第87章

The country was discreetly conservative in its social attitude.The gulf between it and the new owner of Temple Barholm was too wide and deep to be crossed without effort combined with immense mental agility.It was on the whole, much easier not to begin a thing at all than to begin it and find one must hastily search about for not too noticeable methods of ending it.A few unimportant, tentative calls were made, and several ladies who had remained unaware of Miss Alicia during her first benefactor's time drove over to see what she was like and perhaps by chance hear something of interest.One or two of them who saw Tembarom went away puzzled and amazed.He did not drop his h's, which they had of course expected, and he was well dressed, and not bad-looking; but it was frequently impossible to understand what he was talking about, he used such odd phrases.He seemed good natured enough, and his way with little old Miss Temple Barholm was really quite nice, queer as it was.It was queer because he was attentive to her in a manner in which young men were not usually attentive to totally insignificant, elderly dependents.

Tembarom derived an extremely diluted pleasure from the visits.The few persons he saw reminded him in varying degrees of Mr.Palford.

They had not before seen anything like his species, and they did not know what to do with him.He also did not know what to do with them.Acertain inelasticity frustrated him at the outset.When, in obedience to Miss Alicia's instructions, he had returned the visits, he felt he had not gone far.

Serious application enabled him to find his way through the church service, and he accompanied Miss Alicia to church with great regularity.He began to take down the books from the library shelves and look them over gravely.The days gradually ceased to appear so long, but he had a great deal of time on his hands, and he tried to find ways of filling it.He wondered if Ann would be pleased if he learned things out of books.

When he tentatively approached the subject of literature with Miss Alicia, she glowed at the delightful prospect of his reading aloud to her in the evenings-- "reading improving things like history and the poets.""Let's take a hack at it some night," he said pleasantly.

The more a fellow knew, the better it was for him, he supposed; but he wondered, if anything happened and he went back to New York, how much "improving things" and poetry would help a man in doing business.

The first evening they began with Gray's " Elegy," and Miss Alicia felt that it did not exhilarate him; she was also obliged to admit that he did not read it very well.But she felt sure he would improve.

Personally she was touchingly happy.The sweetly domestic picture of the situation, she sitting by the fire with her knitting and he reading aloud, moved and delighted her.The next evening she suggested Tennyson's "Maud." He was not as much stirred by it as she had hoped.

He took a somewhat humorous view of it.

"He had it pretty bad, hadn't he?"' he said of the desperate lover.

"Oh, if only you could once have heard Sims Reeves sing 'Come into the Garden, Maud'!" she sighed."A kind friend once took me to hear him, and I have never, never forgotten it."But Mr.Temple Barholm notably did not belong to the atmosphere of impassioned tenors.

On still another evening they tried Shakspere.Miss Alicia felt that a foundation of Shakspere would be "improving" indeed.They began with "Hamlet."He found play-reading difficult and Shaksperian language baffling, but he made his way with determination until he reached a point where he suddenly grew quite red and stopped.

"Say, have you read this?" he inquired after his hesitation.

"The plays of Shakspere are a part of every young lady's education,"she answered; "but I am afraid I am not at all a Shaksperian scholar.""A young lady's education?" he repeated."Gee whizz!" he added softly after a pause.

He glanced over a page or so hastily, and then laid the book down.

"Say," he suggested, with an evasive air, "let's go over that 'Maud'

one again.It's--well, it's easier to read aloud."The crude awkwardness of his manner suddenly made Miss Alicia herself flush and drop a stitch in her knitting.How dreadful of her not to have thought of that!

"The Elizabethan age was, I fear, a rather coarse one in some respects.Even history acknowledges that Queen Elizabeth herself used profane language." She faltered and coughed a little apologetic cough as she picked up her stitch again.

"I bet Ann's never seen inside Shakspere," said Tembarom.Before reading aloud in the future he gave some previous personal attention to the poem or subject decided upon.It may be at once frankly admitted that when he read aloud it was more for Miss Alicia's delectation than for his own.He saw how much she enjoyed the situation.

His effect of frankness and constant boyish talk was so inseparable from her idea of him that she found it a puzzling thing to realize that she gradually began to feel aware of a certain remote reserve in him, or what might perhaps be better described as a habit of silence upon certain subjects.She felt it marked in the case of Strangeways.

She surmised that he saw Strangeways often and spent a good deal of time with him, but he spoke of him rarely, and she never knew exactly what hours were given to him.Sometimes she imagined he found him a greater responsibility than he had expected.Several times when she believed that he had spent part of a morning or afternoon in his room, he was more silent than usual and looked puzzled and thoughtful.She observed, as Mr.Palford had, that the picture-gallery, with its portraits of his ancestors, had an attraction.A certain rainy day he asked her to go with him and look them over.It was inevitable that she should soon wander to the portrait of Miles Hugo and remain standing before it.Tembarom followed, and stood by her side in silence until her sadness broke its bounds with a pathetic sigh.

"Was he very like him?" he asked.