Part 58 (1/2)

”When I am comfortable and entertained,” Moffat, the house steward, had quoted his master as saying, ”you may mention it if the castle is in flames; but do not annoy me with excitement and flurry. Ring the bell in the courtyard, and call up the servants to pa.s.s buckets; but until the lawn catches fire, I must insist on being left alone.”

”What dear papa talks to him about, and what he talks about to dear papa,” Lady Celia had more than once murmured in her gently remote, high-nosed way, ”I cannot possibly imagine. Sometimes when I have pa.s.sed them on my way to the croquet lawn I have really seen them both look as absorbed as people in a play. Of course it is very good for papa. It has had quite a marked effect on his digestion. But isn't it odd!”

”I wish,” Lady Edith remarked almost wistfully, ”that I could get on better with him myself conversationally. But I don't know what to talk about, and it makes me nervous.”

Their father, on the contrary, found in him unique resources, and this afternoon it occurred to him that he had never so far heard him express himself freely on the subject of Palliser. If led to do so, he would probably reveal that he had views of Captain Palliser of which he might not have been suspected, and the manner in which they would unfold themselves would more than probably be illuminating. The duke was, in fact, serenely sure that he required neither warning nor advice, and he had no intention of offering either. He wanted to hear the views.

”Do you know,” he said as he stirred his tea, ”I've been thinking about Palliser, and it has occurred to me more than once that I should like to hear just how he strikes you?”

”What I got on to first was how I struck him,” answered Tembarom, with a reasonable air. ”That was dead easy.”

There was no hint of any vaunt of superior shrewdness. His was merely the level-toned manner of an observer of facts in detail.

”He has given you an opportunity of seeing a good deal of him,” the duke added. ”What do you gather from him-- unless he has made up his mind that you shall not gather anything at all?”

”A fellow like that couldn't fix it that way, however much he wanted to,” Tembarom answered again reasonably. ”Just his trying to do it would give him away.”

”You mean you have gathered things?”

”Oh, I've gathered enough, though I didn't go after it. It hung on the bushes. Anyhow, it seemed to me that way. I guess you run up against that kind everywhere. There's stacks of them in New York--different shapes and sizes.”

”If you met a man of his particular shape and size in New York, how would you describe him?” the duke asked.

”I should never have met him when I was there. He wouldn't have come my way. He'd have been on Wall Street, doing high-cla.s.s bucket-shop business, or he'd have had a swell office selling copper-mines--any old kind of mine that's going to make ten million a minute, the sort of deal he's in now. If he'd been the kind I might have run up against,” he added with deliberation, ”he wouldn't have been as well dressed or as well spoken. He'd have been either flashy or down at heel. You'd have called him a crook.”

The duke seemed pleased with his tea as, after having sipped it, he put it down on the table at his side.

”A crook?” he repeated. ”I wonder if that word is altogether American?”

”It's not complimentary, but you asked me,” said Tembarom. ”But I don't believe you asked me because you thought I wasn't on to him.”

”Frankly speaking, no,” answered the duke. ”Does he talk to you about the mammoth mines and the rubber forests?”

”Say, that's where he wins out with me,” Tembarom replied admiringly.

”He gets in such fine work that I switch him on to it whenever I want cheering up. It makes me sorter forget things that worry me just to see a man act the part right up to the top notch the way he does it.

The very way his clothes fit, the style he's got his hair brushed, and that swell, careless lounge of his, are half of the make-up. You see, most of us couldn't mistake him for anything else but just what he looks like--a gentleman visiting round among his friends and a million miles from wanting to b.u.t.t in with business. The thing that first got me interested was watching how he slid in the sort of guff he wanted you to get worked up about and think over. Why, if I'd been what I look like to him, he'd have had my pile long ago, and he wouldn't be loafing round here any more.”

”What do you think you look like to him?” his host inquired.

”I look as if I'd eat out of his hand,” Tembarom answered, quite unbiased by any touch of wounded vanity. ”Why shouldn't I? And I'm not trying to wake him up, either. I like to look that way to him and to his sort. It gives me a chance to watch and get wise to things. He's a high-school education in himself. I like to hear him talk. I asked him to come and stay at the house so that I could hear him talk.”

”Did he introduce the mammoth mines in his first call?” the duke inquired.

”Oh, I don't mean that kind of talk. I didn't know how much good I was going to get out of him at first. But he was the kind I hadn't known, and it seemed like he was part of the whole thing--like the girls with t.i.tle that Ann said I must get next to. And an easy way of getting next to the man kind was to let him come and stay. He wanted to, all right. I guess that's the way he lives when he's down on his luck, getting invited to stay at places. Like Lady Mallowe,” he added, quite without prejudice.

”You do sum them up, don't you?” smiled the duke.

”Well, I don't see how I could help it,” he said impartially. ”They're printed in sixty-four point black-face, seems to me.”

”What is that?” the duke inquired with interest. He thought it might be a new and desirable bit of slang. ”I don't know that one.”