Tembarom

“ It was as if there were some extremely human joke between them. Miss Alicia had delightedly remembered a remark the Duke of Stone had made to her on his return from one of their long drives.
“He is the most popular man in the county,” he had chuckled. “If war broke out and he were in the army, he could raise a regiment at his own gates which would follow him wheresoever he chose to lead it—if it were into hottest Hades.”
Tembarom was rather silent during the first part of their walk, and when he spoke it was of Captain Palliser.
“He's a fellow that's got lots of curiosity. ”

“ Tembarom exclaimed. “Good business! So was I before all this”—he glanced about him—“fell on top of me.”
“I've been saving for three years, sir, and if I can know I'm a permanency—if I can keep this place—”
“You're going to keep it all right,” Tembarom cheered him up with. “If you've got an idea you're going to be fired, just you forget it. Cut it right out.”
“Is—I beg your pardon, sir,” Pearson asked with timorous joy, “but is that the American for saying you'll be good enough to keep me on?”
Mr. Temple Barholm thought a second. ”

“ Miss Alicia had long felt secretly sure that she was spoken of as “her” in the servants' hall. That businesslike sharpness which Palford had observed in his client aided Tembarom always to see things without illusions. He knew that There was no particular reason why his army of servants should regard him for the present as much more than an intruder; but he also knew that if men and women had employment which was not made hard for them, and were well paid for doing, they were not anxious to lose it, and the man who paid their wages might give orders with some certainty of finding them obeyed. ”

“ Bowse as he got up to go. “There's wind enough to upset things.”
Tembarom went out in the hall, and put on his insufficient overcoat. He buttoned it across his chest, and turned its collar up to his ears. Then he bent down to turn up the bottoms of his trousers.
“A pair of arctics would be all to the merry right here,” he said, and then he stood upright and saw Little Ann coming down the staircase holding in her hand a particularly ugly tar-tan-plaid woolen neck-scarf of the kind known in England as a “comforter.” ”

“ Palliser smiled, “or she will not be able to get it. It is not easy to lay one's hands on even now.”
Tembarom thought of certain speculators of entirely insignificant standing of whom he had chanced to see and hear anecdotes in New York. Most of them were youths of obscure origin who sold newspapers or blacked boots, or “swapped” articles the value of which lay in the desire they could excite in other persons to possess them. A popular method known as “bluff” was their most trusted weapon, and even at twelve and fifteen years of age Tembarom had always regarded it as singularly obvious. ”

“ A hall bedroom in a third-rate boarding-house is not a cheerful place, but when Tembarom vaguely felt this, he recalled the nights spent in empty trucks and behind lumber-piles, and thought he was getting spoiled by luxury. He told himself that he was a fellow who always had luck. He did not know, neither did any one else, that his luck would have followed him if he had lived in a coal-hole. It was the concomitant of his normal build and outlook on life. Mrs. Bowse, his hard-worked landlady, began by being calmed down by his mere bearing when he came to apply for his room and board. ”

“ When the curtain drew up on Tembarom's amazing drama, Strangeways had been occupying his bed nearly three weeks, and he himself had been sleeping on a cot Mrs. Bowse had put up for him in his room. The Hutchinsons were on the point of sailing for England—steerage—on the steamship Transatlantic, and Tembarom was secretly torn into fragments, though he had done well with the page and he was daring to believe that at the end of the month Galton would tell him he had “made good” and the work would continue indefinitely. ”

“ You admit that Jem Temple Barholm is alive?” and realized his asinine error before the words were fully spoken.
The realization was the result of the square-shouldered swing with which T. Tembarom turned round, and the expression of his eyes as they ran over him.
“Admit!” he said. “Admit hell! He's up-stairs,” with a slight jerk of his head in the direction of the ceiling.
The duke alone did not gasp. He laughed slightly.
“We've just got here. He came down from London with me, and Sir Ormsby Galloway.” And he said it not to Palliser but to Palford and Grimby. ”

