Part 18 (1/2)

”I'm not going to argue about it,” she answered. ”Arguing's silly.”

His involuntary rising and standing before her was a sort of unconscious tribute of respect.

”I know that,” he owned. ”I know you. That's why I take it like this.

But I want you to tell me one thing. If this hadn't happened, if I'd only had twenty dollars a week, would you have taken me?”

”If you'd had fifteen, and Father could have spared me, I'd have taken you. Fifteen dollars a week is three pounds two and sixpence, and I've known curates' wives that had to bring up families on less. It wouldn't go as far in New York as it would in the country in England, but we could have made it do--until you got more. I know you, too, Mr.

Temple Barholm.”

He turned to her father, and saw in his florid countenance that which spurred him to bold disclosure.

”Say,” he put it to him, as man to man, ”she stands there and says a thing like that, and she expects a fellow not to jerk her into his arms and squeeze the life out of her! I daren't do it, and I'm not going to try; but--well, you said her mother was like her, and I guess you know what I'm up against.”

Hutchinson's grunting chuckle contained implications of exultant tenderness and gratified paternal pride.

”She's th' very spit and image of her mother,” he said, ”and she had th' sense of ten women rolled into one, and th' love of twenty. You let her be, and you're as safe as th' Rock of Ages.”

”Do you think I don't know that?” answered Tembarom, his eyes s.h.i.+ning almost to moisture. ”But what hits me, by thunder! is that I've lost the chance of seeing her work out that fifteen-dollar-a-week proposition, and it drives me crazy.”

”I should have downright liked to try it,” said Little Ann, with speculative reflection, and while she knitted her brows in lovely consideration of the attractive problem, several previously unknown dimples declared themselves about her mouth.

”Ann,” Tembarom ventured, ”if I go to Temple Barholm and try it a year and learn all about it---”

”It would take more than a year,” said Ann.

”Don't make it two,” Tembarom pleaded. ”I'll sit up at night with wet towels round my head to learn; I'll spend fourteen hours a day with girls that look like the pictures in the `Ladies' Pictorial', or whatever it is in England; I'll give them every chance in life, if you'll let me off afterward. There must be another lost heir somewhere; let's dig him up and then come back to little old New York and be happy. Gee! Ann,”--letting himself go and drawing nearer to her,-- ”how happy we could be in one of those little flats in Harlem!”

She was a warm little human thing, and a tender one, and when he came close to her, glowing with tempestuous boyish eagerness, her eyes grew bluer because they were suddenly wet, and she was obliged to move softly back.

”Yes,” she said; ”I know those little flats. Any one could---” She stopped herself, because she had been going to reveal. what a home a woman could make in rooms like the compartments in a workbox. She knew and saw it all. She drew back a little again, but she put out a hand and laid it on his sleeve.

”When you've had quite time enough to find out, and know what the other thing means, I'll do whatever you want me to do,” she said. ”It won't matter what it is. I'll do it.”

”She means that,” Hutchinson mumbled unsteadily, turning aside. ”Same as her mother would have meant it. And she means it in more ways than one.”

And so she did. The promise included quite firmly the possibility of not unnatural changes in himself such as young ardor could not foresee, even the possibility of his new life withdrawing him entirely from the plane on which rapture could materialize on twenty dollars a week in a flat in Harlem.

CHAPTER IX

Type as exotic as Tembarom's was to his solicitor naturally suggested problems. Mr. Palford found his charge baffling because, according to ordinary rules, a young man so rudimentary should have presented no problems not perfectly easy to explain. It was herein that he was exotic. Mr. Palford, who was not given to subtle a.n.a.lysis of differences in character and temperament, argued privately that an English youth who had been brought up in the streets would have been one of two or three things. He would have been secretly terrified and resentful, roughly awkward and resentful, or boastfully delighted and given to a common youth's excitedly common swagger at finding himself suddenly a ”swell.”

This special kind of youth would most a.s.suredly have constantly thought of himself as a ”swell” and would have lost his head altogether, possibly with results in the matter of conduct in public which would have been either maddening or crus.h.i.+ng to the spirit of a well-bred, mature-minded legal gentleman temporarily thrust into the position of bear-leader.

But Tembarom was none of these things. If he was terrified, he did not reveal his anguish. He was without doubt not resentful, but on the contrary interested and curious, though he could not be said to bear himself as one elated. He indulged in no frolics or extravagances. He saw the Hutchinsons off on their steamer, and supplied them with fruit and flowers and books with respectful moderation. He did not conduct himself as a benefactor bestowing unknown luxuries, but as a young man on whom unexpected luck had bestowed decent opportunities to express his friends.h.i.+p. In fact, Palford's taste approved of his att.i.tude. He was evidently much under the spell of the slight girl with the Manchester accent and sober blue eyes, but she was neither flighty nor meretricious, and would have sense enough to give no trouble even when he naturally forgot her in the revelations of his new life. Her father also was plainly a respectable working-man, with a blunt Lancas.h.i.+re pride which would keep him from intruding.

”You can't b.u.t.t in and get fresh with a man like that,” Tembarom said.

”Money wouldn't help you. He's too independent.”