when a villager touches his forehead,” she said.

“Good Lord! no,” he said, starting. “Ought I? I didn’t know they were doing it at me.” And he turned round and made a handsome bow and grinned almost affectionately at the small, amazed party, first puzzling, and then delighting, them, because he looked so extraordinarily friendly. A gentleman who laughed at you like that ought to be equal to a miscellaneous distribution of pennies in the future, if not on the spot. They themselves grinned and chuckled and nudged one another, with stares and giggles.

“I am sorry to say that in a great many places the villagers are not nearly so respectful as they used to be,” Miss Alicia explained. “In Rowcroft the children were very remiss about curtseying. It’s quite sad. But Mr. Temple Barholm was very strict indeed in the matter of demanding proper respectfulness. He has turned men off their farms for incivility. The villagers of Temple Barholm have much better manners than some even a few miles away.”

“Must I tip my hat to all of them?” he asked.

“If you please. It really seems kinder. You--you needn’t quite lift it, as you did to the children just now. If you just touch the brim lightly with your hand in a sort of military salute--that is what they are accustomed to.”

After they had passed through the village street she paused at the end of a short lane and looked up at him doubtfully.

“Would you--I wonder if you would like to go into a cottage,” she said.

“Go into a cottage?” he asked. “What cottage? What for?”

He had not the remotest idea of any reason why he should go into a cottage inhabited by people who were entire strangers to him, and Miss Alicia felt a trifle awkward at having to explain anything so wholly natural.

“You see, they are your cottages, and the people are your tenants, and--”

“But perhaps they mightn’t like it. It might make ’em mad,” he argued. “If their water-pipes had busted, and they’d asked me to come and look at them or anything; but they don’t know me yet. They might think I was Mr. Buttinski.”

“I don’t quite--” she began. “Buttinski is a foreign name; it sounds Russian or Polish. I’m afraid I don’t quite understand why they should mistake you for him.”

Then he laughed--a boyish shout of laughter which brought a cottager to the nearest window to peep over the pots of fuchsias and geraniums blooming profusely against the diamond panes.

“Say,” he apologized, “don’t be mad because I laughed. I’m laughing at myself as much as at anything. It’s a way of saying that they might think I was ‘butting in’ too much--pushing in where I wasn’t asked. See? I said they might think I was Mr. Butt-in-ski! It’s just a bit of fool slang. You’re not mad, are you?”

“Oh, no!” she said. “Dear me! no. It is very funny, of course. I’m afraid I’m extremely ignorant about--about foreign humor.” It seemed more delicate to say “foreign” than merely “American.” But her gentle little countenance for a few seconds wore a baffled expression, and she said softly to herself, “Mr. Buttinski, Butt-in--to intrude. It sounds quite Polish; I think even more Polish than Russian.”

He was afraid he would yell with glee, but he did not. Herculean effort enabled him to restrain his feelings, and present to her only an ordinary-sized smile.

“I shouldn’t know one from the other,” he said; “but if you say it sounds more Polish, I bet it does.”

“Would you like to go into a cottage?” she inquired. “I think it might be as well. They will like the attention.”

“Will they? Of course I’ll go if you think that. What shall I say?” he asked somewhat anxiously.

“If you think the cottage looks clean, you might tell them so, and ask a few questions about things. And you must be sure to inquire about Susan Hibblethwaite’s legs.”

“What?” ejaculated Tembarom.

“Susan Hibblethwaite’s legs,” she replied in mild explanation. “Susan is Mrs. Hibblethwaite’s unmarried sister, and she has very bad legs. It is a thing one notices continually among village people, more especially the women, that they complain of what they call ‘bad legs.’ I never quite know what they mean, whether it is rheumatism or something different, but the trouble is always spoken of as ‘bad legs.’ And they like you to inquire about them, so that they can tell you their symptoms.”

“Why don’t they get them cured?”

