T. Tembarom Part 37

"I wrote some of the stuff in it."

"Wrote some of th' stuff in it? Wrote it thaself ? How could tha, a common chap like thee?" he asked, more excited still, his ferret eyes snapping.

"I don't know how I did it," Tembarom answered, with increased cheer and interest in the situation. " It wasn't high-brow sort of work."

Tummas leaned forward in his incredulous eagerness.

"Does tha mean that they paid thee for writin' it--paid thee?"

"I guess they wouldn't have done it if they'd been Lancas.h.i.+re, "Tembarom answered." But they hadn't much more sense than I had. They paid me twenty-five dollars a week-- that's five pounds."

"I dunnot believe thee," said Tummas, and leaned back on his pillow short of breath.

"I didn't believe it myself till I'd paid my board two weeks and bought a suit of clothes with it," was Tembarom's answer, and he chuckled as he made it.

But Tummas did believe it. This, after he had recovered from the shock, became evident. The curiosity in his face intensified itself; his eagerness was even vaguely tinged with something remotely resembling respect. It was not, however, respect for the money which had been earned, but for the store of things "doin'" which must have been required. It was impossible that this chap knew things undreamed of.

"Has tha ever been to th' Klondike ? " he asked after a long pause.

"No. I've never been out of New York."

Tummas seemed fretted and depressed.

"Eh, I'm sorry for that. I wished tha'd been to th' Klondike. I want to be towd about it," he sighed. He pulled the atlas toward him and found a place in it.

"That theer's Dawson," he announced. Tembarom saw that the region of the Klondike had been much studied. It was even rather faded with the frequent pa.s.sage of searching fingers, as though it had been pored over with special curiosity.

"There's gowd-moines theer," revealed Tummas. "An' theer's welly newt else but snow an' ice. A young chap as set out fro' here to get theer froze to death on th' way."

"How did you get to hear about it?"

"Ann she browt me a paper onet." He dug under his pillow, and brought out a piece of newspaper, worn and frayed and cut with age and usage.

"This heer's what's left of it." Tembarom saw that it was a fragment from an old American sheet and that a column was headed "The Rush for the Klondike."

"Why didna tha go theer?" demanded Tummas. He looked up from his fragment and asked his question with a sudden reflectiveness, as though a new and interesting aspect of things had presented itself to him.

"I had too much to do in New York," said Tembarom. "There's always something doing in New York, you know."

Tummas silently regarded him a moment or so.

"It's a pity tha didn't go," he said." Happen tha'd never ha' coom back."

Tembarom laughed the outright laugh.

"Thank you," he answered.

Tummas was still thinking the matter over and was not disturbed.

"I was na thinkin' o' thee," he said in an impersonal tone. "I was thinkin' o' t' other chap. If tha'd gon i'stead o' him, he'd ha' been here i'stead o' thee. Eh, but it's funny." And he drew a deep breath like a sigh having its birth in profundity of baffled thought.

Both he and his evident point of view were "funny" in the Lancas.h.i.+re sense, which does not imply humor, but strangeness and the unexplainable. Singular as the phrasing was, Tembarom knew what he meant, and that he was thinking of the oddity of chance. Tummas had obviously heard of "poor Jem" and had felt an interest in him.

"You're talking about Jem Temple Barholm I guess," he said. Perhaps the interest he himself had felt in the tragic story gave his voice a tone somewhat responsive to Tummas's own mood, for Tummas, after one more boring glance, let himself go. His interest in this special subject was, it revealed itself, a sort of obsession. The history of Jem Temple Barholm had been the one drama of his short life.

"Aye, I was thinkin' o' him," he said. "I should na ha' cared for th'

Klondike so much but for him."

"But he went away from England when you were a baby."

"Th' last toime he coom to Temple Barholm wur when I wur just born.

Foak said he coom to ax owd Temple Barholm if he'd help him to pay his debts, an' th' owd chap awmost kicked him out o' doors. Mother had just had me, an' she was weak an' poorly an' sittin' at th' door wi'

me in her arms, an' he pa.s.sed by an' saw her. He stopped an' axed her how she was doin'. An' when he was goin' away, he gave her a gold sovereign, an' he says, `Put it in th' savin's-bank for him, an' keep it theer till he's a big lad an' wants it.' It's been in th' savin's- bank ever sin'. I've got a whole pound o' ma own out at interest.

