Part 20 (1/2)

They were shown into a room the walls of which seemed built of books; the furniture was rich and grave and luxuriously comfortable. A fire blazed as well as glowed in a fine chimney, and a table near it was set with a glitter of splendid silver urn and equipage for tea.

”Mrs. b.u.t.terworth was afraid you might not have been able to get tea, sir,” said the man-servant, who did not wear livery, but whose butler's air of established authority was more impressive than any fawn color and claret enriched with silver could have encompa.s.sed.

Tea again? Perhaps one was obliged to drink it at regular intervals.

Tembarom for a moment did not awaken to the fact that the man was speaking to him, as the master from whom orders came. He glanced at Mr. Palford.

”Mr. Temple Barholm had tea after we left Crowly,” Mr. Palford said.

”He will no doubt wish to go to his room at once, Burrill.”

”Yes, sir,” said Burrill, with that note of entire absence of comment with which Tembarom later became familiar. ”Pearson is waiting.”

It was not unnatural to wonder who Pearson was and why he was waiting, but Tembarom knew he would find out. There was a slight relief on realizing that tea was not imperative. He and Mr. Palford were led through the hall again. The carriage had rolled away, and two footmen, who were talking confidentially together, at once stood at attention.

The staircase was more imposing as one mounted it than it appeared as one looked at it from below. Its breadth made Tembarom wish to lay a hand on a bal.u.s.trade, which seemed a mile away. He had never particularly wished to touch bal.u.s.trades before. At the head of the first flight hung an enormous piece of tapestry, its forest and hunters and falconers awakening Tembarom's curiosity, as it looked wholly unlike any picture he had ever seen in a shop-window. There were pictures everywhere, and none of them looked like chromos. Most of the people in the portraits were in fancy dress. Rumors of a New York millionaire ball had given him some vague idea of fancy dress. A lot of them looked like freaks. He caught glimpses of corridors lighted by curious, high, deep windows with leaded panes. It struck him that there was no end to the place, and that there must be rooms enough in it for a hotel.

”The tapestry chamber, of course, Burrill,” he heard Mr. Palford say in a low tone.

”Yes, sir. Mr. Temple Barholm always used it.”

A few yards farther on a door stood open, revealing an immense room, rich and gloomy with tapestry-covered walls and dark oak furniture. A bed which looked to Tembarom incredibly big, with its carved oak canopy and ma.s.sive posts, had a presiding personality of its own. It was mounted by steps, and its hangings and coverlid were of embossed velvet, time-softened to the perfection of purples and blues. A fire enriched the color of everything, and did its best to drive the shadows away. Deep windows opened either into the leafless boughs of close-growing trees or upon outspread s.p.a.ces of heavily timbered park, where gaunt, though magnificent, bare branches menaced and defied. A slim, neat young man, with a rather pale face and a touch of anxiety in his expression, came forward at once.

”This is Pearson, who will valet you,” exclaimed Mr. Palford.

”Thank you, sir,” said Pearson in a low, respectful voice. His manner was correctness itself.

There seemed to Mr. Palford to be really nothing else to say. He wanted, in fact, to get to his own apartment and have a hot bath and a rest before dinner.

”Where am I, Burrill?” he inquired as he turned to go down the corridor.

”The crimson room, sir,” answered Burrill, and he closed the door of the tapestry chamber and shut Tembarom in alone with Pearson.

CHAPTER XI

For a few moments the two young men looked at each other, Pearson's gaze being one of respectfulness which hoped to propitiate, if propitiation was necessary, though Pearson greatly trusted it was not.

Tembarom's was the gaze of hasty investigation and inquiry. He suddenly thought that it would have been ”all to the merry” if somebody had ”put him on to” a sort of idea of what was done to a fellow when he was ”valeted.” A valet, he had of course gathered, waited on one somehow and looked after one's clothes. But were there by chance other things he expected to do,--manicure one's nails or cut one's hair,--and how often did he do it, and was this the day? He was evidently there to do something, or he wouldn't have been waiting behind the door to pounce out the minute he appeared, and when the other two went away, Burrill wouldn't have closed the door as solemnly as though he shut the pair of them in together to get through some sort of performance.

”Here's where T. T. begins to feel like a fool,” he thought. ”And here's where there's no way out of looking like one. I don't know a thing.”

But personal vanity was not so strong in him as healthy and normal good temper. Despite the fact that the neat correctness of Pearson's style and the finished expression of his neat face suggested that he was of a cla.s.s which knew with the most finished exactness all that custom and propriety demanded on any occasion on which ”valeting” in its most occult branches might be done, he was only ”another fellow,”

after all, and must be human. So Tembarom smiled at him.

”h.e.l.lo, Pearson,” he said. ”How are you?”

Pearson slightly started. It was the tiniest possible start, quite involuntary, from which he recovered instantly, to reply in a tone of respectful gratefulness:

”Thank you, sir, very well; thank you, sir.”