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diff --git a/37973.txt b/37973.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d04b25b --- /dev/null +++ b/37973.txt @@ -0,0 +1,5189 @@ +The Project Gutenberg eBook, Diana Tempest, Volume I (of 3), by Mary +Cholmondeley + + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + + + + +Title: Diana Tempest, Volume I (of 3) + + +Author: Mary Cholmondeley + + + +Release Date: November 10, 2011 [eBook #37973] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII) + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DIANA TEMPEST, VOLUME I (OF 3)*** + + +E-text prepared by Suzanne Shell, Matthew Wheaton, and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net) from page images +generously made available by Internet Archive/American Libraries +(http://www.archive.org/details/americana) + + + +Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this + file which includes the original illuminations. + See 37973-h.htm or 37973-h.zip: + (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/37973/37973-h/37973-h.htm) + or + (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/37973/37973-h.zip) + + + Project Gutenberg also has Volumes II and III of this + work. See + Volume II: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/37974 + Volume III: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/37975 + + + Images of the original pages are available through + Internet Archive/American Libraries. See + http://www.archive.org/details/dianatempest01chol + + + + + +DIANA TEMPEST. + +by + +MARY CHOLMONDELEY, + +Author of +"The Danvers Jewels," +"Sir Charles Danvers," etc. + +In Three Volumes. +VOL. I. + + + + + + + +London: +Richard Bentley & Son, +Publishers in Ordinary to Her Majesty the Queen. +1893. +(All rights reserved.) + + + + + TO + + MY SISTER + + HESTER. + + + "He put our lives so far apart + We cannot hear each other speak." + + + "The lawyer's deed + Ran sure, + In tail, + To them, and to their heirs + Who shall succeed, + Without fail, + For evermore. + + "Here is the land, + Shaggy with wood, + With its old valley, + Mound and flood. + But the heritors?" ... + + EMERSON, _Earth-song_. + + + + +DIANA TEMPEST. + + + + +CHAPTER I. + +"La pire des mesalliances est celle du coeur." + + +Colonel Tempest and his miniature ten-year-old replica of himself had +made themselves as comfortable as circumstances would permit in opposite +corners of the smoking carriage. It was a chilly morning in April, and +the boy had wrapped himself in his travelling rug, and turned up his +little collar, and drawn his soft little travelling cap over his eyes in +exact, though unconscious, imitation of his father. Colonel Tempest +looked at him now and then with paternal complacency. It is certainly a +satisfaction to see ourselves repeated in our children. We feel that the +type will not be lost. Each new edition of ourselves lessens a natural +fear lest a work of value and importance should lapse out of print. + +Colonel Tempest at forty was still very handsome; and must, as a young +man, have possessed great beauty before the character had had time to +assert itself in the face; before selfishness had learned to look out of +the clear grey eyes, and a weak self-indulgence and irresolution had +loosened the well-cut lips. + +Colonel Tempest, as a rule, took life very easily. If he had fits of +uncontrolled passion now and then, they were quickly over. If his +feelings were touched, that was quickly over too. But to-day his face +was clouded. He had tried the usual antidotes for an impending attack +of what he would have called "the blues," by which he meant any species +of reflection calculated to give him that passing annoyance which was +the deepest form of emotion of which he was capable. But _Punch_ and the +_Sporting Times_, and even the comic French paper which Archie might not +look at, were powerless to distract him to-day. At last he tossed the +latter out of the window to corrupt the morals of trespassers on the +line, and, as it was, after all, less trouble to yield than to resist, +settled himself in his corner, and gave way to a series of gloomy and +anxious reflections. + +He was bent on a mission of importance to his old home, to see his +brother who was dying. His mind always recoiled instinctively from the +thought of death, and turned quickly to something else. It was fourteen +years since he had been at Overleigh, fourteen years since that event +had taken place which had left a deadly enmity of silence and +estrangement between his brother and himself ever since. And it had all +been about a woman. It seemed extraordinary to Colonel Tempest, as he +looked back, that a quarrel which had led to such serious +consequences--which had, as he remembered, spoilt his own life--should +have come from so slight a cause. It was like losing the sight of an eye +because a fly had committed trespass in it. A man's mental rank may +generally be determined by his estimate of woman. If he stands low he +considers her--heaven help her--such an one as himself. If he climbs +high he takes his ideal of her along with him, and, to keep it safe, +places it above himself. + +Colonel Tempest pursued the reflections suggested by an untaxed +intellect of average calibre which he believed to be profound. A mere +girl! How men threw up everything for women! What fools men were when +they were young! After all, when he came to think of it, there had been +some excuse for him. (There generally was.) How beautiful she had been +with her pale exquisite face, and her innocent eyes, and a certain shy +dignity and pride of bearing peculiar to herself. Yes, any other man +would have done the same in his place. The latter argument had had great +weight with Colonel Tempest through life. He could not help it if she +were engaged to his brother. It was as much her fault as his own if they +fell in love with each other. She was seventeen and he was seven and +twenty, but it is always the woman who "has the greater sin." + +He remembered, with something like complacency, the violent love-making +of the fortnight that followed, her shy adoration of her beautiful eager +lover. Then came the scruples, the flight, the white cottage by the +Thames, the marriage at the local register office. What a fool he had +been, he reflected, and how he had worshipped her at first, before he +had been disappointed in her; disappointed in her as the boy is in the +butterfly when he has it safe--and crushed--in his hand. She might have +made anything of him, he reflected. But somehow there had been a hitch +in her character. She had not taken him the right way. She had been +unable to effect a radical change in him, to convert weakness and +irresolution into strength and decision; and he had been quite ready to +have anything of that sort done for him. During all those early weeks of +married life, until she caught a heavy cold on her chest, he had +believed existence had been easily and delightfully transformed for +him. He was susceptible. His feelings were always easily touched. +Everything influenced him, for a time; beautiful music, or a pathetic +story for half an hour; his young wife for--nearly six months. + +A play usually ends with the wedding, but there is generally an +after-piece, ignored by lovers but expected by an experienced audience. +The after-piece in Colonel Tempest's domestic drama began with tears, +caused, I believe, in the first instance by a difference of opinion as +to who was responsible for the earwigs in his bath sponge. In the white +cottage there were many earwigs. But even after the earwig difficulty +was settled by a move to London, other occasions seemed to crop up for +the shedding of those tears which are known to be the common resource of +women for obtaining their own way when other means fail; and others, +many others, suggested by youth and inexperience and a devoted love had +failed. If they are silent tears, or worse still, if the eyelids betray +that they have been shed in secret, a man may with reason become much +annoyed at what looks like a tacit reproach. Colonel Tempest became +annoyed. It is the good fortune of shallow men so thoroughly to +understand women, that they can see through even the noblest of them; +though of course that deeper insight into the hypocrisy practised by the +whole sex about their fancied ailments, and inconveniently wounded +feelings for their own petty objects, is reserved for selfish men alone. + +Matters have become very wrong indeed, when a caress is not enough to +set all right at once; but things came to that shocking pass between +Colonel and Mrs. Tempest, and went in the course of the next few years +several steps further still, till they reached, on her part, that dreary +dead level of emaciated semi-maternal tenderness, which is the only +feeling some husbands allow their wives to entertain permanently for +them; the only kind of love which some men believe a virtuous woman is +capable of. + +How he had suffered, he reflected, he who needed love so much. Even the +advent of the child had only drawn them together for a time. He +remembered how deeply touched he had been when it was first laid in his +arms, how drawn towards its mother. But his smoking-room fire had been +neglected during the following week, and he could not find any large +envelopes, and the nurse made absurd restrictions about his seeing his +wife at his own hours, and Di herself was feeble and languid, and made +no attempt to enter into his feelings, or show him any sympathy, and-- + +Colonel Tempest sighed as he made this mournful retrospect of his +married life. He had never cared to be much at home, he reflected. His +home had not been made very pleasant to him; the poor meagre home in a +dingy street, the wrong side of Oxford Street, which was all that a +young man in the Guards, with expensive tastes, who had quarrelled with +his elder brother, could afford. The last evening he had spent in that +house came back to him with a feeling of bitter resentment at the +recollection of his wife's unreasonable distress when a tradesman called +after dinner for payment of a longstanding account which she had +understood was settled. It was not a large bill he remembered +wrathfully, and he had intended to keep his promise of paying it +directly his money came in, but when it came he had needed it, and more, +for his share of the spring fishing he had taken cheap with a friend. +Naturally he would not see the man whose loud voice, asking repeatedly +for him, could be heard in the hall, and who refused to go away. Colonel +Tempest had a dislike to rows with tradespeople. At last his wife, +prostrate, and in feeble health, rose languidly from her sofa, and went +down to meet the recriminations of the unfortunate tradesman, who, after +a long interval, retired, slamming the door. Colonel Tempest heard her +slow step come up the stair again, and then, instead of stopping at the +drawing-room door, it had gone toiling upwards to the room above. He was +incensed by so distinct an evidence of temper. Surely, he said to +himself with exasperation, she knew when she married him that she was +marrying a poor man. + +She did not return: and at last he blew out the lamp, and lighting the +candle put ready for him, went upstairs, and opening the door of his +wife's room, peered in. She was sitting in the dark by the black +fireplace with her head in her hands. A great deal of darkness and cold +seemed to have been compressed into that little room. She raised her +head as he came in. Her wide eyes had a look in them of a dumb +unreasoning animal distress which took him aback. There was no pride nor +anger in her face. In his ignorance he supposed she would reproach him. +He had not yet realized that the day of reproaches and appeals, very +bitter while it lasted, was long past, years past. The silence of those +who have loved us is sometimes eloquent as a tombstone of that which has +been buried beneath it. + +The room was very cold. A faint smell of warm india-rubber and a +molehill in the middle of the bed showed that a hot bottle was found +more economical than coal. + +"Why on earth don't you have a fire?" he asked, still standing in the +doorway, personally aggrieved at her economies. Di's economies had often +been the subject of sore annoyance to him. An anxious housekeeper in her +teens sometimes retrenches in the wrong place, namely where it is +unpalatable to the husband. Di had cured herself of this fault of late +years, but it cropped up now and again, especially when he returned home +unexpectedly as to-day, and found only mutton chops for dinner. + +"It was the coal bill that the man came about this evening," she said, +apathetically, and then the peculiar distressed look giving place to a +more human expression, as she suddenly became aware of the reproach her +words implied, she added quickly, "but I am not the least cold, thanks." + +Still he lingered; a sense of ill-usage generally needs expression. + +"Why did not you come back to the drawing-room again?" + +There was no answer. + +"I must say you have a knack of making a man's home uncommonly pleasant +for him." + +Still no answer. Perhaps there were none left. One may come to an end of +answers sometimes, like other things--money, for instance. + +"Is my breakfast ordered for half-past seven, sharp?" + +"Yes." + +"Poached eggs?" + +"Yes, and stewed kidneys. I hope they will be right this time. And I've +told Martha to call you at seven punctually." + +"All right. Good night." + +"Good night." + +That had been their parting in this world, Colonel Tempest remembered +bitterly, for he had been too much hurried next morning to run up to +say good-bye before starting for Scotland. Those had been the last words +his wife had spoken to him, the woman for whom he had given up his +liberty. So much for woman's love and tenderness. + +And as the train went heavily on its way, he recalled, in spite of +himself, the last home-coming after that month's fishing, and the fog +that he shot into as he neared King's Cross on that dull April morning +six years ago. He remembered his arrival at the house, and letting +himself in and going upstairs. The house seemed strangely quiet. In the +drawing-room a woman was sitting motionless in the gaslight. She looked +up as he came in, and he recognized the drawn, haggard face of Mrs. +Courtenay, his wife's mother, whom he had never seen in his house +before, and who now spoke to him for the first time since her daughter's +marriage. + +"Is that you?" she said, quietly, her face twitching. "I did not know +where you were. You have a daughter, Colonel Tempest, of a few hours +old." + +He raised his eyebrows. + +"And Di?" he asked. "Pretty comfortable?" + +The question was a concession to custom on Colonel Tempest's part, for, +like others of his enlightened views, he was of course aware that the +pains of childbirth are as nothing compared to the twinge of gout in the +masculine toe. + +"Diana," said the elder woman, with concentrated passion, as she passed +him to leave the room--"Diana, thank God, is dead!" + +He had never forgiven Mrs. Courtenay for that speech. He remembered even +now with a shudder of acute self-pity all he had gone through during the +days that followed, and the silent reproach of the face that even in +death wore a look not of rest, but of a weariness stern and patient, and +a courage that has looked to the end and can wait. + +And when Mrs. Courtenay had written to offer to take the little Diana +off his hands altogether provided he would lay no claim to her later on, +he had refused with indignation. He would not be parted from his +children. But the child was delicate and wailed perpetually, and he +wanted to get rid of the house, and of all that reminded him of a past +that it was distinctly uncomfortable to recall. He put the little +yellow-haired boy to school, and, when Mrs. Courtenay repeated her +offer, he accepted it; and Di, with her bassinette and the minute +feather-stitched wardrobe that her mother had made for her packed inside +her little tin bath, drove away one day in a four-wheeler straight out +of Colonel Tempest's existence and very soon out of his memory. + +His marriage had been the ruin of him, he said to himself, reviewing the +last few years. It had done for him with his brother. He had been a fool +to sacrifice so much for a pretty face, and she had not had a shilling. +He had chucked away all his chances in marrying her. He might have +married anybody; but he had never seen a woman before or since with a +turn of the neck and shoulder to equal hers. Poor Di! She had spoilt his +life, no doubt, but she had had her good points after all. + + * * * * * + +Poor Di! Perhaps she too had had her dark hours. Perhaps she had given +love to a man capable only of a passing passion. Perhaps she had sold +her woman's birthright for red pottage, and had borne the penalty, not +with an exceeding bitter cry, but in an exceeding bitter silence. +Perhaps she had struggled against the disillusion and desecration of +life, the despair and the self-loathing that go to make up an unhappy +marriage. Perhaps in the deepening shadows of death she had heard her +new-born child cry to her through the darkness, and had yearned over it, +and yet--and yet had been glad to go. + +However these things may have been, at any rate, she had a turn of the +neck and shoulder which lived in her husband's memory. Poor Di! + + * * * * * + +Colonel Tempest shook himself free from a train of reflections which had +led him to a death-bed, and suddenly remembered with a shudder of +repugnance that he was on his way to another at this moment. + +His brother had not sent for him. Colonel Tempest was hazarding an +unsolicited visit. He had announced his intention of coming, but he had +received no permission to do so. Nevertheless he had actually screwed +up his weak and vacillating nature to the sticking point of putting +himself and his son into the train when the morning arrived that he had +fixed on for going to Overleigh. + +"For the sake of the old name, and for the sake of the boy," he said to +himself, looking at the delicate regular profile silhouetted against the +window-pane. If Archie had had a pair of wings folded underneath his +little great-coat, he would have made a perfect model for an angel, with +his fair hair and face, and the sweet serious eyes that contemplated, +without any change of expression, his choir book at chapel, or the last +grappling contortions of a cockroach, ingeniously transfixed to the +book-ledge with a pin, to relieve the monotony of the sermon. + +"Overleigh! Overleigh! Overleigh!" called out a porter, as the train +stopped. Colonel Tempest started. There already! How long it was since +he had got out at that station! There was a new station-master, and the +station itself had been altered. He looked at the little red tin shelter +erected on the off-side with an alien eye. It had not been there in +_his_ time. There was no carriage to meet him, although he had mentioned +the train by which he intended to arrive. His heart sank a little as he +took Archie by the hand and set out to walk. The distance was nothing, +for the station had been made specially for the convenience of the +Tempests, and lay within a few hundred yards of the castle gates. But +the omen was a bad one. Would his mission fail? + +How unchanged everything was! He seemed to remember every stone upon the +road. There was the turn up to the village, and the low tower of the +church peering through the haze of the April trees. They passed through +the old Italian gates--there was a new woman at the lodge to open +them--and entered the park. Archie drew in his breath. He had never seen +deer at large before. He supposed his uncle must keep a private +zoological gardens on a large scale, and his awe of him increased. + +"Are the lions and the tigers loose too?" he inquired, with grave +interest, but without anxiety, as his eyes followed a little band of +fallow deer skimming across the turf. + +"There are no lions and tigers, Archie," said his father, tightening his +clasp on the little hand. If Colonel Tempest had ever loved anything, it +was his son. + +They had come to a turn in the broad white road which he knew well. He +stopped and looked. High on a rocky crag, looking out over its hanging +woods and gardens, the old grey castle stood, its long walls and solemn +towers outlined against the sky. The flag was flying. + +"He is still alive," said Colonel Tempest, remembering a certain +home-coming long ago, when, as he galloped up the steep winding drive, +even as he rode, the flag dropped half-mast high before his eyes, and he +knew his father was dead. + +They had reached the ascent to the castle, and Colonel Tempest turned +from the broad road, and struck into a little path that clambered +upwards towards the gardens through the hanging woods. It was a short +cut to the house. It was here he had first seen Diana, and he pondered +over the fidelity of mind which, after fourteen years, could remember +the exact spot. There was the wooden bridge over the stream where she +had stood, her white gown reflected in the water below her, the heart of +the summer woods enfolding her like the setting of a jewel. The seringa +and the laburnum were out. The air was faint with perfume. She stood +looking at him with lovely surprised eyes, in her exceeding youth and +beauty. Involuntarily his mind turned from that first meeting to the +last parting seven years later. The cold, dark, London bedroom, the +bowed figure in the low chair, the fatigued smell of tepid india-rubber. +What a gulf between the radiant young girl and the woman with the white +exhausted face! Alas! for the many parts a woman may have to play in her +time to one and the same man. Colonel Tempest laughed harshly to +himself, and his powerful mind reverted to the old refrain, "What fools +men are to marry." + +It had been summer when he had seen her first, but now it was early +spring. The woods were very silent. God was making a special revelation +in their heart, was turning over one more page of His New Testament. He +had walked once again in His garden, and at the touch of His feet, all +young sheaths and spears of growing things were stirring and pressing up +to do His will. The larch had hastened to hang out his pink tassels. The +primroses had been the first among the flowers to receive the Divine +message, and were repeating it already in their own language to those +that had ears to hear it. The folded buds of the anemones had heard the +whisper _Ephphatha_, and were opening one after another their pure shy +eyes. The arched neck of the young bracken was showing among the brown +ancestors of last year. The marsh marigolds thronged the water's edge. +Every battered dyke and rocky scar was transfigured. God was once again +making all things new. + +Only a mole, high on its funeral twig, held out tiny human hands, worn +with honest toil, to its Maker, in mute protest against a steel death +"that nature never made" for little agriculturists. Death was still in +the world apparently, side by side with the resurrection of the flowers. +Archie paused to glance contemptuously and shy a stick at the corpse as +he passed. It looked as if it had not afforded much sport before it +died. Colonel Tempest puffed a little, for the ascent was steep, and he +was not so slim as he had once been. He sat down on a circular wooden +seat round a yew tree by the path. He began to dislike the idea of going +on. And, perhaps, after all, he would be told by the servants that his +brother would not see him. Jack was quite capable of making himself +disagreeable to the last. Really, on the whole, perhaps the best course +would be to go down the hill again. It is always so much easier to go +down than to go up; so much pleasanter at the moment to avoid what may +be distasteful to a sensitive mind. + +"Archie," said Colonel Tempest. + +The boy did not hear him. He was looking intently at a little patch of +ground near the garden seat, which had evidently been carefully laid out +by a landscape-gardener of about his own age. Every hair of grass or +weed had been scratched up within the irregular wall of fir cones that +bounded the enclosure. Grey sand imported from a distance, possibly from +the brook, marked winding paths therein, in course of completion. A sunk +bucket with a squirt in it, indicated an intention, as yet unmatured, to +add a fountain to the natural beauties of the site. + +"You go in this way, father," said Archie, grasping the situation with +becoming gravity, and pointing out the two oyster shells that flanked +the main entrance, "then you walk round the lake. Look; he has got a +duck ready. Oh, dear! and see, father, here is his name. I would have +done it all in white stones if it had been me. J. O. H. N. John. Father, +who is John?" + +Colonel Tempest's temper was like a curate's gun. You could never tell +when it might not go off, or in what direction. It went off now with an +explosion. It had been at full cock all the morning. + +"Who is John?" he repeated, fiercely kicking the letters on the ground +to right and left. "You may well ask that. John is a confounded +interloper. He has no right here. Damn John!" + +Archie was following the parental boot with anxious eyes. The tin duck +was dinted in on one side, and bulged out on the other in a manner +painful to behold. It would certainly never swim again. The turn of the +squirt might come any moment. But when his father began to say damn, +Archie had always found it better not to interfere. + +"Come along, Archie," said Colonel Tempest, furiously, "don't stand +fooling there," and he began to mount the path with redoubled energy. +All thought of turning back was forgotten. + +Archie looked back ruefully at the devastated pleasure-grounds. The fir +cone boundary was knocked over at one corner. All privacy was lost; +anything might get in now, and the duck, if she recovered, could get +out. It was much to be regretted. + +"Poor damn John," said Archie, slipping his hand into that of the +grown-up child whom he had for a father. + +"Poor John!" echoed Colonel Tempest, his temper evaporating a little, "I +only wish it _were_ poor John; and not poor Archie. That was _your_ +garden, Archie, do you hear, my boy--yours, not his. And you shall have +it, too, if I can get it for you." + +"I don't want it now," said Archie, gravely; "you've spoilt it." + + + + +CHAPTER II. + +"And another dieth in the bitterness of his soul."