They turned to Tembarom at once with a pretty outburst of apologies and thanks. Lady Celia wasn"t, it is true, "a looker," with her narrow shoulders and rather long nose, but she had an air of breeding, and the charming color of which Palliser had spoken, returning to Lady Edith"s cheeks, illuminated her greatly.
They both were very polite and made many agreeably grateful speeches, but in the eyes of both there lurked a shade of anxiety which they hoped to be able to conceal. Their father watched them with a wicked pleasure. He realized clearly their well-behaved desire to do and say exactly the right thing and bear themselves in exactly the right manner, and also their awful uncertainty before an entirely unknown quant.i.ty. Almost any other kind of young man suddenly uplifted by strange fortune they might have known some parallel for, but a newsboy of New York! All the New Yorkers they had met or heard of had been so rich and grand as to make them feel themselves, by contrast, mere country paupers, quite shivering with poverty and huddling for protection in their barely clean rags, so what was there to go on? But how dreadful not to be quite right, precisely right, in one"s approach--quite familiar enough, and yet not a shade too familiar, which of course would appear condescending! And be it said the delicacy of the situation was added to by the fact that they had heard something of Captain Palliser"s extraordinary little story about his determination to know "ladies." Really, if Willocks the butcher"s boy had inherited Temple Barholm, it would have been easier to know where one stood in the matter of being civil and agreeable to him. First Lady Edith, made perhaps bold by the suggestion of physical advantage bestowed by the color, talked to him to the very best of her ability; and when she felt herself fearfully flagging, Lady Celia took him up and did her very well-conducted best. Neither she nor her sister were brilliant talkers at any time, and limited by the absence of any common familiar topic, effort was necessary. The neighborhood he did not know; London he was barely aware of; social functions it would be an impertinence to bring in; games he did not play; sport he had scarcely heard of. You were confined to America, and if you knew next to nothing of American life, there you were.
Tembarom saw it all,--he was sharp enough for that,--and his habit of being jocular and wholly unashamed saved him from the misery of awkwardness that Willocks would have been sure to have writhed under.
His casual frankness, however, for a moment embarra.s.sed Lady Edith to the bitterest extremity. When you are trying your utmost to make a queer person oblivious to the fact that his world is one unknown to you, it is difficult to know where do you stand when he says
"It"s mighty hard to talk to a man who doesn"t know a thing that belongs to the kind of world you"ve spent your life in, ain"t it? But don"t you mind me a minute. I"m glad to be talked to anyhow by people like you. When I don"t catch on, I"ll just ask. No man was ever electrocuted for not knowing, and that"s just where I am. I don"t know, and I"m glad to be told. Now, there"s one thing. Burrill said "Your Ladyship" to you, I heard him. Ought I to say it, er oughtn"t I?"
"Oh, no," she answered, but somehow without distaste in the momentary stare he had startled her into; "Burrill is--"
"He"s a servant," he aided encouragingly. "Well, I"ve never been a butler, but I"ve been somebody"s servant all my life, and mighty glad of the chance. This is the first time I"ve been out of a job."
What nice teeth he had! What a queer, candid, unresentful creature!
What a good sort of smile! And how odd that it was he who was putting her more at her ease by the mere way in which he was saying this almost alarming thing! By the time he had ended, it was not alarming at all, and she had caught her breath again.
She was actually sorry when the door opened and Lady Joan Fayre came in, followed almost immediately by Lady Mallowe and Captain Palliser, who appeared to have just returned from a walk and heard the news.
Lady Mallowe was most sympathetic. Why not, indeed? The Duke of Stone was a delightful, cynical creature, and Stone Hover was, despite its ducal poverty, a desirable place to be invited to, if you could manage it. Her ladyship"s method of fluttering was not like Miss Alicia"s, its character being wholly modern; but she fluttered, nevertheless.
The duke, who knew all about her, received her amiabilities with appreciative smiles, but it was the splendidly handsome, hungry-eyed young woman with the line between her black brows who engaged his attention. On the alert, as he always was, for a situation, he detected one at once when he saw his American address her. She did not address him, and scarcely deigned a reply when he spoke to her. When he spoke to others, she conducted herself as though he were not in the room, so obviously did she choose to ignore his existence. Such a bearing toward one"s host had indeed the charm of being an interesting novelty. And what a beauty she was, with her lovely, ferocious eyes and the small, black head poised on the exquisite long throat, which was on the verge of becoming a trifle too thin! Then as in a flash he recalled between one breath and another the quite fiendish episode of poor Jem Temple Barholm--and she was the girl!
