Part 45 (1/2)
”What price Lady Mallowe!” said the son. ”I'll bet a sovereign she began it.”
”She did,” remarked Palliser; ”but I think one may leave Mr. Temple Barholm safely to Lady Joan.” Mr. Grantham laughed as one who knew something of Lady Joan.
”There's an Americanism which I didn't learn from him,” Palliser added, ”and I remembered it when he was talking her over. It's this: when you dispose of a person finally and forever, you 'wipe up the earth with him.' Lady Joan will 'wipe up the earth' with your new neighbor.”
There was a little shout of laughter. ”Wipe up the earth” was entirely new to everybody, though even the country in England was at this time by no means wholly ignorant of American slang.
This led to so many other things both mirth-provoking and serious, even sometimes very serious indeed, that the entire evening at Detchworth was filled with talk of Temple Barholm. Very naturally the talk did not end by confining itself to one household. In due time Captain Palliser's little sketches were known in divers places, and it became a habit to discuss what had happened, and what might possibly happen in the future. There were those who went to the length of calling on the new man because they wanted to see him face to face.
People heard new things every few days, but no one realized that it was vaguely through Palliser that there developed a general idea that, crude and self-revealing as he was, there lurked behind the outward candor of the intruder a hint of over-sharpness of the American kind.
There seemed no necessity for him to lay schemes beyond those he had betrayed in his inquiries about ”ladies,” but somehow it became a fixed idea that he was capable of doing shady things if at any time the temptation arose. That was really what his boyish casualness meant. That in truth was Palliser's final secret conclusion. And he wanted very much to find out why exactly little old Miss Temple Barholm had been taken up. If the man wanted introductions, he could have contrived to pick up a smart and enterprising unprofessional chaperon in London who would have done for him what Miss Temple Barholm would never presume to attempt. And yet he seemed to have chosen her deliberately. He had set her literally at the head of his house. And Palliser, having heard a vague rumor that he had actually settled a decent income upon her, had made adroit inquiries and found it was true.
It was. To arrange the matter had been one of his reasons for going to see Mr. Palford during their stay in London.
”I wanted to fix you--fix you safe,” he said when he told Miss Alicia about it. ”I guess no one can take it away from you, whatever old thing happens.”
”What could happen, dear Mr. Temple Barholm?” said Miss Alicia in the midst of tears of grat.i.tude and tremulous joy. ”You are so young and strong and--everything! Don't even speak of such a thing in jest. What could happen?”
”Anything can happen,” he answered, ”just anything. Happening's the one thing you can't bet on. If I was betting, I'd put my money on the thing I was sure couldn't happen. Look at this Temple Barholm song and dance! Look at T. T. as he was half strangling in the blizzard up at Harlem and thanking his stars little Munsberg didn't kick him out of his confectionery store less than a year ago! So long as I'm all right, you're all right. But I wanted you fixed, anyhow.”
He paused and looked at her questioningly for a moment. He wanted to say something and he was not sure he ought. His reverence for her little finenesses and reserves increased instead of wearing away. He was always finding out new things about her.
”Say,” he broke forth almost impetuously after his hesitation, ”I wish you wouldn't call me Mr. Temple Barholm.”
”D-do you?” she fluttered. ”But what could I call you?”
”Well,” he answered, reddening a shade or so, ”I'd give a house and lot if you could just call me Tem.”
”But it would sound so unbecoming, so familiar,” she protested.
”That's just what I'm asking for,” he said--”some one to be familiar with. I'm the familiar kind. That's what's the matter with me. I'd be familiar with Pearson, but he wouldn't let me. I'd frighten him half to death. He'd think that he wasn't doing his duty and earning his wages, and that somehow he'd get fired some day without a character.”
He drew nearer to her and coaxed.
”Couldn't you do it?” he asked almost as though he were asking a favor of a girl. ”Just Tem? I believe that would come easier to you than T.
T. I get fonder and fonder of you every day, Miss Alicia, honest Injun. And I'd be so grateful to you if you'd just be that unbecomingly familiar.”
He looked honestly in earnest; and if he grew fonder and fonder of her, she without doubt had, in the face of everything, given her whole heart to him.
”Might I call you Temple -- to begin with?” she asked. ”It touches me so to think of your asking me. I will begin at once. Thank you -- Temple,” with a faint gasp. ”I might try the other a little later.”
It was only a few evenings later that he told her about the flats in Harlem. He had sent to New York for a large bundle of newspapers, and when he opened them he read aloud an advertis.e.m.e.nt, and showed her a picture of a large building given up entirely to ”flats.”
He had realized from the first that New York life had a singular attraction for her. The unrelieved dullness of her life -- those few years of youth in which she had stifled vague longings for the joys experienced by other girls; the years of middle age spent in the dreary effort to be ”submissive to the will of G.o.d,” which, honestly translated, signified submission to the exactions and domestic tyrannies of ”dear papa” and others like him -- had left her with her capacities for pleasure as freshly sensitive as a child's. The smallest change in the routine of existence thrilled her with excitement. Tembarom's casual references to his strenuous boyhood caused her eyes to widen with eagerness to hear more. Having seen this, he found keen delight in telling her stories of New York life -- stories of himself or of other lads who had been his companions. She would drop her work and gaze at him almost with bated breath. He was an excellent raconteur when he talked of the things he knew well. He had an unconscious habit of springing from his seat and acting his scenes as he depicted them, laughing and using street-boy phrasing:
”It's just like a tale,” Miss Alicia would breathe, enraptured as he jumped from one story to another. ”It's exactly like a wonderful tale.”
She learned to know the New York streets when they blazed with heat, when they were hard with frozen snow, when they were sloppy with melting slush or bright with springtime suns.h.i.+ne and spring winds blowing, with pretty women hurrying about in beflowered spring hats and dresses and the exhilaration of the world-old springtime joy. She found herself hurrying with them. She sometimes hung with him and his companions on the railing outside dazzling restaurants where scores of gay people ate rich food in the sight of their boyish ravenousness.
She darted in and out among horses and vehicles to find carriages after the theater or opera, where everybody was dressed dazzlingly and diamonds glittered.
”Oh, how rich everybody must have seemed to you--how cruelly rich, poor little boy!”