第129章

After this came a pause.Each man sat thinking his own thoughts, which, while marked with difference in form, were doubtless subtly alike in the line they followed.During the silence T.Tembarom looked out at the late afternoon shadows lengthening themselves in darkening velvet across the lawns.

At last he said:

"I never told you that I've been reading some of the 'steen thousand books in the library.I started it about a month ago.And somehow they've got me going."The slightly lifted eyebrows of his host did not express surprise so much as questioning interest.This man, at least, had discovered that one need find no cause for astonishment in any discovery that he had been doing a thing for some time for some reason or through some prompting of his own, and had said nothing whatever about it until he was what he called "good and ready." When he was "good and ready" he usually revealed himself to the duke, but he was not equally expansive with others.

"No, you have not mentioned it," his grace answered, and laughed a little."You frequently fail to mention things.When first we knew each other I used to wonder if you were naturally a secretive fellow;but you are not.You always have a reason for your silences.""It took about ten yearsto kick that into me--ten good years, Ishould say." T.Tembarom looked as if he were looking backward at many episodes as he said it."Naturally, I guess, I must have been an innocent, blab-mouthed kid.I meant no harm, but I just didn't know.

Sometimes it looks as if just not knowing is about the worst disease you can be troubled with.But if you don't get killed first, you find out in time that what you've got to hold on to hard and fast is the trick of 'saying nothing and sawing wood.'"The duke took out his memorandum-book and began to write hastily.T.

Tembarom was quite accustomed to this.He even repeated his axiom for him.

"Say nothing and saw wood," he said."It's worth writing down.It means 'shut your mouth and keep on working.'""Thank you," said the duke."It is worth writing down.Thank you.""I did not talk about the books because I wanted to get used to them before I began to talk," Tembarom explained."I wanted to get somewhere.I'd never read a book through in my life before.Never wanted to.Never had one and never had time.When night came, I was dog-tired and dog-ready to drop down and sleep."Here was a situation of interest.A young man of odd, direct shrewdness, who had never read a book through in his existence, had plunged suddenly into the extraordinarily varied literary resources of the Temple Barholm library.If he had been a fool or a genius one might have guessed at the impression made on him; being T.Tembarom, one speculated with secret elation.The primitiveness he might reveal, the profundities he might touch the surface of, the unexpected ends he might reach, suggested the opening of vistas.

"I have often thought that if books attracted you the library would help you to get through a good many of the hundred and thirty-six hours a day you've spoken of, and get through them pretty decently,"commented the duke.

"That's what's happened," Tembarom answered."There's not so many now.

I can cut 'em off in chunks."

"How did it begin?"

He listened with much pleasure while Tembarom told him how it had begun and how it had gone on.

"I'd been having a pretty bad time one day.Strangeways had been worse--a darned sight worse--just when I thought he was better.I'd been trying to help him to think straight; and suddenly I made a break, somehow, and must have touched exactly the wrong spring.It seemed as if I set him nearly crazy.I had to leave him to Pearson right away.Then it poured rain steady for about eight hours, and Icouldn't get out and `take a walk.' Then I went wandering into the picture-gallery and found Lady Joan there, looking at Miles Hugo.And she ordered me out, or blamed near it.""You are standing a good deal," said the duke.

"Yes, I am--but so is she." He set his hard young jaw and nursed his knee, staring once more at the velvet shadows."The girl in the book Ipicked up--" he began.

"The first book? " his host inquired.

Tembarom nodded.

"The very first.I was smoking my pipe at night, after every one else had gone to bed, and I got up and began to wander about and stare at the names of the things on the shelves.I was thinking over a whole raft of things--a whole raft of them--and I didn't know I was doing it, until something made me stop and read a name again.It was a book called `Good-by, Sweetheart, Good-by,' and it hit me straight.Iwondered what it was about, and I wondered where old Temple Barholm had fished up a thing like that.I never heard he was that kind.""He was a cantankerous old brute," said the Duke of Stone with candor, "but he chanced to be an omnivorous novel-reader.Nothing was too sentimental for him in his later years.""I took the thing out and read it," Tembarom went on, uneasily, the emotion of his first novel-reading stirring him as he talked."It kept me up half the night, and I hadn't finished it then.I wanted to know the end.""Benisons upon the books of which one wants to know the end!" the duke murmured.

Tembarom's interest had plainly not terminated with "the end." Its freshness made it easily revived.There was a hint of emotional indignation in his relation of the plot.

"It was about a couple of fools who were dead stuck on each other--dead.There was no mistake about that.It was all real.But what do they do but work up a fool quarrel about nothing, and break away from each other.There was a lot of stuff about pride.Pride be damned!

How's a man going to be proud and put on airs when he loves a woman?

How's a woman going to be proud and stick out about things when she loves a man? At least, that's the way it hit me.""That's the way it hit me--once," remarked his grace.

"There is only once," said Tembarom, doggedly.

"Occasionally," said his host."Occasionally."Tembarom knew what he meant.