--JOB xxi. 25. + + +A profound knowledge of human nature enunciated the decree, "Thou shalt +not covet thy neighbour's _house_," and relegated the neighbour's wife +to a back seat among the servants and live stock. + +The intense love of a house, passing the love even of prohibited women, +is a passion which those who "nightly pitch their moving tents" in +villas and hired dwellings, and look upon heaven as their home, can +hardly imagine, and frequently regard with the amused contempt of +ignorance. But where pride is a leading power the affections will be +generally found immediately in its wake. In these days it is the +fashion, especially of the vulgar-minded well-born, to decry birth as +being of no account. Those who do so, apparently fail to perceive that, +by the very fact of decrying it, they proclaim their own innate lack of +appreciation of those very advantages of refinement, manners, and a +certain distinction and freemasonry of feeling, which birth has +evidently withheld from them personally, but which, nevertheless, birth +alone can bestow. The strong hereditary pride of race which is as +natural a result of time and fixed habitat as the forest oak--which is +bred in the bone and comes out in the flesh from generation to +generation--is accompanied, as a rule, by a passionate love, not of +houses, but of _the_ house, the home, the eyrie, the one sacred spot +from which the race sprang. + +Among the Tempests devotion to Overleigh had been an hereditary instinct +from time immemorial. Other possessions, gifts of royalty, or dowers of +heiresses came and went. Overleigh remained from generation to +generation. Scapegrace Tempests squandered the family fortune, and +mortgaged the family properties, but others rose up in their place, who, +whatever else was lost, kept fast hold on Overleigh. The old castle on +the crag had passed through many vicissitudes. It had been originally +built in Edward II.'s time, and the remains of fortification, and the +immense thickness of the outer walls, showed how fierce had been the +inroads of Scot and Borderer which such strength was needed to repel. +The massive arched doorway through which the yelling hordes of the +Tempests and their retainers swooped down, with black lion on pennant +flying, upon the enemy, was walled up in the time of the Tudors, and +the vaulted basement with its acutely pointed chamfered arches became +the dungeons of the later portion of the building; the cellars of the +present day. + +Overleigh had entertained royalty royally in its time, and had sheltered +royalty more royally still. Cromwell's cannon had not prevailed against +it. It had been partially burnt, it had been partially rebuilt. There it +still stood, a glory, and a princely possession on the lands that had +been meted in the Doomsday book to a certain Norman knight Ivo de +Tempete, the founder of an iron race. And in the nineteenth century a +Tempest held it still. Tempest had become a great name. Gradually wealth +had gathered round Overleigh, as the lichen had gathered round its grey +stones. There were coal-mines now among the marsh-lands of William the +Conqueror's favourite, harbours and towns along the sea-coast. Tempest +of Overleigh was a power, a name that might be felt, that had been +felt. The name ranked high among the great commoners of England. Titles +and honours of various kinds had been offered it from time to time. But +for a Tempest, to be a Tempest was enough. And Overleigh Castle had +remained their solitary dwelling-place. Houses were built for younger +sons, but the head of the family made his home invariably at Overleigh +itself. There were town houses in London and York, but country seats +were not multiplied. To be a Tempest was enough. To live and die at +Overleigh was enough. + +Some one was dying at Overleigh now. Mr. Tempest had come to that pass, +and was taking it very quietly, as he had taken everything so far, from +the elopement of his betrothed with his brother fourteen years ago, to +the death of his poor, pretty faithless wife in the room where he was +now lying; the round oak-panelled room, which followed the outer wall +of the western tower; the room in which he had been born, where Tempests +had arrived and departed, and lain in state. And now after a solitary +life he was dying, as he had lived, alone. + +He had gone too far down the steep path which leads no man knows +whither, to care much for anything that he was leaving behind. He had +not read his brother's letter announcing his coming. It lay with a pile +of others for some one hereafter to sort or burn. Mr. Tempest had done +with letters, had done with everything except Death. The pressure of +Death's hand was heavy on him, upon his eyes, upon his heart. He had +been a punctual man all his life. He hoped he should not be kept waiting +long. + + * * * * * + +Colonel Tempest followed the servant with inward trepidation across the +white stone hall. He had been at once admitted, for it was known that +Mr. Tempest was dying, and the only wonder in the minds of nurse and +doctor and servants was that his only brother had not arrived before. +The servant led the way along the picture-gallery. A child was playing +at the further end of it under the Velasquez; or, to speak more +correctly, was looking earnestly out of one of the low mullioned +windows. The voice of the young year was calling him from without, as +the spring calls only the young. But he might not go out to-day, though +there were nests waiting for him, and holiday glories in wood and meadow +that his soul longed after. He had been told he must stay in, in case +that stern silent father who was dying should ask for him. John did not +think he would want him, for when had he ever wanted him yet? but he +remained at his post at the window, breathing his silent longing into a +little mist on the pane. + +He looked round as Colonel Tempest and Archie approached, and then came +gravely forward, and put out a strong little brown hand. + +Colonel Tempest just touched it without speaking, and turned his eyes +away. He could not trust himself to look again at the erect dignified +little figure with its square dark face. When had there ever been a dark +Tempest? + +The two boys, near of an age, looked each other straight in the eyes. +Archie was the younger and the taller of the two. + +"Are you John?" he asked at once. + +"Yes." + +"John what?" + +"No. John Amyas Tempest." + +"Archie," said Colonel Tempest, who had grown rather pale, "you can +stay here with----, until I send for you." And with one backward glance +at them, he followed the servant to an ante-room, where the doctor +presently came to him. + +"I am his only brother," said Colonel Tempest hoarsely. "Can I see him?" + +"Certainly, my dear sir, certainly; but at the same time all agitation, +all tendency to excitement, must be rigorously avoided." + +"Is he really dying?" interrupted Colonel Tempest. + +"He is." + +"How long has he?" Colonel Tempest felt as if a hand were tightening +round his throat. The doctor shrugged his shoulders. + +"Three hours. Five hours. He might live through the night. I cannot +say." + +"There would be time," said Colonel Tempest to himself; and, not without +a shuddering foreboding that his brother might die in his actual +presence, without giving him time to bolt, he entered the sick-room, +from which the doctor had beckoned the nurse, and closed the door. + +The room was full of light, for the dying man had been oppressed by the +darkness in which he lay, and a vain attempt had been made to alleviate +it by the flood of April sunshine which had been let into the room. +Through the open window came the rapture of the birds. + +Mr. Tempest lay perfectly motionless with his eyes half closed. His worn +face had a strong family resemblance to his brother's, with the beauty +left out. + +"Jack!" said Colonel Tempest. + +Mr. Tempest heard from an immense distance, and came painfully back +across long wastes and desert places of confused memories, came slowly +back to the room, and the dim sunshine, and himself; and stopped short +with a jarred sense as he saw his own long feeble hands laid upon the +counterpane. He had forgotten them, though he recognized them now he saw +them again. Why had he returned? + +"Jack," said the voice again. + +Mr. Tempest opened his eyes suddenly, and looked full at his brother--at +the false, weak, handsome face of the man who had injured him. + +It all came back, the passion and the despair; the intolerable agony of +jealousy and baffled love; and the deadly, deadly hatred. Fourteen years +ago was it since Diana had been taken from him? It returned upon him as +though it were yesterday. A light flamed up in the dying eyes before +which Colonel Tempest quailed. + +All the sentences he had prepared beforehand seemed to fail him, as +prepared sentences have a way of doing, being made to fit imaginary +circumstances, and being consequently unsuited to any others. Mr. +Tempest, who had not prepared anything, had the advantage. + +"Curse you," he said, in his low, difficult whisper. "You damned +scoundrel!" + +Colonel Tempest was shocked. To bear a grudge after all these years! +Jack had always been vindictive! And what an unchristian state of mind +for one on the brink of that nightmare of horror, the grave! He was +unable to articulate. + +"What are you here for?" said Mr. Tempest, after a pause. "Who let you +in? Why can't I be allowed to die in peace?" + +"Oh, don't talk like that, Jack!" gasped Colonel Tempest, speaking +extempore, after fumbling in all the empty pockets of his mind for +something appropriate to say. "I am sure I am very sorry for----" A look +warned him that even his tactful reference to a certain subject would +be resented. "But, it's all past and gone now, and--it's a long time +ago, and you're----" + +"Dying," suggested Mr. Tempest. + +"... and," hurried on Colonel Tempest, glad of the lift, "it's not for +my own sake I've come. But I've got a boy, Jack; he is here now. I have +brought him with me. Such a fine, handsome boy--every inch a Tempest, +and the image of our father. I don't want to speak for myself, but for +the sake of the boy, and the place, and the old name." + +Colonel Tempest hid his quivering face in his hands. He was really +moved. + +The sick man's mouth twitched; he evidently understood his brother's +incoherent words. + +"John succeeds," he said. + +The two men looked away from each other. + +"John is not a Tempest," said Colonel Tempest, in a choked voice. "You +know it--everybody knows it!" + +"He was born in wedlock." + +"Yes; but he is not your son. You would have divorced her if she had +lived. He is the legal heir, of course, if you countenance him; but +something might be done still--it is not too late. I know the estate +goes, failing you and your children, to me and mine. Don't bear a +grudge, Jack. You can't have any feeling for the child--it's against +nature. Remember the old name and the old place, that has never been out +of the hands of a Tempest yet. Don't drag our honour in the dust and put +it to open shame! Think how it would have grieved our father. Let me +call in the doctor and the nurse, and disown him now before witnesses. +Such things have been done before, and may be again. I can contest his +claim then; I shall have something to go on. And you _must_ have proofs +of his illegitimacy if you will only give them. But there will be _no_ +chance if you uphold him to the last, and if--and if you--die--without +speaking." + +Mr. Tempest made no answer except to look his brother steadily in the +face. The look was sufficient. It said plainly enough, "That is what I +mean to do." + +Colonel Tempest lost all hope, but despair made one final clutch--a last +desperate appeal to his brother's feelings. It is one of the misfortunes +of self-centred people that their otherwise convenient habit of +disregarding what is passing in the minds of others, leads them to +trample on their feelings at the very moment when most desirous of +turning them to their own account. Colonel Tempest, with the best +intentions of a pure self-interest, trampled heavily. + +"Pass me over--cut me out," he said, with a vague inappreciation of +points of law. "I'll sign anything you please; but let the little chap +have it--let Archie have it--_Di's son_." + +There was a silence that might be felt. Approaching death seemed to make +a stride in those few breathless seconds; but it seemed also as if a +determined will were holding him momentarily at arm's length. Mr. +Tempest turned his fading face towards his brother. His eyes were +unflinching, but his voice was almost inaudible. + +"Leave me," he said. "John succeeds." + +The blood rushed to Colonel Tempest's head, and then seemed to ebb away +from his heart. A sudden horror took him of some subtle change that was +going forward in the room, and, seeing all was lost, he hastily left it. + +The two boys had fraternized meanwhile. Each, it appeared, was +collecting coins, and Archie gave a glowing account of the cabinet his +father had given him to put them in. John kept his in an old sock, which +he solemnly produced, and the time was happily passed in licking the +most important coins, to give them a momentary brightness, and in +comparing notes upon them. John was sorry when Colonel Tempest came +hurriedly down the gallery and carried Archie off before he had time to +say good-bye, or to offer him his best coin, which he had hot in his +hand with a view to presentation. + +Before he had time to gather up his collection, the old doctor came to +him, and told him, very gravely and kindly, that his father wished to +see him. + +John nodded, and put down the sock at once. He was a person of few +words, and, though he longed to ask a question now, he asked it with his +eyes only. John's deep-set eyes were very dark and melancholy. Could it +be that his mother's remorse had left its trace in the young +unconscious eyes of her child? Their beauty somewhat redeemed the square +ugliness of the rest of his face. + +The doctor patted him on the head, and led him gently to Mr. Tempest's +door. + +"Go in and speak to him," he said. "Do not be afraid. I shall be in the +next room all the time." + +"I am not afraid," said John, drawing himself up, and he went quietly +across the great oak-panelled room and stood at the bedside. + +There was a look of tension in Mr. Tempest's face and hands, as if he +were holding on tightly to something which, did he once let go, he would +never be able to regain. + +"John," he said, in an acute whisper. + +"Yes, father." The child's face was pale and his eyes looked awed, but +they met Mr. Tempest's bravely. + +"Try and listen to what I am going to say, and remember it. You are a +very little boy now, but you will hold a great position some day--when +you are a man. You will be the head of the family. Tempest is one of the +oldest names in England. Remember what I say"--the whisper seemed to +break and ravel down under the intense strain put on it to a single +quivering strand--"remember--you will understand it when you are older. +It is a great trust put into your hands. When you grow into a man, much +will be expected of you. Never disgrace your name; it stands high. Keep +it up--keep it up." The whisper seemed to die altogether, but an iron +will forced it momentarily back to the grey toiling lips. "You are the +head of the family; do your duty by it. You will have no one much to +help you. I shall not--be there. You must learn to be an upright, +honourable gentleman by yourself. Do you understand?" + +"Yes, father." + +"And you will--_remember_?" + +"Yes, father." If the lip quivered, the answer came nevertheless. + +"That is all; you can go." + +The child hesitated. + +"Good night," he said gravely, advancing a step nearer. The sun was +still streaming across the room, but it seemed to him, as he looked at +the familiar, unfamiliar face, that it was night already. + +"Don't kiss me," said the dying man. "Good night." + +And the child went. + +Mr. Tempest sighed heavily, and relaxed his hold on the consciousness +that was ready to slip away from him, and wander feebly out he knew not +whither. Hours and voices came and went. His own voice had gone down +into silence before him. It was still broad daylight, but the casement +was slowly growing "a glimmering square," and he observed it. + +Presently it flickered--glimmered--and went out. + + + + +CHAPTER III. + + "As the foolish moth returning + To its Moloch, and its burning, + Wheeling nigh, and ever nigher, + Falls at last into the fire, + Flame in flame; + So the soul that doth begin + Making orbits round a sin, + Ends the same." + + +It was a sultry night in June rather more than a year after Mr. +Tempest's death. An action had been brought by Colonel Tempest directly +after his brother's death, when the will was proved in which Mr. Tempest +bequeathed everything in his power to bequeath to his "son John." The +action failed; no one except Colonel Tempest had ever been sanguine +that it would succeed. Colonel Tempest was unable to support an +assertion of which few did not recognize the probable truth. No proof of +John's suspected illegitimacy was forthcoming. His mother had died when +he was born; it was eleven years ago. The fact that Mr. Tempest had +mentioned him by name as his son in his will was overwhelming evidence +to the contrary. The long-delayed blow fell at last. A verdict was given +in favour of the little schoolboy. + +"I'm sorry for you, I am, indeed," said Mr. Swayne, composedly watching +Colonel Tempest flinging himself about his little room, into which the +latter had just rushed, nearly beside himself at the decision of a +bribed and perjured court. + +Mr. Swayne was a stout, florid-looking man between forty and fifty, with +a heavy face like a grimace that some one else had made, who laboured +under the delusion, unshared by any of his fellow-creatures, that he was +a gentleman. In what class he had been born no one knew. What he was now +any one could see for himself. He was generally considered by the men +with whom he associated a good fellow for an ally in a disreputable +pinch, and a blackguard when the pinch was over. Every one regarded +Dandy Swayne with contempt, but for all that "The Snowdrop," as he was +playfully called, might be seen in the chambers and at the dinners of +men far above him in the social scale, who probably for very good +reasons tolerated his presence, and for even better reviled him behind +his back. He had a certain shrewdness and knowledge of the seamy side of +human nature which stood him in good stead. He was a noted billiard +player--a little too noted, perhaps. His short, thick ringed hands did +not mind much what they fastened on. He was not troubled by +conscientious scruples. The charm of Dandy Swayne's character was that +he stuck at nothing. He would go down any sewer provided there was money +in it, and money there always was somewhere in everything he took in +hand. Dandy Swayne's career had had strange ups and downs. No one knew +how he lived. The private fortune on which he was wont to enlarge of +course existed only in his own imagination. Sometimes he disappeared +entirely for longer or shorter periods--generally after money +transactions of a nature that required privacy and foreign travel. But +the same Providence which tempers the wind to the shorn lamb watches +over the shearer also, and he always reappeared again, sooner or later, +with his creased white waistcoat and yesterday's gardenia, and the old +swagger that endeared him to his fellow-creatures. + +He was up in the world just now, living "in style" in smart chambers +strewn with photographs of actresses, and littered with cheap expensive +furniture, and plush hangings redolent of smoke and stale scent, among +which Colonel Tempest was knocking about in his disordered evening +dress. + +"I'm sorry for you, Colonel," repeated Mr. Swayne, slowly; "but I wish +to ---- you'd sit down and not rush up and down like that. It's not a bit +of good taking on in that way, though it's ---- ---- luck all the same." + +Mr. Swayne's conversation was devoid of that severe simplicity which +society demands; indeed, it was so encrusted and enriched with +ornamental gems of expression of a surprising and dubious character, +that to present his conversation to the reader without the personal +peculiarities of his choice of language is to do him an injustice +which, however unavoidable, is much to be regretted. Mr. Swayne's +conversation without his oaths might be compared to a bird without its +feathers; the body is there, but all individuality and beauty of contour +is gone. + +Mr. Swayne filled his glass, and pushed the bottle across to his friend, +whose flushed face and shaking hand showed that he had had enough +already. Colonel Tempest sat down impatiently and filled his glass, too. + +"It's the will that did it, I suppose," suggested Mr. Swayne; "that +tipped it over." + +"Yes," said Colonel Tempest, striking his clenched hand on the table. +"_My son John_ he called him in his will; there was no getting over +that. He knew it when he put those words in. He knew I should contest +the succession, and he hated me so that he perjured himself to keep me +out of my own, and stuck to it even on his death-bed. John is no more +his son than you are. A little dark Fane, that is what he is. They say +he takes after his mother's family; he well may do, ---- him!" + +Mr. Swayne sympathetically echoed the sentiment in a varied but not less +forcible form of speech. + +"And my son," continued Colonel Tempest, his fair weak face whitening +with passion--"you know my boy; look at him--a Tempest to the backbone, +down to his finger-nails. You can't look at him among the pictures in +the gallery and not see he is bone of their bone and flesh of their +flesh. He is as like the Vandyke of Amyas Tempest the cavalier as he can +be. It drives me mad to think of him, cut out by a bastard!" + +Mr. Swayne appeared to be in a meditative turn of mind. He watched the +smoke of his cigar curl upwards from the unshaved crater of his lip into +the air. + +"You're in the tail, I suppose?" he remarked at last. + +"Of course I am. If my brother John died without children, everything +was to come to me and my heirs. My brother had only a life interest in +the place." + +"Then I don't see how he was to blame, doing as he did, if it was +entailed all along on his son." Mr. Swayne spoke with a certain cautious +interest. + +"He never _had_ a son. If he had disowned his wife's child, everything +would have come to me." + +"Lor!" said Mr. Swayne, "I did not understand it was so near as that. +Then this little chap, this John, he's all that stands between you and +the property, is he? Failing him, it still comes to you?" + +Mr. Swayne's small tightly-wedged eyes, with the expression of +dissipated boot-buttons, were beginning to show a gleam of professional +interest. + +"Yes, it would; but John won't fail," said Colonel Tempest, savagely. +"He will keep us out. We shall be as poor as rats as long as we live, +and shall see him chucking our money right and left!" and Colonel +Tempest, who was by this time hardly responsible for what he said, +ground his teeth and cursed his enemy in a paroxysm of rage and drink. +Mr. Swayne observed him attentively. + +"Don't take on so, Colonel," he remarked soothingly. "Dear me, what's a +little boy?--What's a little boy here or there," he continued, +meditatively, "one more or one less? There's a sight of little kids in +the world; some wanted, some not. I've known cases, Colonel"--here he +fixed his eyes on the ceiling--"cases with parents, maybe, singing up in +heaven and takin' no notice, when little chaps that weren't wanted, that +nobody took to, seemed to--meet with an accident, get snuffed out by +mistake." + +"John won't meet with an accident," said Colonel Tempest passionately. +"I wish to ---- he would!" + +"I look at it this way," said Mr. Swayne, philosophically. "There's +things gentlemen can do, and there's things they can't. A gentleman is a +party that can't do his dirty work for himself, though as often as not +he has a deal on his hands that must be shoved through somehow. The +thing is to find parties who'll take what I call a personal interest, if +it's made worth their while. Now about this little boy, that no one +wants, and is a comfort to nobody. It's quite curious the things little +boys will do; out in boats alone, outriggers now, as dangerous as can +be, or leaning out of railway carriages in tunnels. Lor! you never know +what they won't be up to, little rascals. They're made of mischief. +Forty thousand a year, is it, he is keeping you out of, and yours by +right? Well, I don't say anything about that; but all I say is, I have +friends I can find that are open to a bet. What's the harm of betting a +thousand pounds to one sovereign that you never come into the property? +It ain't likely, as you say. What's the harm of a bet, provided you +don't mind risking your money? Let's say, just for the sake of--of +argument, that there _was_ ten bets--ten bets at a thousand to one that +you never come in. Ten thousand pounds to pay, if you come in after all. +What's ten thousand pounds to a man with forty thousand a year?" Mr. +Swayne snapped his fingers. "And no trouble to nobody. Nothing to do but +to pay up quietly when the time comes. It don't concern you who takes up +the bets, and you don't know either. You know nothing at all about it. +You lay your money, and, look here, Colonel, you mark my words, some way +or somehow, some time or other, _that boy will disappear_." + +The two men looked steadily at each other. Colonel Tempest's eyes were +bloodshot, but Mr. Swayne had all his wits about him; he never became +intoxicated, even at the expense of others, if there was money in +keeping sober. + +"Curse him!" said Colonel Tempest in a hoarse whisper. "He should not +get in my light." + +The child was to blame, naturally. + +Mr. Swayne did not answer, but went to a side table, on which were pens, +ink, and paper. Some things, if done at all, are best done quickly. + + + + +CHAPTER IV. + +"After the red pottage comes the exceeding bitter cry." + + +Fifteen years is a long time. What companies of trite reflections crowd +the mind as it looks back across the marshes and the fens, and the +highlands and the lowlands, and the weary desert places, to some point +that catches the eye in the middle distance! We stood there once. +Perhaps we go back in memory--all the way back--to that little town and +spire in the green country, and pray once again in the cool +vision-haunted church, and peer up once again at the window in the +narrow street where Love lived and looked out, where patience and +affection dwell together now. They were always friends, those two. + +Or perhaps we look back to a parting of the ways which did not seem to +be a parting at the time, and recall a "Good-bye" that was lightly +uttered because it was only thought to be _Au revoir_. We see now, from +where we stand, the point where the paths diverged. + +Fifteen years! + +They have not passed very smoothly over the head of Colonel Tempest. +Whenever he looked back across the breezy uplands of his well-spent +life, his eye avoided and yet was inevitably attracted with a loathing +allurement to one dark spot in the middle distance, where---- + +Fifteen years ago or yesterday was it? + +The old nightmare, with the shuddering horror of yesterday mingled with +the heavy pressure of years, might come back at any moment--was always +coming back. + +That sultry night in June! + +Everything was disjointed and fragmentary in his memory the morning +after it; he could not see the whole. He had a confused recollection of +an intense passionate hatred that was like a physical pain, and of +Swayne's voice saying, "What's a little boy?" And then there were slips +of paper. Swayne said a bet was a bet. He, Colonel Tempest, had had +something to do with those slips of paper--_What?_--One had fallen on +the floor, and Swayne had blotted it carefully. There was Swayne's voice +again, "Your handwriting ain't up to much, Colonel." He had written +something then. What was it? His own name? Memory failed. Who was that +devil in the room, with Swayne's face and blurred watch-chain--two +watch-chains--and the thick busy hands? And then it was night, and he +was in the streets again in the hot darkness, among the blinking lamps +and stars that looked like eyes, and Swayne was seeing him home. And +there was a horror over everything; horror leant over him at night, +horror woke him in the morning and pursued him throughout the day, and +the next day, and the next. What had he done? He tried to piece together +the broken fragments that his groping memory could glean; but nothing +came of it--at least, nothing he could believe. But Swayne knew. On the +third day he could bear it no longer, and he went to find him; but +Swayne had disappeared. Colonel Tempest went up to his chambers on the +pretence of a letter--of something; he knew not what. They were swept +and garnished in readiness for new arrivals, for if one choice spirit +disappears, a good landlady knows what to expect. + +Colonel Tempest looked once round the room, and then sat feebly down. It +was as if for days he had been staring at a blank sheet, and now a dark +slide had been suddenly taken from the magic lantern. The picture was +before him in all its tawdry distinctness. _He knew what he had done._ + +Colonel Tempest was not a radically bad man. Who is? But there was in +him a kind of weakness of fibre which consists in being subservient to +the impulse of the moment. The effects of a feeble yielding to impulse +are sometimes hardly to be distinguished from those of the most +deliberate and thorough-paced sin. + +He was conscious of good in himself, of a refined dislike to coarseness +and vice even when he dabbled in it, of vague longings after better +things, of amiable, even chivalrous, inclinations towards others, +especially towards women not of his own family. In his own family, +where there had always been, even in his mother's time, some feminine +weakness or imperfection for a manly nature to point out and ridicule, +of course courtesy and tenderness could not be expected of him. + +Thus at each juncture of his life he was obliged to justify what he +would have called his failings, what some would have called sins, by +laying the blame on others, and by this means to account for the glaring +discrepancy between the inward and spiritual gracefulness of his +feelings and the outward and visible signs of his actions. + +A man with such good impulses, such an affectionate nature, cannot be a +sinner. If there was one thing more than another that Colonel Tempest +thoroughly believed in, it was in his affectionate nature. He might have +his faults, he was wont to say, but his heart was in the right place. If +things went amiss, the fault was in the circumstance, in the +temptation, in the unfortunate character of those with whom his life was +knit. Weakness has its superstition, and superstition its scapegoat. His +father had spoilt him. His wife had not understood him. His brother had +played him false. Swayne had tempted him. + +What have not those to answer for who teach us in language, however +spiritual, however orthodox, to lay our sins on others--on _any other_ +except ourselves! + +After the first shock of panic, of terror lest he had done something for +which he might eventually have to suffer, Colonel Tempest struggled back +to the well-worn position, now clutched with both hands, that he had +been betrayed in a moment of passion by a fiend in human shape, and +that, if--anything happened, Swayne was the most to blame. + +Still they were dreadful days at first--dreadful weeks in which he +suffered for Swayne's sin. And Swayne seemed to have disappeared for +good--or perhaps for evil. + +And then--gradually--inasmuch as nothing had power to affect him for +long together, the horror lightened. + +The sun rose and set. The world went on. A year passed. Archie wrote for +money from school. Things took their usual course. Colonel Tempest had +his hair cut as usual; he observed with keen regret that it was thinning +at the top. Life settled back into its old groove. + +_Nothing happened._ + +To persons gifted with imagination, what is more solemn, or more +appalling, than the pause which follows on any decisive action which is +perceived to have within it the seed of a result--a result which even +now is germinating in darkness, is growing towards the light, foreseen, +but unknown? With what body will they come, we ask ourselves--these slow +results that spring from the dust of our spent actions? Faith sows and +waits. Sin sows and trembles. The fool sows and forgets. Colonel Tempest +was practically an Atheist. He did not believe in cause and effect; he +believed in chance. He had sown, but perhaps nothing would come up. He +had seen the lightning, but perhaps the thunder might not follow after +all. + +Suddenly, one winter morning, without warning, it growled on the +horizon. + +"That inconvenient little nephew of yours has precious nearly hooked +it," said a man in the club to him as he came in. "His tutor must be a +plucky chap. I should owe him a grudge if I were you." + +The man held out the paper to him, and, turning away with a laugh, went +out whistling. He meant no harm; but the smallest arrow of a refined +pleasantry can prick if it happens to come between the joints of the +harness. + +Colonel Tempest felt sea-sick. The room was empty except for the waiter, +who was arranging his breakfast on one of the tables by the