he said.
There was an odd reflection in his eyes, and he seemed to consider her and the situation again.
"Well," he began after his pause, "what I want to know is what you expect ME to do."
There was no unkindness in his manner, in fact, quite the contrary, even when he uttered what seemed to Miss Alicia these awful, unwarranted words. As though she had forced herself into his presence to make demands upon his charity! They made her tremble and turn pale as she got up quickly, shocked and alarmed.
"Oh, nothing! nothing! nothing WHATEVER, Mr. Temple Barholm!" she exclaimed, her agitation doing its best to hide itself behind a fine little dignity. He saw in an instant that his style of putting it had been ""way off," that his ignorance had betrayed him, that she had misunderstood him altogether. He almost jumped at her.
"Oh, say, I didn"t mean THAT!" he cried out. "For the Lord"s sake!
don"t think I"m such a Tenderloin tough as to make a break like that!
Not on your life!"
Never since her birth had a male creature looked at Miss Alicia with the appeal which showed itself in his eyes as he actually put his arm half around her shoulders, like a boy begging a favor from his mother or his aunt.
"What I meant was--" He broke off and began again quite anxiously, "say, just as a favor, will you sit down again and let me tell you what I did mean?"
It was that natural, warm, boyish way which overcame her utterly. It reminded her of the only boy she had ever really known, the one male creature who had allowed her to be fond of him. There was moisture in her eyes as she let him put her back into her chair. When he had done it, he sat down on the ottoman again and poured himself forth.
"You know what kind of a chap I am. No, you don"t, either. You mayn"t know a thing about me; and I want to tell you. I"m so different from everything you"ve ever known that I scare you. And no wonder. It"s the way I"ve lived. If you knew, you"d understand what I was thinking of when I spoke just now. I"ve been cold, I"ve been hungry, I"ve walked the wet streets on my uppers. I know all about GOING WITHOUT. And do you expect that I am going to let a--a little thing like you--go away from here without friends and without money on the chance of getting into an almshouse that isn"t vacant? Do you expect that of me? Not on your life! That was what I meant."
Miss Alicia quivered; the pale-purple ribbons on her little lace cap quivered.
"I haven"t," she said, and the fine little dignity was piteous, "a SHADOW of a claim upon you." It was necessary for her to produce a pocket- handkerchief. He took it from her, and touched her eyes as softly as though she were a baby.
"Claim nothing!" he said. "I"ve got a claim on YOU. I"m going to stake one out right now." He got up and gesticulated, taking in the big room and its big furniture. "Look at all this! It fell on me like a thunderbolt. It"s nearly knocked the life out of me. I"m like a lost cat on Broadway. You can"t go away and leave me, Miss Alicia; it"s your duty to stay. You"ve just GOT to stay to take care of me." He came over to her with a wheedling smile. "I never was taken care of in my life. Just be as n.o.ble to me as old Temple Barholm was to you: give me a sort of home."
If a little gentlewoman could stare, it might be said that Miss Alicia stared at him. She trembled with amazed emotion.
"Do you mean--" Despite all he had said, she scarcely dared to utter the words lest, after all, she might be taking for granted more than it was credible could be true. "Can you mean that if I stayed here with you it would make Temple Barholm seem more like HOME? Is it possible you--you mean THAT?"
"I mean just that very thing."
It was too much for her. Finely restrained little elderly gentlewoman as she was, she openly broke down under it.
"It can"t be true!" she e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed shakily. "It isn"t possible. It is too--too beautiful and kind. Do forgive me! I c-a-n"t help it." She burst into tears.
She knew it was most stupidly wrong. She knew gentlemen did not like tears. Her father had told her that men never really forgave women who cried at them. And here, when her fate hung in the balance, she was not able to behave herself with feminine decorum.
Yet the new Mr. Temple Barholm took it in as matter-of- fact a manner as he seemed to take everything. He stood by her chair and soothed her in his dear New York voice.
"That"s all right, Miss Alicia," he commented. "You cry as much as you want to, just so that you don"t say no. You"ve been worried and you"re tired. I"ll tell you there"s been two or three times lately when I should like to have cried myself if I"d known how. Say," he added with a sudden outburst of imagination, "I bet anything it"s about time you had tea."
The suggestion was so entirely within the normal order of things that it made her feel steadier, and she was able to glance at the clock.
"A cup of tea would be refreshing," she said. "They will bring it in very soon, but before the servants come I must try to express--"
But before she could express anything further the tea appeared.
Burrill and a footman brought it on splendid salvers, in ma.s.sive urn and tea-pot, with chaste, sacrificial flame flickering, and wonderful, hot b.u.t.tered and toasted things and wafers of bread and b.u.t.ter attendant. As they crossed the threshold, the sight of Miss Alicia"s small form enthroned in their employer"s chair was one so obviously unantic.i.p.ated that Burrill made a step backward and the footman almost lost the firmness of his hold on the smaller tray. Each recovered himself in time, however, and not until the tea was arranged upon the table near the fire was any outward recognition of Miss Alicia"s presence made. Then Burrill, pausing, made an announcement entirely without prejudice:
"I beg pardon, sir, but Higgins"s cart has come for Miss Temple Barholm"s box; he is asking when she wants the trap."
"She doesn"t want it at all," answered Tembarom. "Carry her trunk up- stairs again. She"s not going away."
The lack of proper knowledge contained in the suggestion that Burrill should carry trunks upstairs caused Miss Alicia to quail in secret, but she spoke with outward calm.
"No, Burrill," she said. "I am not going away."
"Very good, Miss," Burrill replied, and with impressive civility he prepared to leave the room. Tembarom glanced at the tea-things.
"There"s only one cup here," he said. "Bring one for me."
Burrill"s expression might perhaps have been said to start slightly.
"Very good, sir," he said, and made his exit. Miss Alicia was fluttering again.
"That cup was really for you, Mr. Temple Barholm," she ventured.
"Well, now it"s for you, and I"ve let him know it," replied Tembarom.
"Oh, PLEASE," she said in an outburst of feeling--"PLEASE let me tell you how GRATEFUL--how grateful I am!"
But he would not let her.
"If you do," he said, "I"ll tell you how grateful _I_ am, and that"ll be worse. No, that"s all fixed up between us. It goes. We won"t say any more about it."
He took the whole situation in that way, as though he was a.s.suming no responsibility which was not the simple, inevitable result of their drifting across each other--as though it was only what any man would have done, even as though she was a sort of delightful, unexpected happening. He turned to the tray.
"Say, that looks all right, doesn"t it?" he said. "Now you are here, I like the way it looks. I didn"t yesterday."
Burrill himself brought the extra cup and saucer and plate. He wished to make sure that his senses had not deceived him. But there she sat who through years had existed discreetly in the most unconsidered rooms in an uninhabited wing, knowing better than to presume upon her privileges--there she sat with an awed and rapt face gazing up at this new outbreak into Temple Barholm"s and "him joking and grinning as though he was as pleased as Punch."
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 circ.u.mstances 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 una.s.suming 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 Va.s.sar 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.