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diff --git a/37974-8.txt b/37974-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..8a5fb84 --- /dev/null +++ b/37974-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,4710 @@ +The Project Gutenberg eBook, Diana Tempest, Volume II (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 II (of 3) + + +Author: Mary Cholmondeley + + + +Release Date: November 10, 2011 [eBook #37974] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DIANA TEMPEST, VOLUME II (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 37974-h.htm or 37974-h.zip: + (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/37974/37974-h/37974-h.htm) + or + (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/37974/37974-h.zip) + + + Project Gutenberg also has Volumes I and III of this + work. See + Volume I: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/37973 + 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/dianatempest02chol + + + + + +DIANA TEMPEST. + +by + +MARY CHOLMONDELEY, + +Author of +"The Danvers Jewels," +"Sir Charles Danvers," etc. + +In Three Volumes. +VOL. II. + + + + + + + +London: +Richard Bentley & Son, +Publishers in Ordinary to Her Majesty the Queen. +1893. +(All rights reserved.) + + + + +DIANA TEMPEST. + + + + +CHAPTER I. + + "The fact is, I have never loved any one well enough to put + myself into a noose for them. It _is_ a noose, you + know."--GEORGE ELIOT. + + +It was the middle of July. The season had reached the climax which +precedes a collapse. The heat was intense. The pace had been too great +to last. The rich sane were already on their way to Scotch moor or +Norwegian river; the rich insane and the poor remained, and people with +daughters--assiduously entertaining the dwindling numbers of the +"uncertain, coy, and hard to please" _jeunesse dorée_ of the present +day. There were some great weddings fixed for the end of July, proving +that marriage was not extinct,--prospective weddings which, like iron +rivets, held the crumbling fabric of the season together. + +If the unusual heat had driven away half the world, still the greater +part of the little world mentioned in these pages remained. Not quite +all, for Sir Henry and Lady Verelst had departed rather suddenly for +Norway, and Lord Frederick was drinking the water at Homburg or Aix; and +thriving on a beverage which never passed his lips without admixture in +his own country, except in connection with the toothbrush. + +But John and his aunt Miss Fane were still in the large cool house in +Park Lane. Lord Hemsworth was still baking himself for no apparent +reason in his rooms over his club. Mrs. Courtenay and Di were still in +town, because they could not afford to go until their country visits +began. + +"Oh, granny," said Di one afternoon as they sat together in the darkened +drawing-room, "let us cut everything. Do be ill, and let me write round +to say we have been obliged to leave town." + +Mrs. Courtenay shook her head. + +"We can't go till we have somewhere to go to, and we are not due at +Archelot till the first of August." + +"Could not we afford a week, just one week, at the sea first?" + +"No, Di," said Mrs. Courtenay, "I have thought it over. Only the rich +can have their cake and eat it. We had a victoria for a fortnight in +June. That meant no seaside this year." + +There was a pause. + +"I wish I were married," said Di, looking affectionately at Mrs. +Ccurtenay's pale face. "I wish I had a rich, kind husband. I would not +mind if he parted his hair down the middle, or even if he came down to +breakfast in slippers, if only he would give me everything I wanted. And +he should stay up in London, and we would run down to the seaside +together, G., first-class; I am not sure I should not take a _coupé_ for +you; and you should go out on the sands in the donkey-chairs that your +soul loves; and have ice on the butter and cream in the tea; and in the +evening we would sit on a first-floor balcony (no more second-floors if +I were rich) and watch a cool moon rising over a cool sea. I wish +moonlight on the sea were not so expensive. The beauties of nature are +very dear, granny. Sunsets cost money nowadays." + +"Everything costs money," said Mrs. Courtenay. + +Di was silent a little while; it was too hot to talk except at +intervals. + +"I don't think I mind being poor," she said at last. "For myself, I +mean. I have looked at being poor in the face, and it is not half so bad +as rich people seem to think. I mean our kind of poorness; of course, +not the poverty of nothing a year and ten children to educate, who ought +never to have been born. But some people think that the kind of means +(like ours) which narrow down pleasures, and check one at every turn, +and want a sharp tug to meet at the end of the year, are a dreadful +misfortune. Really I don't see it. Of course it is annoying being less +well off than any of our friends, and now I come to think of it, all the +people we know are richer than ourselves. I wonder how it happens. But +there is something rather interesting after all in combating small +means. Look at that screen I made you last year, and think of the +gnawing envy it has awakened in the hearts of friends. It was a +clothes-horse once, but genius was brought to bear upon it, and it is a +very imposing object now. And then my dear Emersons, all eleven of them, +I don't think I could have valued them so much, or have been so furious +with Jane for spilling water on one of them, if they had not emerged one +by one out of my glove and shoe money." + +"Oh, my dear, poverty does not matter, nothing matters while you are +young and strong. But it presses hard when one is