T. Tembarom Part 84

"So would I, Pearson." His serene lightness was of the most baffling, but curiously supporting, order. "This being the case, my advice would be not to go into detail. Let us tell white lies--all of us--without a shadow of hesitancy. Miss Temple Barholm, even you must do your best."

"I will try--indeed, I will try!" And the Duke felt her tremulously ardent a.s.sent actually delicious.

"There! we'll consider that settled, Pearson," he said.

"Thank you, your Grace. Thank you, Miss," Pearson's relieved grat.i.tude verged on the devout. He turned to go, and as he did so his attention was arrested by an approach he remarked through a window.

"Mr. and Miss Hutchinson are arriving now, Miss," he announced, hastily.

"They are to be brought in here," said Miss Alicia.

The duke quietly left his seat and went to look through the window with frank and unembarra.s.sed interest in the approach. He went, in fact, to look at Little Ann, and as he watched her walk up the avenue, her father lumbering beside her, he evidently found her aspect sufficiently arresting.

"Ah!" he exclaimed softly, and paused. "What a lot of very nice red hair," he said next. And then, "No wonder! No wonder!"

"That, I should say," he remarked as Miss Alicia drew near, "is what I once heard a bad young man call `a deserving case.'"

He was conscious that she might have been privately a little shocked by such aged flippancy, but she was at the moment perturbed by something else.

"The fact is that I have never spoken to Hutchinson," she fluttered.

"These changes are very confusing. I suppose I ought to say Mr.

Hutchinson, now that he is such a successful person, and Temple--"

"Without a shadow of a doubt!" The duke seemed struck by the happiness of the idea. "They will make him a peer presently. He may address me as 'Stone' at any moment. One must learn to adjust one's self with agility. `The old order changeth.' Ah! she is smiling at him and I see the dimples."

Miss Alicia made a clean breast of it.

"I went to her--I could not help it! " she confessed. "I was in such distress and dare not speak to anybody. Temple had told me that she was so wonderful. He said she always understood and knew what to do."

"Did she in this case?" he asked, smiling.

Miss Alicia's manner was that of one who could express the extent of her admiration only in disconnected phrases.

"She was like a little rock. Such a quiet, firm way! Such calm certainty! Oh, the comfort she has been to me! I begged her to come here to-day. I did not know her father had returned."

"No doubt he will have testimony to give which will be of the greatest a.s.sistance," the duke said most encouragingly. "Perhaps he will be a sort of rock."

"I--I don't in the least know what he will be!" sighed Miss Alicia, evidently uncertain in her views.

But when the father and daughter were announced she felt that his Grace was really enchanting in the happy facility of his manner. He at least adjusted himself with agility. Hutchinson was of course lumbering. Lacking the support of T. Tembarom's presence and incongruity, he himself was the incongruous feature. He would have been obliged to bl.u.s.ter by way of sustaining himself, even if he had only found himself being presented to Miss Alicia; but when it was revealed to him that he was also confronted with the greatest personage of the neighborhood, he became as hot and red as he had become during certain fateful business interviews. More so, indeed.

"Th' other chaps hadn't been dukes;" and to Hutchinson the old order had not yet so changed that a duke was not an awkwardly impressive person to face unexpectedly.

The duke's manner of shaking hands with him, however, was even touched with an amiable suggestion of appreciation of the value of a man of genius. He had heard of the invention, in fact knew some quite technical things about it. He realized its importance. He had congratulations for the inventor and the world of inventions so greatly benefited.

"Lancashire must be proud of your success, Mr. Hutchinson." How agreeably and with what ease he said it!

"Aye, it's a success now, your Grace," Hutchinson answered, "but I might have waited a good bit longer if it hadn't been for that lad an'

his bold backing of me."

"Mr. Temple Barholm?" said the duke.

"Aye. He's got th' way of making folks see things that they can't see even when they're hitting them in th' eyes. I'd that lost heart I could never have done it myself."

"But now it is done," smiled his Grace. "Delightful!"

"I've got there--same as they say in New York--I've got there," said Hutchinson.

He sat down in response to Miss Alicia's invitation. His unease was wonderfully dispelled. He felt himself a person of sufficient importance to address even a duke as man to man.

"What's all this romancin' talk about th' other Temple Barholm comin'

back, an' our lad knowin' an' hidin' him away? An' Palliser an' th'

lawyers an' th' police bein' after 'em both?"

"You have heard the whole story?" from the duke.

"I've heard naught else since I come back."

"Grandmother knew a great deal before we came home," said Little Ann.

The duke turned his attention to her with an engaged smile. His look, his bow, his bearing, in the moment of their being presented to each other, had seemed to Miss Alicia the most perfect thing. His fine eye had not obviously wandered while he talked to her father, but it had in fact been taking her in with an inclusiveness not likely to miss agreeable points of detail.

"What is her opinion, may I ask?" he said. "What does she say?"

"Grandmother is very set in her ways, your Grace." The limpidity of her blue eye and a flickering dimple added much to the quaint comprehensiveness of her answer. "She says the world's that full of fools that if they were all killed the Lord would have to begin again with a new Adam and Eve."

"She has entire faith in Mr. Temple Barholm--as you have," put forward his Grace.

"Mine's not faith exactly. I know him," Little Ann answered, her tone as limpid as her eyes.

"There's more than her has faith in him," broke forth Hutchinson.

"Danged if I don't like th' way them village chaps are taking it.

They're ready to fight over it. Since they've found out what it's come to, an' about th' lawyers comin' down, they're talkin' about gettin'

up a kind o' demonstration."

"Delightful!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed his Grace again. He leaned forward. "Quite what I should have expected. There's a good deal of beer drunk, I suppose."

"Plenty o' beer, but it'll do no harm." Hutchinson began to chuckle.

"They're talkin' o' gettin' out th' fife an' drum band an' marchin'

round th' village with a calico banner with `Vote for T. Tembarom'

painted on it, to show what they think of him."

The duke chuckled also.

"I wonder how he's managed it?" he laughed. "They wouldn't do it for any of the rest of us, you know, though I've no doubt we're quite as deserving. I am, I know."

Hutchinson stopped laughing and turned on Miss Alicia.

"What's that young woman comin' down here for?" he inquired.