window. The +fire leapt and blazed; everything swayed. He sat down mechanically in +his accustomed place, still clutching the paper. He tried to read it, to +find the place, but he could see nothing. At last he poured out a cup of +coffee and drank it, and then tried again. There it was: Narrow escape +of Mr. Goodwin and Mr. Tempest on the Metropolitan Railway. Mr. Goodwin +and his charge, Mr. Tempest, were returning by the last train from the +Crystal Palace. Tremendous crowd on the platform. Struggle for the train +as it came in. Mr. Tempest pushed down between the still moving train +and the platform. Heroic devotion of Mr. Goodwin. Rescue of Mr. Tempest +uninjured. Serious injuries of Mr. Goodwin. + +Colonel Tempest read no more. He wiped his forehead. + +Swayne's men were at their devil's work, then! Perhaps they had tried +before and failed, and he had not heard of it? They would try +again--presently. Perhaps next time they would succeed. + +The old horror woke up again with an acuteness that for the moment +seemed greater than he could bear. Weak men should abstain from +wrong-doing. They cannot stand the brunt of their own actions; the kick +of the gun is too much for them. + +And from that time to this the horror never wholly left him; if it +slumbered, it was only to reawaken. At long intervals incidents +happened, sometimes of the most trifling description, and some of which +he did not even hear of at the time, which roused it afresh. There +seemed to be a fate against John at Eton which followed him to Oxford. +Archie, who was at Eton and Oxford with him, occasionally let things +drop by chance which made Colonel Tempest's blood run cold. + +"They have failed so far," he would say to himself; "but they will do it +yet. I know they will do it in the end!" + +At last he made a desperate attempt to find Swayne, and cancel the bet; +but perhaps Swayne knew the man he had to deal with, and had foreseen a +movement of that kind. At any rate, he was not to be discovered. Colonel +Tempest found himself helpless. + +Was there no anodyne for this recurring agony? He dared not drown it in +drink. What might he not say under its influence? The consolations of +religion, or rather of the Church, which he had always understood to be +a sort of mental chloroform for uneasy consciences, did not seem to meet +his case. The thought of John's danger never troubled him--John's +possible death. The superstitious terror was for himself alone. He +wanted a religion which would adhere to him of its own accord, and be in +the way when needed; and he tried various kinds recommended for the +purpose, but--without effect. + +Perhaps a religion for self-centred people remains to be invented. Even +religiosity (the patent medicine of the spiritual life of the age--the +universal pain-killer)--even religiosity, though it meets almost all +requirements, does not quite fill that gap. + +Colonel Tempest became subject to long attacks of nervous irritation and +depression. He ceased to be a good, and consequently a popular, +companion. His health, never strong, always abused, began to waver. At +fifty-five he looked thin and aged. He had come before his time to the +evil days and the years which have no pleasure in them. + +As he turned out of St. George's Church, Hanover Square, on this +particular spring afternoon, whither he had gone to assist at a certain +fashionable wedding at which his daughter Diana had officiated as +bridesmaid, he looked broken down and feeble beyond his years. + +A broad-shouldered, dark man elbowed his way through the throng of +footmen and spectators, and came up with him. + +"Are not you going back to the house?" he asked. + +"No," said Colonel Tempest--"I hate weddings! I hate the whole thing. I +only went to have a look at my child, who was bridesmaid. Di is my only +daughter, but I don't see much of her; others take care of that." His +tone was pathetic. He had gradually come to believe that his child had +been wrested from him by Mrs. Courtenay, and that he was a defrauded +parent. + +"I am not going to the house, either," said John Tempest, for it was he. +"I don't hate weddings, but I detest that one. Do you mind coming down +to my club? I have not seen you really to speak to since I came back. I +want to have a talk with you about Archie; he seems to have been +improving the shining hours during these three years I have been away." + +Colonel Tempest winced jealously. He knew John had paid the considerable +debts that Archie had contrived to amass, not only during the short time +he was at Oxford, before he left to cram for the army, but also at +Sandhurst. But Colonel Tempest had felt no gratitude on that score. Was +not all John's wealth Archie's by right? and John must know it. Men do +not grow up in ignorance of such a fact as a slur on their parentage. +What was a dole of a few hundred pounds now and again, when a man was +wrongfully keeping possession of many thousands? + +"Young men are all alike," said Colonel Tempest, testily. "Archie is no +worse than the rest. Poor fellow, it's very little I can do for him! +It's deuced expensive living in the Guards; I found it so myself." + +John might have asked, except that these are precisely the questions +that make enmity between relations, why Colonel Tempest had put him in +the Guards, considering that it was an idle life, and Archie was +absolutely without expectations of any description. He and his sister Di +had not even the modest fortune of a younger son eventually to divide +between them. One of the beauties of Colonel Tempest's romantic +clandestine marriage had been the lack of settlements, which, though it +had prevented his wife bringing him anything owing to the rupture with +her family, had at any rate enabled him to whittle away his own private +fortune at will, and to inveigh at the same time against the miserliness +of the Courtenays, who ought, of course, to have provided for his +children. + +How Colonel Tempest kept going at all no one knew. How Archie was kept +going most people knew, or rather guessed without difficulty. John and +Archie had held firmly together at Eton, and afterwards at Oxford. John +had untied a very uncomfortable knot that had arranged itself round the +innocent Archibald at Sandhurst. It could hardly be said that there was +friendship between the two, but John, though only one year his cousin's +senior, had taken the position of elder brother from the first, and had +stood by Archie on occasions when that choice, but expensive, spirit +needed a good deal of standing by. Archie had inherited other things +from his father besides his perfect profile, and knew as well as most +men which side his bread was buttered. They were friends in the ordinary +acceptance of that misused term. John had just returned from three +years' absence at the Russian and Austrian Courts, and Archie, who had +begun to feel his absence irksome in the extreme, had welcomed him back +with effusion. + +"Come into the Carlton and let us talk things over," said John. + +In spite of himself, Colonel Tempest occasionally almost liked John, +even while he kicked against the pricks of a certain respect which he +could not entirely smother for this grave quiet man of few words. When +he was not for the moment jealous of him--and there were such +moments--he could afford to indulge a sentiment almost of regret for +him. At times he still hated him with the perfect hatred of the injurer +for the injured; but nothing to stir that latent superstitious horror, +and consequent detestation of the cause of the horror, had occurred of +late years. They had walked slowly down Bond Street and St. James's +Street, and had reached the Carlton. Close by the steps a man was +lounging. Colonel Tempest saw him look attentively at John as they came +up, and the blood left his heart. It was Swayne. + +In a moment the horror was awake again--wide awake, hydra-headed, close +at hand, insupportable. + +Swayne stared for a moment full at Colonel Tempest, and then turned away +and sauntered slowly along Pall Mall. + +"Won't you come in?" said John, as his companion hesitated. + +"Not to-day. Another time," said Colonel Tempest, and incoherently +making he knew not what excuse, he left John to join another man who was +entering at that moment, and hurried after Swayne. He overtook him as he +passed through the gates into St. James's Park. It was a dull, foggy +afternoon, and there were not many people about. + +Swayne nodded carelessly to him as he joined him. He evidently did not +mind being overtaken. + +"Well, Colonel," he said, in the half insolent manner that in men like +Swayne implies a knowledge that they have got the whip hand. Swayne was +not to be outshone in the art of grovelling by any of his own species of +fellow-worm, but he did not grovel unnecessarily. His higher nature was +that of a bully. + +"---- you, Swayne, where have you been all these years?" said Colonel +Tempest, hurriedly. "I've tried to find you over and over again." + +"I've been busy, Colonel," returned Mr. Swayne, swaying himself on tight +light-checked legs, and pushing back his grey high hat. "Business before +pleasure. That's my motto. And I've been mortal sick, too. Thought I +should have gone up this time last year. I did indeed. You look the +worse for wear too; but I must not be standing talking here, pleasant as +it is to meet old friends." + +"Look here, Swayne," said Colonel Tempest, in great agitation, laying a +spasmodic clutch on Swayne's arm, "I can't stand it any longer. I can't +indeed. It's wearing me into my grave. I want you--to cancel the bet. +You must cancel it. I won't bear it. If you won't cancel it, I won't pay +up when the--if the time comes." + +"Won't you?" said Swayne, with contempt. "I know better." + +"I must get out of it. It's killing me," repeated Colonel Tempest, +ignoring Swayne's last remark. + +"Pay up, then," said Swayne. "If you won't bear it, pay up." + +Colonel Tempest was staggered. + +"I have not a thousand pounds I could lay my hands on," he said +hoarsely, "much less ten. I've been broke these last five years. You +know that." + +"Raise it," said Swayne. "I ain't against that; quite the reverse. +There's been a deal of time and money wasted already. All the parties +will be glad to have the money down. He's in England again now, thank +the Lord. That's a saving of expense. I was waiting to have a look at +him myself when you came up. I've never set eyes on him before." + +"I can't raise it," said Colonel Tempest with the despairing remembrance +of repeated failures in that direction. "I can't give security for five +hundred." + +"If you can't pay it, and you can't raise it," said Swayne, shaking off +Colonel Tempest's hand, and thrusting his own into his pockets, "what's +the good of talking? Sorry not to part friends, Colonel; but what's done +is done. You can't send back shoes to the maker that have come to pinch +on wearing 'em. You should have thought of that before. Business is +business, and a bet's a bet." + + + + +CHAPTER V. + + "Alas! the love of women! It is known + To be a lovely and a fearful thing." + + BYRON. + + +Rooms seldom represent their inmates faithfully, any more than +photographs their originals, and a poorly-furnished room, like a bad +photograph, is, as a rule, a caricature. But there are fortunate persons +who can weave for themselves out of apparently incongruous odds and ends +of _bric-a-brac_, and china, and cretonne, a habitation which is as +peculiar to them as the moss cocoon is to the long-tailed tit, or as the +spillikins, in which she coldly cherishes the domestic affections, are +to the water-hen. + +Madeleine Thesinger's little boudoir looking over Park Lane was as like +her as a translation is to the original. Madeleine was one of the many +young souls who mistake eccentricity for originality. It was therefore +to be expected that a life-sized china monkey should be suspended from +the ceiling by a gilt chain, not even holding a lamp as an excuse for +its presence. Her artistic tendencies required that scarlet pampas grass +should stand in a high yellow jar on the piano, and that the piano +itself should be festooned with terra-cotta Liberty silk. A little palm +near had its one slender leg draped in an _impromptu_ Turkish trouser, +made out of an amber handkerchief. Even the flowers are leaving their +garden of Eden now. They require clothing, just as chrysanthemums must +have their hair curled. We shall put the lily into corsets next! + +There was a faint scent of incense in the room. A low couch, covered +with striped Oriental rugs and cushions, was drawn near the fire. Beside +it was a small carved table--everything was small--with a few devotional +books upon it, an open Bible, and a hyacinth in water. A frame, on which +some elaborate Church embroidery was stretched, kept the Bible in +countenance. The walls were draped as only young ladies, defiant of all +laws of taste or common sense, but determined on originality, can drape +them. The _portiere_ alone fell all its length to the ground. The other +curtains were caught up or tweaked across, or furled like flags against +the walls above chromos and engravings, over which it was quite +unnecessary that they should ever be lowered. The pictures themselves +were mostly sentimental or religious. Leighton's "Wedded" hung as a +pendant to "The Light of the World." The small room was crowded with +tiny ornaments and brittle conceits, and mirrors placed at convenient +angles. There was no room to put anything down anywhere. + +Sir Henry Verelst, when he was ushered in, large and stout and +expectant, instantly knocked over a white china mandarin whose tongue +dropped out on the carpet as he picked it up. He replaced it with awe, +tongue and all, and then, taking refuge on the hearth-rug, promenaded +his pale prawn-like eyes round the apartment to see where he could put +down his hat. But apparently there was no vacant place, for he continued +to clutch it in a tightly-gloved hand, and to stare absently in front of +him, sniffing the unmodulated sniff of solitary nervousness. + +Sir Henry had a vacant face. The only change of which it was capable was +a change of colour. Under the influence of great emotion he could become +very red, instead of red, but that was all. He was a stout man, and his +feelings never got as far as the surface; they probably gave up the +attempt half way. He was feeling a great deal--for him--at this moment, +but his face was as stolid as a doll's. He had fallen suddenly and +desperately in love, bald head over red ears in love, with Madeleine, +after his own fashion, since she had shown him so decidedly that he was +dear to her on that evening a fortnight ago when he had hovered round +her in his usual "fancy free" and easy manner, merely because she was +the prettiest girl in the room. He now thought her the most wonderful +and beautiful and religious person in the world. He had been counting +the hours till he should see her again. He did not know how to bear +being kept waiting in this way; but he did not turn a hair, possibly +because there were not many to turn. He stood as if he were stuffed. At +last, after a long interval, there was a step in the passage. He sighed +copiously through his nose, and changed legs; his dull eyes turned to +the _portiere_. + +A French maid entered, who in broken English explained that mademoiselle +could not see monsieur. Mademoiselle had a headache. Would monsieur call +again at five o'clock? + +Sir Henry started, and became his reddest, face, and ears, and neck; +but, after a momentary pause, he merely nodded to the woman and went +out, knocking over the same china figure from the same table as he did +so, but this time without perceiving it. + +As soon as he was gone, the maid replaced the piece of china now +permanently tongueless, and then raised her eyes and hands. + +"Mon Dieu!" she said below her breath, as she left the room. "Quel +fiance!" + +A few moments later Madeleine came in her headache appeared to be +sufficiently relieved to allow of her coming down now that her betrothed +had departed. She pulled down the rose-coloured blinds, and then flung +herself with a little shiver on to the couch beside the fire. She was +very pretty, very fair, very small, very feminine in dress and manner. +That she was seven and twenty it would have been impossible to believe, +except by daylight, but for a certain tinge of laboured youthfulness in +her demeanour. + +She put up two of the dearest little hands to her small curled head, and +then held them to the fire with a gesture of annoyance. Her eyes--they +were pretty appealing eyes, with delicately-bistred eyelashes--fell upon +her diamond engagement-ring as she did so, and she turned her left hand +from side to side to make the stones catch the light. + +She was still looking at her ring when the door opened, and "Miss +Tempest" was announced. + +"Well, Madeleine?" said a fresh clear voice. + +"_Dear_ Di!" said Madeleine, rising and throwing herself into her +friend's arms. "How good of you to come, and so early, too! I have been +so longing to see you, so longing to tell you about everything!" She +drew her visitor down beside her on the couch, and took possession of +her hand. + +"I am very anxious to hear," said Di, disengaging her hand after a +moment, and pulling off her furred gloves and boa. + +"Let me help you, you dear thing," said Madeleine, unfastening her +friend's coat, in which action the engagement-ring took a good deal of +exercise. "Is it very cold out? What a colour you have! I never saw you +looking so well." + +"Really?" said Di, remembering how Madeleine had made the same remark +on her return last year from fishing in Scotland with her face burnt +brick red. "One does not generally look one's best after being out in a +wind like a knife; but I am glad you think so. And now tell me all about +_it_." + +Di's long, rather large, white hand was taken into both Madeleine's +small ones again, and fondled in silence for a few moments. + +Di looked at her with an expression half puzzled, half benevolent, as a +Newfoundland might look at a toy terrier. She was in reality five or six +years younger than Madeleine, but her height and a certain natural +dignity of carriage and manner gave her the appearance of being much +older--by a rose-coloured light. + +"It was very sudden," said Madeleine in a shy whisper, evidently +enjoying the situation. + +"How sudden? Do you mean it was a sudden idea on his part?" + +"No, you tiresome thing, of course not; but it came upon _me_ very +suddenly." + +"Oh!" + +After all a bite may with truth be called sudden by the angler who has +long and persistently cast over that and every other rise within reach. + +"You see," said Madeline, "I had not seen him for a long time, and +somehow his being so much older and--and everything, and----" + +Di recalled the outward presentment of Sir Henry--elderly, gouty, the +worse for town wear. + +"I see," she said gravely. + +There was a pause. + +"I knew you would feel with me about it," said Madeleine, +affectionately. "I always think you are so sympathetic." + +"But you _did_ think it over--it did occur to you before he asked you?" +said the sympathizer in rather a low voice. + +"Oh yes! The night before I thought of it." + +"The night before?" echoed Di. + +"Yes, that last evening at Narbury. I don't know how it was; there were +some much prettier girls there than me, but I was quite monopolized by +the men--Lord Algy and Captain Graham in particular; it was really most +embarrassing. I have such a dislike to being made conspicuous. One on +each side of the piano, you know; and, as I told them, they ought not to +leave the other girls in the way they were doing. There were two girls +who had no one to speak to all the evening. I begged them to go and talk +to them, but they would not listen; and Sir Henry stood about near, and +would insist on turning over, and somehow suddenly I thought he meant +something, but I never thought it would be so quick. Men are so strange. +I sometimes think they look at things _quite_ differently from a woman. +It's such a solemn thought to me that we have got to influence them, and +draw them up." + +"Or draw them on," said Di gravely--"one or the other, or both at the +same time. Yes, it's very solemn. When did you say Sir Henry became +sudden?" + +"Next morning--the very next morning, after breakfast, in the +orchid-house. I just wandered in there to read my letters. It took me +entirely by surprise. It is such a comfort to talk to you, dear Di. I +know you do enter into it all so." + +"Not into the orchid-house," said Di, looking straight in front of her. + +"You naughty thing!" said Madeleine, delightedly. "I shall shake you if +you tease like that." + +To threaten to shake any one was Madeleine's sheet-anchor in the form of +repartee. Di knit her white brows. + +"And though the idea had never so much as crossed your mind till a few +hours before, still you accepted him?" she asked. + +"No," said Madeleine, withdrawing her hand with dignity; "of course I +did not. I don't know what other girls feel about it, but with me there +is something too solemn, too sacred, in an engagement of that kind to +rush into it all in a moment. I told him so, and that I must think it +over, and that I could not answer him anything at once." + +"And how long did you think it over?" + +"All that morning. I stayed by myself in my own room. I did not go out, +though the others all went to a steeplechase on Lord Algy's drag, and I +had a new gown on purpose. I suppose most girls would have gone, but I +felt I could not. I can't take things lightly like some people. I dare +say it is a mistake, but I always have felt anything of that kind very +deeply." + +"I suppose he did not go either?" + +"N--no, he didn't." + +"That would have been awkward if you had not intended to accept him." + +Madeleine looked into the fire. + +"It was a very painful time," she went on, after a pause. "And it was so +embarrassing at luncheon--only him and me, and that old General Hanbury. +Every one else had gone." + +"Even your mother?" + +"Yes; she was the chaperone of the party, as Mrs. Mildmay had a +headache. But I did not want her to stay. She did not know till it was +all settled. I could not have talked about it to her; mamma and I feel +so differently. You know she always remembers how much she cared for +poor papa. I was dreadfully perplexed what I ought to do, but"--in a +lowered voice--"I took it where I take all my troubles, Di. I prayed +over it; I laid it all before----" + +Madeleine stopped short as Di suddenly hid her face in her hands. The +white nape of her neck was crimson. + +"And then?" she asked, after a moment's silence, with her face still +hidden. + +"Then it all seemed to become clear," murmured Madeleine, gratified by +Di's evident envy. "And I saw it was _meant_. You know, Di, I believe +those things are decided for one. And I felt quite peaceful, and I went +out for a little bit in the garden, and the sun was setting--I always +care so much for sunsets, they mean so much to me, and it was all so +beautiful and calm; and--I suppose he had seen me go out--and----" + +Di uttered a sound between a laugh and a sob, which resulted in +something like a croak. Her fair face was red with--_was_ it envy?--as +she raised her head. Two large tears stood in her indignant wistful +eyes. She looked hard at Madeleine, and the latter avoided her direct +glance. + +"Madeleine," she said, "do you care for this man?" + +Madeleine gave a little pout which would have appealed to a masculine +heart, but which had no effect on Di. + +"I was very much surprised when you wrote to tell me," continued Di, +rather hurriedly. "I never should have thought--when I remember what he +is--I can't believe that you can really care about him." + +"I have a great influence over him--an influence for good," said +Madeleine. "He would promise anything I asked; he has already about +smoking. I know he has not been always---- But you know a woman's +influence. I always mention him in my prayers, Di." + +Madeleine had been long in the habit of presenting the names of her most +eligible acquaintances of the opposite sex to the favourable +consideration of the Almighty, without whose co-operation she was aware +that nothing matrimonially advantageous could be effected, and in whose +powers as a chaperon she placed more confidence than in the feeble +finite efforts of a kind but unworldly mother. She had never so far felt +impelled to draw His attention to the spiritual needs of younger sons. + +"Every woman has an enormous influence for the time over a man who is in +love with her," said Di, who seemed to have frozen perceptibly. "It is +nothing peculiar. It is one of the common stock feelings on such +occasions. The question is, Do you really care for him?" + +Madeleine shivered a little, and then suddenly burst into uncontrollable +weeping. Di was touched to the quick. Loss of self-control sometimes +moves reserved people profoundly. They know that only an overwhelming +onslaught of emotion would be able to wrest their own self-control from +them; and when they witness the loss of it in another, they think that +it must have been caused by the same amount of suffering. + +"I think you are very unkind, Di," Madeleine said, between her sobs. +"And I always thought you would be the one to sympathize with me when I +was engaged. And I have chosen the bridesmaids' gowns on purpose to suit +you, though I know Sir Henry's niece, that little fat Dalrymple with her +waist under her arms, will look simply hideous in it. And I wrote to you +the _very_ first! I think you are very unkind!" + +"Am I?" said Di, gently, as if she were speaking to a child; and she +knelt down by the little sobbing figure and put her arms round her. +"Never mind about the bridesmaids' gowns, dear. It was very nice of you +to think how they would suit me. Never mind about anything but just this +one thing: Do you think you will be happy if you marry Sir Henry +Verelst?" + +"Others do it," sobbed Madeleine. "Look at Maud Lister, and she hated +Lord Lentham--and he was such a dreadful little man, with a mole, worse +than---- But she got not to mind. And I've been out nine years. You are +only twenty-one, Di. It's all very well for you to talk like that; I +felt just the same when I was your age. But I shall be twenty-eight this +year; and you don't know what it feels like to be getting on, and one's +fringe not what it was; and always having to pretend to be glad when one +is bridesmaid to girls younger than one's self, and seeing other girls +have _trousseaux_, and thinking, perhaps, one will never have one at +all. I don't know how I could bear to live if I was thirty and was not +married!" + +Di was silent for a moment from sheer astonishment at a real declaration +of feeling from one who felt, and lived, and talked, and dressed +according to a social code fixed as the laws of the Medes and Persians. + +Her low voice had a certain tremor of repressed emotion in it as she +said: "But think of Sir Henry. The bridegroom is part of the wedding, +after all; think of what he is. What can you care for in him? Nothing. I +don't see how you could. And he is twice your age. Be a brave girl, and +break it off." + +Di felt as she said the last words that the courage of being able to +break off the engagement was as nothing to that of continuing to keep +it. She did not realize that an entire lack of imagination wears, under +certain circumstances, the appearance of the most stoical fortitude. + +The brave girl sobbed again, and pressed a little frilled square of +cambric to her eyes. + +"No," she gasped; "I can't--I can't! It has been in all the papers. Half +my things are ordered; I have asked the bridesmaids. I can't go back +now. It is wicked to break off an engagement. God would be very angry +with me." + +It is difficult to argue with any one who can make a Jorkins of the +Almighty. Every word Madeleine spoke showed her friend how unavailing +any further remonstrance would be. Di saw that she had gone through that +common phase of imagination which a shallow nature feels to be +prophetic. Madeleine had, in what stood proxy for her imagination, +already regarded herself as a bride, as the recipient, not of diamonds +in general, but of the Verelst diamonds in particular. Already in +maiden meditation she had seen herself arrive at certain houses on +bridal visits--had contemplated herself opening a county hunt ball as +the bride of the year--until she looked upon the wedding as a settled +event, the husband as a necessary adjunct, the _trousseaux_ as a +certainty. + +"And you must see my under-things when they come, because we have always +been such friends," continued Madeleine, as Di remained silent. She +dried her eyes with little dabs, for even in emotion she remembered the +danger of wiping them, while she favoured Di with minute details +respecting those complete sets of under-clothing which so mysteriously +enhance and dignify the holy estate of matrimony in the feminine mind. +But Di was not listening. The image of Sir Henry, who had besought +herself to marry him a year ago, reverted to her mind with a +remembrance of her own repulsion towards the Moloch to which Madeleine +was preparing to offer herself up. + +"Madeleine," she said suddenly, "I am sure from what I have seen that +marriage is too difficult if you don't care for your husband. The +married people who did not marry for love tell one so by their faces. I +am sure there are some hard times to be lived through even when you care +very much. Nothing but a great love, granny says, will float one over +some of the rocks ahead. But to marry without love is like undertaking +to sew without a needle, or dig without a spade--attempting difficult +work without the tool provided for it. Oh, Madeleine, don't do it! Break +it off--break it off!" + +Madeleine clung closer to the girl kneeling beside her. It almost seemed +as if the urgent eager voice were not speaking in vain. + +A tap came at the door. + +Di, always shy of betraying emotion, was