Then he became almost excited in his interest. He saw it all. As he had himself argued must be the case, this poor fellow was in love. But it was not with a lady in the New York department stores; it was with a young woman who would evidently disdain to wipe her feet upon him.
How thrilling! As Lady Mallowe and Palliser and the others chattered, he watched him, observing his manner. He stood the handsome creature"s steadily persistent rudeness very well; he made no effort to push into the talk when she coolly held him out of it. He waited without external uneasiness or spasmodic smiles. If he could do that despite the inevitable fact that he must feel his position uncomfortable, he was possessed of fiber. That alone would make him worth cultivating.
And if there were persons who were to be made uncomfortable, why not cut in and circ.u.mvent the beauty somewhat and give her a trifle of unease? It was with the light and adroit touch of accustomedness to all orders of little situations that his grace took the matter in hand, with a shade, also, of amiable malice. He drew Tembarom adroitly into the center of things; he knew how to lead him to make easily the odd, frank remarks which were sufficiently novel to suggest that he was actually entertaining. He beautifully edged Lady Joan out of her position. She could not behave ill to him, he was far too old, he said to himself, leaving out the fact that a Duke of Stone is a too respectable personage to be quite waved aside.
Tembarom began to enjoy himself a little more. Lady Celia and Lady Edith began to enjoy themselves a little more also. Lady Mallowe was filled with admiring delight. Captain Palliser took in the situation, and asked himself questions about it. On her part, Miss Alicia was restored to the happiness any lack of appreciation of her "dear boy"
touchingly disturbed. In circ.u.mstances such as these he appeared to the advantage which in a brief period would surely reveal his wonderful qualities. She clung so to his "wonderful qualities" because in all the three-volumed novels of her youth the hero, debarred from early advantages and raised by the turn of fortune"s wheel to splendor, was transformed at once into a being of the highest accomplishments and the most polished breeding, and ended in the third volume a creature before whom emperors paled. And how more than charmingly cordial his grace"s manner was when he left them!
"To-morrow," he said, "if my daughters do not discover that I have injured some more than vital organ, I shall call to proffer my thanks with the most immense formality. I shall get out of the carriage in the manner customary in respectable neighborhoods, not roll out at your feet. Afterward you will, I hope, come and dine with us. I am devoured by a desire to become more familiar with The Earth."
CHAPTER XXV
It was Lady Mallowe who perceived the moment when he became the fashion. The Duke of Stone called with the immense formality he had described, and his visit was neither brief nor dull. A little later Tembarom with his guests dined at Stone Hover, and the dinner was further removed from dullness than any one of numerous past dinners always noted for being the most agreeable the neighborhood afforded.
The duke managed his guest as an impresario might have managed his tenor, though this was done with subtly concealed methods. He had indeed a novelty to offer which had been discussed with much uncertainty of point of view. He presented it to an only languidly entertained neighborhood as a trouvaille of his own choice. Here was drama, here was atmosphere, here was charm verging in its character upon the occult. You would not see it if you were not a collector of such values.
"n.o.body will be likely to see him as he is unless he is pointed out to them," was what he said to his daughters. "But being bored to death,-- we are all bored,--once adroitly a.s.sisted to suspect him of being alluring, most of them will spring upon him and clasp him to their wearied b.r.e.a.s.t.s. I haven"t the least idea what will happen afterward.
I shall in fact await the result with interest."
Being told Palliser"s story of the "Ladies," he listened, holding the tips of his fingers together, and wearing an expression of deep interest slightly baffled in its nature. It was Lady Edith who related the anecdote to him.
"Now," he said, "it would be very curious and complicating if that were true; but I don"t believe it is. Palliser, of course, likes to tell a good story. I shall be able to discover in time whether it is true or not; but at present I don"t believe it."
Following the dinner party at Stone Hover came many others. All the well-known carriages began to roll up the avenue to Temple Barholm.
The Temple Barholm carriages also began to roll down the avenue and between the stone griffins on their way to festive gatherings of varied order. Burrill and the footmen ventured to reconsider their early plans for giving warning. It wasn"t so bad if the country was going to take him up.
"Do you see what is happening?" Lady Mallowe said to Joan. "The man is becoming actually popular."
"He is popular as a turn at a music hall is," answered Joan. "He will be dropped as he was taken up."
"There"s something about him they like, and he represents what everybody most wants. For G.o.d"s sake! Joan, don"t behave like a fool this time. The case is more desperate. There is nothing else-- nothing."
"There never was," said Joan, " and I know the desperateness of the case. How long are you going to stay here?"
"I am going to stay for some time. They are not conventional people.
