T.Tembarom himself, after the duke had established him, furnished an unlimited source of interest.His household became a perennial fount of quiet discussion.Lady Mallowe and her daughter were the members of it who met with the most attention.They appeared to have become members of it rather than visitors.Her ladyship had plainly elected to extend her stay even beyond the period to which a fond relative might feel entitled to hospitality.She had been known to extend visits before with great cleverness, but this one assumed an established aspect.She was not going away, the neighborhood decided, until she had achieved that which she had come to accomplish.The present unconventional atmosphere of the place naturally supported her.And how probable it seemed, taking into consideration Captain Palliser's story, that Mr.Temple Barholm wished her to stay.Lady Joan would be obliged to stay also, if her mother intended that she should.But the poor American--there were some expressions of sympathy, though the situation was greatly added to by the feature --the poor American was being treated by Lady Joan as only she could treat a man.It was worth inviting the whole party to dinner or tea or lunch merely to see the two together.The manner in which she managed to ignore him and be scathing to him without apparently infringing a law of civility, and the number of laws she sometimes chose to sweep aside when it was her mood to do so, were extraordinary.If she had not been a beauty, with a sort of mystic charm for the male creature, surely he would have broken his chains.But he did not.What was he going to do in the end? What was she going to do? What was Lady Mallowe going to do if there was no end at all? He was not as unhappy-looking a lover as one might have expected, they said.He kept up his spirits wonderfully.Perhaps she was not always as icily indifferent to him as she chose to appear in public.Temple Barholm was a great estate, and Sir Moses Monaldini had been mentioned by rumor.Of course there would be something rather strange and tragic in it if she came to Temple Barholm as its mistress in such singular circumstances.But he certainly did not look depressed or discouraged.So they talked it over as they looked on.
"How they gossip! How delightfully they gossip!" said the duke."But it is such a perfect subject.They have never been so enthralled before.Dear young man! how grateful we ought to be for him!"One of the most discussed features of the case was the duke's own cultivation of the central figure.There was an actual oddity about it.He drove from Stone Hover to Temple Barholm repeatedly.He invited Tembarom to the castle and had long talks with him--long, comfortable talks in secluded, delightful rooms or under great trees on a lawn.He wanted to hear anecdotes of his past, to draw him on to giving his points of view.When he spoke of him to his daughters, he called him "T.Tembarom," but the slight derision of his earlier tone modified itself.
"That delightful young man will shortly become my closest intimate,"he said."He not only keeps up my spirits, but he opens up vistas.
Vistas after a man's seventy-second birthday! At times I could clasp him to my breast.""I like him first rate," Tembarom said to Miss Alicia."I liked him the minute he got up laughing like an old sport when he fell out of the pony carriage."As he became more intimate with him, he liked him still better.
Obscured though it was by airy, elderly persiflage, he began to come upon a background of stability and points of view wholly to be relied on in his new acquaintance.It had evolved itself out of long and varied experience, with the aid of brilliant mentality.The old peer's reasons were always logical.He laughed at most things, but at a few he did not laugh at all.After several of the long conversations Tembarom began to say to himself that this seemed like a man you need not be afraid to talk things over with--things you didn't want to speak of to everybody.
"Seems to me," he said thoughtfully to Miss Alicia, "he's an old fellow you could tie to.I've got on to one thing when I've listened to him: he talks all he wants to and laughs a lot, but he never gives himself away.He wouldn't give another fellow away either if he said he wouldn't.He knows how not to."There was an afternoon on which during a drive they took together the duke was enlightened as to several points which had given him cause for reflection, among others the story beloved of Captain Palliser and his audiences.
"I guess you've known a good many women," T.Tembarom remarked on this occasion after a few minutes of thought."Living all over the world as you've done, you'd be likely to come across a whole raft of them one time and another.""A whole raft of them, one time and another," agreed the duke."Yes.""You've liked them, haven't you?"
"Immensely.Sometimes a trifle disastrously.Find me a more absolutely interesting object in the universe than a woman --any woman--and Iwill devote the remainder of my declining years to the study of it,"answered his grace.
He said it with a decision which made T.Tembarom turn to look at him, and after his look decide to proceed.
"Have you ever known a bit of a slim thing"--he made an odd embracing gesture with his arm--"the size that you could pick up with one hand and set on your knee as if she was a child"--the duke remained still, knowing this was only the beginning and pricking up his ears as he took a rapid kaleidoscopic view of all the "Ladies" in the neighborhood, and as hastily waved them aside--"a bit of a thing that some way seems to mean it all to you--and moves the world?" The conclusion was one which brought the incongruous touch of maturity into his face.
"Not one of the `Ladies,"' the duke was mentally summing the matter up."Certainly not Lady Joan, after all.Not, I think, even the young person in the department store."He leaned back in his corner the better to inspect his companion directly.