on her feet in a moment. +Madeleine drew the screen hastily between herself and the light as she +said, "Come in." + +It was the French maid, who explained that the dressmaker had sent the +two rolls of brocade as she had promised, so that mademoiselle might +judge of them in the piece. She brought them in with her, and spread +them in artistic folds on two chairs. + +Madeleine sat up and gave a little sigh. + +"If she gives them up, she will give him up, too," thought Di. "This is +the turning-point." + +"Di," she said earnestly, "which would you advise, the mauve or the +white and gold? I always think you have such taste." + +Di started and turned a shade pale. She saw by that one sentence that +the die had been thrown, though Madeleine was not herself aware of it. +The moments of our most important decisions are often precisely those in +which nothing seems to have been decided; and only long afterwards, when +we perceive with astonishment that the Rubicon has been crossed, do we +realize that in that half-forgotten instant of hesitation as to some +apparently unimportant side issue, in that unconscious movement that +betrayed a feeling of which we were not aware, our choice was made. The +crises of life come, like the Kingdom of Heaven, without observation. +Our characters, and not our deliberate actions, decide for us; and even +when the moment of crisis is apprehended at the time by the troubling of +the water, action is generally a little late. Character, as a rule, +steps down first. It was so with Madeleine. + +Sir Henry owed his bride to the exactly timed appearance of a mauve +brocade sprinkled with silver _fleur-de-lys_. The maid turned it +lightly, and the silver threads gleamed through the rich pale material. + +"It is perfect," said Madeleine in a hushed voice; "absolutely perfect. +Don't you think so, Di? And she says she will do it for forty guineas, +as she is making me other things. The front is to be a silver gauze over +plain mauve satin to match, and the train of the brocade. The white and +gold is nothing to it." + +"It is very beautiful," said Di, looking at it with a kind of horror. It +seemed to her at the moment as if every one had their price. + +Madeleine smiled faintly. She felt that Di must envy her. It was of +course only natural that she should do so. A thought strayed across her +mind that in the future many gowns of this description, hitherto +unobtainable and unsuitable, might sweeten existence; and she would be +kind to Di. She would press an old one, before it was really old, on +her occasionally. + +Madeleine gave the sigh that accompanies relaxation from intense mental +strain. + +"I will decide on the mauve," she said. + + + + +CHAPTER VI. + + "Ready money of affection + Pay, whoever drew the bill." + + CLOUGH. + + +"Put not your trust in brothers," said Di, coming in from a balcony +after the departure of the bride and bridegroom, and looking round the +crowded drawing-room, where the fictitious gaiety of a wedding was more +or less dismally stamped on every face. "I do believe Archie has +deserted me." + +"I know he has," said her companion. "He told me half an hour ago that +he was going to bolt." + +"Did he? The deceiver! He gave me a solemn promise that he would see me +home. I believe young men are the root of all evil. Don't pin your faith +to them, Lord Hemsworth, or you will live to rue it, like me." + +"I won't." + +"And why, pray, did not you mention the fact that he was going when I +was laboriously explaining all the presents to you, and exhausting +myself in pointing out watches in bracelets or concealed in the handles +of umbrellas, which you were quite unable to see for yourself? One good +turn deserves another. Ah! now the people are really beginning to go. Is +not that Lady Breakwater in the inner drawing-room? Poor woman--I mean, +happy mother! I will try and get near her to say good-bye. Look at her +smiling; I think I should know a wedding smile anywhere." + +"No, you need not see me home," she added a few minutes later, as she +stood in the hall. "Have I not a hired brougham? One throws expense to +the winds on an occasion of this kind. There comes your hansom behind +it. What a lovely chestnut! How I do envy you it! The blessings of this +world are very unevenly distributed. Good-bye." + +"I am going to see you home," said Lord Hemsworth, with decision. "It is +the duty of the best man to make himself generally useful to the chief +bridesmaid. I've read it in my little etiquette book; and, however +painful my duty may be made to me, I shall perform it." + +"You have performed it thoroughly already. No, you are not coming in. +Don't shut the door on my gown, please. Thanks. Home, coachman." + +"Are you going to the Speaker's to-night?" said Lord Hemsworth, with +his arms on the carriage-door, perfectly regardless of the string of +carriages behind him. + +"I am." + +"Good luck; so am I." + +"That's not in the etiquette book," said Di, with mischief in her eyes. +"In the meantime you are stopping the whole procession. We have shaken +hands once already. Good-bye again." + + * * * * * + +Mrs. Courtenay was sitting in her armchair with her back to the light in +the long sunny drawing-room of her little house in Kensington, waiting +for the return of her granddaughter from the wedding to which at the +last moment she had been unable to escort her herself. Her headache was +better now, and she had taken up her work, the fine elaborate lace work +in imitation of an old design which she had copied in some Italian +church. + +Mrs. Courtenay had been one of the four beautiful Miss Digbys of +Ebberstone about whom society had gone wild fifty years ago; and in her +old age she was beautiful still, with the dignified and gracious manner +of one who has been worshipped in her day. Her calm keen face bore the +marks of much suffering, but of suffering that had been outlived. +Perhaps next to the death of her husband, who had left her in her early +youth to struggle with life alone, the blow which she had felt most +keenly had been the clandestine and most miserable marriage of her only +daughter with Colonel Tempest; but it was all past now. People while +they are undergoing the strain of the ordinary ills that flesh is heir +to, the bitterness of inadequately returned love, the loss or alienation +of children, the grind of poverty or the hydra-headed wants of +insufficient wealth, are not as a rule pleasant or sympathetic +companions. The lessons of life are coming too quickly upon them to +allow of it. They are preoccupied. But _tout passe_. Mrs. Courtenay had +loved and had suffered, and had presented a brave front to the world, +and had known wealth, as she now knew poverty. The pain was past; the +experience remained; therein lay the secret of her power and her +popularity, for she had both. She seemed to have reached a little quiet +backwater in the river of life where the pressure of the current could +no longer reach her, would never reach her again. She sometimes said +that nothing could affect her very deeply now, except, perhaps, what +affected her granddaughter. But that was a large exception. Mrs. +Courtenay loved her granddaughter with some of the stern tender +affection which she had once lavished on her own daughter--which she +had buried in her grave. The elder Diana had taken two hearts down to +the grave with her--her mother's and Mr. Tempest's. + +Mrs. Courtenay had that rarest gift-- + + "A heart at leisure from itself + To soothe and sympathize." + +To that little house in Kensington many came, long before her beautiful +granddaughter was of an age to be its principal attraction, as she had +now become. Mrs. Courtenay's house had gained the magic name of being +agreeable, possibly because she made it so to one and all alike. None +but the pushing and the dictatorial were ever overlooked. Country +relations with the loud voices and the abusive political views peculiar +to rural life were her worst bugbears, but even they had a pleasing +suspicion that they had distinguished themselves in conversation, and +departed with the gratified feeling akin to that depicted on a plain +woman's face when she has come out well in a photograph. + +In talking with the young Mrs. Courtenay remembered her own far-away +youth, its romantic passions, its watchful nights, its splendour of +sunrise illusions. She remembered, too, its great ignorance, and was +not, like so many elders, exasperated with the young for having omitted +to learn, before they came into the world, what they themselves only +learned by living half a century in it. + +She had sympathy with old and young alike, but perhaps she felt most +deeply for those who were struggling in the meshes of middle age, no +longer interesting to others or even to themselves. Many came to Mrs. +Courtenay for comfort and sympathy in the servitude with hard labour of +middle age, and none came in vain. + +Mrs. Courtenay lifted her calm clear eyes to the Louis Quatorze clock on +the old Venetian cabinet near her. + +"Di is late," she said half aloud. + +The low sun was thinking better of it, and was shining in through the +tracery of the bare branches of the trees outside. If there was ever a +ray of sunshine anywhere, it was in that little Kensington drawing-room. +The sun never forgot to seek it out, to come and have a look at the +little possessions which in spite of her narrow means Mrs. Courtenay had +gradually gathered round her. It came now, and touched the white _Capo +di Monte_ figures on the mantelpiece, and brought into momentary +prominence the inlaid ivory dolphins on the ebony cabinet; those +dolphins with curly tails which two Dianas had loved at the age when +permission to drive dolphins and sit on waves was not a final +impossibility though denied for the moment. It lighted up the groups of +Lowestoft china, and the tall Oriental jars which Mrs. Courtenay +suffered no one to dust but herself. The little bits of old silver and +enamel on the black polished table caught the light. So did the +daffodils in the green Vallauris tripod. They blazed against the +shadowed pictured wall. The quiet room was full of light. + +Presently a carriage stopped at the door, the bell rang, and a moment +later a swift light step mounted the stair, and Di came in, tall and +radiant in her flowing white and yellow draperies, her bouquet of mimosa +in her hand. + +She was beautiful, with the beauty that is recognized at once. Beauty is +so rare nowadays and prettiness so common, that the terms are often +confused and misapplied, and the most ordinary good looks usurp the +name of beauty. But between prettiness and beauty there is nevertheless +a great gulf fixed. No one had ever called Di a pretty girl. At one and +twenty she was a beautiful woman, with that nameless air of distinction +which can ennoble the plainest face and figure. + +She had a right to beauty from both parents, and resembled both of them +to a certain degree. She had the tall splendid figure of the Tempests +with their fair skin and pale golden hair, waving back thick and +burnished from her low white forehead. But she had her mother's dark +unfathomable eyes with the long dark eyelashes, and her mother's +features with their inherent nobility and strength, which were so +entirely lacking in the Tempests--at least, in the present generation of +them. Some people, women mostly, said there was too much contrast +between her dark eyes and eyebrows and the extreme fairness of her +complexion and hair. Men, however, did not think so. They saw that she +was beautiful, and that was enough. Indeed, it was too much for some of +them. Women said, also, that her features were too large, that she was +on too large a scale altogether. No doubt that accounted for the fact +that she was seldom overlooked. + +"Well, Granny, and how is the headache?" she asked gaily, pulling off +her long gloves and instantly beginning to unwire the mimosa in her +bouquet with rapid, capable white hands. + +"Oh! the headache is gone," said Mrs. Courtenay, watching her +granddaughter. "And how did it all go off?" + +"Perfectly," said Di, in her clear gay voice. "Madeleine looked +beautiful, and often as I have been bridesmaid I never stood behind a +bride with a better fitting back. I suppose the survival of the best +fitted is what we are coming to in these days. Anyhow, Madeleine +attained to it. It was a well done thing altogether. The altar one mass +of white peonies! White peonies at Easter! Sir Henry was the only red +one there. And eight of us all youth and innocence in white and amber to +bear her company. We bridesmaids were all waiting for her for some time +before she arrived or he either; but Lord Hemsworth marched him in at +last, just when I was beginning to hope he would not turn up. I have +seen him look worse, Granny. He did not look so very bald until he knelt +down, and I have known his nose redder. To a friend I dare say it only +looked like a blush that had lost its way. He is a stout man to outline +himself in a white waistcoat, but I thought on the whole he looked +well." + +"Di," said Mrs. Courtenay, with her little inward laugh, "you should +not say such things." + +"Oh yes, I can say anything I like to you," said Di. "Dear me, I am +sitting on my new amber sash! What extravagance! It will be long enough +before I have another. It was really good of Lady Breakwater to give me +the whole turn-out. We never could have afforded it." + +"Did Madeleine look unhappy?" + +"No; she was pale, but perfectly collected, and she walked quite firmly +to the chancel steps where the security for fifteen thousand a year and +two diamond tiaras and a pendant was awaiting her. The security looked a +little nervous." + +"Di," said Mrs. Courtenay, with an effort after severity, "never again +let me hear you laugh at the man who once did you the honour to ask you +to marry him. You show great want of feeling." + +Di's face changed. It became several degrees sterner than her +grandmother's. That peculiar concentrated light came into her soft +lovely eyes which is a life-long puzzle to those who can see only one +aspect of a character, and whose ideas are consequently thrown into the +wildest confusion by a change of expression. There was at times an +appearance of intensity of feeling about Di which sometimes gleamed up +into her eyes and gave a certain tremor to her low voice, that surprised +and almost frightened those who regarded her only as a charming but +somewhat eccentric woman. Di's best friends said they did not understand +her. The little foot-rule by which they measured others did not seem to +apply to her. She was grave or gay, cynical or tender, frivolous or +sympathetic, according to the mood of the hour, or according as her +quick intuition and sense of mischief showed her the exact opposite was +expected of her. But behind the various moods which naturally high +spirits led her into for the moment, keener eyes could see that there +was always something kept back--something not suffered to be discussed +and commented on by the crowd--namely, herself. Her frank, cordial +manner might deceive the many, but others who knew her better were +conscious of a great reserve--of a barrier beyond which they might not +pass; of locked rooms in that sunny, hospitable house into which no one +was invited, into which she had, perhaps, as yet rarely penetrated +herself. + +Mrs. Courtenay possibly understood her better than any one, but Di took +her by surprise now. She laid down her flowers and came and stood before +her grandmother. + +"Do I show want of feeling?" she said, in her low, even voice. "I know I +have none for that man; but why should I have any? If he wanted to +marry me, why did he want it? He knew I did not like him--I made that +sufficiently plain. Did he care one single straw for anything about me +except my looks? If he had liked me ever so little, it would have been +different; but why am I to be grateful because he wanted me to sit at +the head of his table, and wear his diamonds?" + +"You talk as young and silly girls with romantic ideas do talk," replied +Mrs. Courtenay, piqued into making assertions exactly contrary to her +real opinions. "I fancied you had more sense! Madeleine did a wise thing +in accepting him. She has made a very prudent marriage." + +"Yes," said Di, moving slowly away and sitting down by the window--"that +is just it. I wonder if there is anything in the whole wide world so +recklessly imprudent as a prudent marriage? But what am I talking +about?" she added, lightly. "It is not a marriage; it is merely a social +contract. I can't see why they went to church myself, or what the +peonies and that nice little newly-ironed Bishop were for. They were +quite unnecessary. A register-office and a clerk would have done just as +well, and have been more in keeping. But how silly it is of me to be +wasting my time in holding forth when your cap is not even trimmed for +this evening. The price of a virtuous woman is above rubies nowadays. +Nothing but diamonds and settlements will secure a first-rate article. +And now, to come back to more serious subjects, will you wear your +diamond stars, G"--("G" was the irreverent pet name by which Di +sometimes called her grandmother)--"or shall I fasten that little +marabou feather with your pearl clasp into the point-lace cap? It wants +something at the side." + +"I think I will wear the diamonds," said Mrs. Courtenay, thoughtfully. +"People are beginning to wear their jewels again now. Only sew them in +firmly, Di." + +"You should have seen the array of jewellery to-day," said Di, still in +the same tone, arranging the mimosa in clusters about the room. "Other +people's diamonds seem to take all the starch out of me. A kind of +limpness comes over me when I look at tiaras. And there was such a +_riviere_ and pendant! And a little hansom cab and horse in diamonds as +a brooch. I should like to be tempted by a brooch like that. Sir Henry +has his good points, after all. I see it now that it is too late. And +why do people sprinkle themselves all over with watches nowadays, +Granny, in unexpected places? Lord Hemsworth counted five--was it, or +six?--set in different presents. There were two, I think, in bracelets, +one in a fan, and one in the handle of an umbrella. What can be the use +of a watch in the handle of an umbrella? Then there was a very little +one in--what was it?--a paper-knife, set round with large diamonds. It +made me feel quite unwell to look at it when I thought how what had been +spent on that silly thing would have dressed you and me, Granny, for a +year. That reminds me--I shall tear off this amber sash and put it on my +white _miroitant_ dinner-gown. You must not give me any more white +gowns; they are done for directly." + +"I like to see you in white." + +"Oh! so do I--just as much as I like to see you, Granny, in brocade; but +it can't be done. I won't have you spending so much on me. If I am a +pauper, I don't mind looking like one." + +She looked very unlike one as she gathered up her gloves and lace +handkerchief and bouquet holder, and left the room. And yet they were +very poor. No one knew on how small a number of hundreds that little +home was kept together, how narrow was the margin which allowed of those +occasional little dinner-parties of eight to which people were so glad +to come. Who was likely to divine that the two black satin chairs had +been covered by Di's strong hands--that the pale Oriental coverings on +the settees and sofas that harmonized so well with the subdued colouring +of the room were the result of her powers of upholstery--that it was Di +who mounted boldly on high steps and painted her own room and her +grandmother's an elegant pink distemper, inciting the servants to go and +do likewise for themselves? + +It was easy to see they were poor, but it was generally supposed that +they had the species of limited means which wealth is so often kind +enough to envy, with its old formula that the truly rich are those who +have nothing to keep up. This is true if the narrow means have not +caused the wants to become so circumscribed that nothing further remains +that can _be put down_. The rich, one would imagine, are those who, +whatever their income may be, have it in their power to put down an +unnecessary expense. But probably all expenses are essentially necessary +to the wealthy. + +Mrs. Courtenay and her granddaughter lived very quietly, and went +without effort, and, indeed, as a matter of course, into that society +which is labelled, whether rightly or wrongly, as "good." + +Persons of narrow means too often slip out of the class to which they +naturally belong, because they can give nothing in return for what they +receive. They may have a thousand virtues, and be far superior in their +domestic relations to those who forget them, but they _are_ forgotten, +all the same. Society is rigorous, and gives nothing for nothing. + +But others there are whose poverty makes no difference to them, who are +welcomed with cordiality, and have reserved seats everywhere because, +though they cannot pay in kind, they have other means at their disposal. +Their very presence is an overpayment. Every one who goes into society +must, in some form or other, as Mrs. Lynn Linton expresses it, "pay +their shot." All the doors were open to Mrs. Courtenay and her +granddaughter, not because they were handsomer than other people, not +because they belonged by birth to "good" society, and were only to be +seen at the "best" houses, but because, wherever they went, they were +felt to be an acquisition, and one not invariably to be obtained. + +Madeleine had been glad to book Di at once as one of her bridesmaids. +Indeed, she had long professed a great affection for the younger girl, +with whom she had nothing in common, but whose beauty rendered it +probable that she might eventually make a brilliant match. + +As the bridesmaid sat down rather wearily in her own room, +and unfastened the diamond monogram brooch--"the gift of the +bridegroom"--the tears that had been in her heart all day came into her +eyes; Di's slow, difficult tears. + +What a mass of illusions are torn from us by the first applauded +mercenary marriage that comes very near to us in our youth! Death, when +he draws nigh for the first time, at least leaves us our illusions; but +this voluntary death in life, from which there is no resurrection, +filled Di's soul with loathing compassion. She bowed her fair head on +her hands and wept over the girl who had never been her friend, but +whose fate might at one time have been her own. + + + + +CHAPTER VII. + + "Broad his shoulders are and strong; + And his eye is scornful, + Threatening and young." + + EMERSON. + + +There was the usual crush at the Speaker's, the usual sprinkling of +stars and orders, and splendid uniforms. If it made Di feel limp to look +at other people's diamonds, she would be very limp to-night. + +Two men with their backs to the wall, somewhat withdrawn from the moving +pressure of the crowd, were commenting in the absolute privacy of a +large gathering on the stream of arrivals. + +"Who is that old parchment face and the eyeglass?" asked the younger +man, whose bleached eyes and moustache betokened foreign service. + +"Which?" + +"Coming in now; looks as if he had seen a thing or two. There--he is +talking to one of the Arden twins." + +"That man? That is Lord Frederick Fane, an old reprobate. See, he has +buttonholed Hemsworth. I should like to hear what he is saying to him. +Look how his eye twinkles. He is one of our instructors of youth." + +"Hemsworth has been standing there for the last half-hour." + +"He is waiting; anybody can see that. So am I, though not for the same +person." + +"Whom are you looking out for?" + +"Do you see that dark man with the high nose, talking to the Post +Office? There--the Duchess of Southark has just spoken to him, and is +introducing her daughter." + +"Do you mean that ugly beggar with the clean-shaved face and heavy jaw?" + +"I don't see that he is so ugly. He has got a head on his shoulders, and +his face means something, which is more than you can say of many. There +is no lack of ability there. He is one of the men of the future, and +people are beginning to find it out. He has not taken any line in +politics yet, but he is bound to soon. Both sides want him, of course. +He is one of our most promising Commoners, Tempest of Overleigh." + +The younger man glanced at the square-shouldered erect figure and strong +dark face with deep interest. + +"Is he the man about whom there was a lawsuit when his father died?" + +"Yes; Colonel Tempest brought an action, but he lost it. There was no +evidence forthcoming, though there was very little doubt how matters +really stood." + +"He is not like the Tempests." + +"No; if you want a Tempest pure and simple, look at the man with +tow-coloured hair in the further doorway, making running with the little +soda-water heiress. That is the regular Tempest style." + +"He is too beautiful; he has overdone it," said the other. "If he were +less handsome, he would be better looking, and his hair looks like a +wig. He has the face of a fool on him." + +"The last two generations have had no grit in them. Jack Tempest, the +last man, might have done something, but he never came to the fore. He +was a trustworthy Conservative, but not an energetic man like his +father, the old minister, who lies in Westminster Abbey." + +"Perhaps the present man will come to the fore." + +"Perhaps! I know he will; you can see it in his face, and he has the +_prestige_ of his name and wealth to back him. But I don't know which +side he will take. I know that he voted right at the last election, but +so did half the Liberals. I incline to think he has Liberal leanings, +but he refused to stand three years ago for the family constituency, +which is an absolute certainty whatever he professes himself, and he has +been secretary to the Embassy at St. Petersburg for the last three +years." + +"He is very like his mother's family, except that the Fanes are not so +ugly." + +"Of course he is like his mother's family; it's an open secret. Look at +him now; he is speaking to Lord Frederick Fane, his mother's--first +cousin. There's a family resemblance for you! I wonder they stand +together." + +His companion drew in his breath. The likeness between the elder man +and the young one was unmistakable. + +"Does he know, do you think?" he asked after a moment. + +"Of course he must know that there is a 'but' about himself. People +don't grow up in ignorance of such things; but I should think he does +_not_ know that it is more than a suspicion, that it is a moral +certainty, and that Lord Frederick---- But it is seven and twenty years +ago, and it is half forgotten now. He is not the only heir with a doubt +about him. He will be a credit to the Tempests, anyhow. If the property +had fallen into the hands of those two thieves, Colonel Tempest and his +son, there would not have been much left of it for the next generation." + +"It's frightfully hot!" said the younger man. "I shall bolt." + +"Just home from Africa, and find it hot!" said the other. "Ah!"