第68章

He could see what a good little mother she would have made, looking after her children and doing everything on earth to make them happy and comfortable, just the kind of mother Ann would make, though she had not Ann's steady wonder of a little head or her shrewd farsightedness.Jem would have been in luck if he had been her son.It was a darned pity he hadn't been.If he had, perhaps he would not have died young.

"Yes," he answered sympathetically, "it's hard for a young fellow to die.How old was he, anyhow? I don't know.""Not much older than you are now.It was seven years ago.And if he had only died, poor dear! There are things so much worse than death.""Worse!"

"Awful disgrace is worse," she faltered.She was plainly trying to keep moisture out of her eyes.

"Did he get into some bad mix-up, poor fellow?" If there had been anything like that, no wonder it broke her up to think of him.

It surely did break her up.She flushed emotionally.

"The cruel thing was that he didn't really do what he was accused of,"she said.

"He didn't?"

"No; but he was a ruined man, and he went away to the Klondike because he could not stay in England.And he was killed--killed, poor boy! And afterward it was found out that he was innocent--too late.""Gee!" Tembarom gasped, feeling hot and cold."Could you beat that for rotten luck! What was he accused of?"Miss Alicia leaned forward and spoke in a whisper.It was too dreadful to speak of aloud.

"Cheating at cards--a gentleman playing with gentlemen.You know what that means."Tembarom grew hotter and colder.No wonder she looked that way, poor little thing!

"But,"--he hesitated before he spoke,--"but he wasn't that kind, was he? Of course he wasn't.""No, no.But, you see,"--she hesitated herself here,--"everything looked so much against him.He had been rather wild." She dropped her voice even lower in making the admission.

Tembarom wondered how much she meant by that.

"He was so much in debt.He knew he was to be rich in the future, and he was poor just in those reckless young days when it seemed unfair.

And he had played a great deal and had been very lucky.He was so lucky that sometimes his luck seemed uncanny.Men who had played with him were horrible about it afterward.""They would be," put in Tembarom." They'd be sore about it, and bring it up."They both forgot their tea.Miss Alicia forgot everything as she poured forth her story in the manner of a woman who had been forced to keep silent and was glad to put her case into words.It was her case.

To tell the truth of this forgotten wrong was again to offer justification of poor handsome Jem whom everybody seemed to have dropped talk of, and even preferred not to hear mentioned.

"There were such piteously cruel things about it," she went on."He had fallen very much in love, and he meant to marry and settle down.

Though we had not seen each other for years, he actually wrote to me and told me about it.His letter made me cry.He said I would understand and care about the thing which seemed to have changed everything and made him a new man.He was so sorry that he had not been better and more careful.He was going to try all over again.He was not going to play at all after this one evening when he was obliged to keep an engagement he had made months before to give his revenge to a man he had won a great deal of money from.The very night the awful thing happened he had told Lady Joan, before he went into the card-room, that this was to be his last game."Tembarom had looked deeply interested from the first, but at her last words a new alertness added itself.

"Did you say Lady Joan? " he asked." Who was Lady Joan?""She was the girl he was so much in love with.Her name was Lady Joan Fayre.""Was she the daughter of the Countess of Mallowe?""Yes.Have you heard of her?"

He recalled Ann's reflective consideration of him before she had said, "She'll come after you." He replied now: "Some one spoke of her to me this morning.They say she's a beauty and as proud as Lucifer.""She was, and she is yet, I believe.Poor Lady Joan--as well as poor Jem!""She didn't believe it, did she?" he put in hastily."She didn't throw him down?""No one knew what happened between them afterward.She was in the card-room, looking on, when the awful thing took place."She stopped, as though to go on was almost unbearable.She had been so overwhelmed by the past shame of it that even after the passing of years the anguish was a living thing.Her small hands clung hard together as they rested on the edge of the table.Tembarom waited in thrilled suspense.She spoke in a whisper again:

"He won a great deal of money--a great deal.He had that uncanny luck again, and of course people in the other rooms heard what was going on, and a number drifted in to look on.The man he had promised to give his revenge to almost showed signs of having to make an effort to conceal his irritation and disappointment.Of course, as he was a gentleman, he was as cool as possible; but just at the most exciting moment, the height of the game, Jem made a quick movement, and--and something fell out of his sleeve.""Something," gasped Tembarom, "fell out of his sleeve!"Miss Alicia's eyes overflowed as she nodded her beribboned little cap.

"It"--her voice was a sob of woe--"it was a marked card.The man he was playing against snatched it and held it up.And he laughed out loud.""Holy cats! " burst from Tembarom; but the remarkable exclamation was one of genuine horror, and he turned pale, got up from his seat, and took two or three strides across the room, as though he could not sit still.

"Yes, he laughed--quite loudly," repeated Miss Alicia, "as if he had guessed it all the time.Papa heard the whole story from some one who was present."Tembarom came back to her rather breathless.

"What in thunder did he do--Jem?" he asked.

She actually wrung her poor little hands.