growing old. Money +eases everything." + +"I feel that; and sometimes when I see you working a sovereign out of +the neck of that horrid little woollen jug in the writing-table drawer, +I simply long for money for your sake, that you may never be worried +about it any more. And sometimes I should like it for the sake of all +the lovely places in the world that other people go to (people who only +remember the _table d'hôte_ dinners when they come back), and the books +that I cannot afford, and the pictures that seem my very own, only they +belong to some one else; and the kind things one could do to poor people +who could not return them, which rich people don't seem to think of: +rich people's kindnesses are always so expensive. Yes, I long for money +sometimes, but all the time I know I don't really care about it. There +seems to be no pleasure in having anything if there is no difficulty in +getting it. I would rather marry a poor man with brains and do my best +with his small income, and help him up, than spend a rich man's money. +Any one can do that. I fear I shall never take you to the seaside, my +own G., or send you pre-paid hampers of hothouse flowers, or game, after +Mr. Di's _battues_, for I am certain Providence intends me to be a poor +man's wife, if I enter the holy estate at all, because--I should make +such a good one." + +"You would make a good wife, Di, but I sometimes think you will never +marry," said Mrs. Courtenay, sadly. She felt the heat. + +"Well, granny, I won't say I feel sure I shall never marry, because all +girls say that, and it generally means nothing. But still that is what I +feel without saying it. Do you remember poor old Aunt Belle when she was +dying, and how nothing pleased her, and how she said at last: 'I want--I +want--I don't know what I want'? Well, when I come to think of it, I +really don't know what _I_ want. I know what I _don't_ want. I don't +want a kind, indulgent husband, and a large income, and good horses, and +pretty little frilled children with their mother's eyes, that one shows +to people and is proud of. It is all very nice. I am glad when I see +other people happy like that. I should like to see you pleased; but for +myself--really--I think I should find them rather in the way. I dare say +I might make a good wife, as you say. I believe I could be rather a +cheerful companion, and affectionate if it was not exacted of me. But +somehow all that does not hit the mark. The men who have cared for me +have never seemed to like me for myself, or to understand the something +behind the chatter and the fun which is the real part of me--which, if I +married one of them, would never be brought into play, and would die of +starvation. The only kind of marriage I have ever had a chance of seems +to me like a sort of suicide--seems as if it would be one's best self +that would be killed, while the other self, the well-dressed, +society-loving, ball-going, easy-going self, would be all that was left +of me, and would dance upon my grave." + +Mrs. Courtenay was silent. She never ridiculed any thought, however +crude and young, if it were genuine. She was one of the few people who +knew whether Di was in fun or in earnest, and she knew she was in +earnest now. + +"There are such things as happy marriages," she said. + +"Yes, granny; but I think it is the _happy_ marriages I see which make +me afraid of marrying. I know it is foolish to expect to meet with +anything better than the ordinary happy marriage, and one ought to be +thankful if one met with that, for half the world does not. But when I +see what is _called_ a happy marriage I always think, is that all? +Somebody who believes everything I do is right, however silly it is, and +knows how many lumps of sugar I take in my tea--like Arnold and +Lily--people point at that marriage as such a model, because they have +been married two years and are still as silly as they were. But whenever +I stay with them, and she talks nonsense, and he thinks it is all the +wisdom of Solomon; and she gives him a blotting-pad, and he gives her a +fan; and then they look at each other, and then run races in the garden, +and each waits for the other, and they come in hand-in-hand as if they +had done something clever--whenever I behold these things it all seems +to me a sort of game that I should be ashamed to play at, and I feel, if +that is all, at least all I ought to expect, that it is a kind of +happiness I don't care to have. Must love be always a sort of pretence, +granny, and such a blind, silly, unreasoning feeling when it does exist? +If ever I fall in love, shall I set up an assortment of lamentable, +ludicrous illusions about some commonplace young man, as Lily does +about that pink Arnold? Can't love be real, like hate? Can't people ever +look at each other, and see each other as they _are_, and love each +other for _what_ they are?" + +"The Lilies and the Arnolds would not marry if they saw each other as +they are, my dear, and they would miss a great deal of happiness in +consequence. There would be very few marriages if there were no +illusions." + +Di was silent. + +Mrs. Courtenay stitched a resolution into her lace-work concerning a man +whom no one could call commonplace, and presently spoke again. + +"You are confusing 'being in love' with love itself," she said. "The one +is common to vulgarity, the other rare, at least between men and women. +It is the best thing life has to offer. But I have noticed that those +who believe in it, and hope for it, and refuse the commoner love for it, +generally--remain unmarried. And now, my dear, send down Evans with my +black lace mantilla, and my new bonnet, for Mrs. Darcy said she would +lend us her carriage for the afternoon, and it comes at five. Put on a +white gown, and make yourself look cool. I must call on Miss Fane, and +afterwards we will go down and see the pony races at Hurlingham. Lord +Hemsworth sent us tickets for to-day. He is riding, I think." + + + + +CHAPTER II. + + "The little waves make the large ones, and are of the same + pattern."