--with +sudden interest, looking back to the doorway--"I thought so. Hemsworth +was not waiting for nothing. By ---- she _is_ handsome, and what a +figure! She is the tallest woman in the room except Lady Delmour's two +yards of unmarriageable maypole. Look how she moves, and the way her +head is set on her shoulders. If I had not a wife and seven children, I +should make a fool of myself. I remember her mother, just as handsome +twenty years ago, but not so brilliant, and with an unhappy look about +her. Hang Tempest! I won't wait any longer for him. I must go and speak +to her before Hemsworth takes possession of her." + + * * * * * + +"You take my advice, John," said Lord Frederick Fane confidentially to +his kinsman; "don't tie yourself to a party any more than you would to a +woman. Leave that for fools like Hemsworth. Just go your own way, and +give no one a claim on you." + +"I intend to go my own way when I have decided where I want to go." + +"Well, in the meanwhile don't commit yourself. Always leave yourself a +loop-hole." + +"I don't see the use of worrying about loop-holes if I don't want to +back out of anything. I shall never consciously put myself anywhere +where it might be necessary to wriggle out on all fours." + +"Oh! I dare say. I thought all that in my salad days, but you'll grow +out of it as you get older. You'll chip your shell, John, like the rest +of us, he! he! and not be above a shift. There's not a man who won't +stoop to a shift on a pinch, provided the pinch is sharp enough, any +more than there is a woman, bespoken or otherwise, who does not like +being made love to, provided it is done the right way. That is my +experience." + +Lord Frederick's experience was that of most men of his stamp, the crown +of whose maturer years, earned by a youth of strenuous self-indulgence, +is a disbelief in human nature. Secret contempt of women, coupled with a +smooth and adulatory manner towards them, show only too plainly the +school in which these opinions have been formed. + +"Look at Hemsworth," continued Lord Frederick, as Mrs. Courtenay and Di, +and Lord Hemsworth in close attendance, were being gradually drifted +towards the room in which they were standing. "If Hemsworth goes on +giving that girl a hold over him, he will find himself deuced +uncomfortable one of these days. He had better hold hard while he can. +Discretion is the better part of valour. I've been telling him so." + +"Why should he hold hard?" said John, rather absently. "After all, none +but the brave deserve the fair." + +"And none but the brave can live with some of them. He, he!" said Lord +Frederick, chuckling. "There are cheaper ways of getting out of love +than by marriage; but she is a fine woman. Hemsworth has got eyes in his +head, I must own. I remember being dreadfully in love with her mother, +nearly thirty years ago, and she with me. She had that sort of stand-off +manner which takes some men more than anything; it did me. I wonder more +women don't adopt it. I very nearly married her. He, he! But Tempest, +your uncle, made a fool of himself while I hesitated, and was wretched +with her, poor devil! I have never had such a shave since. Upon my word" +putting up his eyeglass--"if I were a young man, I think I'd marry Di +Tempest. Those large women wear well, John; they don't shrivel up to +nothing like Mrs. Graham, or expand like Lady Torrington, that emblem of +plenty without waist. He, he! Look at Mrs. Courtenay, too. There's a +fine old pelican with an eye to the main chance. Always look at the +mother and the grandmother if you can. But she is on too large a scale +for you." + +"Not in the least," said John, calmly. "I cherish thoughts of Miss +Delmour, who is quite three inches taller." + +"Don't marry a Delmour! They are too thin. Those girls have neither +mind, body, nor estate. I have seen two generations of them. They have a +sort of prettiness when they are quite new; but look at her married +sisters. They all look as if they had shrunk in the wash." + +"I must go and speak to Mrs. Courtenay," said John, from whose +impenetrable face it would have been difficult to judge whether his +companion's style of conversation amused or disgusted him. "Three years' +absence blunts the recollection of one's friends." And he moved away +towards the next room. The recollection of a good many people, however, +had apparently not become blunted, and it was some time before he could +make his way to Mrs. Courtenay, who was talking with a Turkish +Ambassador and revolutionizing his ideas of English women. + +She was genuinely glad to see John, having known him from a boy. + +"You know your cousin Diana, of course?" she said, as Di came towards +them. + +"Indeed I do not," said John. "I asked who she was at the Thesinger +wedding to-day, and found myself in the ludicrous position of not +knowing my own first cousin." + +"Not recognizing her, you mean?" said Mrs. Courtenay. "Surely you must +have seen her often in my house before you went abroad; but I suppose +she was in a chrysalis school-room state then, and has emerged into +young ladyhood since. Here is your cousin saying he does not know you," +continued Mrs. Courtenay, turning to Di. "John, this is Di. Di, this is +your first cousin, John Tempest." + +Both bowed, and then thought better of it and shook hands. Their eyes +met on the exact level of equal height, and the steady keen glance that +passed between was like the meeting of two formidable powers. Each was +taken by surprise. It was as if, instead of shaking hands, they had +suddenly measured swords. + +"If you don't know each other you ought to," continued Mrs. Courtenay. +"Lord Hemsworth, what is that unwholesome-looking compound you have got +hold of?" + +"Lemonade for Miss Tempest." + +"Kindly fetch me some too." And Mrs. Courtenay turned away to continue +her conversation with the Turk, who was still hovering near, and whose +bead-like eyes under his red fez showed a decided envy of John. + +He and Di were standing in the doorway that led into the last room where +the refreshments were, and a stream of people beginning at that moment +to press out again, pressed them back into the room they had just been +leaving. + +"I shall upset this down some one's back in another minute and make an +enemy for life," said Di, holding her glass as best she could. She would +have given anything at that instant to say something unusually frivolous +in order to shake off the impression of the moment before; but her +frivolity had temporarily departed with Lord Hemsworth. + +"Don't oppose the stream; subside into this backwater," said John, +placing his square shoulders between the throng and herself, and +nodding to a recess by one of the high arched windows. + +Having reached it, Di sipped the highwater mark off her lemonade. + +"It's safe now," she said. "I don't know why I took it; I don't want it +now I've got it. Have you seen Archie since you came back? You know +_him_, of course? He often talks about you." + +"Yes, I saw him at the Thesinger wedding to-day." + +"Were you there?" + +"Yes, but only at the church. I did not go on to the house; I disliked +the whole affair too much. Many marriages, half the marriages one sees, +are only irrevocable flirtations; but the ceremony of to-day was not +even that." + +Di looked away through the mullioned window out across the river and its +gliding shimmer to the lights beyond. She did not know how long it was +before she spoke. + +"I think it was a great sin," she said, at last, in a low voice, +unconscious of a pause that to her companion was full of meaning. + +"Or a great mistake," he said, gently. + +"No, not a mistake," said Di, still looking out. "The others, the +irrevocable flirtations, are the mistakes. There was no mistake to-day. +But it was a dull wedding," she added, with sudden self-recollection and +a change of manner. "Not like one I was at last autumn in the country. I +was staying in the same house as the bridegroom, and he and the best +man, a Mr. Lumley, got up at an early hour, woke some of the other men, +and paraded the house with an _impromptu_ band of music. I remember the +bridegroom performed piercingly upon the comb. I wonder people ever play +the comb; it is so plaintive. But perhaps it is your favourite +instrument, perfected in the course of foreign travel, and I am +trampling on your feelings unawares." + +"I used to play upon it," said John, "but not of late years. I left it +off because it tickled and increased the natural melancholy of my +disposition. What were the other instruments?" + +"Let me see, Lord Hemsworth murmured upon a gong, and Mr. Lumley uttered +his dark speech upon a tray. The whole was very effective. He told me +afterwards that it was a relief to his feelings, which had been much +lacerated by the misplaced affections of the bride." + +Di's laughing mischievous eyes met John's fixed upon her with a grave +attention that took her aback. She had an uncomfortable sense that he +was regarding her with secret amusement. A moment before she had been +sorry that she had inadvertently spoken with a force that was unusual +to her. Now she was equally vexed that she had been flippant. + +"Here you are," said Lord Hemsworth, elbowing his way up to them. "I +have been looking for you everywhere. Mrs. Courtenay is going, and is +asking for you." + + + + +CHAPTER VIII. + + "Psyche-papillon, un jour + Puisses-tu trouver l'amour + Et perdre tes ailes!" + + +"Di," said Mrs. Courtenay, as they drove away at last, after the usual +half-hour's waiting for the carriage, the tedium of which Lord Hemsworth +had exerted himself to relieve, "do you usually talk quite so much +nonsense to Lord Hemsworth as you did to-night?" + +"Generally, granny. Yes, I think it was about the usual quantity. +Sometimes it is rather more, a good deal more, when you are not there." + +Mrs. Courtenay was silent for a few minutes. + +"You are making a mistake, Di," she said at last. + +"How, granny?" + +"In your manner to Lord Hemsworth. You make yourself cheap to him. A +woman should never do that!" + +Di did not answer. + +"When I was young," said Mrs. Courtenay, "I should have been proud to +have been admired by a man of his stamp." + +"So should I," said Di, quietly, "if I did not like him so much." + +"You do like him, then?" + +"I do, and I mean to act on the square by him!" + +"I don't know what you mean." + +"Yes, you do, granny, perfectly! I have known him too long to alter my +manner to him. I know him by heart. If I once begin to be serious and +reserved with him, if I once fail to keep him at arm's length, which +talking nonsense does, his feeling towards me, which only amuses him +now, will become serious too. Lord Hemsworth is not so superficial as he +seems. He would have been in earnest before now if I would have let him, +and he is the kind of man who could be very much in earnest. I can't +help his playing with edged tools, but I _can_ prevent his cutting +himself." + +"My dear, he is in love with you now, and has been for the last six +months." + +"Yes," said Di, "he is in a way; but he would be much worse if he had +had encouragement." + +"And what do you call allowing him to talk to you for half an hour on +the stairs, if it is not encouragement? You may be certain there was not +a creature there who did not think you were encouraging him." + +"I don't mind what creatures think, as long as I don't _do_ the thing. +And he knows well enough I don't!" + +"Why _not_ do it, if you like him?" + +"Well, granny," said Di, after a pause, "the way I look at it is this. I +don't mean only about Lord Hemsworth, but about any one who, well, who +is interested in me--really interested in me, I mean; not one of the +sham ones who want to pass the time. I never consider them. I say +something like this to myself. 'Di, do you observe that man?' 'Yes,' I +say, 'my eye is upon him.' 'Are you aware that he will come and speak to +you the first instant he can?' 'Yes, I know that.' 'Look at him well.' +Then I look at him. 'What do you think of him?' 'He is rather +nice-looking,' I say, 'and he is pleasant to talk to, and he has the +right kind of collars. I like him.' 'Di,' I say to myself very +solemnly--you have no idea how solemn I am on these occasions--'are you +willing to prefer him to the rest of the whole universe, to listen to +his conversation for the remainder of your natural life, to knock under +to him entirely; in short, to take him and his collars for better for +worse?' 'No, of course not,' I say indignantly; 'I should not think of +such a thing!' 'Then,' I reply, 'you have no earthly right to let him +think you might be persuaded to; or to allow him to take a single one of +the preliminary steps in that direction, however gratifying it may be to +your vanity to see him do it, or however sorry you may be to lose him. +He is paying you the highest compliment a man can pay a woman. One good +turn deserves another. He has seen you looking at him. Here he comes to +try the first rung of the ladder. Stop him at once, before he has +climbed high enough for a fall. He will soon go away if he thinks you +are heartless and frivolous. Well, then, he is a good fellow. He +deserves it at your hands. Let him think you heartless, and send him +away none the worse.' That is something of what I feel about men--I mean +the nice ones, granny." + +Mrs. Courtenay raised her eyes to the ceiling of the carriage, and her +two hands made a simultaneous upheaval under her voluminous wraps. Her +hopes for Lord Hemsworth had suffered a severe shock during the last few +minutes, and words were a relief. + +"Of all the egregious folly I have heard in the course of a long life," +she remarked, "I think that takes the palm. How do you suppose any woman +in the whole world, or man either, would marry if they looked at +marriage like that? Things come gradually." + +"Not with me, granny," said Di, promptly. "Either I see them or I don't +see them; and at the beginning I always look on to the end, just as one +does in a novel to see whether it is worth reading. I can't pretend to +myself when I walk in the direction of church bells that I don't know I +shall arrive at the church in the end, however pleasant the walk may +be." + +"You will never marry, so you may as well make up your mind to it," said +Mrs. Courtenay, who was already revolving an entirely new idea in her +mind, which cast Lord Hemsworth completely into the shade. "If you are +so fond of looking at the future, you had better amuse yourself by +picturing yourself as a penniless old maid." + +"I wish there was something one could be between an old maid and a +married woman," said Di. "I think if I had my choice I would be a +widow." + +Mrs. Courtenay, somewhat propitiated by her new idea, gave her silent +but visible laugh, and Di went on-- + +"What do you think of John Tempest, granny? He is so black that talking +of widows reminded me of him." + +Mrs. Courtenay sustained a slight nervous shock. + +"I had not much conversation with him," she said, stifling a slight +yawn. "I am glad to see him back in England. Remind me to ask him next +time we have a dinner-party." + +"He looks clever," said Di. "Ugly men sometimes do. It is a way they +have." + +"It does not matter how ugly a man is if he looks like a gentleman." + +"Not a bit," said Di. "I am only sorry he looks as if he had been cut +out with a blunt pair of scissors because he is a Tempest, and Tempests +ought to be handsome to keep up the family traditions. Look at the old +man in Westminster Abbey. I am proud of his nose whenever I look at it. +I wish the present head of the family had kept a firmer hold on that +feature, that is all; and, it being a hook, I should have thought he +might easily have done so. I think it is a want of good taste to bring +the Fane features so prominently to Overleigh, don't you? Archie +represents the looks of the family certainly, and so do I, granny, +though I believe you fondly imagine I am not aware of it. But it does +not matter so much what we look like, as it does with the head of the +family." + +"The family has got a head to it for the first time for two +generations," remarked Mrs. Courtenay, closing the conversation by +putting on her respirator. + + * * * * * + +As Lord Hemsworth turned away from putting Mrs. Courtenay and Di into +their carriage he saw John coming down the steps. + +"Still here?" he said. "I thought you had gone hours ago." + +"It is a fine night," said John, who did not think it necessary to say +that he _was_ still there; "I think I shall walk." + +"So will I," replied Lord Hemsworth, and they went out together. + +John and Lord Hemsworth had known each other since the Eton days, and +had that sort of quiet liking for each other which has the germ of +friendship in it, which circumstances may eventually quicken or destroy. + +As they turned into Whitehall a hansom, one of many, passed them at a +foot's pace, with its usual civil interrogatory, "Cab, sir?" + +"That cab horse with the white stocking reminds me," said Lord +Hemsworth, "that I was looking at a bay mare at Tattersall's to-day for +my team. I wish you would come and see her, Tempest. I like her looks, +and she is a good match to the other bay, but she has a white stocking." + +"I don't see any harm in one," said John, with interest; "but it rather +depends on the rest of the team." + +"That is just it," said Lord Hemsworth. "I drive a scratch team this +year, two greys and two bays with black points. She is right height, +good action, not too high, and has been driven as a wheeler, which is +what I want her for; but I don't like the idea of a white stocking among +them." + +And talking of one of the subjects that most Englishmen have in common, +they proceeded slowly past the Horse Guards and into Trafalgar Square. + +"Tempest," said Lord Hemsworth, after a time, "do you know it strikes me +very forcibly that we are being followed?" + +"Not likely," said John. + +"Not at all likely, but the fact all the same. Look there, that is the +same hansom waiting at the corner that hailed us as we came out of the +gates. I know him by the white stocking." + +"I should imagine there might be about five hundred and one cab horses +with white stockings in London." + +"I dare say, but I know a horse again when I see him just as much as I +know a face. I bet you anything you like that is the same horse." + +"I dare say it is," said John absently. + +Lord Hemsworth said nothing more. They walked up St. James's Street in +silence. + +"I have taken rooms here for the moment," said John, stopping at the +corner of King Street. "I will come round to Tattersall's about two +to-morrow. Good night." + +Lord Hemsworth bade him good night, and then walked on up St. James's +Street. There were a few hansoms on the stand. The last, which was in +the act of drawing up behind the others, had a horse with a white +stocking. + +"Now," said Lord Hemsworth to himself, "we will see whether it is +Tempest or me he is after, for I am certain it is one of us." + +He stopped short near the cab-stand, and, striking a light, lit a +cigarette, holding the match so that his face was plainly visible. Then +he proceeded leisurely on his way and turned down Piccadilly. There were +a good many people in the street and a certain number of carriages. + +Presently he stopped under a somewhat dark archway, and threw away his +cigarette. + +"No," he said, after carefully watching for some time the cabs and +carriages which passed; "nothing more to be seen of our friend. I wonder +what's up! It's Tempest he was after, not me." + + + + +CHAPTER IX. + + "Is it well with the child?"--2 KINGS iv. 26. + + +A happy childhood is one of the best gifts that parents have it in their +power to bestow; second only to implanting the habit of obedience, which +puts the child in training for the habit of obeying himself later on. + +A happy childhood is like a welcome into the world. This welcome John +never had. No one had been glad to see him when he arrived. No little +ring of downy hair had been cut off and treasured. No one came to look +at him when he was asleep. No wedded hands were clasped the closer for +his coming. The love and awe and pride which sometimes meet over the +cradle of a first child were absent from his nursery. The old nurse who +had been his mother's nurse took him and loved him, and gave herself for +him, as is the marvellous way of some women with other people's +children. I believe the under-housemaid occasionally came to see him in +his bath, and I think the butler, who was a family man himself, gave him +a woolly lamb on his first birthday. But excepting the servants and the +village people, no one took much notice of John. It is not even on +record whether he ever crept, or what the first word he could say was. +It was all chronicled on Mitty's faithful heart, but nowhere else. Mitty +was proud when he began to sway and reel on unsteady legs. Mitty walked +up and down with him in her arms night after night when teeth were +coming, crooning little sympathetic songs. Mitty dressed him every +afternoon in his best frock with blue sash and ribboned socks, just like +the other children who go downstairs. But John never went downstairs at +teatime; never gnawed a lump of sugar with solemn glutinous joy under a +parent's eye; or sucked the stiffness out of a rusk before admiring +friends. No one sent for John; he was never wanted. + +Mitty had had troubles. She had buried Mr. Mitty many years ago, and, +after keeping a cow of her own, had returned to the service of the +Fanes, with whom she had lived before her marriage. But I do not think +she ever felt anything so acutely as the neglect of her "lamb." + +When Mr. Tempest was expected home John was put through tearful and +elaborate toilets. His hair, dark and straight, the despair of Mitty's +heart, was worked up till it rose like a crest on the top of his head; +his bronze shoes (which succeeded the knitted socks) were put on. But +after these great efforts Mitty always cried bitterly, and kissed John +till he cried too for company, and then his smart things would be torn +off, and they would go down to tea together in the housekeeper's room. +That was a treat. There was society in the housekeeper's room. Mrs. +Alcock was very large, spread over with black silk which had a rich +aroma of desserts and sweet biscuits. There were in her keeping certain +macaroons John knew of, for she was a person of vast responsibilities. +He sat on her knee sometimes, but not often, for she breathed and rose +and fell all over, and creaked underneath her buttons. She was kind, but +she was billowy, and the geography of her figure was uncertain, and she +could never think of anything to interest him but macaroons, and she was +enigmatical as to how the almond was fastened into the top. The butler, +Mr. Parker, was estimable, but Mr. Parker, like Mrs. Alcock, was averse +to answering questions, even when John inquired, "Why his head was +coming through his hair?" Charles the footman was more amusing, but he +never came into the housekeeper's room. It was difficult to see as much +of Charles as could be wished. He was really funny when Mitty was not +there. He could dance a hornpipe in the pantry. John had seen him do it; +and Charles was always ready to pull off his coat and give John a ride. +What kickings and neighings and prancings there were going upstairs on +these occasions. How John clutched round his horse's neck urging him not +to spare himself, till he pressed his charger's shirtstud into his +throat. Once on a wet day they went out hunting in the garret gallery, +but only once, when Mitty was out: and the housemaid with the red +cheeks was the fox. Ah! what an afternoon that was. But it came to an +end all too soon. Charles wiped his forehead at last, and said the fox +was "gone to ground," though John knew she was only in the housemaid's +closet, giggling among the brooms. That was an afternoon not to be +forgotten, not even to be spoilt by the fact that when Mitty and a bag +of bull's-eyes came home she was very angry, and called the fox an +"impudent hussy." Perhaps that event was the first that remained +distinctly in his memory. Certainly afterwards people and incidents +detached themselves more clearly from the haze of confused memories that +preceded it. + +The following day as it seemed to John--perhaps, in reality many weeks +later--he had a vague recollection of a stir in the house, and of seeing +various kinds of candles laid out on a table near the storeroom; and +then he was in a new black velvet suit with a collar that tickled, and +they were in the picture-gallery, he and Mitty, and there were lamps, +and all the white sheets were gone from the furniture, and it was all +very solemn; and Mitty held his hand tight and told him to be a good +boy, and blew his nose for him with a handkerchief of her own that had +crumbs in it, and then wiped her eyes and gave him a flower to hold, +telling him to be very careful of it; and John was _very_ careful. Years +later he could see that flower still. It was a white orchis with +maidenhair; and then suddenly a door at the further end of the gallery +opened, and a tall man, whom John had seen before, came out. + +Mitty loosed John's hand and gave him a little push, whispering, "Go and +speak to your papa, and give him the pretty flower." But John stood +stock still and looked at the advancing figure. + +And the tall gentleman came down the gallery, and stopped short rather +suddenly when he saw them, and said, "Well, nurse, all flourishing, I +hope? Well, John," and passed on. + +And Mitty and John were much depressed, and went upstairs again the back +way; and Mrs. Alcock met them at the swing door and said _she never +did_, and Mitty cried all the time she undressed him, and he pulled the +orchis to pieces, and found on investigation that it had wire inside; +and experienced the same difficulty in putting it together again next +morning that he had previously found in readjusting the toilet of a dead +robin after he had carefully undressed it the night before. After that +"Papa" became not a familiar but a distinct figure in John's +recollection. "Papa" was seen from the nursery windows to walk up and +down the bowling-green on the wide plateau in front of the castle, +where the fountain was, with Neptune reining in his dolphins in the +middle. John was taught by Mitty to kiss his hand to papa, but papa, who +seldom looked up, was apparently unconscious of these blandishments. He +was seen to arrive and to depart. Sometimes other men came back with him +who met John in the gardens and made delightful jokes, and were almost +equal to Charles, only they did not wear livery. + +One event followed close upon another. + +A lady came to Overleigh. Mitty and Mrs. Alcock agreed that no lady had +ever stayed at Overleigh since--and then they stopped: and that very +evening John was actually sent for to come down to dessert. Charles, who +had run up to the nursery during dinner to say so, remarked with a +prefatory "Lawks" that wonders would never cease. John was quite ready +at the time the message came, sitting in his black velvet suit and his +silk stockings and his buckled shoes in his own chair by the fire. He +had grown out of several suits whilst he waited. It was one of the many +inexplicable things that he took in wondering silence at the time, that +when he wore those particular garments a certain red cushion was always +put on the seat of his little cane-bottomed chair. Mitty told him when +he inquired into it that was because of the pattern coming off on his +velvets, "blesh" him, and John did not understand, but turned it over in +his mind together with everything he heard, and pondered long beside the +nursery fire over many things, and was a very solemn, richly-dressed, +lonely little boy. + +He had always been ready, always waiting when Mr. Tempest was at home. +Now at last he was sent for. He took it with a stoic calm. Mitty and +Charles were much more excited than he was. Even Mrs. Alcock, who had +seen too much of the ways of scullery and dairymaids to be capable of +being surprised at anything in this world--even she was taken aback. +Mitty and he went together down the grand staircase; and the carved +figures on the banisters had lamps in their hands, so many lamps that +they made him wink, and in the great stone hall there was a blazing log +fire, and among the statues there were tall palms and growing things. + +John was still looking at the white fur rugs upon the stone floor, and +counting the claws of the outstretched bear's paws when Charles came to +tell them that dinner was over. The moment had come. Mitty took him to +the door, opened it, and pushed him gently in. + +The dining-hall looked very large and very empty. John had never been in +it at night before. A long way off at a little table in the bay window +two people were sitting. A glow of shaded light fell on the table. Mr. +Parker was not there. Even Charles, whom John had always considered +indispensable in the highest circles, was absent. John walked very +slowly across the room and stopped short in the middle, his strong +little hands tightly clasped behind his back on the clean folded pocket +handkerchief that Mitty had thrust into them at the last moment. He was +not afraid, but he did not know what was going to happen next. + +The lady turned and looked towards him. + +She was pale, with white hair, and a sad, beautiful face as if she had +often been very, very sorry. She was older than Mitty and Mrs. Alcock, +and Mrs. Evans of the shop, and quite different, very awful to look +upon. + +John wondered whether she was Queen Victoria, and whether he ought to +kneel down. + +"Come here, John," said Mr. Tempest, but John did not stir. + +"So this is John," said the lady, and she put out her wonderful jewelled +hand with a very gentle smile, and John went straight up to her at once +and stood close beside her, on her gown, in fact; and it was not Queen +Victoria. It was Mrs. Courtenay. + +After that night a change came over John's life. He was not forgotten +any more. Mrs. Courtenay during the few days that she remained at +Overleigh came up several times to the nursery, and had long +conversations with Mitty. John, arrayed in the stiffest of white sailor +suits with anchors at the corners, came down to see her in the sunny +morning-room where his mother's picture hung, and showed her at her +request his Noah's Ark which Mitty had given him, and afterwards +conversed with her on many topics. He repeated to her the hymn Mitty had +taught him, + + "When little Samiwell awoke," + +and mentioned Charles to her with high esteem. She was very gentle with +him, very courteous. She gave him her whole attention, looking at him +with a certain pained compassion. Gradually John unfolded his mind to +her. He confided to her his intention of marrying Mitty at a future +date, and of presenting Charles at the same time with a set of studs +like Mr. Parker's. He was very grave and sedate, and every morning +shrank back afresh from going to see her, and then forgot his fears in +the kind feminine presence and the welcome that was so new and strange +and sweet. Once she took him in her arms and held him closely to her. +Her eyes were stern through her tears. + +"Poor little fatherless, motherless child!" she said, half to herself, +and she put him down and went to the window and looked out--looked out +across the forest to the valley and over the stretching woods to the +long lines of the moors against the sky. Perhaps she was thinking that +it would all belong to that little child some day; the home where she +had once hoped to see her own daughter live happily with children +growing up about her. + +Mr. Tempest came into the room at that moment. + +"What, John here?" he said. + +"Yes," she replied, and was silent. There was a great indignation in her +face. + +"Mr. Tempest," she said at last, "evil has been done to you, not once, +but twice. You have suffered heavily at the hands of others. Be careful +that some one does not suffer at _your_ hands!" + +"Who?" + +"Your," Mrs. Courtenay hesitated, "your _heir_." + +"He _is_ my heir," said Mr. Tempest, sternly; "that is enough!" + +"Then do your duty by him," said Mrs. Courtenay. "You do it to others; +do it also to him." And thenceforward, and until the day of his death, +Mr. Tempest did his duty as he conceived it! never a fraction more, but +never a fraction less. + + * * * * * + +John was put early to school. No one went down to see the place before +he came to it. No one wrote anxiously about him beforehand, describing +his health and his attainments in the Latin grammar. Mr. Goodwin, who +was afterwards his tutor, long remembered the arrival of the little, +square, bullet-headed boy with a servant, with whom he gravely shook +hands on the platform. Mr. Goodwin had come to meet him, and Charles, +the last link to home, was parted from in silence. The small luggage was +handed over. Once as they left the station, John looked back, and Mr. +Goodwin saw the little brown hands clench tightly. John had a trick of +clenching his hands as a child, which clung to him throughout life, but +he walked on in silence. He was seven years old, and in trousers. +_Pantalon oblige._ Mr. Goodwin, a good-natured under-master fresh from +college, with small brothers at home, respected his silence. Perhaps he +divined something of the struggle that was going on under that brand new +little great-coat of many pockets. Presently John swallowed ominously +several times. + +Mr. Goodwin supposed the usual tears were coming. + +"Those are very large puddles," said John suddenly, with a quaver in his +voice, "larger than----" The voice, though not the courage, failed. + +"They are, Tempest," said Mr. Goodwin, "uncommonly large!" + +And that was the beginning of a lasting friendship between the two. That +friendship took a long time to grow. John was reserved with the +reticence that in a child speaks volumes of what the home-life had been. +He had not the habit of talking to anyone. He listened and obeyed. At +first he held aloof from the other boys. Mr. Goodwin advised him to make +friends, and John listened in silence. He had never been with boys +before. He did not know how. The first half he was very lonely. He would +have been bullied more than he actually was had he not been so strong +and so impossible to convince of defeat. As it was, he took his share +with a sort of doggedness, and would have started on the high road to +unpopularity in his new little world if he had not turned out good at +games. That saved him, and before many weeks were over long blotted +accounts of football and cricket and racquets were written to Mitty and +Charles. Mr. Goodwin noticed that the weekly letter to his father never +contained any particulars of this kind. + +There had been a difficulty at first about his correspondence, +which--after long pondering upon the same--John had brought to Mr. +Goodwin for advice. + +"I want to send a letter to some one," he said one day, when Mr. Goodwin +had asked him into his study. "Not father." + +"To whom, then?" + +"To Mitty. I said I would write; I promised." And he produced a very +much blotted paper and spread it before Mr. Goodwin. + +"It's a long letter." It was indeed; the writing had been so severe and +the paper so thin, that it had worked through to the other side. + +"For Mitty," said John. "That is the person it's for; and another for +Charles, with a picture in it." And a second sheet, suggestive of severe +manual labour, was produced. + +"I see," said Mr. Goodwin, his hand laid carelessly over his mouth, +"but--yes, I see. This for Charles, and this for--ahem!