Part 56 (1/2)

”He's got something on his mind,” mentally commented the duke. ”He wonders if he will tell it to me.”

”And there's times when you'd give half you've got to be able to talk a thing out and put it up to some one else for a while. I could do it with her. That's why I said I wish to G.o.d that she was here.”

”You have learned to know how to keep still,” the duke said. ”So have I. We learned it in different schools, but we have both learned.”

As he was saying the words, he thought he was going to hear something; when he had finished saying them he knew that he would without a doubt. T. Tembarom made a quick move in his seat; he lost a shade of color and cleared his throat as he bent forward, casting a glance at the backs of the coachman and footman on the high seat above them.

”Can those fellows hear me?” he asked.

”No,” the duke answered; ”if you speak as you are speaking now.”

”You are the biggest man about here,” the young man went on. ”You stand for everything that English people care for, and you were born knowing all the things I don't. I've been carrying a big load for quite a while, and I guess I'm not big enough to handle it alone, perhaps. Anyhow, I want to be sure I'm not making fool mistakes. The worst of it is that I've got to keep still if I'm right, and I've got to keep still if I'm wrong. I've got to keep still, anyhow.”

”I learned to hold my tongue in places where, if I had not held it, I might have plunged nations into bloodshed,” the duke said. ”Tell me all you choose.”

As a result of which, by the time their drive had ended and they returned to Stone Hover, he had told him, and, the duke sat in his corner of the carriage with an unusual light in his eyes and a flush of somewhat excited color on his cheek.

”You're a queer fellow, T. Tembarom,” he said when they parted in the drawing-room after taking tea. ”You exhilarate me. You make me laugh.

If I were an emotional person, you would at moments make me cry.

There's an affecting uprightness about you. You're rather a fine fellow too, 'pon my life.” Putting a waxen, gout-knuckled old hand on his shoulder, and giving him a friendly push which was half a pat, he added, ”You are, by G.o.d!”

And after his guest had left him, the duke stood for some minutes gazing into the fire with a complicated smile and the air of a man who finds himself quaintly enriched.

”I have had ambitions in the course of my existence-- several of them,” he said, ”but even in over-vaulting moments never have I aspired to such an alt.i.tude as this--to be, as it were, part of a melodrama. One feels that one scarcely deserves it.”

CHAPTER XXVII

”Mr.Temple Barholm seems in better spirits,” Lady Mallowe said to Captain Palliser as they walked on the terrace in the starlight dusk after dinner.

Captain Palliser took his cigar from his mouth and looked at the glowing end of it.

”Has it struck you that he has been in low spirits?” he inquired speculatively. ”One does not usually connect him with depression.”

”Certainly not with depression. He's an extraordinary creature. One would think he would perish from lack of the air he is used to breathing--New York air.”

”He is not peris.h.i.+ng. He's too shrewd,” returned Palliser. ”He mayn't exactly like all this, but he's getting something out of it.”

”He is not getting much of what he evidently wants most. I am out of all patience,” said Lady Mallowe.

Her acquaintance with Palliser had lasted through a number of years.

They argued most matters from the same basis of reasoning. They were at times almost candid with each other. It may be acknowledged, however, that of the two Lady Mallowe was the more inclined to verge on self-revelation. This was of course because she was the less clever and had more temper. Her temper, she had, now and then, owned bitterly to herself, had played her tricks. Captain Palliser's temper never did this. It was Lady Mallowe's temper which spoke now, but she did not in the least mind his knowing that Joan was exasperating her beyond endurance. He knew the whole situation well enough to be aware of it without speech on her part. He had watched similar situations several times before.

”Her manner toward him is, to resort to New York colloquialisms, `the limit,'” Palliser said quietly. ”Is it your idea that his less good spirits have been due to Lady Joan's ingenuities? They are ingenious, you know.”

”They are devilish,” exclaimed her mother.” She treads him in the mire and sails about professing to be conducting herself flawlessly. She is too clever for me,” she added with bitterness.