He rushed about New York strenuously attending to business concerning himself and his extraordinary acquaintances, and on the day of the steamer's sailing he presented himself at the last moment in an obviously just purchased suit of horribly cut clothes.At all events, their cut was horrible in the eyes of Mr.Palford, who accepted no cut but that of a West End tailor.They were badly made things enough, because they were unconsidered garments that Tembarom had barely found time to snatch from a "ready-made" counter at the last moment.He had been too much "rushed" by other things to remember that he must have them until almost too late to get them at all.He bought them merely because they were clothes, and warm enough to make a voyage in.He possessed a monster ulster, in which, to Mr.Palford's mind, he looked like a flashy black-leg.He did not know it was flashy.His opportunities for cultivating a refined taste in the matter of wardrobe had been limited, and he had wasted no time in fastidious consideration or regrets.Palford did him some injustice in taking it for granted that his choice of costume was the result of deliberate bad taste.It was really not choice at all.He neither liked his clothes nor disliked them.He had been told he needed warm garments, and he had accepted the advice of the first salesman who took charge of him when he dropped into the big department store he was most familiar with because it was the cheapest in town.Even when it was no longer necessary to be cheap, it was time-saving and easy to go into a place one knew.
The fact that he was as he was, and that they were the subjects of comment and objects of unabated interest through-out the voyage, that it was proper that they should be companions at table and on deck, filled Mr.Palford with annoyed unease.
Of course every one on board was familiar with the story of the discovery of the lost heir.The newspapers had reveled in it, and had woven romances about it which might well have caused the deceased Mr.
Temple Barholm to turn in his grave.After the first day Tembarom had been picked out from among the less-exciting passengers, and when he walked the deck, books were lowered into laps or eyes followed him over their edges.His steamer-chair being placed in a prominent position next to that of a pretty, effusive Southern woman, the mother of three daughters whose eyes and eyelashes attracted attention at the distance of a deck's length, he was without undue delay provided with acquaintances who were prepared to fill his every moment with entertainment.
"The three Gazelles," as their mother playfully confided to Tembarom her daughters were called in Charleston, were destructively lovely.
They were swaying reeds of grace, and being in radiant spirits at the prospect of "going to Europe," were companions to lure a man to any desperate lengths.They laughed incessantly, as though they were chimes of silver bells; they had magnolia-petal skins which neither wind nor sun blemished; they had nice young manners, and soft moods in which their gazelle eyes melted and glowed and their long lashes drooped.They could dance, they played on guitars, and they sang.They were as adorable as they were lovely and gay.
"If a fellow was going to fall in love," Tembarom said to Palford, "there'd be no way out of this for him unless he climbed the rigging and dragged his food up in a basket till he got to Liverpool.If he didn't go crazy about Irene, he'd wake up raving about Honora; and if he got away from Honora, Adelia Louise would have him `down on the mat.'" From which Mr.Palford argued that the impression made by the little Miss Hutchinson with the Manchester accent had not yet had time to obliterate itself.
The Gazelles were of generous Southern spirit, and did not surround their prize with any barrier of precautions against other young persons of charm.They introduced him to one girl after another, and in a day or two he was the center of animated circles whenever he appeard.The singular thing, however, was that he did not appear as often as the other men who were on board.He seemed to stay a great deal with Strangeways, who shared his suite of rooms and never came on deck.Sometimes the Gazelles prettily reproached him.Adelia Louise suggested to the others that his lack of advantages in the past had made him feel rather awkward and embarrassed; but Palford knew he was not embarrassed.He accepted his own limitations too simply to be disturbed by them.Palford would have been extremely bored by him if he had been of the type of young outsider who is anxiouus about himself and expansive in self-revelation and appeals for advice; but sometimes Tembarom's air of frankness, which was really the least expansive thing in the world and revealed nothing whatever, besides concealing everything it chose, made him feel himself almost irritatingly baffled.It would have been more natural if he had not been able to keep anything to himself and had really talked too much.