--Mitty. And you +want them to go to-day?" + +"Yes." John was evidently relieved. He extracted from his trousers +pocket two envelopes, not much the worse for seclusion, and laid one by +each letter. One envelope was stamped. "I had two stamps," he explained; +"one I put on, and the other I ate in a mistake. I licked it, and then I +could not find it." + +"Well, we will put on another," said Mr. Goodwin, who was a person of +resources. "Now, what next? Shall we put them into their envelopes?" + +John cautiously assented. + +"And perhaps you would like me to direct them for you?" + +"Yes." John certainly had a nice smile. + +"Well, here goes; we will do Charles first. Who is Charles?" + +"He lives with us. He brought me in the train." + +"Really! Well, what is his name? Charles what?" + +"He is not Charles anything," said John, anxiously. "That's just it; +he's only Charles." + +Mr. Goodwin laid down the pen. He saw the difficulty. + +"He must have another name, Tempest," he said. "Try and think." + +"I _have_ thought," said John. "Before I came to you I thought. I +thought in bed last night." + +"And don't you know Mitty's name either?" + +"No." John's voice was almost inaudible. + +"Dear me!" said Mr. Goodwin, smiling, and not realizing the gravity of +the situation. "We can't put 'Mitty' on one letter, and 'Charles' on the +other. That would never do, would it?" + +There was a moment's silence, in which hope went straight out of John's +heart. If Mr. Goodwin could not see his way out of the difficulty, who +could? He turned red, and then white. His harsh-featured, little face +took an ugly look of acute distress. + +"I said I would write," he said, in a strangled voice. "I promised +Charles in the pantry; it was a faithful promise." + +Mr. Goodwin looked up in surprise, and his manner changed. + +"Wait a minute," he said, eagerly; "the letters shall go. We will manage +it somehow. Is Charles the butler at home?" + +"No; that is Mr. Parker." + +"What is he, then?" + +"He does things for Mr. Parker. Mr. Parker points, and Charles hands the +plates." + +"Footman, perhaps?" + +"Yes," said John, with relief, "that's Charles." + +"Now," said Mr. Goodwin, with interest, "shall we put, 'The footman, +Overleigh Castle,' on the envelope? Then it will be sure to reach him." + +"There's Francis; he's a footman, too," suggested John, but with dawning +hope. "Francis might get it then. He took a kidney once!" + +"We will put 'Charles, the footman,' then," said Mr. Goodwin, writing +it. "'Overleigh Castle,' Yorkshire. Now then, for the other." + +"When I write to father, what do I put at the end?" said John, his eyes +still riveted on the envelope. "'J. Tempest,' and then something else." + +"Esquire?" suggested Mr. Goodwin. + +"Yes," said John. "I think I should like Charles to be the same as +father, please." + +Mr. Goodwin added a large esquire after the word footman. + +"Now for Mitty," he said. "I suppose Mitty is the housekeeper?" + +"Why, the housekeeper is Mrs. Alcock!" said John, with a smile at Mr. +Goodwin's ignorance. + +"There seem to be a good many servants at Overleigh." + +"Yes," replied John, "it is a nice party. We are company to each other. +You see, father is always away almost, and he does not play anything +when he is at home. Now, Charles always does his concertina in the +evenings, and Francis is learning the flute." + +After the direction of the second letter had been finally settled, John +licked them carefully up, and looked at them with triumph. + +"You must go now," said Mr. Goodwin. "I'm busy." + +John retreated to the door, and then paused. + +"Me and Mitty and Charles are much obliged," he said, with dignity. + +"Don't mention it," said Mr. Goodwin. + +But the incident remained in his mind. + + + + +CHAPTER X. + + "Whoso would be a man must be a Nonconformist."--EMERSON. + + +John was eleven years old when, during a memorable Easter holidays, his +father died, and lay in state in the round room in the western tower, +and was buried at midnight by torchlight in the little Norman church at +Overleigh, as had been the custom of the Tempests from time immemorial. + +His father's death made very little difference to John, except that his +holidays were spent with Miss Fane, an aunt in London: and Charles left +to become a butler with a footman under him; and the other servants, +too, seemed to melt away, leaving only Mitty, and Mr. Parker, and Mrs. +Alcock, in the old shuttered home. Mr. Goodwin was John's tutor during +the holidays. It was he who saved John's life at the railway station, at +the risk of his own. + +No one had been aware, till the accident happened, that John had been +particularly attached to his tutor. He evidently got on with him, and +was conveniently pleased with his society, but he had, to a peculiar +degree, the stolid indifferent manner of most schoolboys. He was +absolutely undemonstrative, and he tacitly resented his aunt's +occasional demonstrative affection to himself. When will unmarried elder +people learn that children are not to be deceived? John was very +courteous, even as a boy, but his best friends could not say of him, at +that or at any later period of his life, that he was engaging. He had, +through life, a cold manner. No one had supposed, what really was the +case, namely, that he would have given his body to be burned for the +sake of the kind, cheerful young man who had taken an easy fancy to him +on his arrival at school, and had subsequently become sufficiently fond +of him to prefer being his tutor to that of any one else. He guessed +John's absolute devotion to himself as little as any one. John's boyish +thoughts, and feelings, and affections, were of that shy yet fierce +kind, which shrink equally from expression and detection. No one had so +far found them hard to deal with, because no one had thought of dealing +with them. + +Yet John sat for two days on the stairs outside the sick man's room, +after the accident, unnoticed and unreprimanded. He was never seen to +cry, but he was, nevertheless, almost unable to see out of his eyes. His +aunt, Miss Fane, at whose house in London he was spending his Christmas +holidays, had gone down to the country to nurse a sister, and the house +was empty, but for the servants and the trained nurse. The doctor, who +came several times a day, always found him sitting on the stairs, or +appearing stealthily from an upper landing, working himself down by the +balusters. He said very little, but the doctor seemed to understand the +situation, and always had a kind and encouraging word for him, and gave +him Mr. Goodwin's love, and took messages and offers of his best books +from John to the invalid. But during those two long days, he always had +some excellent reason for John's not visiting his tutor. He was +invariably, at that moment, tired, or asleep, or resting, or---- A deep +anxiety settled on John's mind. Something was being kept from him. + +Christmas Day came and passed. Mitty's present, and a Christmas card +from a friend, the Latin master's youngest daughter, came for John, but +they were unopened. The next day brought three doctors who stayed a long +time in the drawing-room after they had been in the sick-room. + +John sat on the stairs with clenched hands. At last he got up +deliberately and went into the drawing-room. Two of the doctors were +sitting down. One was standing on the hearth-rug looking into the fire. + +"It can't be done," he was saying emphatically. "Both must go." + +All three men turned in surprise as John entered the room. He came up to +the fire, unaware of the enormity of the crime he was committing in +interrupting a consultation. He tried to speak. He had got ready what he +wished to ask. But his lips only moved; no words came out. + +The consultation was evidently finished, for the man on the hearth-rug, +who seemed anxious to get away, was buttoning his fur coat, and holding +his hands to the fire for a last warm. They were very kind. They were +not jocose with him, as is the horrible way of some elder persons with +childhood's troubles. The old doctor who came daily put his hand on his +shoulder and told him Mr. Goodwin had been very ill, but that he was +going to get better, going to be quite well and strong again presently. + +John said nothing. He was convinced there was something in the +background. + +"Twelve o'clock to-morrow, then," said the man who was in a hurry, and +he took up his hat and went out. + +"I have two boys about the same age as you," said the old doctor, +patting John's shoulder. "Tom and Edward. They are making a little model +steam-engine. I expect you are fond of engines, aren't you?" + +"Not just now, thank you," said John. "I am sometimes." + +"I wish you would come and see it to-morrow," continued the doctor. +"They would like to show it you, I know. I could send you back in the +carriage when it has set me down here about--shall we say twelve? Do +come and see it." + +"Thank you," said John almost inaudibly, "you are very kind, but--I am +engaged." + +Miss Fane always said she was engaged when she did not want to accept an +invitation, and John supposed it was a polite way of saying he would +rather not go. The other doctor laughed, but not unkindly, and the +father of Tom and Edward absently drew on his gloves, as if turning over +something in his mind. + +"Have you seen the new lion, and the birds that fly under water at the +Zoo?" he inquired slowly, "and the snakes being fed?" + +"No," said John. + +"Ah! That's the thing to see," he said thoughtfully. "Tom and Edward +have been. Dear me! How they enjoyed it! They went at feeding time, +mid-day. And my nephew, Harry Austin, who is twenty-one and at college, +went with them, and said he would not have missed it for anything. You +go and see that, with that nice man who answers the bell. I will send +you two tickets to-night." + +"Thank you," said John. + +The two doctors shook hands with him and departed. + +"You may as well keep your tickets," said the younger one as they went +downstairs. "He does not mean going." + +"He is a queer little devil," said Tom's and Edward's father. "But I +like him. There's grit in him, and he watches outside that room like a +dog. I wish I could have got him out of the house to-morrow, poor little +beggar." + +John stood quite still in the middle of the long, empty drawing-room +when they were gone. A nameless foreboding of some horrible calamity was +upon him. And yet--and yet--they had said he was going to get better, to +be quite strong again. He waylaid the trained nurse for the twentieth +time, and she said the same. + +He suffered himself to be taken out for a walk, after hearing from her +that Mr. Goodwin wished it; and in the afternoon he consented to go with +George, Miss Fane's cheerful, good-natured young footman, to the +"Christian Minstrels." But he lay awake all night, and in the morning +after breakfast he crept noiselessly back to the stairs. It was a foggy +morning, and the gas was lit. Jessie, the stout, silly housemaid, always +in a perspiration or tears, was sweeping the landing just above him, +sniffing audibly as she did so. + +"Poor young gentleman," she was saying below her breath to her +colleague. "I can't a-bear the thought of the operation. It seems to +turn my inside clean upside down." + +John clutched hold of the banisters. His heart gave one throb, and then +stood quite still. + +"Coleman says as both 'is 'ands must go," said the other maid also in a +whisper. "She told me herself. She says she's never seen such a case all +her born days. They've been trying all along to save one, but they +can't. They're to be took hoff to-day." + +John understood at last. + +He slipped downstairs again, and stood a moment in hesitation where to +go: not to the little back-room on the ground-floor, which had been set +apart for his use by his aunt. He might be found there. George might +come in to see if he would fancy a game of battledore and shuttle-cock, +or the cook might step up with a little cake, or the butler himself +might bring him a comic paper. The servants were always kind. But he +felt that he could not bear any kindness just now. He must be somewhere +alone by himself. + +The drawing-room door was locked, but the key was on the outside. He +turned it cautiously and went in. The room was dark and fiercely cold. +Bands of yellow fog peered in over the tops of the shutters. The room +had been prepared the day before for the consultation, but now it had +returned to its former shuttered, muffled state. John took the key from +the outside and locked himself in. + +Then he flung himself on his face on to one of the muffled settees and +stuffed the dust-sheet into his mouth. Anything not to scream--a low +strangled cry was wrenched out of him; another and another, and +another, but the dust sheet told no tales. He dragged it down with him +on to the floor and bit into the wet, cobwebby material. And by degrees +the paroxysm passed. The power to keep silence returned. At last John +sat up and looked round him, breathing hard. A clock ticked in the +darkness, and presently struck a single chime. Half-past +something--half-past eleven it must be--and they were coming at twelve. + +Was there no help? + +"God," said John suddenly, in a low, distinct voice in the darkness. "Do +something. If you don't stop it nobody else will. You know you can if +you like. You divided the Red Sea. Remember all your plagues. Oh, God! +God! make something happen. There's half an hour still. Think of him. +Both hands. And all the clever books he was going to write, and all the +things he was going to do. Oh, God! God! and _such_ a cricketer!" + +There was a short silence. John felt absolutely certain God would +answer. He waited a long time, but no one spoke. The fog deepened +outside. The quarter struck faintly from the church in the next street. + +"I give up one hand," said John, stretching out both of his. "I only ask +for one now. Let him keep one--the other one. He is so clever, he could +soon learn to write with his left, and perhaps hooks don't hurt after +the first. Oh, God! I dare say he could manage with one, but not both, +not both." + +John repeated the last words over and over again in an agony of +supplication. He would _make_ God hear. + +It was growing very dark. The link-boys were crying in the streets: a +carriage stopped at the door. + +"Oh, God! They're coming. Not both; not both!" gasped John, and the +sweat broke from his forehead. + +Two more carriages--lowered voices in the passage, and quiet footfalls +going upstairs. John prayed without ceasing. The house had become very +silent. At last the silence awed him, and an overmastering longing to +know seized upon him. He stole out of the drawing-room, and sped swiftly +upstairs. On the landing opposite Mr. Goodwin's room the butler was +standing listening. Everything was quite still. John could hear the gas +burning. There was a can of hot water just outside the door. The steam +curled upwards out of the spout. As he reached the landing the door was +softly opened, and the nurse raised the heavy can and lifted it into the +room. + +Through the open door came a hoarse inarticulate sound, which seemed to +pierce into John's brain. + +"Courage," said a gentle voice, and the door was closed again. The +butler breathed heavily, and there was a whimper from the upper landing. +Trembling from head to foot John fled down the stairs again unperceived +into the drawing-room, and crouched down on the floor near the open +door, turning his face to the wall. Every now and then a strong shudder +passed over him, and he beat his little black head dumbly against the +wall. But he did not move until at last the doctors came down. He let +the first two pass, he could not speak to them; and it was a long time +before the father of Tom and Edward appeared. John came suddenly out +upon him at the turn of the stairs. + +"Is it both?" he said, clutching his coat. + +"Both what, my boy?" said the doctor, puzzled by the sudden onslaught, +and looking down at the blackened convulsed face and shaggy hair. + +"Both _hands_." + +The doctor hesitated. + +"Yes," he said gravely. "I am grieved to say it is." John flung up his +arms. + +"I will never pray to God again as long as I live," he said +passionately. + +"John," said the doctor sternly, and then suddenly putting out his hand +to catch him as he reeled backwards. "What? Good gracious! The child has +fainted." + + * * * * * + +John went back to school before the holidays were over, for Miss Fane on +her return found it difficult to know what to do with him. Mr. Goodwin +came back no more. He slowly regained a certain degree of health, a +ruined man, without private means, at seven and twenty. John wrote +constantly to him, and wrote also long urgent letters in a large +cramped hand to his trustees. And something inadequate was done. When he +came of age his first action was to alter that something, and to induce +Mr. Goodwin and the sister who lived with him to take up their abode in +the chaplain's house, in the park at Overleigh, where they had now been +established nearly seven years. Whether John's was an affectionate +nature or not it would be hard to say, for affection had so far +intermeddled little with his life; but he had a kind of faithfulness, +and a memory of the heart as well as of the head. John never forgot a +kindness, never wholly forgot an injury. He might forgive one, for he +showed as he grew towards man's estate, and passed through the various +vicissitudes of school and college life, a certain stern generosity of +temper, and contempt for small retaliations. He was certainly not +revengeful, but--he remembered. His mind was as tenacious of impression +as engraved steel. That very tenacity of impression had given Mr. +Goodwin an unbounded influence over him in his early youth. John had +believed absolutely in Mr. Goodwin; and Mr. Goodwin, hurried by a bitter +short cut of suffering from youth to responsible middle age, had devoted +himself with the religious fervour of entire self-abnegation to the boy +for whom he had risked his life. John's intense attachment to him had +after his recovery come as a surprise to him, yoked with a sense of +responsibility; for to be loved in any fashion is to incur a great +responsibility. + +Mr. Goodwin acted according to his lights. But the good intentions of +others cannot pave the way to heaven for us. In the manner of many +well-meaning teachers, Mr. Goodwin used his influence over John to +impress upon him the stamp of his own narrow religious convictions. He +honestly believed it was the best thing he could do for the young, +strong, earnest nature which sat at his feet. But John did not sit long. +Mr. Goodwin was aghast at the way in which the little chains and +check-strings of his scheme of salvation were snapped like thread when +John began to rise to his feet. An influence misused, if once shaken, is +lost for ever. John went away like a young Samson, taking the poor +weaver's inadequate beam with him; and never came back. Mr. Goodwin's +teaching had done its work. John never leaned again "on one mind +overmuch." Mr. Goodwin pushed him early into scepticism, into which +narrow teaching pushes all independent natures, and regarded his success +with bitter disappointment. John left him, and Mr. Goodwin's office +others took. Mr. Goodwin suffered horribly. + +John had not, of course, reached seven and twenty without passing +through many phases, each more painful to Mr. Goodwin than the last. He +had spoken fiercely at Oxford on one occasion in favour of community of +goods, to the surprise and amusement of his friends; and on one other +single occasion in support of the philosophy of Kant, with which he did +not agree, but whose side he could not bear to see inefficiently taken +up only for the sake of refutation. When the spirit moved him John could +be suddenly eloquent, but the spirit very seldom did. As a rule he saw +both sides with equal clearness, and could be forced into partisanship +on neither. Those who expected he would make a brilliant speaker in the +House of Commons would probably be disappointed in him. It was +remarkable, considering he had apparently no special talent or aptitude +for any one line of study, and had never particularly distinguished +himself either at school or college, that nevertheless he had +unconsciously raised in the minds of those who knew him best, and many +who knew him not at all, a more or less vague expectation that he would +make his mark, that in some fashion or other he would come to the fore. + +The abilities of persons with square jaws are usually taken for granted +by the crowd, and certainly John's was square enough to suggest any +amount of reserved force. But general expectation rarely falls on those +who have sufficient strength not only to resist its baneful influence, +but also to realize its hopes. The effect of the expectation of others +on many minds is to draw into greater activity that personal conceit +which, once indulged, saps the roots of individual life, and gradually +vitiates the powers. Conceit is only mediocrity in the bud. Like a +blight in Spring it stunts the autumn fruit. + +On some natures again the expectation of others acts as a stimulus, the +force of which is quite incalculable. It spurs a natural humility into +fixed resolution and self-reliance; turns sloth into energy, earnestness +into action, and goads diffidence up the hill of achievement. It has +been truly said, that "those who trust us educate us." Perhaps it might +be added that those who believe in us make or destroy us. + +If John, who was perfectly aware of the enthusiastic or grudging +expectations that others had formed of him, had not as yet fallen into +either of these two extremes, it was probably because what others might +happen to think or not think concerning him was of little moment to him, +and had no power to sway him either way. + +The thing of all others that puzzled John's staunchest adherents was +their inability to fix him in any one set of opinions, social, +political, or religious. Many after Mr. Goodwin tried and failed. For +John's great wealth and position, besides the native force of character +of which even as a very young man he gave signs, and an openness of mind +which encouraged while it ought to have disheartened proselytism, all +these attributes had made him an object of interest and importance, +which would have ruined a more self-conscious man. As it was, he +listened, got to the bottom of the subject, whatever it might be, never +left it till he had probed it to the uttermost, and then went his way. +He marched out of every mental prison he could be temporarily lured +into. He would go boldly into any that interested him, but locks and +bars would not hold him directly he did not wish to stay there any +longer. + +Mr. Goodwin hoped against hope that John would see the error of his +ways, and "come back"; that, according to his mode of expressing +himself, the pride of the intellect might be broken, and John might one +day be moved to return from the desert and husks and the sw---- +philosophy of free thought to his father's home. He said something of +the kind one day to John, and was astonished at the sudden flame that +leapt into the young man's eyes as he silently took up his hat and went +out. + +The one thing of all others which the Mr. Goodwins of this world are +incapable of discerning, is that to leave an outgrown form of faith is +in itself an act of faith almost beyond the strength of shrinking human +frailty. To bury a dead belief is hard. They regard it invariably as a +voluntary desertion, not of their form of religion, but of religion +itself for private ends, or from a sense of irksomeness. Mr. Goodwin had +reproachfully suggested that John had got into "a bad set" at Oxford, +and was in the habit of mixing in "doubtful society" in London. Those +whose surroundings have moulded them attribute all mental changes in +others to a superficial and generally an entirely inadequate influence +such as would have had power to affect themselves. + +John left the house white with anger. He had been anxious and humble +half an hour before. He had listened sadly enough to Mr. Goodwin's +counsels, the old, old counsels that fortunately always come too +late--that are worse than none, because they appeal to motives of +self-interest, safety, peace of mind, etc.; the pharisaical reasoning +that what has been good enough for our fathers is good enough for us. + +But now his anger was fierce against his teacher, who was so quick to +believe evil of any development not of his own fostering. + +"He calls good evil, and evil good," he said to himself. "It seems to me +I have only got to lose hold of the best in me, and lead a cheap +goody-goody sort of life, and I should please everybody all round, Mr. +Goodwin included. He wants me to remain a child always. He would break +my mind to pieces now if he could, and would offer up the little bits to +God. He thinks the voice of God in the heart is a temptation of the +devil. I will not silence it and crush it down, as he wants me to do. I +will love, honour, and cherish it from this day forward, for better for +worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health." + + * * * * * + +There seems to be in life a call which comes to a few only who, like the +young man in the Gospel, have great possessions. From youth up the life +may have been carefully lived in certain well-worn grooves traced by +the finger of God--grooves in which many are allowed to pass their whole +existence. But to some among those many, to some few with great mental +possessions, the voice comes sooner or later: "Forsake all, leave all, +and follow Me." How many turn away sorrowful? They cannot believe in the +New Testament of the present day. They ponder instead what God whispered +eighteen hundred years ago in the ear of a listening Son, but they +shrink from recognizing the same voice speaking in their hearts now, +completing all that has gone before. And so the point of life is missed. +The individual life, namely, the life of Christ--obedient not to +Scripture, but to the Giver of the Scripture--is not lived. The life +Christ led--at variance with the recognized faiths and fashionable +opinions of the day, at variance just because it did not conform to a +dead ritual, just because it was obedient throughout to a personal +prompting--that life is not more tolerated to-day than it was eighteen +hundred years ago. The Church will have none of it--treats the first +spark of it as an infidelity to Christ Himself. Against every young and +ardent listening and questioning soul the Church and the world combine, +as in Our Lord's day, to crucify once again the Christ--life which is +not of their kindling, which is indeed an infidelity, but an infidelity +only to them. So the crucifix is raised high. The sign of our great +rejection of Him is deified; the Mediator, the Saviour, the Redeemer is +honoured. The instrument of His death is honoured; but the thought for +the sake of which He was content to stretch His nailed hands upon it, +His thought is without honour. + + * * * * * + +Poor Mr. Goodwin! Poor John! Affection had to struggle on as best it +could as the years widened the gulf between them, and was reduced to +find a meagre subsistence in cordial words and sympathy for neuralgia on +John's part, and interest in John's shooting and hunting on Mr. +Goodwin's. Affectionate and easy terms were