--GEORGE ELIOT. + + +John was dragging himself feebly across the hall to the smoking-room, +after a dutiful cup of tea with his aunt, who was prostrate with a +headache, when the door-bell rang, and he saw the champing profiles of a +pair of horses through one of the windows. Following his masculine +instincts, he hurried across the hall with all the celerity he could +muster, and had just got safe under cover when the footman answered the +bell. His ear caught the name of Mrs. Courtenay through the open door of +the smoking-room, and presently, though he knew Miss Fane did not +consider herself well enough to see visitors, there was a slow rustling +across the hall, and up the stairs, accompanied by a light firm footfall +that could hardly belong to James, whose elephantine rush had so often +disturbed him when he was ill. + +As James came down again, John looked out of the smoking-room door. + +"Who is with Miss Fane?" + +"Mrs. Courtenay, sir." + +"Any one else?" + +"No, sir. Miss Fane could only see Mrs. Courtenay. Miss Tempest, as come +with her, is in the gold drawing-room." + +John shut the smoking-room door and went and looked out of the window. +It was not a cheerful prospect, but that did not matter much, as he +happened to be looking at it without seeing it. Lindo got up on a chair +and looked solemnly out too, rolling the whites of his eyes +occasionally at his master from under his bushy brows, and yawning long +tongue-curling yawns of sheer _ennui_. The cowls on the chimney-pots +twirled. The dead plants on the leads were still dead. The cook's canary +was going up and down on its two perches like a machine. John reflected +that it was rather a waste of canary power; but, perhaps, there was +nothing to hold back for in its bachelor existence. It would stand still +enough presently when it was stuffed. + +Could he get upstairs by himself? That was the question. He could come +down, but that was not of much interest to him just now. Could he get up +again? Only the first floor. Shallow stairs. Sit down half way. Awkward +to be found sitting there, certainly. One thing was certain: that he was +not going to be conveyed up in Marshall's solemn embrace as heretofore. +John reflected that he must begin to walk by himself some time. Why not +now? Very slowly, of course. Why not now? + +It certainly was slow. But the stairs were shallow. There were +balusters. It was done at last. If that alpine summit--the upper +mat--was finally reached on hands and knees, who was the wiser? + +John was breathless but triumphant. His hands were a trifle black; but +what of that? The door of the gold drawing-room was open. It was a +historic room, the decoration of which had been left untouched since the +days when the witty Mrs. Tempest, whom Gainsborough painted, held her +salon there. It was a long pillared room. Curtains of some old-fashioned +pale gold brocade, not made now, hung from the white pillars and +windows. The gold-coloured walls were closely lined with dim pictures +from the ceiling to the old Venetian leather of the dado. Tall, gilt +eastern figures, life size, meant to hold lamps, stood here and there, +raising their empty hands, hideous, but peculiar to the room, with its +bygone stately taste, and stiff white and gilt chairs and settees. John +drew aside the curtain, and then hesitated. A family of tall white +lilies in pots were gathered together in one of the further windows. Di +was standing by them, turned towards him, but without perceiving him. +She had evidently introduced herself to the lilies as a friend of the +family, and was touching the heads of those nearest to her very gently, +very tenderly with one finger. She stood in the full light, like some +tall splendid lily herself, against the golden background. + +John drew in his breath. It was _his_ house; they were _his_ lilies. The +empty setting which seemed to claim her for its own, to group itself so +naturally round her, was all his. There was a tremor of prophesy in the +air. His brain seemed to turn slowly round in his head. He had come +upstairs too quickly. His hand clutched the curtain. He felt momentarily +incapable of stirring or speaking. The old physical pain, which only +loosed him at intervals, tightened its thongs. But he dreaded to see her +look up and find him watching her. He went forward and held out his hand +in silence. + +Di looked up and her expression changed instantly. A lovely colour came +into her face, and her eyes shone. She advanced quickly towards him. + +"Oh, John!" she said. "Is it really you? I was afraid we should not see +you before we left town. But you ought not to stand." (John's complexion +was passing from white to ashen grey, to pale green.) "Sit down." She +held both his passive hands in hers. She would not for worlds have let +him see that she thought he was going to faint. "This is a nice chair by +the window," drawing him gently to it. "I was just admiring your lilies. +You will let me ring for a cup of tea, I know. I am so thirsty." It was +done in a moment, and she was back again beside him, only a voice now, a +voice among the lilies, which appeared and disappeared at intervals. One +tall furled lily head came and went with astonishing celerity, and the +voice spoke gently and cheerfully from time to time. It was like a +wonderful