Part 55 (1/2)
There was an afternoon on which during a drive they took together the duke was enlightened as to several points which had given him cause for reflection, among others the story beloved of Captain Palliser and his audiences.
”I guess you've known a good many women,” T. Tembarom remarked on this occasion after a few minutes of thought. ”Living all over the world as you've done, you'd be likely to come across a whole raft of them one time and another.”
”A whole raft of them, one time and another,” agreed the duke. ”Yes.”
”You've liked them, haven't you?”
”Immensely. Sometimes a trifle disastrously. Find me a more absolutely interesting object in the universe than a woman --any woman--and I will devote the remainder of my declining years to the study of it,”
answered his grace.
He said it with a decision which made T. Tembarom turn to look at him, and after his look decide to proceed.
”Have you ever known a bit of a slim thing”--he made an odd embracing gesture with his arm--”the size that you could pick up with one hand and set on your knee as if she was a child”--the duke remained still, knowing this was only the beginning and p.r.i.c.king up his ears as he took a rapid kaleidoscopic view of all the ”Ladies” in the neighborhood, and as hastily waved them aside--”a bit of a thing that some way seems to mean it all to you--and moves the world?” The conclusion was one which brought the incongruous touch of maturity into his face.
”Not one of the `Ladies,”' the duke was mentally summing the matter up. ”Certainly not Lady Joan, after all. Not, I think, even the young person in the department store.”
He leaned back in his corner the better to inspect his companion directly.
”You have, I see,” he replied quietly. ”Once I myself did.” (He had cried out, ”Ah! Heloise!” though he had laughed at himself when he seemed facing his ridiculous tragedy.)
”Yes,” confessed T. Tembarom. ”I met her at the boarding-house where I lived. Her father was a Lancas.h.i.+re man and an inventor. I guess you've heard of him; his name is Joseph Hutchinson.”
The whole country had heard of him; more countries, indeed, than one had heard. He was the man who was going to make his fortune in America because T. Tembarom had stood by him in his extremity. He would make a fortune in America and another in England and possibly several others on the Continent. He had learned to read in the village school, and the girl was his daughter.
”Yes,” replied the duke.
”I don't know whether the one you knew had that quiet little way of seeing right straight into a thing, and making you see it, too,” said Tembarom.
”She had,” answered the duke, and an odd expression wavered in his eyes because he was looking backward across forty years which seemed a hundred.
”That's what I meant by moving the world,” T. Tembarom went on. ”You know she's RIGHT, and you've got to do what she says, if you love her.”
”And you always do,” said the duke--”always and forever. There are very few. They are the elect.”
T. Tembarom took it gravely.
”I said to her once that there wasn't more than one of her in the world because there couldn't be enough to make two of that kind. I wasn't jos.h.i.+ng either; I meant it. It's her quiet little voice and her quiet, babyfied eyes that get you where you can't move. And it's something else you don't know anything about. It's her never doing anything for herself, but just doing it because it's the right thing for you.”
The duke's chin had sunk a little on his breast, and looking back across the hundred years, he forgot for a moment where he was. The one he remembered had been another man's wife, a little angel brought up in a convent by white-souled nuns, pa.s.sed over by her people to an elderly vaurien of great magnificence, and she had sent the strong, laughing, impa.s.sioned young English peer away before it was too late, and with the young, young eyes of her looking upward at him in that way which saw ”straight into a thing” and with that quiet little voice. So long ago! So long ago!
”Ah! Heloise!” he sighed unconsciously.
”What did you say?” asked T. Tembarom. The duke came back.
”I was thinking of the time when I was nine and twenty,” he answered.
”It was not yesterday nor even the day before. The one I knew died when she was twenty-four.”
”Died!” said Tembarom. ”Good Lord!” He dropped his head and even changed color. ”A fellow can't get on to a thing like that. It seems as if it couldn't happen. Suppose--” he caught his breath hard and then pulled himself up-- ”Nothing could happen to her before she knew that I've proved what I said--just proved it, and done every single thing she told me to do.”
”I am sure you have,” the duke said.