“ It was an almost exciting thing to look at, and he stood very still indeed. A fellow who did not own two pairs of boots would be a fool not to keep quiet.
“You haven't told me I oughtn't to go out till the blizzard lets up,” he said presently.
“No, I haven't, Mr. Tembarom,” she answered. “You're one of the kind that mean to do a thing when they've made up their minds. It'll be a nice bit of money if you can keep the page.”
“Galton said he'd give me a chance to try to make good,” said Tembarom. “And if it's the hit he thinks it ought to be, he'll raise me ten. Thirty per. ”

“ Palliser strolled down his opened avenue with an incidental air which was entirely creditable to his training of himself. T. Tembarom acknowledged that much.
“You are too generous,” said Palliser. “You are the sort of fellow who will always need all he has, and more. The way you go among the villagers! You think you merely slouch about and keep it quiet, but you don't. You've set an example no other landowner can expect to live up to, or intends to. It's too lavish. It's pernicious, dear chap. I have heard all about the cottage you are doing over for Pearson and his bride. ”

“ Tembarom replied uncombatively. Tummas’s eyes bored deeper into him.
“Does na tha care?” he demanded.
“What should I care for? Let every fellow enjoy himself his own way.”
“Tha ’rt not a bit like one o’ the gentry,” said Tummas. “Tha ’rt quite a common chap. Tha ’rt as common as me, for aw tha foine clothes.”
“People are common enough, anyhow,” said Tembarom. “There’s nothing much commoner, is there? There’s millions of ’em everywhere—billions of ’em. None of us need put on airs.”
“Tha ’rt as common as me,” said Tummas, reflectively. “An’ yet tha owns Temple Barholm an’ aw that brass. ”

“ They talked of the Hutchinsons, of the invention, of the business “deals” Tembarom had entered into at the outset, and of their tremendously encouraging result. It was not mere rumor that Hutchinson would end by being a rich man. The girl would be an heiress. How complex her position would be! And being of the elect who unknowingly bear with them the power that “moves the world,” how would she affect Temple Barholm and its surrounding neighborhood? ”

“ Palliser, it is true, suggested it was Tembarom's “cheek” which stood him in good stead. The young man from behind the counter in a Liverpool or Blackburn shop would probably have been frightened to death and afraid to open his mouth in self-revelation, whereas Temple Barholm was so entirely a bounder that he did not know he was one, and was ready to make an ass of himself to any extent. The frankest statement of the situation, if any one had so chosen to put it, would have been that he was regarded as a sort of court fool without cap or bells. ”

“ Temple Barholm,” she replied, shaking her head. “Even when inventions get started, they don't go off like sky-rockets.”
“She knows everything, doesn't she?” Tembarom said to Hutchinson. “Here, come and sit down. I've not seen you for 'steen years.”
She took her seat in the big arm-chair and looked at him with softly examining eyes, as though she wanted to understand him sufficiently to be able to find out something she ought to do if he needed help. ”

“ When they entered the picture-gallery Strangeways paused a moment again, and stood peering down its length.
“It is very dimly lighted. How can we see?” he said.
“I told Pearson to leave it dim,” Tembarom answered. “I wanted it just that way at first.”
He tried—and succeeded tolerably well—to say it casually, as he led the way ahead of them. He and the duke had not talked the scheme over for nothing. As his grace had said, they had “worked the thing up.” As they moved down the gallery, the men and women in their frames looked like ghosts staring out to see what was about to happen. ”

“ Palford to the carriage waiting for them. It was a severe but sumptuous equipage, and the coachman was as well dressed and well built as the footman. Tembarom took his place in it with many mental reservations.
“What are the illustrations on the doors?” he inquired.
“The Temple Barholm coat of arms,” Mr. Palford answered. “The people at the station are your tenants. Members of the family of the stout man with the broad hat have lived as yeoman farmers on your land for three hundred years.” ”

