"What could he do? There was a dead silence.People moved just a little nearer to the table and stood and stared, merely waiting.They say it was awful to see his face--awful.He sprang up and stood still, and slowly became as white as if he were dying before their eyes.Some one thought Lady Joan Fayre took a step toward him, but no one was quite sure.He never uttered one word, but walked out of the room and down the stairs and out of the house.""But didn't he speak to the girl?"
"He didn't even look at her.He passed her by as if she were stone.""What happened next?"
"He disappeared.No one knew where at first, and then there was a rumor that he had gone to the Klondike and had been killed there.And a year later--only a year! Oh, if he had only waited in England!--a worthless villain of a valet he had discharged for stealing met with an accident, and because he thought he was going to die, got horribly frightened, and confessed to the clergyman that he had tucked the card in poor Jem's sleeve himself just to pay him off.He said he did it on the chance that it would drop out where some one would see it, and a marked card dropping out of a man's sleeve anywhere would look black enough, whether he was playing or not.But poor Jem was in his grave, and no one seemed to care, though every one had been interested enough in the scandal.People talked about that for weeks."Tembarom pulled at his collar excitedly.
"It makes me sort of strangle," he said."You've got to stand your own bad luck, but to hear of a chap that's had to lie down and take the worst that could come to him and know it wasn't his--just KNOW it! And die before he's cleared! That knocks me out."Almost every sentence he uttered had a mystical sound to Miss Alicia, but she knew how he was taking it, with what hot, young human sympathy and indignation.She loved the way he took it, and she loved the feeling in his next words "And the girl--good Lord!--the girl?""I never met her, and I know very little of her; but she has never married.""I'm glad of that," he said."I'm darned glad of it.How could she?"Ann wouldn't, he knew.Ann would have gone to her grave unmarried.But she would have done things first to clear her man's name.Somehow she would have cleared him, if she'd had to fight tooth and nail till she was eighty.
"They say she has grown very bitter and haughty in her manner.I'm afraid Lady Mallowe is a very worldly woman.One hears they don't get on together, and that she is bitterly disappointed because her daughter has not made a good match.It appears that she might have made several, but she is so hard and cynical that men are afraid of her.I wish I had known her a little--if she really loved Jem."Tembarom had thrust his hands into his pockets, and was standing deep in thought, looking at the huge bank of red coals in the fire-grate.
Miss Alicia hastily wiped her eyes.
"Do excuse me," she said.
"I'll excuse you all right," he replied, still looking into the coals.
"I guess I shouldn't excuse you as much if you didn't" He let her cry in her gentle way while he stared, lost in reflection.
"And if he hadn't fired that valet chap, he would be here with you now--instead of me.Instead of me," he repeated.
And Miss Alicia did not know what to say in reply.There seemed to be nothing which, with propriety and natural feeling, one could say.
"It makes me feel just fine to know I'm not going to have my dinner all by myself," he said to her before she left the library.
She had a way of blushing about things he noticed, when she was shy or moved or didn't know exactly what to say.Though she must have been sixty, she did it as though she were sixteen.And she did it when he said this, and looked as though suddenly she was in some sort of trouble.
"You are going to have dinner with me," he said, seeing that she hesitated--"dinner and breakfast and lunch and tea and supper and every old thing that goes.You can't turn me down after me staking out that claim.""I'm afraid--" she said."You see, I have lived such a secluded life.
I scarcely ever left my rooms except to take a walk.I'm sure you understand.It would not have been necessary even if I could have afforded it, which I really couldn't--I'm afraid I have nothing--quite suitable--for evening wear."
"You haven't!" he exclaimed gleefully."I don't know what is suitable for evening wear, but I haven't got it either.Pearson told me so with tears in his eyes.It never was necessary for me either.I've got to get some things to quiet Pearson down, but until I do I've got to eat my dinner in a tweed cutaway; and what I've caught on to is that it's unsuitable enough to throw a man into jail.That little black dress you've got on and that little cap are just 'way out of sight, they're so becoming.Come down just like you are."She felt a little as Pearson had felt when confronting his new employer's entire cheerfulness in face of a situation as exotically hopeless as the tweed cutaway, and nothing else by way of resource.
But there was something so nice about him, something which was almost as though he was actually a gentleman, something which absolutely, if one could go so far, stood in the place of his being a gentleman.It was impossible to help liking him more and more at every queer speech he made.Still, there were of course things he did not realize, and perhaps one ought in kindness to give him a delicate hint.