Dinner at Detchworth Grange was most amusing that evening.One of the chief reasons -- in fact, it would not be too venturesome to say THEchief reason -- for Captain Palliser's frequent presence in very good country houses was that he had a way of making things amusing.His relation of anecdotes, of people and things, was distinguished by a manner which subtly declined to range itself on the side of vulgar gossip.Quietly and with a fine casualness he conveyed the whole picture of the new order at Temple Barholm.He did it with wonderfully light touches, and yet the whole thing was to be seen -- the little old maid in her exquisite clothes, her unmistakable stamp of timid good breeding, her protecting adoration combined with bewilderment;the long, lean, not altogether ill-looking New York bounder, with his slight slouch, his dangerously unsophisticated-looking face, and his American jocularity of slang phrase.
"He's of a class I know nothing about.I own he puzzled me a trifle at first," Palliser said with his cool smile."I'm not sure that I've 'got on to him' altogether yet.That's an expressive New York phrase of his own.But when we were strolling about together, he made revelations apparently without being in the least aware that they were revelations.He was unbelievable.My fear was that he would not go on.""But he did go on?" asked Amabel."One must hear something of the revelations."Then was given in the best possible form the little drama of the talk in the garden.No shade of Mr.Temple Barholm's characteristics was lost.Palliser gave occasionally an English attempt at the reproduction of his nasal twang, but it was only a touch and not sufficiently persisted in to become undignified.
"I can't do it," he said."None of us can really do it.When English actors try it on the stage, it is not in the least the real thing.
They only drawl through their noses, and it is more than that."The people of Detchworth Grange were not noisy people, but their laughter was unrestrained before the recital was finished.Nobody had gone so far as either to fear or to hope for anything as undiluted in its nature as this was.
"Then he won't give us a chance, the least chance," cried Lucy and Amabel almost in unison."We are out of the running.""You won't get even a look in--because you are not 'ladies,'" said their brother.
"Poor Jem Temple Barholm! What a different thing it would have been if we had had him for a neighbor!" Mr.Grantham fretted.
"We should have had Lady Joan Fayre as well," said his wife.
"At least she's a gentlewoman as well as a 'lady,'" Mr.Grantham said.
"She would not have become so bitter if that hideous thing had not occurred."They wondered if the new man knew anything about Jem.Palliser had not reached that part of his revelation when the laughter had broken into it.He told it forthwith, and the laughter was overcome by a sort of dismayed disgust.This did not accord with the rumors of an almost "nice" good nature.
"There's a vulgar horridness about it," said Lucy.
"What price Lady Mallowe!" said the son."I'll bet a sovereign she began it.""She did," remarked Palliser; "but I think one may leave Mr.Temple Barholm safely to Lady Joan." Mr.Grantham laughed as one who knew something of Lady Joan.
"There's an Americanism which I didn't learn from him," Palliser added, "and I remembered it when he was talking her over.It's this:
when you dispose of a person finally and forever, you 'wipe up the earth with him.' Lady Joan will 'wipe up the earth' with your new neighbor."There was a little shout of laughter."Wipe up the earth" was entirely new to everybody, though even the country in England was at this time by no means wholly ignorant of American slang.
This led to so many other things both mirth-provoking and serious, even sometimes very serious indeed, that the entire evening at Detchworth was filled with talk of Temple Barholm.Very naturally the talk did not end by confining itself to one household.In due time Captain Palliser's little sketches were known in divers places, and it became a habit to discuss what had happened, and what might possibly happen in the future.There were those who went to the length of calling on the new man because they wanted to see him face to face.
People heard new things every few days, but no one realized that it was vaguely through Palliser that there developed a general idea that, crude and self-revealing as he was, there lurked behind the outward candor of the intruder a hint of over-sharpness of the American kind.
There seemed no necessity for him to lay schemes beyond those he had betrayed in his inquiries about "ladies," but somehow it became a fixed idea that he was capable of doing shady things if at any time the temptation arose.That was really what his boyish casualness meant.That in truth was Palliser's final secret conclusion.And he wanted very much to find out why exactly little old Miss Temple Barholm had been taken up.If the man wanted introductions, he could have contrived to pick up a smart and enterprising unprofessional chaperon in London who would have done for him what Miss Temple Barholm would never presume to attempt.And yet he seemed to have chosen her deliberately.He had set her literally at the head of his house.And Palliser, having heard a vague rumor that he had actually settled a decent income upon her, had made adroit inquiries and found it was true.
It was.To arrange the matter had been one of his reasons for going to see Mr.Palford during their stay in London.