“ Temple Barholm intimated to you, a man of almost unlimited means has command of resources which it might not be easy to contend with if he had reason to feel himself injured.”
The fact that Captain Palliser had in a bitterly frustrated moment allowed himself to be goaded into losing his temper, and “giving away” to Tembarom the discovery on which he had felt that he could rely as a lever, did not argue that a like weakness would lead him into more dangerous indiscretion. ”

“ It seemed that he had to present himself to the villagers “as an example.” If the Temple Barholm pews were empty, the villagers, not being incited to devotional exercise by his exalted presence, would feel at liberty to remain at home, and in the irreligious undress of shirt-sleeves sit and smoke their pipes, or, worse still, gather at “the Hare and Hounds” and drink beer. Also, it would not be “at all proper” not to go to church.
Pearson produced a special cut of costume for this ceremony, and Tembarom walked with Miss Alicia across the park to the square-towered Norman church. ”

“ They take a good deal of medicine when they can afford it. I think they like to take it. They're very pleased when the doctor gives them `a bottle o' summat,' as they call it. Oh, I mustn't forget to tell you that most of them speak rather broad Lancashire.”
“Shall I understand them?” Tembarom asked, anxious again. “Is it a sort of Dago talk?”
“It is the English the working-classes speak in Lancashire. 'Summat' means 'something.' 'Whoam' means 'home.' But I should think you would be very clever at understanding things.” ”

“ Then, after watching his face for a moment or so, he added tentatively, “Would you perhaps wish us to make her acquaintance for—for any reason, sir?”
Tembarom thought the matter over speculatively. He had learned that his first liking for Pearson had been founded upon a rock. He was always to be trusted to understand, and also to apply a quite unusual intelligence to such matters as he became aware of without having been told about them.
“What I’d like would be for her to hear that there’s plenty doing at Temple Barholm; that people are coming and going all the time ”

“ But youth and inexperience and suddenly inherited wealth not infrequently led to rash adventures. Something which Palford called “very handsome” was done for Mrs. Bowse and the boarding-house. Mrs. Bowse was evidently not proud enough to resent being made secure for a few years' rent. The extraordinary page was provided for after a large amount of effort and expenditure of energy.
“I couldn't leave Galton high and dry,” Tembarom explained when he came in after rushing about. “I think I know a man he might try, but I've got to find him and put him on to things. Good Lord! ”

“ A mass of earth and debris of all sorts suddenly gives way, burying half-a-dozen men. Two or three are dug out dead, the others not reached. There was no time to spare to dig for dead men. Some one had seen Temple Barholm near the place; he was seen no more. Ergo, he was buried with the rest. At that time, those who knew him in England felt it was the best thing that could have happened to him. It would have been if his valet had not confessed his trick, and old Temple Barholm had not died. ”

“ 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. ”

“ She learned to know the New York streets when they blazed with heat, when they were hard with frozen snow, when they were sloppy with melting slush or bright with springtime sunshine and spring winds blowing, with pretty women hurrying about in beflowered spring hats and dresses and the exhilaration of the world-old springtime joy. ”

“ They therefore gladly spend the night in the wood—i. e. in a valley or hollow covered with a growth of acacias and tamarisks, of which there are many to the southeast of Edom. The inhabitants of the land of Têma were to have mercy on the fugitives and to offer them water and bread. This is done even today by the inhabitants of the oases when they learn that a tribe with whom they are on friendly terms has been plundered and is escaping from its enemies.
In Jeremiah, 25: 23, there is also a record of the danger by which Dedan, Têma, and Bûz were threatened. ”

“ Captain von Hirschfeld, who, throughout this and our subsequent stay at Mangu, was hospitality personified, had got everything ready for us. A nice house was placed at our disposal, all swept and garnished, very large, airy, and roomy, with a fine broad verandah. Close by our house was an extraordinary-looking building of native construction called Tamberma Fort. This was built many years ago by a tribe of natives of that name, who live in the extreme north-eastern corner of Togoland. These Tamberma were, and still are, a very wild, warlike, and truculent people. ”