It can be managed very well. We are relatives."
"Will you stay," inquired Joan in a low voice, "until they ask you to remove yourself?"
Lady Mallowe smiled an agreeably subtle smile.
"Not quite that," she answered. "Miss Alicia would never have the courage to suggest it. It takes courage and sophistication to do that sort of thing. Mr. Temple Barholm evidently wants us to remain. He will be willing to make as much of the relationship as we choose to let him."
"Do you choose to let him make as much of it as will establish us here for weeks--or months?" Joan asked, her low voice shaking a little.
"That will depend entirely upon circ.u.mstances. It will, in fact, depend entirely upon you," said Lady Mallowe, her lips setting themselves into a straight, thin line.
For an appreciable moment Joan was silent; but after it she lost her head and whirled about.
"I shall go away," she cried.
"Where?" asked Lady Mallowe.
"Back to London."
"How much money have you?" asked her mother. She knew she had none.
She was always sufficiently shrewd to see that she had none. If the girl had had a pound a week of her own, her mother had always realized that she would have been unmanageable. After the Jem Temple Barholm affair she would have been capable of going to live alone in slums. As it was, she knew enough to be aware that she was too handsome to walk out into Piccadilly without a penny in her pocket; so it had been just possible to keep her indoors.
"How much money have you?" she repeated quietly. This was the way in which their unbearable scenes began--the scenes which the servants pa.s.sing the doors paused to listen to in the hope that her ladyship would forget that raised voices may be heard by the discreet outsider.
"How much money have you?" she said again.
Joan looked at her; this time it was for about five seconds. She turned her back on her and walked out of the room. Shortly afterward Lady Mallowe saw her walking down the avenue in the rain, which was beginning to fall.
She had left the house because she dared not stay in it. Once out in the park, she folded her long purple cloak about her and pulled her soft purple felt hat down over her brows, walking swiftly under the big trees without knowing where she intended to go before she returned. She liked the rain, she liked the heavy clouds; she wore her dark purples because she felt a fantastic, secret comfort in calling them her mourning --her mourning which she would wear forevermore.
No one could know so well as herself how desperate from her own point of view the case was. She had long known that her mother would not hesitate for a moment before any chance of a second marriage which would totally exclude her daughter from her existence. Why should she, after all, Joan thought? They had always been antagonists. The moment of chance had been looming on the horizon for months. Sir Moses Monaldini had hovered about fitfully and evidently doubtfully at first, more certainly and frequently of late, but always with a clearly objecting eye cast askance upon herself. With determination and desire to establish a social certainty, astute enough not to care specially for young beauty and exactions he did not purpose to submit to, and keen enough to see the advantage of a handsome woman with bitter reason to value what was offered to her in the form of a luxurious future, Sir Moses was moving toward action, though with proper caution. He would have no penniless daughters hanging about scowling and sneering. None of that for him. And the ripest apple upon the topmost bow in the highest wind would not drop more readily to his feet than her mother would, Joan knew with sharp and shamed burnings.
As the rain fell, she walked in her purple cloak, unpaid for, and her purple hat, for which they had been dunned with threatening insults, and knew that she did not own and could not earn a penny. She could not dig, and to beg she was ashamed, and all the more horribly because she had been a beggar of the meaner order all her life. It made her sick to think of the perpetual visits they had made where they were not wanted, of the times when they had been politely bundled out of places, of the methods which had been used to induce shop-keepers to let them run up bills. For years her mother and she had been walking advertis.e.m.e.nts of smart shops because both were handsome, wore clothes well, and carried them where they would be seen and talked about. Now this would be all over, since it had been Lady Mallowe who had managed all details. Thrown upon her own resources, Joan would have none of them, even though she must walk in rags. Her education had prepared her for only one thing--to marry well, if luck were on her side. It had never been on her side. If she had never met Jem, she would have married somebody, since that would have been better than the inevitable last slide into an aging life spent in cheap lodgings with her mother. But Jem had been the beginning and the end.
She bit her lips as she walked, and suddenly tears swept down her cheeks and dripped on to the purple cloth folded over her breast.
"And he sits in Jem"s place! And every day that common, foolish stare will follow me!" she said.
He sat, it was true, in the place Jem Temple Barholm would have occupied if he had been a living man, and he looked at her a good deal. Perhaps he sometimes unconsciously stared because she made him think of many things. But if she had been in a state of mind admitting of judicial fairness, she would have been obliged to own that it was not quite a foolish stare. Absorbed, abstracted, perhaps, but it was not foolish. Sometimes, on the contrary, it was searching and keen.