“I don’t know, I’m sure. They take a good deal of medicine when they can afford it. I think they like to take it. They’re very pleased when the doctor gives them ‘a bottle o’ summat,’ as they call it. Oh, I mustn’t forget to tell you that most of them speak rather broad Lancashire.”

“Shall I understand them?” Tembarom asked, anxious again. “Is it a sort of Dago talk?”

“It is the English the working-classes speak in Lancashire. ‘Summat’ means ‘something.’ ‘Whoam’ means ‘home.’ But I should think you would be very clever at understanding things.”

“I’m scared stiff,” said Tembarom, not in the least uncourageously; “but I want to go into a cottage and hear some of it. Which one shall we go into?”

There were several whitewashed cottages in the lane, each in its own bit of garden and behind its own hawthorn hedge, now bare and wholly unsuggestive of white blossoms and almond scent to the uninitiated. Miss Alicia hesitated a moment.

“We will go into this one, where the Hibblethwaites live,” she decided. “They are quite clean, civil people. They have a naughty, queer, little crippled boy, but I suppose they can’t keep him in order because he is an invalid. He’s rather rude, I’m sorry to say, but he’s rather sharp and clever, too. He seems to lie on his sofa and collect all the gossip of the village.”

They went together up the bricked path, and Miss Alicia knocked at the low door with her knuckles. A stout, apple-faced woman opened it, looking a shade nervous.

“Good morning, Mrs. Hibblethwaite,” said Miss Alicia in a kind but remote manner. “The new Mr. Temple Barholm has been kind enough to come to see you. It’s very good of him to come so soon, isn’t it?”

“It is that,” Mrs. Hibblethwaite answered rapidly, looking him over. “Wilt tha coom in, sir?”

Tembarom accepted the invitation, feeling extremely awkward because Miss Alicia’s initiatory comment upon his goodness in showing himself had “rattled” him. It had made him feel that he must appear condescending, and he had never condescended to any one in the whole course of his existence. He had, indeed, not even been condescended to. He had met with slanging and bullying, indifference and brutality of manner, but he had not met with condescension.

“I hope you’re well, Mrs. Hibblethwaite,” he answered. “You look it.”

“I deceive ma looks a good bit, sir,” she answered. “Mony a day ma legs is nigh as bad as Susan’s.”

“Tha ’rt jealous o’ Susan’s legs,” barked out a sharp voice from a corner by the fire.

The room had a flagged floor, clean with recent scrubbing with sandstone; the whitewashed walls were decorated with pictures cut from illustrated papers; there was a big fireplace, and by it was a hard-looking sofa covered with blue-and-white checked cotton stuff. A boy of about ten was lying on it, propped up with a pillow. He had a big head and a keen, ferret-eyed face, and just now was looking round the end of his sofa at the visitors.

“Howd tha tongue, Tummas!” said his mother.

“I wun not howd it,” Tummas answered. “Ma tongue’s the on’y thing about me as works right, an’ I’m noan goin’ to stop it.”

“He’s a young nowt,” his mother explained; “but he’s a cripple, an’ we conna do owt wi’ him.”

“Do not be rude, Thomas,” said Miss Alicia, with dignity.

“Dun not be rude thysen,” replied Tummas. “I’m noan o’ thy lad.”

Tembarom walked over to the sofa.

“Say,” he began with jocular intent, “you’ve got a grouch on, ain’t you?”

Tummas turned on him eyes which bored. An analytical observer or a painter might have seen that he had a burning curiousness of look, a sort of investigatory fever of expression.

“I dun not know what tha means,” he said. “Happen tha ’rt talkin’ ’Merican?”

“That’s just what it is,” admitted Tembarom. “What are you talking?”

“Lancashire,” said Tummas. “Theer’s some sense i’ that.”

Tembarom sat down near him. The boy turned over against his pillow and put his chin in the hollow of his palm and stared.

“I’ve wanted to see thee,” he remarked. “I’ve made mother an’ Aunt Susan an’ feyther tell me every bit they’ve heared about thee in the village. Theer was a lot of it. Tha coom fro’ ’Meriker?”

