第61章

He could not persuade them to remain to take lunch with him.The firmness of Hutchinson's declination was not unconnected with a private feeling that "them footmen chaps 'u'd be on the lookout to see the way you handled every bite you put in your mouth." He couldn't have stood it, dang their impudence! Little Ann, on her part, frankly and calmly said, "It wouldn't DO." That was all, and evidently covered everything.

After they had gone, the fog lifted somewhat, but though it withdrew from the windows, it remained floating about in masses, like huge ghosts, among the trees of the park.When Tembarom sat down alone to prolong his lunch with the aid of Burrill and the footmen, he was confronted by these unearthly shapes every time he lifted his eyes to the window he faced from his place at the table.It was an outlook which did not inspire to cheerfulness, and the fact that Ann and her father were going back to Manchester and later to America left him without even the simple consolation of a healthy appetite.Things were bound to get better after a while; they were BOUND to.A fellow would be a fool if he couldn't fix it somehow so that he could enjoy himself, with money to burn.If you made up your mind you couldn't stand the way things were, you didn't have to lie down under them, with a thousand or so "per" coming in.You could fix it so that it would be different.By jinks! there wasn't any law against your giving it all to the church but just enough to buy a flat in Harlem out-right, if you wanted to.But you weren't going to run crazy and do a lot of fool things in a minute, and be sorry the rest of your life.

Money was money.And first and foremost there was Ann, with her round cheeks flushed and her voice all sweet and queer, saying, "You wouldn't be T.Tembarom; and it was T.Tembarom that--that was T.

Tembarom."

He couldn't help knowing what she had begun to say, and his own face flushed as he thought of it.He was at that time of life when there generally happens to be one center about which the world revolves.The creature who passes through this period of existence without watching it revolve about such a center has missed an extraordinary and singularly developing experience.It is sometimes happy, often disastrous, but always more or less developing.Speaking calmly, detachedly, but not cynically, it is a phase.During its existence it is the blood in the veins, the sight of the eyes, the beat of the pulse, the throb of the heart.It is also the day and the night, the sun, the moon, and the stars, heaven and hell, the entire universe.

And it doesn't matter in the least to any one but the creatures living through it.T.Tembarom was in the midst of it.There was Ann.There was this new crazy thing which had happened to him--"this fool thing,"as he called it.There was this monstrous, magnificent house,--he knew it was magnificent, though it wasn't his kind,--there was old Palford and his solemn talk about ancestors and the name of Temple Barholm.It always reminded him of how ashamed he had been in Brooklyn of the "Temple Temple" and how he had told lies to prevent the fellows finding out about it.And there was seventy thousand pounds a year, and there was Ann, who looked as soft as a baby,--Good Lord! how soft she'd feel if you got her in your arms and squeezed her!--and yet was somehow strong enough to keep him just where she wanted him to stay and believed he ought to stay until "he had found out." That was it.

She wasn't doing it for any fool little idea of making herself seem more important: she just believed it.She was doing it because she wanted to let him "have his chance," just as if she were his mother instead of the girl he was clean crazy about.His chance! He laughed outright--a short, confident laugh which startled Burrill exceedingly.

When he went back to the library and lighted his pipe he began to stride up and down as he continued to think it over.

"I wish she was as sure as I am," he said."I wish she was as sure of me as I am of myself--and as I am of her." He laughed the short, confident laugh again."I wish she was as sure as I am of us both.

We're all right.I've got to get through this, and find out what it's best to do, and I've got to show her.When I've had my chance good and plenty, us two for little old New York! Gee! won't it be fine!" he exclaimed imaginatively."Her going over her bills, looking like a peach of a baby that's trying to knit its brows, and adding up, and thinking she ought to economize.She'd do it if we had ten million."He laughed outright joyfully."Good Lord! I should kiss her to death!"The simplest process of ratiocination would lead to a realization of the fact that though he was lonely and uncomfortable, he was not in the least pathetic or sorry for himself.His normal mental and physical structure kept him steady on his feet, and his practical and unsentimental training, combining itself with a touch of iron which centuries ago had expressed itself through some fighting Temple Barholm and a medium of battle-axes, crossbows, and spears, did the rest.

"It'd take more than this to get me where I'd be down and out.I'm feeling fine," he said."I believe I'll go and 'take a walk,' as Palford says."The fog-wreaths in the park were floating away, and he went out grinning and whistling, giving Burrill and the footman a nod as he passed them with a springing young stride.He got the door open so quickly that he left them behind him frustrated and staring at each other.

"It wasn't our fault," said Burrill, gloomily."He's never had a door opened for him in his life.This won't do for me."He was away for about an hour, and came back in the best of spirits.