“He doesn’t like you, he doesn’t like you,” the duke said rather thoughtfully. “He has a way of conveying that you are far more subtle than you choose to look. He says an air of entire frankness is one of the chief assets of American promoters.”
Tembarom smiled the smile of recognition. “Yes,” he said, “it looks like that’s a long way round, doesn’t it? But it’s not far to T. T. when you want to hitch on the connection. Anyhow, that’s the way he means it to look. If ever I was suspected of being in any mix-up, everybody would remember he’d said that.”
“It’s very amusin’,” said the duke.
They had become even greater friends and intimates by this time than the already astonished neighborhood suspected them of being. That they spent much time together in an amazing degree of familiarity was the talk of the country, in fact, one of the most frequent resources of conversation. Everybody endeavored to find reason for the situation, but none had been presented which seemed of sufficiently logical convincingness. The duke was eccentric, of course. That was easy to hit upon. He was amiably perverse and good-humoredly cynical. He was of course immensely amused by the incongruity of the acquaintance. This being the case, why exactly he had never before chosen for himself a companion equally out of the picture it was not easy to explain. Palliser, it is true, suggested it was Tembarom’s “cheek” which stood him in good stead, and his being so entirely a bounder that he did not know he was one, and was ready to make an ass of himself to any extent. The frankest statement of the situation, if any one had so chosen to put it, would have been that he was regarded as a sort of court fool without cap or bells.
No one was aware of the odd confidences which passed between the weirdly dissimilar pair. No one guessed that the old peer sat and listened to stories of a red-headed, slim-bodied girl in a dingy New York boarding-house, that he liked them sufficiently to encourage their telling, that he had made a mental picture of a certain look in a pair of maternally yearning and fearfully convincing round young eyes, that he knew the burnished fullness and glow of the red hair until he could imagine the feeling of its texture and abundant warmth in the hand. And this subject was only one of many. And of others they talked with interest, doubt, argument, speculation, holding a living thrill.
The tap of croquet-mallets sounded hollow and clear from the sunken lawn below the mass of shrubs between them and the players as the duke repeated:
“It’s hugely amusin’,” dropping his “g,” which was not one of his usual affectations.
“Confound it!” he said next, wrinkling the thin, fine skin round his eyes in a speculative smile, “I wish I had had a son of my own just like you.”
All of Tembarom’s white teeth revealed themselves.
“I’d have liked to be in it,” he replied, “but I shouldn’t have been like me.”