Part 48 (1/2)

Then he turned suddenly round toward one of the big windows. He turned because he had been startled by a sound, a movement. Some one was standing before the window. For a second's s.p.a.ce the figure seemed as though it was almost one with the purple-gray clouds that were its background. It was a tall young woman, and her dress was of a thin material of exactly their color--dark-gray and purple at once. The wearer held her head high and haughtily. She had a beautiful, stormy face, and the slender, black brows were drawn together by a frown.

Tembarom had never seen a girl as handsome and disdainful. He had, indeed, never been looked at as she looked at him when she moved slightly forward.

He knew who it was. It was the Lady Joan girl, and the sudden sight of her momentarily ”rattled” him.

”You quite gave me a jolt,” he said awkwardly, and knowing that he said it like a ”mutt.” ”I didn't know any one was in the gallery.”

”What are you doing here?” she asked. She spoke to him as though she were addressing an intruding servant. There was emphasis on the word ”you.”

Her intention was so evident that it increased his feeling of being ”rattled.” To find himself confronting deliberate ill nature of a superior and finished kind was like being spoken to in a foreign language.

”I--I'm T. Tembarom.” he answered, not able to keep himself from staring because she was such a ”winner” as to looks.

”T. Tembarom?” she repeated slowly, and her tone made him at once see what a fool he had been to say it.

”I forgot,” he half laughed. ”I ought to have said I'm Temple Barholm.”

”Oh!” was her sole comment. She actually stood still and looked him up and down.

She knew perfectly well who he was, and she knew perfectly well that no palliative view could possibly be taken by any well-bred person of her bearing toward him. He was her host. She had come, a guest, to his house to eat his bread and salt, and the commonest decency demanded that she should conduct herself with civility. But she cared nothing for the commonest, or the most uncommon, decency. She was thinking of other things. As she had stood before the window she had felt that her soul had never been so black as it was when she turned away from Miles Hugo's portrait--never, never. She wanted to hurt people. Perhaps Nero had felt as she did and was not so hideous as he seemed.

The man's tailor had put him into proper clothes, and his features were respectable enough, but nothing on earth could make him anything but what he so palpably was. She had seen that much across the gallery as she had watched him staring at Miles Hugo.

”I should think,” she said, dropping the words slowly again, ”that you would often forget that you are Temple Barholm.”

”You're right there,” he answered. ”I can't nail myself down to it. It seems like a sort of joke.”

She looked him over again.

”It is a joke,” she said.

It was as though she had slapped him in the face, though she said it so quietly. He knew he had received the slap, and that, as it was a woman, he could not slap back. It was a sort of surprise to her that he did not giggle nervously and turn red and shuffle his feet in impotent misery. He kept quite still a moment or so and looked at her, though not as she had looked at him. She wondered if he was so thick- skinned that he did not feel anything at all.

”That's so,” he admitted. ”That's so.” Then he actually smiled at her.

”I don't know how to behave myself, you see,” he said. ”You're Lady Joan Fayre, ain't you? I'm mighty glad to see you. Happy to make your acquaintance, Lady Joan.”

He took her hand and shook it with friendly vigor before she knew what he was going to do.

”I'll bet a dollar dinner's ready,” he added, ”and Burrill's waiting.

It scares me to death to keep Burrill waiting. He's got no use for me, anyhow. Let's go and pacify him.”

He did not lead the way or drag her by the arm, as it seemed to her quite probable that he might, as costermongers do on Hampstead Heath.

He knew enough to let her pa.s.s first through the door; and when Lady Mallowe looked up to see her enter the drawing-room, he was behind her. To her ladys.h.i.+p's amazement and relief, they came in, so to speak, together. She had been spared the trying moment of a.s.sisting at the ceremony of their presentation to each other.

CHAPTER XXII

In a certain sense she had been dragged to the place by her mother.

Lady Mallowe had many resources, and above all she knew how to weary her into resistlessness which was almost indifference. There had been several shameless little scenes in the locked boudoir. But though she had been dragged, she had come with an intention. She knew what she would find herself being forced to submit to if the intruder were not disposed of at the outset, and if the manoeuvering began which would bring him to London. He would appear at her elbow here and there and at every corner, probably unaware that he was being made an offensive puppet by the astute cleverness against which she could not defend herself, unless she made actual scenes in drawing-rooms, at dinner- tables, in the very streets themselves. Gifted as Lady Mallowe was in fine and light-handed dealing of her cards in any game, her stakes at this special juncture were seriously high. Joan knew what they were, and that she was in a mood touched with desperation. The defenselessly new and ignorant Temple Barholm was to her mind a direct intervention of Providence, and it was only Joan herself who could rob her of the benefits and reliefs he could provide. With regard to Lady Joan, though Palliser's quoted New Yorkism, ”wipe up the earth,” was unknown to her, the process she had in mind when she left London for Lancas.h.i.+re would have been well covered by it. As in feudal days she might have ordered the right hand of a creature such as this to be struck off, forgetting that he was a man, so was she capable to-day of inflicting upon him any hurt which might sweep him out of her way. She had not been a tender-hearted girl, and in these years she was absolutely callous. The fellow being what he was, she had not the resources she might have called upon if he had been a gentleman. He would not understand the chills and slights of good manners. In the country he would be easier to manage than in town, especially if attacked in his first timidity before his new grandeurs. His big house no doubt frightened him, his servants, the people who were of a cla.s.s of which he knew nothing. When Palliser told his story she saw new openings. He would stand in servile awe of her and of others like her.