“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.
“I wanted to fix you—fix you safe,” he said when he told Miss Alicia about it. “I guess no one can take it away from you, whatever old thing happens.”
“What could happen, dear Mr. Temple Barholm?” said Miss Alicia in the midst of tears of gratitude and tremulous joy. “You are so young and strong and—everything! Don't even speak of such a thing in jest. What could happen?”
“Anything can happen,” he answered, “just anything. Happening's the one thing you can't bet on. If I was betting, I'd put my money on the thing I was sure couldn't happen. Look at this Temple Barholm song and dance! Look at T. T. as he was half strangling in the blizzard up at Harlem and thanking his stars little Munsberg didn't kick him out of his confectionery store less than a year ago! So long as I'm all right, you're all right. But I wanted you fixed, anyhow.”
He paused and looked at her questioningly for a moment. He wanted to say something and he was not sure he ought. His reverence for her little finenesses and reserves increased instead of wearing away. He was always finding out new things about her.