No one could know so well as herself how desperate from her own point of view the case was.She had long known that her mother would not hesitate for a moment before any chance of a second marriage which would totally exclude her daughter from her existence.Why should she, after all, Joan thought? They had always been antagonists.The moment of chance had been looming on the horizon for months.Sir Moses Monaldini had hovered about fitfully and evidently doubtfully at first, more certainly and frequently of late, but always with a clearly objecting eye cast askance upon herself.With determination and desire to establish a social certainty, astute enough not to care specially for young beauty and exactions he did not purpose to submit to, and keen enough to see the advantage of a handsome woman with bitter reason to value what was offered to her in the form of a luxurious future, Sir Moses was moving toward action, though with proper caution.He would have no penniless daughters hanging about scowling and sneering.None of that for him.And the ripest apple upon the topmost bow in the highest wind would not drop more readily to his feet than her mother would, Joan knew with sharp and shamed burnings.
As the rain fell, she walked in her purple cloak, unpaid for, and her purple hat, for which they had been dunned with threatening insults, and knew that she did not own and could not earn a penny.She could not dig, and to beg she was ashamed, and all the more horribly because she had been a beggar of the meaner order all her life.It made her sick to think of the perpetual visits they had made where they were not wanted, of the times when they had been politely bundled out of places, of the methods which had been used to induce shop-keepers to let them run up bills.For years her mother and she had been walking advertisements of smart shops because both were handsome, wore clothes well, and carried them where they would be seen and talked about.Now this would be all over, since it had been Lady Mallowe who had managed all details.Thrown upon her own resources, Joan would have none of them, even though she must walk in rags.Her education had prepared her for only one thing--to marry well, if luck were on her side.It had never been on her side.If she had never met Jem, she would have married somebody, since that would have been better than the inevitable last slide into an aging life spent in cheap lodgings with her mother.But Jem had been the beginning and the end.
She bit her lips as she walked, and suddenly tears swept down her cheeks and dripped on to the purple cloth folded over her breast.
"And he sits in Jem's place! And every day that common, foolish stare will follow me!" she said.
He sat, it was true, in the place Jem Temple Barholm would have occupied if he had been a living man, and he looked at her a good deal.Perhaps he sometimes unconsciously stared because she made him think of many things.But if she had been in a state of mind admitting of judicial fairness, she would have been obliged to own that it was not quite a foolish stare.Absorbed, abstracted, perhaps, but it was not foolish.Sometimes, on the contrary, it was searching and keen.
Of course he was doing his best to please her.Of all the "Ladies," it seemed evident that he was most attracted by her.He tried to talk to her despite her unending rebuffs, he followed her about and endeavored to interest her, he presented a hide-bound unsensitiveness when she did her worst.Perhaps he did not even know that she was being icily rude.He was plainly "making up to her" after the manner of his class.
He was perhaps playing the part of the patient adorer who melted by noble long-suffering in novels distinguished by heroes of humble origin.
She had reached the village when the rain changed its mind, and without warning began to pour down as if the black cloud passing overhead had suddenly opened.She was wondering if she would not turn in somewhere for shelter until the worst was over when a door opened and Tembarom ran out with an umbrella.
"Come in to the Hibblethwaites cottage, Lady Joan," he said."This will be over directly."He did not affectionately hustle her in by the arm as he would have hustled in Miss Alicia, but he closely guarded her with the umbrella until he guided her inside.
"Thank you," she said.
The first object she became aware of was a thin face with pointed chin and ferret eyes peering at her round the end of a sofa, then a sharp voice.
"Tak' off her cloak an' shake th' rain off it in th' wash 'us'," it said."Mother an' Aunt Susan's out.Let him unbutton it fer thee.""I can unbutton it myself, thank you," said Lady Joan.Tembarom took it when she had unbuttoned it.He took it from her shoulders before she had time to stop him.Then he walked into the tiny "wash 'us" and shook it thoroughly.He came back and hung it on a chair before the fire.
Tummas was leaning back in his pillows and gazing at her.
"I know tha name," he said."He towd me," with a jerk of the head toward Tembarom.
"Did he?" replied Lady Joan without interest.
A flaringly illustrated New York paper was spread out upon his sofa.
He pushed it aside and pulled the shabby atlas toward him.It fell open at a map of North America as if through long habit.
"Sit thee down," he ordered.
Tembarom had stood watching them both.
"I guess you'd better not do that," he suggested to Tummas.
"Why not? " said the boy, sharply."She's th' wench he was goin' to marry.It's th' same as if he'd married her.If she wur his widder, she'd want to talk about him.Widders allus wants to talk.Why shouldn't she? Women's women.He'd ha' wanted to talk about her.""Who is `he'?" asked Joan with stiff lips.
"The Temple Barholm as' 'd be here if he was na."Joan turned to Tembarom.
"Do you come here to talk to this boy about HIM?" she said."How dare you!"Tummas's eyes snapped; his voice snapped also.
"He knew next to nowt about him till I towd him," he said."Then he came to ax me things an' foind out more.He knows as much as I do now.
Us sits here an' talks him over."