There's not many lads ha' got that."

"He must have been a good-natured fellow," commented Tembarom. "It was darned bad luck him going to the Klondike."

"It was good luck for thee," said Tummas, with resentment.

"Was it?" was Tembarom's unbiased reply. "Well, I guess it was, one way or the other. I'm not kicking, anyhow."

Tummas naturally did not know half he meant. He went on talking about Jem Temple Barholm, and as he talked his cheeks flushed and his eyes lighted.

"I would na spend that sovereign if I was starvin'. I'm going to leave it to Ann Hutchinson in ma will when I dee. I've axed questions about him reet and left ever sin' I can remember, but theer's n.o.body knows much. Mother says he was fine an' handsome, an' gentry through an'

through. If he'd coom into th' property, he'd ha' coom to see me again I'll lay a s.h.i.+llin', because I'm a cripple an' I canna spend his sovereign. If he'd coom back from th' Klondike, happen he'd ha' towd me about it." He pulled the atlas toward him, and laid his thin finger on the rubbed spot. "He mun ha' been killed somewheer about here," he sighed. "Somewheer here. Eh, it's funny."

Tembarom watched him. There was something that rather gave you the "w.i.l.l.i.e.s" in the way this little cripple seemed to have taken to the dead man and worried along all these years thinking him over and asking questions and studying up the Klondike because he was killed there. It was because he'd made a kind of story of it. He'd enjoyed it in the way people enjoy stories in a newspaper. You always had to give 'em a kind of story; you had to make a story even if you were telling about a milk-wagon running away. In newspaper offices you heard that was the secret of making good with what you wrote. Dish it up as if it was a sort of story.

He not infrequently arrived at astute enough conclusions concerning things. He had arrived at one now. Shut out even from the tame drama of village life, Tummas, born with an abnormal desire for action and a feverish curiosity, had hungered and thirsted for the story in any form whatsoever. He caught at fragments of happenings, and colored and dissected them for the satisfying of unfed cravings. The vanished man had been the one touch of pictorial form and color in his ten years of existence. Young and handsome and of the gentry, unfavored by the owner of the wealth which some day would be his own possession, stopping "gentry-way" at a cottage door to speak good-naturedly to a pale young mother, handing over the magnificence of a whole sovereign to be saved for a new-born child, going away to vaguely understood disgrace, leaving his own country to hide himself in distant lands, meeting death amid snow and ice and surrounded by gold-mines, leaving his empty place to be filled by a boot-black newsboy--true there was enough to lie and think over and to try to follow with the help of maps and excited questions.

"I wish I could ha' seen him," said Tummas. "I'd awmost gi' my sovereign to get a look at that picture in th' gallery at Temple Barholm."

"What picture?" Tembarom asked. "Is there a picture of him there?"

"There is na one o' him, but there's one o' a lad as deed two hundred year' ago as they say wur th' spit an' image on him when he wur a lad hissen. One o' th' owd servants towd mother it wur theer."

This was a natural stimulus to interest and curiosity.

"Which one is it? Jinks! I'd like to see it myself. Do you know which one it is? There's hundreds of them."

"No, I dunnot know," was Tummas's dispirited answer, "an' neither does mother. Th' woman as knew left when owd Temple Barholm deed."

"Tummas," broke in Mrs. Hibblethwaite from the other end of the room, to which she had returned after taking Miss Alicia out to complain about the copper in the "wash-'us'--" "Tummas, tha'st been talkin'

like a magpie. Tha'rt a lot too bold an' ready wi' tha tongue. Th'

gentry's noan comin' to see thee if tha clacks th' heads off theer showthers."

"I'm afraid he always does talk more than is good for him," said Miss Alicia. "He looks quite feverish."

"He has been talking to me about Jem Temple Barholm," explained Tembarom. "We've had a regular chin together. He thinks a heap of poor Jem."