gradually re-established +between them, and a guarded sympathy on general subjects returned; but +Mr. Goodwin knew that, from being "the friend of the inner, he had +become only the companion of the outer life" of the person he cared for +most in the world, and the ways of Providence appeared to him +inscrutable. And now Mr. Goodwin understood John even less at seven and +twenty than at twenty-one. The conception of the possibility of a mind +that after being strongly influenced by a succession of the most +"dangerous" teachers and books, gives final allegiance to none, and can +at last elect to stand alone, was impossible to Mr. Goodwin. And yet +John arrived at that simple and natural result at which those who have +sincerely and humbly searched for a law and an authority outside +themselves do arrive. An external authority is soon seen to be too good +to be true. There is no court of appeal against the verdict of the +inexorable judge who dwells within. + +How many rush hither and thither and wear down the patience of earnest +counsellors, and whittle away all the best years of their lives to +nothingness, in fretting and scratching among ruins for the law by which +they may live! They look for it in Bibles, in the minds of anxious +friends who turn over everything to help them, in the face of Nature, +who betrays the knowledge of the secret in her eyes, but who utters it +not. And last of all a remnant of the many look in their own hearts, +where the great law of life has been hidden from the beginning. David +says: "Yea, Thy law is within my heart." A greater than David said the +same. But it is buried deep, and few there be that find it. + + + + +CHAPTER XI. + + "Still as of old + Man by himself is priced. + For thirty pieces Judas sold + Himself, not Christ." + H.C.C. + + +Lent gave way to Easter, and Easter melted into the season, and Mrs. +Courtenay gave a little dinner-party, at which John was one of the +guests; and Madeleine was presented on her marriage; and Di had two new +gowns, and renovated an old one, and nearly broke Lord Hemsworth's heart +by refusing the box-seat on his drag at the meeting of the Four-in-hand; +and Lord Hemsworth did not invest in the bay mare with the white +stocking, but turned heaven and earth to find another with black points, +and succeeded, only to drive in lonely bitterness to the meet. And John +was to have been there also, but he had been so severely injured in a +fire which broke out at his lodgings, in the room below his, three weeks +before, that he was still lying helpless at the house in Park Lane, +which he had lent to his aunt, Miss Fane, and whither he was at once +taken, after the accident, to struggle slowly back to life and painful +convalescence. + +For the last three weeks, since the fire, hardly any one had seen +Colonel Tempest. The old horror had laid hold upon him like a mortal +sickness. Sleep had left him. Remorse looked at him out of the eyes of +the passers in the street. There was no refuge. He avoided his club. +What might he not hear there! What might not have happened in the night! +He could trust himself to go nowhere for fear of his face betraying +him. He wandered aimlessly out in the evenings in the lonelier portions +of the Park. Sometimes he would stop his loitering, to follow with +momentary interest the children sailing their boats on the Round Pond, +and then look up and see the veiled London sunset watching him from +behind Kensington Palace, and turn away with a guilty sense of +detection. The aimless days and waking ghosts of nights came and went, +came and went, until his misery became greater than he could bear. The +resolutions of the weak are as much the result of the period of feeble, +apathetic inertia that precedes them, as the resolutions of the strong +are the outcome of earnest reflection and mental travail. + +"It will kill me if it goes on," he said to himself. There was one way, +and one only, by means of which this intolerable weight might be shifted +from his shoulders. He hung back many days. He said he could not do +_that_, anything but _that_--and then he did it. + +His heart beat painfully as he turned his steps towards Park Lane, and +he hesitated many minutes before he mounted the steps and rang the bell +at the familiar door of the Tempest town-house, where his father had +lived during the session, where his mother had spent the last years of +her life after his death. + +It was an old-fashioned house. The iron rings into which the links used +to be thrust still flanked the ponderous doorway, together with the +massive extinguisher. + +The servant informed him that Mr. Tempest had been out of danger for +some days, but was not seeing any one at present. + +"Ask if he will see me," said Colonel Tempest, hoarsely. "Say I am +waiting." + +The man left him in the white stone hall where he and his brother Jack +had played as boys. The dappled rocking-horse used to stand under the +staircase, but it was no longer there: given away, no doubt, or broken +up for firewood. John might have kept the poor old rocking-horse. +Recollections that took the form of personal grievances were never far +from Colonel Tempest's mind. + +In a few minutes the man returned, and said that Mr. Tempest would see +him, and led the way upstairs. A solemn, melancholy-looking valet was +waiting for him, who respectfully informed him that the doctor's orders +were that his master should be kept very quiet, and should not be +excited in any way. Colonel Tempest nodded unheeding, and was conscious +of a door being opened, and his name announced. + +He went forward hesitatingly into a half-darkened room. + +"Pull up the further blind, Marshall," said John's voice. The servant +did so, and noiselessly left the room. + +Colonel Tempest's heart smote him. + +The young man lay quite motionless, his dark head hardly raised, his +swathed hands stretched out beside him. His unshaved face had the +tension of protracted suffering, and the grave steady eyes which met +Colonel Tempest's were bright with suppressed pain. The eyes were the +only things that moved. It seemed to Colonel Tempest that if they were +closed--. He shuddered involuntarily. In his morbid fancy the prostrate +figure seemed to have already taken the rigid lines of death, the +winding-sheet to be even now drawn up round the young haggard face. + +Colonel Tempest was not gifted with imagination where he himself was not +concerned. He was under the impression that the influenza, from which he +occasionally suffered, was the most excruciating form of mortal illness +known to mankind. He never believed people were really ill until they +were dead. Now he realized for the first time that John had been at +death's door; that is to say, he realized what being at death's door was +like, and he was fairly staggered! + +"Good God, John!" he said with a sort of groan. "I did not know it had +been as bad as this." + +"Sit down," said John, as the nurse brought forward a chair to the +bedside, and then withdrew, eyeing the new-comer suspiciously. "It is +much better now. I receive callers. Hemsworth was here yesterday. I can +shake hands a little; only be very gentle with me. I cry like a girl if +I am more than touched." + +John feebly raised and held out a bandaged hand, of which the end of +three fingers only were visible. Colonel Tempest, whose own feelings +were invariably too deep to admit of his remembering those of others, +pressed it spasmodically in his. + +"It goes to my heart to see you like this, John," he said with a break +in his voice. + +John withdrew his hand. His face twitched a little, and he bit his lip, +but in a few moments he spoke again firmly enough. + +"It is very good of you to come. Now that I have got round the corner, I +shall be about again in no time." + +"Yes, yes," said Colonel Tempest, as if reassuring himself. "You will be +all right again soon." + +"You look knocked up," said John, considering him attentively with his +dark earnest gaze. + +"Do I?" said Colonel Tempest. "I dare say I do. Yes, people may not +notice it as a rule. I keep things to myself, always have done all my +life, but--it will drag me into my grave if it goes on much longer, I +know that." + +"If what goes on?" + +It is all very well for a nervous rider to look boldly at a hedge two +fields away, but when he comes up with it, and feels his horse quicken +his pace under him, he begins to wonder what the landing on the +invisible other side will be like. There was a long silence, broken only +by Lindo, John's Spanish poodle, who, ensconced in an armchair by the +bedside, was putting an aristocratic and extended hind leg through an +afternoon toilet by means of searching and sustained suction. + +"I don't suppose there is a more wretched man in the world than I am, +John," said Colonel Tempest at last. + +"There is something on your mind, perhaps." + +"Night and day," said Colonel Tempest, wishing John would not watch him +so closely. "I have not a moment's peace." + +"You are in money difficulties," said John, justly divining the only +cause that was likely to permanently interfere with his uncle's peace of +mind. + +"Yes," said Colonel Tempest. "I am at my wit's end, and that is the +truth." + +John's lips tightened a little, and he remained silent. That was why his +uncle had come to see him then. His pride revolted against Colonel +Tempest's want of it, against Archie's sponge-like absorption of all +John would give him. He felt (and it was no idle fancy of a wealthy man) +that he would have died rather than have asked for a shilling. A Tempest +should be above begging, should scorn to run in debt. John's pride of +race resented what was in his eyes a want of honour in the other +members of the family of which he was the head. + +Colonel Tempest was in a position of too much delicacy not to feel hurt +by John's silence. He reflected on the invariable meanness of rich men, +with a momentary retrospect of how open-handed he had been himself in +his youth, and even after his crippling marriage. + +"I do not know the circumstances," said John at last. + +"No one does," said Colonel Tempest. + +"Neither have I any wish to know them," said John, with a touch of +haughtiness, "except in so far as I can be of use to you." + +Colonel Tempest found himself very disagreeably placed. He would have +instantly lost his temper if he had been a few weeks younger, but the +memory of those last few weeks recurred to him like a douche of cold +water. Self-interest would not allow him to throw away his last chance +of escaping out of Swayne's clutches, and he had a secret conviction +that no storming or passion of any kind would have any effect on that +prostrate figure, with the stern feeble voice, and intense fixity of +gaze. + +John had always felt a secret repulsion towards his uncle, though he +invariably met him with grave, if distant civility. He had borne in a +proud silence the gradual realization, as he grew old enough to +understand it, that there was a slur upon his name, a shadow on his +mother's memory. He believed, as did some others, that his uncle had +originated the slanders, impossible to substantiate, in order to wrest +his inheritance from him. How could this man, after trying to strip him +of everything, even of his name, come to him now for money? + +John had a certain rigidity and tenacity of mind, an uprightness and +severity, which come of an intense love of justice and rectitude, but +which in an extreme degree, if not counterbalanced by other qualities, +make a hard and unlovable character. + +His clear-eyed judgment made him look at Colonel Tempest with secret +indignation and contempt. But with the harshness of youth other +qualities, rarely joined, went hand in hand. A little knowledge of +others is a dangerous thing. It shows itself in sweeping condemnations +and severe judgments, and a complacent holding up to the light of the +poor foibles and peccadilloes of humanity, which all who will can find. +A greater knowledge shows itself in a greater tenderness towards others, +the tenderness, as some suppose, of wilful ignorance of evil. When or +how John had learnt it I know not, but certainly he had a rapid +intuition of the feelings of others; he could put himself in their +place, and to do that is to be not harsh. + +He looked again at Colonel Tempest, and was ashamed of his passing, +though righteous, anger. He realized how hard it must be for an older +man to be obliged to ask a young one for money, and he had no wish to +make it any harder. He looked at the weak, wretched face, with its +tortured selfishness, and understood a little; perhaps only in part, but +enough to make him speak again in a different tone. + +"Do not tell me anything you do not wish; but I see something is +troubling you very much. Sometimes things don't look so black when one +has talked them over." + +"I can't talk it over, John," said Colonel Tempest, with incontestable +veracity, softened by the kindness of his tone, "but the truth is," +nervousness was shutting its eyes and making a rush, "I want--_ten +thousand pounds and no questions asked_." + +John was startled. Colonel Tempest clutched his hat, and stared out of +the window. He felt benumbed. He had actually done it, actually brought +himself to ask for it. As his faculties slowly returned to him in the +long silence which followed, he became conscious, that if John was too +niggardly to pay his own ransom, he, Colonel Tempest, would not be the +most to blame, if any casualty should hereafter occur. + +At last John spoke. + +"You say you don't want any questions asked, but I _must_ ask one or +two. You want this money secretly. Would the want of it bring disgrace +upon your--children?" He had nearly said your "daughter." + +"If it was found out it would," said Colonel Tempest, in a choked voice. +The detection, which he always told himself was an impossibility, had, +nevertheless, a horrible way of masquerading before him at intervals as +an accomplished fact. + +John knit his brows. + +"I can't pretend not to know what it is," he said. "It is a debt of +honour. You have been betting." + +"Yes," said Colonel Tempest, faintly. + +"I suppose you can't touch your capital. That is settled on your +children." + +"No," said Colonel Tempest. "There were no settlements when I married. I +had to do the best I could. I had twenty thousand pounds from my father, +and my wife brought me a few thousands after her uncle's death; a very +few, which her relations could not prevent her having. But there were +the children, and one thing with another, and women are extravagant, and +must have everything to their liking; and by the time I had settled up +and sold everything after the break-up, it was all I could do to put +Archie to school." + +(Oh! Di, Di, cold in your grave these two and twenty years! Do you +remember the little pile of account books that you wound up, and put in +your writing-table drawer, that last morning in April, thinking that if +anything happened, he would find them there--afterwards. He had always +inveighed against the meanness of your economy before the servants, and +against your extravagance in private. Do you remember the butcher's +book, with thin blotting paper, that blotted tears as badly as ink +sometimes, for meat was dear; and the milk bills? You were always proud +of the milk bills, with the space for cream left blank, except when he +was there. And the little book of sundries, where those quarter pounds +of fresh butter and French rolls, were entered, which Anne ran out to +get if he came home suddenly, because he did not like the cheap butter +from the Stores. Do you remember these things? He never knew, he never +looked at the dumb reproach of that little row of books: but I cannot +think, wherever you are, that you have quite forgotten them.) + +John was silent again. How could he deal with this man who roused in him +such a vehement indignation? For several minutes he could not trust +himself to speak. + +"I think I had better go," said Colonel Tempest at last. + +John started violently. + +"No, no," he said. "Wait. Let me think." + +The nurse and his aunt came into the room at that moment. + +"Are not you feeling tired, sir?" the nurse inquired, warningly. + +"Yes, John," said Miss Fane, grunting as her manner was. "Mustn't get +tired." + +"I am not," he replied. "Colonel Tempest and I are discussing business +matters which won't wait--which it would trouble me to leave unsettled. +We have not quite finished, but he is more tired than I am. It is the +hottest day we have had. Will you give him a cup of tea, Aunt Flo, and +bring him back in half an hour." + +When he was left alone John turned his head painfully on the pillow, and +slowly opened and shut one of the bandaged hands. This not altogether +satisfactory form of exercise was the only substitute he had within his +power for the old habit of pacing up and down while he thought. + +Ought he to give the money? He had no right to make a bad use of +anything because he happened to have a good deal of it. This ten +thousand would follow the previous twenty thousand, as a matter of +course. + +Giving it did not affect himself, inasmuch as he would hardly miss it. +It was a generous action only in appearance, for he was very wealthy; +even among the rich he was very rich. His long minority, and various +legacies of younger branches, which had shown the Tempest peculiarity of +dying out, and leaving their substance to the head of the family, had +added to an already imposing income. In his present mode of life he did +not spend a third of it. + +The thought flashed across his mind that if he had died three weeks ago, +if the hinges of the door had held as firmly as the shot lock, and he +had perished in that room in King Street like a rat in a trap, Colonel +Tempest would at this very moment have been in possession of everything. +He looked at his own death, and all it would have entailed, +dispassionately. + +That improvident selfish man had been within an ace of immense wealth. +And yet--John's heart smote him--his uncle had been genuinely grieved to +see him so ill: had been really thankful to think he was out of danger. +He had almost immediately afterwards reverted to himself and his own +affairs; but that was natural to the man. He had nevertheless been +unaffectedly overcome the moment before. The emotion had been genuine. + +John struggled hard against his strong personal dislike. + +Perhaps Colonel Tempest had become entangled in the money difficulty at +the very time his--John's--life hung in the balance, when he took for +granted he was about to inherit all. The speculation was heartless, +perhaps, but pardonable. John saw no reason why Colonel Tempest should +not have counted on his death. For ten days it had been more than +probable; and now he might live to a hundred. Perhaps the probability of +his reaching old age was slenderer than he supposed. + +He lay a little while longer and then rang the bell near his hand, and +directed his servant to bring him a locked feminine elegancy from a +side-table which, until he could replace his burnt possessions, had +evidently been lent him by his aunt to use as a despatch-box. He got out +a cheque-book, and with clumsy fingers filled in and signed a cheque. +Then he lay back panting and exhausted. The will was strong in him, but +the suffering body was desperately weak. + +When Colonel Tempest returned, John held the cheque towards him in +silence with a feeble smile. + +Colonel Tempest took it without speaking. His lips shook. He was more +moved than he had been for years. + +"God bless you, John," he said at last. "You are a good fellow, and I +don't deserve it from you." + +"Good-bye," said John, in a more natural tone of voice than he had yet +used towards him. "If you are at the polo match on Thursday, will you +look in and tell me how it has gone? It would be a kindness to me. I +know Archie and Hemsworth are playing." Colonel Tempest murmured +something unintelligible, and went out. + +He did not go back at once to his rooms in Brook Street. Almost +involuntarily his steps turned towards the Park. The world was changed +for him. The weary ceaseless beat of the horses' hoofs on the wood +pavement had a cheerful exhilarating ring. All the people looked glad. +There was a confused rejoicing in the rustle of the trees, in the flying +voices of the children playing and rolling in the grass. He wandered +down towards the Serpentine. Dogs were rushing in and out of the water. +An elastic cockeared retriever, undepressed by its doubtful ancestry, +was leaping and waving a wet tail at its master, giving the short sharp +barks of youth and a light heart. An aristocratic pug in a belled collar +was delicately sniffing the evening breeze across the water, watching +the antics of the lower orders with protruding eyes like pieces of toffy +rounded and glazed by suction. An equally aristocratic black +poodle--Lindo out for a stroll with the valet--with more social +tendencies, was hurrying up and down on the extreme verge, beckoning +rapidly with its short tufted tail to the athletes in the water. The +ducks bobbed on the ripples. The children sprawled and shouted and +clambered. The low sun had laid a dancing, glancing pathway across the +water. How glad it all was, how exceeding glad! Colonel Tempest patted +one of the children on the head and felt benevolent. + +As he turned away at last and sauntered homewards, he passed a little +knot of people gathered round a gesticulating open-air preacher. Two +girls, arm in arm, just in front of him, were lounging near, talking +earnestly together. + +"Sin no more lest a worse thing come unto thee," bawled the strident +fanatic voice. + +"I shall have mine trimmed with tulle, and a flower on the crown," said +one of the girls. + +Colonel Tempest walked slowly on. Yes, yes; that was it. _Sin no more +lest a worse thing come unto thee._ He had always dreaded that worse +thing, and now that fear was all over. He translated the cry of the +preacher into a message to himself, his first personal transaction with +the Almighty. He felt awed. It was like a voice from another world. +Religion was becoming a reality to him at last. There are still persons +for whom the Law and the Prophets are not enough--who require that one +should rise from the dead to galvanize their superstition into momentary +activity. Sin no more. No--never any more. He had done with sin. He +would make a fresh start from to-day, and life would become easy and +unembarrassed and enjoyable once again; no more nightmares and wakeful +nights and nervous haunting terrors. They were all finished and put +away. The tears came into his eyes. He regretted that he had not enjoyed +these comfortable feelings earlier in life. The load was lifted from his +heart, and the removal of the pain was like a solemn joy. + + + + +CHAPTER XII. + + "On entre, on crie, + C'est la vie. + On crie, on sort, + C'est la mort." + + +On the paths of self-interest the grass is seldom allowed to grow under +the feet. Colonel Tempest hurried. It would be tedious to follow the +various steps feverishly taken which led to his finally unearthing the +home address of Mr. Swayne. He procured it at last, not without expense, +from an impoverished client of that gentleman who had lately been in +correspondence with him. Mr. Swayne had always shown a decided reticence +with regard to the locality of his domestic roof. Colonel Tempest was +of course in possession of several addresses where letters would find +him, but his experience of such addresses had been that, unless strictly +connected with pecuniary advantage to Mr. Swayne, the letters did not +seem to reach their destination. But now, even when Colonel Tempest +wrote to say he would pay up, no answer came. Swayne did not rise even +to that bait. Colonel Tempest, who was aware that Mr. Swayne's faith in +human nature had in the course of his career sustained several severe +shocks, came to the conclusion that Mr. Swayne did not attach importance +to his statement--that indeed he regarded it only as a "blind" in order +to obtain another interview. + +It was on a burning day in June that Colonel Tempest set forth to search +out his tempter at Rosemont Villa, Iron Ferry, in the manufacturing town +of Bilgewater. The dirty smudged address was in his pocket-book, as was +also the notice of his banker that ten thousand pounds had been placed +to his credit a few days before. + +The London train took him to Worcester, and from thence the local line, +after meandering through a desert of grime and chimneys, and after +innumerable stoppages at one hideous nigger station after another, +finally deposited him on the platform of Bilgewater Junction. Colonel +Tempest got out and looked about him. It was not a rural scene. Heaps of +refuse and slag lay upon the blistered land thick as the good +resolutions that pave a certain road. Low cottages crowded each other in +knots near the high smoking factories. Black wheels turned slowly +against the grey of the sky, which whitened upwards towards the ghost of +the midsummer sun high in heaven. We are told that the sun shines +equally on the just and on the unjust; but that was said before the +first factory was built. At Bilgewater it is no longer so. + +Colonel Tempest inquired his way to Iron Ferry, and, vaguely surprised +at Mr. Swayne's choice of locality for his country residence, set out +along the baked wrinkles of the black high-road, winding between wastes +of cottages, some inhabited and showing dreary signs of life, some empty +and decrepit, some fallen down dead. The heat was intense. The steam and +the smoke rose together into the air like some evil sacrifice. The +pulses of the factories throbbed feverishly as he passed. The steam +curled upwards from the surface of the livid pools and canals at their +base. The very water seemed to sweat. + +Colonel Tempest reached Iron Ferry, being guided thither by the spire of +the little tin church, which pointed unheeded towards the low steel +sky, shut down over the battered convulsed country like a coffin lid +over one who has died in torment. + +At Iron Ferry, which had a bridge and a wharf and a canal, and was +everything except a ferry, he inquired again concerning Rosemont Villa, +and was presently picking his way across a little patch of common +towards a string of what had once been red brick houses, but which had +long since embraced the universal colour of their surroundings. They +were rather better looking houses if a sort of shabby gentility can be +called anything except the worst. They were semi-detached. From out of +one of them the strains were issuing faintly and continuously of the +inevitable accordion, which for some occult reason is always found to +consort with poverty and oyster-shells. + +At the open door of another a girl was standing tearing pieces with her +teeth out of a chunk of something she held in her hand. She was +surrounded by a meagre family of poultry who fought and pecked and trod +each other down with almost human eagerness for the occasional morsels +she threw to them. Something in her appearance and in the way she seemed +to enjoy the greed and mutual revilings of her little dependents +reminded Colonel Tempest--he hardly knew why--of Mr. Swayne. + +Another glance made the supposition a certainty. There were the small +boot-buttons of eyes, the heavy mottled expressionless face, which +Colonel Tempest had until now considered to be the exclusive property of +Mr. Swayne. This slouching, tawdry down-at-heel arrow was no doubt one +of that gentleman's quiverful. + +Mr. Swayne had always worn such very unmarried waistcoats and button +holes that it was a shock to Colonel Tempest to regard him as a +domestic character. + +"Is Mr. Swayne at home?" he asked, amid the cackling and flouncing of +the poultry. + +The "arrow," her cheek "bulged with the unchewed piece," looked at him +doubtfully for a moment, and then called over her shoulder-- + +"Mother!" + +The voice as of a female who had never been held in subjection answered +shrilly from within--"Well?" + +"Here's a gent as wants to see father." + +There was a sound of some heavy vessel being set down, and a woman, +large and swarthy, came to the door. She might have been good-looking +once. She might perhaps have been "a fine figure of a woman" in the days +when Swayne wooed and won her, and no doubt her savings, for his own. +But possibly the society of Mr. Swayne may not in the long run have +exerted an ennobling or even a soothing influence upon her. Her +complexion was a fiery red, and her whole appearance bespoke a +temperament to which the artificial stimulus of alcohol, though +evidently unnecessary, was evidently not denied. + +"Swayne's sick," she said, eyeing Colonel Tempest with distrust. "He +can't see no one, and if he could, there's not a shilling in the house +if you was to scrape the walls with a knife--so that's all about it. +It's no manner of use coming pestering here for money." + +"I don't want money," said Colonel Tempest. "I want to pay, not to be +paid." + +The woman shook her head incredulously, and put out her under lip, +uttering the mystic word, "Walker!" It did not seem to bear upon the +subject, but somebody, probably the accordion next door, laughed. + +"I must see him!" said Colonel Tempest, vehemently. "I've had dealings +with him which I want to settle and have done with. It's my own interest +to pay up. He would see me directly if he knew I was here." + +The woman hesitated. + +"Swayne is uncommon sick," she said, slowly. "If it's business I doubt +he could scarce fettle at it now." + +"Do you mean he is not sober?" + +"He's sober enough, poor fellow," said Mrs. Swayne, with momentary +sympathy; "but he's mortal bad. He hasn't done nobbut but dithered with +a bit of toast since Tuesday, and taking it out of hisself all the time +with flouncing and swearing like a brute beast." + +"Is he--do you mean to say he is _dying_?" demanded Colonel Tempest in +sudden panic. + +"Doctor says he won't hang on above a day or two," said the girl +nonchalantly. "Doctor says his works is clean