第186章

Many an honest penny was turned, with the assistance of the romantic Temple Barholm case, by writers of paragraphs for newspapers published in the United States.It was not merely a romance which belonged to England but was excitingly linked to America by the fact that its hero regarded himself as an American, and had passed through all the picturesque episodes of a most desirably struggling youth in the very streets of New York itself, and had "worked his way up" to the proud position of society reporter "on" a huge Sunday paper.It was generally considered to redound largely to his credit that refusing "in spite of all temptations to belong to other nations," he had been born in Brooklyn, that he had worn ragged clothes and shoes with holes in them, that he had blacked other people's shoes, run errands, and sold newspapers there.If he had been a mere English young man, one recounting of his romance would have disposed of him; but as he was presented to the newspaper public every characteristic lent itself to elaboration.He was, in fact, flaringly anecdotal.As a newly elected President who has made boots or driven a canal-boat in his unconsidered youth endears himself indescribably to both paragraph reader and paragraph purveyor, so did T.Tembarom endear himself.For weeks, he was a perennial fount.What quite credible story cannot be related of a hungry lad who is wildly flung by chance into immense fortune and the laps of dukes, so to speak? The feeblest imagination must be stirred by the high color of such an episode, and stimulated to superb effort.Until the public had become sated with reading anecdotes depicting the extent of his early privations, and dwelling on illustrations which presented lumber-yards in which he had slept, and the facades of tumble-down tenements in which he had first beheld the light of day, he was a modest source of income.Any lumber-yard or any tenement sufficiently dilapidated would serve as a model; and the fact that in the shifting architectural life of New York the actual original scenes of the incidents had been demolished and built upon by new apartment-houses, or new railroad stations, or new factories seventy-five stories high, was an unobstructing triviality.Accounts of his manner of conducting himself in European courts to which he had supposedly been bidden, of his immense popularity in glittering circles, of his finely democratic bearing when confronted by emperors surrounded by their guilty splendors, were the joy of remote villages and towns.A thrifty and young minor novelist hastily incorporated him in a serial, and syndicated it upon the spot under the title of "Living or Dead." Among its especial public it was a success of such a nature as betrayed its author into as hastily writing a second romance, which not being rendered stimulating by a foundation of fact failed to repeat his triumph.

T.Tembarom, reading in the library at Temple Barholm the first newspapers sent from New York, smiled widely.

"You see they've got to say something, Jem," he explained."It's too big a scoop to be passed over.Something's got to be turned in.And it means money to the fellows, too.It's good copy.""Suppose," suggested Jem, watching him with interest, "you were to write the facts yourself and pass them on to some decent chap who'd be glad to get them.""Glad!" Tembarom flushed with delight."Any chap would be'way up in the air at the chance.It's the best kind of stuff.Wouldn't you mind?

Are you sure you wouldn't?" He was the warhorse snuffing battle from afar.

Jem Temple Barholm laughed outright at the gleam in his eyes.

"No, I shouldn't care a hang, dear fellow.And the fact that Iobjected would not stop the story."

"No, it wouldn't, by gee! Say, I'll get Ann to help me, and we'll send it to the man who took my place on the Earth.It'll mean board and boots to him for a month if he works it right.And it'll be doing a good turn to Galton, too.I shall be glad to see old Galton when I go back.""You are quite sure you want to go back?" inquired Jem.A certain glow of feeling was always in his eyes when he turned them on T.Tembarom.

"Go back! I should smile! Of course I shall go back.I've got to get busy for Hutchinson and I've got to get busy for myself.I guess there'll be work to do that'll take me half over the world; but I'm going back first.Ann's going with me."But there was no reference to a return to New York when the Sunday Earth and other widely circulated weekly sheets gave prominence to the marriage of Mr.Temple Temple Barholm and Miss Hutchinson, only child and heiress of Mr.Joseph Hutchinson, the celebrated inventor.From a newspaper point of view, the wedding had been rather unfairly quiet, and it was necessary to fill space with a revival of the renowned story, with pictures of bride and bridegroom, and of Temple Barholm surrounded by ancestral oaks.A thriving business would have been done by the reporters if an ocean greyhound had landed the pair at the dock some morning, and snap-shots could have been taken as they crossed the gangway, and wearing apparel described.But hope of such fortune was swept away by the closing paragraph, which stated that Mr.and Mrs.

Temple Barholm would "spend the next two months in motoring through Italy and Spain in their 90 h.p.Panhard."It was T.Tembarom who sent this last item privately to Galton.

"It's not true," his letter added, "but what I'm going to do is nobody's business but mine and my wife's, and this will suit people just as well." And then he confided to Galton the thing which was the truth.