THE visits of Lady Mallowe and Captain Palliser had had their features. Neither of the pair had come to one of the most imposing “places” in Lancashire to live a life of hermit-like seclusion and dullness. They had arrived with the intention of availing themselves of all such opportunities for entertainment as could be guided in their direction by the deftness of experience. As a result, there had been hospitalities at Temple Barholm such as it had not beheld during the last generation at least. T. Tembarom had looked on, an interested spectator, as these festivities had been adroitly arranged and managed for him. He had not, however, in the least resented acting as a sort of figurehead in the position of sponsor and host.
“They think I don’t know I’m not doing it all myself,” was his easy mental summing-up. “They’ve got the idea that I’m pleased because I believe I’m It. But that’s all to the merry. It’s what I’ve set my mind on having going on here, and I couldn’t have started it as well myself. I shouldn’t have known how. They’re teaching me. All I hope is that Ann’s grandmother is keeping tab.”
“Do you and Rose happen to know old Mrs. Hutchinson?” he had inquired of Pearson the night before the talk with the duke.
“Well, not to say exactly know her, sir, but everybody knows of her,” said Pearson. “She is a most remarkable old person, sir—most remarkable.” Then, after watching his face for a moment or so, he added tentatively, “Would you perhaps wish us to make her acquaintance for—for any reason, sir?”
Tembarom thought the matter over speculatively. He had learned that his first liking for Pearson had been founded upon a rock. He was always to be trusted to understand, and also to apply a quite unusual intelligence to such matters as he became aware of without having been told about them.
“What I’d like would be for her to hear that there’s plenty doing at Temple Barholm; that people are coming and going all the time; and that there’s ladies to burn—and most of them lookers, at that,” was his answer.
How Pearson had discovered the exotic subtleties of his master’s situation and mental attitude toward it, only those of his class and gifted with his occult powers could explain in detail. The fact exists that Pearson did know an immense number of things his employer had not mentioned to him, and held them locked in his bosom in honored security, like a little gentleman. He made his reply with a polite conviction which carried weight.
“It would not be necessary for either Rose or me to make old Mrs. Hutchinson’s acquaintance with a view to informing her of anything which occurs on the estate or in the village, sir,” he remarked. “Mrs. Hutchinson knows more of things than any one ever tells her. She sits in her cottage there, and she just knows things and sees through people in a way that’d be almost unearthly, if she wasn’t a good old person, and so respectable that there’s those that touches their hats to her as if she belonged to the gentry. She’s got a blue eye, sir.”
“Has she?” exclaimed Tembarom.