wore out." + +"Let me go to him at once," said Colonel Tempest. "It is of great +importance; I must see him at once." + +The women stared at each other undecidedly, and the girl nudged her +mother. + +"Lor, mother, what does it signify? If the gentleman 'ull make it worth +while, show him up." + +Colonel Tempest hastily produced a sovereign, and in a few minutes was +stumbling up the rickety stairs behind Mrs. Swayne. She pushed open a +half-closed door, and noisily pulled back a bit of curtain which shaded +the light--what poor dim light there was--from the bed, knocking over as +she did so a tallow candle in the window-sill bent double by the heat. + +Colonel Tempest had followed her into the room and into an atmosphere +resembling that of the monkey-house at the Zoo, stiffened with brandy. + +"Oh, good gracious!" he ejaculated, as Mrs. Swayne drew back the +curtain. "Oh dear, Mrs. Swayne! I ought to have been prepared. I had no +idea---- What's the matter with him? What is he writing on the wall?" + +For Mr. Swayne was changed. He was within a measurable distance of being +unrecognizable. That evidently would be the next alteration not for the +better in him. Already he was slow to recognize others. He was sitting +up in bed, swearing and scratching tearfully at the wall-paper. He +looked stouter than ever, but as if he might collapse altogether at a +pin prick, and shrivel down to a wrinkled nothing among the creases of +his tumbled bedding. + +Mrs. Swayne regarded her prostrate lord with arms akimbo. Possibly she +considered that her part of the agreement, to love and to cherish Mr. +Swayne, and honour and obey Mr. Swayne, was now at an end, as death was +so plainly about to part them. At any rate, she appeared indisposed to +add any finishing touches to her part of the contract. Mr. Swayne had, +in all probability, put in his finishing touches with such vigour, that +possibly a remembrance of them accounted for a certain absence of +solicitude on the part of his helpmeet. + +"Who's this? Who's this? Who's this?" said Mr. Swayne in a rapid +whisper, perceiving his visitor, and peering out of the gloom with a +bloodshot furtive eye. "Dear, dear, dear! ... Mary ... I'm busy ... I'm +pressed for time. Take him away. Quite away; quite away." + +Mr. Swayne had been a man of few and evil words when in health. His +recording angel would now need a knowledge of shorthand. This sudden +flow of language fairly staggered Colonel Tempest. + +"I must have out those bonds," he went on, forgetting his visitor again +instantly. "I can't lay my hand on 'em, but I've got 'em somewhere. Top +left-hand drawer of the walnut escritoire. I know I have 'em. I'll make +him bleed. Top left-hand. No, no, no. Where was it, then? Lock's +stiff;----the lock. Break it. I say I will have 'em." + +As he spoke he tore from under the pillow a little footstool, having the +remnant of a frayed dog, in blue beads, worked upon it, a conjugal +attention no doubt on the part of Mrs. Swayne, to raise the sick man's +head. + +And Mr. Swayne, after endeavouring to unlock the dog's tail, smote +savagely upon it, and sank back with chattering teeth. + +"That's the way he goes on," said Mrs. Swayne. "Mornin', noon, and +night. Never a bit of peace, except when he gets into his prayin' fits. +I expect he'll go off in one of them tantrums." + +It did not appear unlikely that he would "go off" then and there, but +after a few moments a sort of ghastly life seemed to return. Even death +did not appear to take to him. He opened his eyes, and looked round +bewildered. Then his head fell forward. + +"Now's yer time," said the woman. "Before he gets up steam for another +of them rages. Parson comes and twitters a bit when he's in this way; +and he'll pray very heavy while he recollects hisself, until he goes off +again. He'll be better now for a spell," and she left the room, and +creaked ponderously downstairs again. Colonel Tempest advanced a step +nearer the lair on which poor Swayne was taking his last rest but one, +and said faintly: + +"Swayne. I say, Swayne. Rouse up." + +The only things that roused up were Swayne's eyelids. These certainly +trembled a little. + +In the next house the accordion was beginning a new tune, was +designating Jerusalem as its ha-appy home. + +Apprehensive terror for himself as usual overcame other feelings. It +overcame in this instance the unspeakable repugnance Colonel Tempest +felt to approaching any nearer. He touched the prostrate man on the +shoulder with the slender white hand which had served him so exclusively +from boyhood upwards, which had never wavered in its fidelity to him to +do a hand's turn for others, which shrinkingly did his bidding now. + +"Wake up, Swayne," repeated Colonel Tempest, actually stooping over him. +"Wake up, for----," he was going to add "heaven's sake;" but the thought +of heaven in connection with Swayne seemed inappropriate; and he +altered it to "for mercy's sake," which sounded just as well. + +"Is it the parson?" asked Swayne feebly, in a more natural voice. + +"No, no," said Colonel Tempest reassuringly. "It's only me, a friend. +It's Colonel Tempest." + +"I wish it _was_ the parson," repeated Swayne, seeming to emerge +somewhat from his torpor. "He might have come and let off a few more +prayers for me. He says it's all right if I repent, and I suppose he +knows; but it don't seem likely. Don't seem as if God _could_ be greened +quite as easy as parson makes out. I should have liked to throw off a +few more prayers so as to be on the safe side," and he began to mutter +incoherently. + +As a man lives so, it is said, he generally dies. Swayne seemed to +remain true to his own interests, only his aspect of those interests +had altered. He felt the awkwardness of going into court absolutely +unprepared. Prayer was cheap if it could do what he wanted, and he had +had professional advice as to its efficacy. A man who all his life can +grovel before his fellow-creatures, may as well do a little grovelling +before his Creator at the last, if anything is to be got by it. + +It is to the credit of human nature that, as a rule, men even of the +lowest type feel the uselessness, the degradation, of trying to annul +their past on their deathbeds. But to Swayne, who had never shone as a +credit to human nature, a chance remained a chance. He was a gambler and +a swindler, a man who had risked long odds, and had been made rich and +poor by the drugging of a horse, or the forcing of a card. If, in his +strict attention to never losing a chance, he had inadvertently mislaid +his soul, he was not likely to be aware of it. But a _chance_ was a +thing he had never so far failed to take advantage of. He was taking his +last now. + +Colonel Tempest looked at him in horror. The interests of the two men +clashed, and at a vital moment. + +"For God's sake don't pray now, Swayne," said Colonel Tempest, +appealingly, as Swayne began to mutter something more. "I've come to set +wrong right, and that will be a great deal better than any prayers; do +you more good in the end." + +Swayne did not seem to understand. He looked in a perplexed manner at +Colonel Tempest. + +"I don't appear to fetch it out right," he said. "But it's in the +Prayer-book on the mantelpiece. That's what our parson reads out of. You +get it, colonel; just get it quick, and pray 'em off one after another. +It don't matter much which. They're all good." + +"Swayne," said Colonel Tempest, in utter desperation, "I'll do anything; +I'll--pray as much as you like afterwards, if you will only give me up +those papers you have against me--those bets." + +"What?" said Swayne, a gleam of the old professional interest flickering +into his face. "You han't got the money?" + +"Yes. Here, here!" and Colonel Tempest tore the banker's note out of his +pocket-book, and held it before Swayne's eyes. + +"I was to have had twenty-five per cent. commission," said Swayne, +rallying perceptibly at the thought. "Twenty-five per cent. on each. I +wouldn't let 'em go at less. Two thousand five hundred I should have +made. But"--with a sudden restless relapse--"it's no use thinking of +that now. Get down the book, colonel." + +But for once Colonel Tempest was firm. + +Perhaps his indignation against Swayne's egotism enabled him to be so. +He made Swayne understand that business must in this instance come +first, and prayers afterwards. It was a compact; not the first between +the two. + +"The papers," he repeated over and over again, frantic at the speed with +which the last links of Swayne's memory seemed falling from him. "Where +are they? You have them with you, of course? Tell me where they are?" +and he grasped the dying man by the shoulder. + +Swayne was frightened back to some semblance of effort. + +"I haven't got 'em," he gasped. "The--the--the chaps engaged in the +business have 'em." + +"But you know who have got them?" + +"Yes, of course. It's all written down somewhere." + +"Where?" + +But Swayne "did not rightly know." He had the addresses in cipher +somewhere, but he could not put his hand upon them. Half wild with fear, +Colonel Tempest searched the pockets of the clothes that lay about the +room, holding up their contents for Swayne to look at. It was like some +hideous game of hide-and-seek. But the latter only shook his head. + +"I have 'em somewhere," he repeated, "and there was a change not so long +ago. When was it? May. There's one of 'em written down in cipher in my +pocket-book in May, I know that." + +"Here. This one?" said Colonel Tempest, holding out a greasy +pocket-book. + +"That's it," said Swayne. "Some time in May." + +Colonel Tempest turned to the month, and actually found a page with a +faint pencil scrawl in cipher across it. + +"That's him," said Swayne. "James Larkin," and he read out a complicated +address without difficulty. + +"Will that find him?" asked Colonel Tempest, his hand shaking so much +that he could hardly write down Swayne's words. + +"If it's to his advantage it will." + +"For certain?" + +"Certain." + +"And the others?" + +"There's one dead," said Swayne, his voice waxing feebler and feebler as +the momentary galvanism of Colonel Tempest's terror lost its effect. +"And there's two I had back the papers from; they were sick of it, and +they said he had a charmed life. And one of 'em went to America, and +married, and set up respectable. I have his paper too. And one of 'em's +in quod, but he'll be out soon, I reckon, and he's good for another try. +He precious near brought it off last time. There's a few left that's +still biding their time! There! And now I won't hear nothin' more about +it. Get to the prayers, Colonel, and be quick. Parson might have come +again, damn him." + +"Stop a minute. Can I get at the others through Larkin?" + +Swayne had sunk back spent and livid. He looked at Colonel Tempest with +fixed and glassy eyes. + +"Yes," he said, with the ghost of an oath; "get to the prayers." + +Colonel Tempest was still trembling with the relief from that horrible +nightmare of suspense as he opened the shiny new Prayer-book which the +clergyman had left. He held the first link. He had now only to draw the +whole chain through his hand, and break it to atoms; the chain that was +dragging him down to hell. He hastily began to read. + +God has heard many prayers, but, perhaps, not many like those which +ascended from that hideous tumbled death-bed, where kneeling +self-interest halted through the supplication, and prostrate +self-interest gasped out Amen. + +Oh! did He who first taught us how to pray, did He, raised high upon the +cross of an apparent failure, look down the ages that were yet to come, +and see how we should abuse that gift of prayer? Was that bitter cry +which has echoed through eighteen hundred years wrung from Him even for +our sakes also as well as those who stood around Him--"Father, forgive +them, for they know not what they do"? + +Colonel Tempest was still on his knees when the door was softly opened, +and a young, a very young, clergyman came in and knelt down beside him, +clasping his thin hands over the collapsed felt _soufflee_ which did +duty for a hat. After stumbling to the end of the prayer he was reading, +Colonel Tempest put the book into his hand and escaped. + +He stole down the stairs and past the little sitting-room unobserved. He +was out again in the open air, the live free air, which seemed freshness +itself after the atmosphere of that sick-room. He held the clue. He had +it, he held it, he was safe. God was on his side now, and was helping +him to make restitution. At one despairing moment when he had been +tearing even the linings out of the pockets of Swayne's check trousers +he had feared that Providence had deserted him. Now that he had the +pocket-book he regretted his want of faith. I do not think his mind +reverted once to Swayne, for Swayne was no longer of any interest to him +now that he was out of Swayne's power. Colonel Tempest did not exactly +forget people, but his mind was so constituted that everything with +which it came in contact was wiped out the moment it had ceased to +affect or group itself round himself. His imagination did not follow his +colleague's last faltering steps upon that steep brink where each must +one day stand. His mind turned instinctively to the most frivolous +subjects, was back in London wondering what he would have had for dinner +if he had dined with Archie as he had intended; was anxious to know how +many cigarettes of that new brand he had put into his case before he +left London that morning. Colonel Tempest stopped, and got out his +cigarette-case and counted them. + +Those who had known Colonel Tempest best, those few who had +misunderstood and loved him, had often pondered with grave anxiety, or +with the wistful perplexity of wounded affection, as to what it was in +him that being so impressionable was yet incapable of any real +impression. His wife may or may not have mastered that expensive secret. +At any rate, she had had opportunities of studying it. When first, a few +weeks after her marriage, she had fallen ill, she, poor fool, had +suffered agonies from the fear that because he hardly came into her +sick-room after the first day, he had ceased to care for her. But when +after a few days more she was feeling better and was pretty and +interesting again in a pink wrapper on the sofa, she had found that he +was as devoted to her as ever, and had confided her foolish dread to him +with happy tears. Possibly she discovered at last that the secret lay +not so much in the selfishness and self-indulgence of a character +moth-eaten by idleness, as in the instant and invariable recoil of the +mind from any subject that threatened to prove disagreeable, the +determination to avoid everything irksome, wearisome, or reproachful. +For a moment, while it was quite new, a sentiment might be indulged in. +But as soon as a certain novelty and pleasure in emotion ceased the +feeling itself was shirked, at whatever expense to others. Those who +shirk are ill to live with, and lay up for themselves an increasing +loneliness as life goes on. + +Colonel Tempest found it unpleasant to think about Swayne, so he thought +of something else. He could always do that unless he himself was +concerned. Then, indeed, as we have seen, it was a different thing. He +was annoyed when, after slowly picking his way back to the station, he +found the last passenger train had just gone; that even if he drove +fifteen miles in to Worcester he should be too late to catch the last +express to London; in fact, that there was nothing for it but a bed at +the station inn. He found, however, that by making a very early start +from Bilgewater the following morning he could reach London by noon, and +so resigned himself to his lot with composure. He had hardly expected he +should be able to go and return in one day. + +It was indeed early when he walked across to the station next morning, +so early that there was a suspicion of freshness in the air, of colour +in the eastern sky. + +On a heap of slag a motionless figure was sitting, black against the sky +line, looking towards the east. It was the curate, who when he perceived +Colonel Tempest, came crunching and flapping in his long coat tails down +to the road below, raised his hat from a meagre clerical brow, and held +out his hand. His face was thin and poor, suggestive of a starved mind +and cold mutton and Pearson on the Creed, but the smile redeemed it. + +"It is all over," he said; "half an hour ago. Quite quietly at the +last. I stayed with him through the night. I never left him. We prayed +together without ceasing." + +Colonel Tempest did not know what to say. + +"It was too late to go to bed," continued the young man impulsively, his +face working. "So I came here. I often come and sit on that ash heap to +see the sun rise. I'm so glad just to have seen you again. I longed to +thank you for those prayers by poor Mr. Crosbie's bed. You know the +Scripture: 'Where two or three are gathered together.' I felt it was so +true. I have lost heart so of late. No one seems to care or think about +these things down here. But your coming and praying like that has been +such a help, such a reproach to me for my want of faith when I think +that the seed falls on the rock. I shall take courage again now. Ah! You +are going by this train? Good-bye, God bless you! Thank you again." + + + + +CHAPTER XIII. + + "Every man's progress is through a succession of + teachers."--EMERSON. + + +As John slowly climbed the hill of convalescence many visitors came to +relieve his solitude, and one of those who came the oftenest was Lord +Frederick Fane. + +Lord Frederick was a square-shouldered, well-preserved, well set up, +carefully-padded man of close on sixty, with a thin-lipped, bloodless +face, and faded eyes, divided by a high nose. + +"Do you like that man?" said Lord Hemsworth to John one day when he was +sitting with him, and Lord Frederick sent up to know whether the latter +would see him. + +"No," said John. + +"But you seem to see a good deal of him." + +"He is civil to me, and I am not rude to him. He is a relation, you +know." + +"I can't stand him," said Lord Hemsworth. "If he is coming up I shall +bolt;" and Lord Frederick entering at that moment, Lord Hemsworth took +his departure. + +"You're better, John," said Lord Frederick, looking at him through his +half-closed eyes, and settling himself gently in a high chair, his hat +and one glove and crutch-handled stick held before him in his broad lean +hand. + +"I feel more human," said John, "now that I'm shaved and dressed. When I +saw myself in the glass yesterday for the first time, I thought I was +Darwin's missing link." + +"You look more human," said Lord Frederick, crossing one leg over the +other, and then contemplating his white spats for a change. "Able to +attend to business again yet?" + +"Not yet. I have tried, but I am as weak as a worm that can't turn." + +"Pity," said Lord Frederick, glancing at a sheaf of letters and some +opened telegrams on the table at John's elbow. "Things always happen at +inconvenient times," he went on. "Old Charlesworth might have chosen a +more opportune moment to die and leave Marchamley vacant again." + +"He is not dead yet." + +"I suppose both sides have been at you already to stand for it +yourself," hazarded Lord Frederick. + +"Yes." + +"I thought so." + +Silence. + +"Are you going to stand?" + +"What is your opinion on the subject? I see you have one." + +"Well," said Lord Frederick, "I look at it this way. I have often said +'Don't tie yourself.' I am all for young men keeping their hands free, +and seeing the ins and outs of life, before they settle down. But you +are not so very young, and a time comes when a sort of annoyance +attaches to freedom itself. It's a bore. Now as to this seat. Indecision +is all very well for a time; it enhances a man's value. You were quite +right not to stand three years ago; it has made you of more importance. +But that won't do much longer. You are bound to come to a decision for +your own advantage. Neutral ground is sometimes between two fires. I +should say 'stand,' if you ask me. Throw in your lot with the side on +which you are most likely to come to the front, and stand." + +"And private opinions? How about them if they don't happen to fit? Throw +them overboard?" + +"Yes," said Lord Frederick. "It has got to be done sooner or later. Why +not sooner? A free-lance is no manner of use. There's a hitch somewhere +in you, John, that if you don't look out will damn your career as a +public man. I don't know what your politics are. My own opinion, between +ourselves, is that you have not got any, but you are bound to have some, +and you may as well join forces with what will bring you forward most, +and start young. That's my advice." + +"Thanks." + +"There is not a man in the world with an ounce of brains who has not +high-flown ideas at your age," continued Lord Frederick. "I have had +them. Everybody has them. You buy them with your first razors. People +generally sicken with them just when they could make a push for +themselves, and while they are getting better, youth and opportunity +pass and don't come back. I've seen it over and over again. Every young +fool with a ginger moustache, when he first starts in public life, is +going to be a patriot, and do his d----d thinking for himself. He might +as well make his own clothes, and expect society to receive him in them. +By the time he is bald he has learnt better, and he's a party man, but he +has lost time in the meanwhile. You may depend upon it, a strong party +man is what is wanted. The country doesn't want individuals with brains; +they are mostly kicked out in the end. If you don't want to go with the +crowd, don't go against it, but throw yourself into it heart and soul, +and get in front of it on its own road. It's no good coming to the fore +unless you have a following." + +"Thanks," said John again. His face was as expressionless as a mask. He +looked, as he lay back in his low couch, a strange mixture of feebleness +and power. It was as if a strong man armed kept watch within a house +tottering to its fall. + +He put out his muscular, powerless hand, and took up one of the +telegrams. + +"Charlesworth is not dead yet," he said. + +Lord Frederick could take a hint. + +"His death will put the Moretons in mourning again," he remarked. "Mrs. +Moreton's ball is doomed. I am sorry for that woman. She is cumbered +with much time-serving, and her ball fell through last year; this is the +second time it has happened. I have been asking her young men for her. I +put down your cousin in the Guards, the Apollo with the tow wig. +What's-his-name, Tempest?" + +"Archibald." + +"Yes. That would be a dangerous man, if he were not such a fool, but the +same placard that says he is to let says he is unfurnished, and it's +poor work taking an empty house, when it comes to living in it. Women +know that. He has let the soda water heiress slip through his fingers. +She is going to marry young Topham. I thought Apollo seemed rather down +on his luck when it was first given out, but he has consoled himself +since. Apparently he has a mission to married women. He is always with +Lady Verelst now; I saw him riding with her again this morning. I don't +know who mounts him, but he was on the best horse I've seen this season. +You are not such a f----, such a philanthropist as to lend him horses, +are you?" + +"When I can't use them myself I have that amount of generosity." + +"H'm! Well, he makes good use of his opportunities to cheer up Lady +Verelst. I wish you would flirt more with married women, John. You would +find your account in it. I did at your age. You see you are too eligible +to go on much with girls, and that's the truth. You would be watched. +But you don't pay enough attention to women, and three-quarters of the +world is made up of them. You are too much of a Puritan, but you may +remember human nature is like a short-footed stocking. If you darn it up +at the heel it will come out at the toe. It's no manner of use to ignore +women. People who do always come the worst croppers in the end. A +flirtation with a fast, married woman would peel your illusions off you +like the skin off an orange. All young men believe in women--till they +know them. He! He! If I were a rabbit I should take a personal interest +in the habits of birds of prey. I told Hemsworth something of the kind +the other day, but he is bent on making a fool of himself." + +"He knows his own affairs best." + +"I fancy I know them better than he does. Miss Di is young, but she is +uncommonly well aware of her own value, and she is looking higher. I +should not wonder if she tried to marry you. She'll take him in five +years' time, if he is still willing, and she outstands her market: but +in the mean time she keeps him dangling. I told him so, and that I +admired her for it. She holds her head high, but she is a splendid +creature, and no mistake. She has not that expectant anxious look about +her that you see in other girls, and she is not made up. It's sterling +good looks in her case. If you are interested in that quarter, you may +take my word for it, it is all genuine, even to her hair. That is why +her frank manner is so telling; it's of a piece with the rest. She +knows how to play her cards. The old woman has taught her a thing or +two." + +"What a knowledge you have of--human nature." + +"I have looked about," said Lord Frederick, rising as gently as he had +sat down, and pulling up his shirt collar. "I had my eyes opened pretty +young, and I have kept them open ever since. Glad you're better. That +black devil in tights of a poodle wants shaving as much as you did last +time I saw you. No, don't ring for that melancholy valet. I will let +myself out. I dare say I shall be in again in the course of a day or +two. Ta, ta." + +John crushed the telegram he was still holding into a hard ball as soon +as his self-constituted guide, philosopher, and friend had left the +room. + +Cynicism was not new to him. It is cheap enough to be universally +appropriated by the poor in spirit, for whom generosity and tolerance +are commodities too expensive to be indulged in. Our belief in human +nature is a foot rule, by which we may be accurately measured ourselves. +There are those in whose enlightened eyes, purity herself is only a +courtesan in fancy dress. John had already had many teachers, for he was +a man who was being educated regardless of expense; but perhaps to no +two persons did he owe so much as to Mr. Goodwin and Lord Frederick +Fane. Our elders act as danger-signals oftener than they know. + +John's room looked out across the Park. His couch had been drawn near +the open window, and to lie and watch the passing crowd of carriages and +pedestrians was almost as much excitement as he could bear after the +darkened rooms and enforced quiet of the last few weeks. John, with +Lindo erect on the vacant chair beside him, saw Lord Frederick's +hansom, with his pale profile inside it, turn down Park Lane below his +windows. Pain had burned all John's energy out of him for the time, and +he had soon forgotten his annoyance in watching the people attempting to +cross the thoroughfare, and in counting the omnibuses that passed. It +was all he was up to. It was about five in the afternoon, and carriage +after carriage turned into the Park at the gates opposite his window. +There went Lady Delmour with her brand new daughter, a sweet, wild rose +from the country, that must be perfected by London smuts and gaslight. +John pointed her out to Lindo, but he only yawned and looked the other +way. There was Mrs. Barker walking with her husband. Those two white +parasols he had danced with somewhere, but he could not put a name to +them. Neither could Lindo when asked. Another red omnibus. That was the +tenth red one within the last half-hour. Royalty went flashing by, +bowing and bowed to. John obliged Lindo, whom he suspected of democratic +tendencies, to make a bow also. He hoped his nurse would not come in and +send him back to bed yet. It was really very interesting watching the +passers-by. Was that--no, it was not--yes, it was Lady Verelst with red +parasol and husband to match, in the victoria with the greys. There was +actually Duchess, his old polo pony whom he had not seen since he sold +her three years ago, looking as spry as ever. John craned his neck to +see the last of the bob-tail of his old favourite whisk round the +corner. A moment later Mrs. Courtenay and Di, erect and fair beside her, +spun past in the opposite direction. Before he had time to realize that +he had seen her, almost before he had recognized her, the momentary +glimpse struck him like a blow. His head swam, his heart, so languid +the moment before, leapt up and struggled like a maddened caged animal. +She had passed some time before he was conscious of anything but the one +fact that he had seen her. + +He stumbled to his feet and walked unsteadily across the room, clutching +at the furniture. He seemed to have left his legs behind. + +"What am I doing?" he said to himself half aloud, holding on to and +swaying against a table. "What has happened? Why did I get up?" + +He dragged himself back to his couch again, and sank down exhausted. The +excursion had been too much for him. He had not walked so far before. He +was bewildered. + +Through the open window came the jingle, and the "clip-clop" and the +hum. Another red omnibus passed. But there was a loud knocking at the +door of John's heart that deafened him to all beside; the peremptory +knocking as of one armed with a claim, who stood without and would not +be denied. + + +END OF VOL. I. + +PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, +LONDON AND BECCLES. _D. & Co._ + + + +***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DIANA TEMPEST, VOLUME I (OF 3)*** + + +******* This file should be named 37973.txt or 37973.zip ******* + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/3/7/9/7/37973 + + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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