“Yes.” Tembarom began vaguely to feel the demand in the burning curiosity.

“Gi’ me that theer book,” the boy said, pointing to a small table heaped with a miscellaneous jumble of things and standing not far from him. “It’s a’ atlas,” he added as Tembarom gave it to him. “Yo’ con find places in it.” He turned the leaves until he found a map of the world. “Theer’s ’Meriker,” he said, pointing to the United States. “That theer’s north and that theer’s south. All the real ’Merikens comes from the North, wheer New York is.”

“I come from New York,” said Tembarom.

“Tha wert born i’ the workhouse, tha run about the streets i’ rags, tha pretty nigh clemmed to death, tha blacked boots, tha sold newspapers, tha feyther was a common workin’-mon--and now tha’s coom into Temple Barholm an’ sixty thousand a year.”

“The last part’s true all right,” Tembarom owned, “but there’s some mistakes in the first part. I wasn’t born in the workhouse, and though I’ve been hungry enough, I never starved to death--if that’s what ‘clemmed’ means.”

Tummas looked at once disappointed and somewhat incredulous.

“That’s the road they tell it i’ the village,” he argued.

“Well, let them tell it that way if they like it best. That’s not going to worry me,” Tembarom replied uncombatively. Tummas’s eyes bored deeper into him.

“Does na tha care?” he demanded.

“What should I care for? Let every fellow enjoy himself his own way.”

“Tha ’rt not a bit like one o’ the gentry,” said Tummas. “Tha ’rt quite a common chap. Tha ’rt as common as me, for aw tha foine clothes.”

“People are common enough, anyhow,” said Tembarom. “There’s nothing much commoner, is there? There’s millions of ’em everywhere--billions of ’em. None of us need put on airs.”

“Tha ’rt as common as me,” said Tummas, reflectively. “An’ yet tha owns Temple Barholm an’ aw that brass. I conna mak’ out how the loike happens.”

“Neither can I; but it does all samee.”

“It does na happen i’ ’Meriker,” exulted Tummas. “Everybody’s equal theer.”

“Rats!” ejaculated Tembarom. “What about multimillionaires?”

He forgot that the age of Tummas was ten. It was impossible not to forget it. He was, in fact, ten hundred, if those of his generation had been aware of the truth. But there he sat, having spent only a decade of his most recent incarnation in a whitewashed cottage, deprived of the use of his legs.

Miss Alicia, seeing that Tembarom was interested in the boy, entered into domestic conversation with Mrs. Hibblethwaite at the other side of the room. Mrs. Hibblethwaite was soon explaining the uncertainty of Susan’s temper on wash-days, when it was necessary to depend on her legs.

“Can’t you walk at all?” Tembarom asked. Tummas shook his head. “How long have you been lame?”

“Ever since I weer born. It’s summat like rickets. I’ve been lyin’ here aw my days. I look on at foak an’ think ’em over. I’ve got to do summat. That’s why I loike the atlas. Little Ann Hutchinson gave it to me onct when she come to see her grandmother.”

Tembarom sat upright.

“Do you know her?” he exclaimed.

“I know her best o’ onybody in the world. An I loike her best.”

“So do I,” rashly admitted Tembarom.

“Tha does?” Tummas asked suspiciously. “Does she loike thee?”

“She says she does.” He tried to say it with proper modesty.

“Well, if she says she does, she does. An’ if she does, then you an’ me’ll be friends.” He stopped a moment, and seemed to be taking Tembarom in with thoroughness. “I could get a lot out o’ thee,” he said after the inspection.

“A lot of what?” Tembarom felt as though he would really like to hear.

“A lot o’ things I want to know about. I wish I’d lived the life tha’s lived, clemmin’ or no clemmin’. Tha’s seen things goin’ on every day o’ thy loife.”

“Well, there’s been plenty going on,” Tembarom admitted.