dream in a golden dusk. And then there was a little clink and +clatter, and a cup of tea suddenly appeared close to him out of the +darkness; and there was Di's voice again, and a momentary glimpse of +Di's earnest eyes, which did not match her tranquil unconcerned voice. + +He drank the tea mechanically without troubling to hold the cup, which +seemed to take the initiative with a precision and an independence of +support, which would have surprised him at any other time. The tea, what +little there was of it, was the nastiest he had ever tasted. It might +have been made in a brandy bottle. But it certainly cleared the air. +Gradually the room came back. The light came back. He came back himself. +It was all hardly credible. There was Di sitting opposite him, evidently +quite unaware that he had been momentarily overcome, and assiduously +engaged in pouring out another cup of tea. She had taken off her gloves, +and he watched her cool slender hands give herself a lump of sugar. +(Only one _small_ lump, John observed. He must remember that.) Then she +filled up the teapot from the little gurgling silver kettle. What +forethought. Wonderful! and yet all apparently so natural. She seemed to +do it as a matter of course. He ought to be helping her, but somehow he +was not. Would she take bread and butter, or one of those little round +things? She took a piece of bread and butter. Perhaps it would be as +well to listen to what she was saying. He lost the first part of the +sentence because she began to stir her tea at the moment, and he could +not attend to two things at once. But presently he heard her say-- + +"Mrs. Courtenay thinks young people ought not to mind missing tea +altogether. But I do mind; don't you? I think it is the pleasantest meal +in the day." + +John cautiously assented that it was. He felt that he must be very +careful, or a slight dizziness which was now rapidly passing off might +be noticed. + +Di went on talking unconcernedly, bending her burnished golden head in +its little white bonnet over the teacups. She seemed to take a great +interest in the tea-things, and the date of the apostle spoons. +Presently she looked at him again, and a relieved smile came into her +face. + +"Are you ready for another cup?" she said. And it was not a dream any +longer, but all quite real and true, and he was real too. + +"No, thanks," said John, taking his cup with extreme deliberation from a +table at his elbow, where he supposed he had set it down. "There is +something wrong about the tea, I think. Do send yours away and have some +more. It has a very odd taste." + +"Has it?" said Di, meeting his eye firmly, but with an effort. "I don't +notice it. On the contrary, I think it is rather good. Try another cup." + +"Perhaps the water did not boil," suggested John feebly, reflecting that +his temporary indisposition might have been the cause of his dislike, +but anxious to conceal the fact. + +"That is a direct reflection on my tea-making," said Di. "You had better +be more careful what you say." And she quickly pushed a stumpy little +liqueur-bottle behind the silver tea-caddy. + +"I beg pardon, and ask humbly for another cup," said John, smiling. The +pain had left him again, as it generally did after he had remained quiet +for a time, and in the relief from it he had a vague impression that the +present moment was too good to last. He did not know that it was usual +to wash out a cup so carefully as Di did his, but she seemed to think it +the right thing, and she probably knew. Anyhow, the second cup was +capital. John was not allowed to drink tea. The doctors who were +knitting firmly together again the slender threads that had so far bound +him to this world, believed he was imbibing an emulsion of something or +other strengthening and nauseous at that moment. + +"Oh! There is a tea-cake," said Di, discovering another dish behind the +kettle. "Why did not I see it before?" + +"It is not too late, I hope," said John, anxiously. The stupidity of +James in putting a tea-cake (which might have been preferred to bread +and butter) out of sight behind an opaque kettle, caused him profound +annoyance. + +But Di could not take a personal interest in the tea-cake. She looked +back at the lilies. + +"Don't you long to be in the country?" she said. "I find myself dreaming +about green fields and flowers gratis. I have not seen a country lane +since Easter, and then it rained all the time. It is three years since I +have found a hedge-sparrow's nest with eggs in it. Don't you long to get +away?" + +"I long to get back to Overleigh," said John. "I went there for a few +days in the spring on my return from Russia. The place was looking +lovely; but," he added, as if it were a matter of course, "naturally +Overleigh always looks beautiful to me." + +Di did not answer. + +"You know the wood below the house," he went on. "When I saw it last all +the rhododendrons were out." + +"I have never seen Overleigh," said Di, looking at the lilies again, and +trying to speak unconcernedly. She knew Lord Hemsworth's tiresome old +Border castle. She had visited at many historic houses. She and Mrs. +Courtenay were going to some shortly. But her own family place, the one +house of all others in the whole world which she would have cared +to see, she had never seen. She had often heard about it from +acquaintances, had looked wistfully at drawings of it in illustrated +magazines, had questioned Mrs. Courtenay and Archie about it, had +wandered in imagination in its long gallery, and down the lichened steps +from the postern in the wall, that every artist vignetted, to the +stone-flagged Italian gardens below. But with her bodily eyes she had +never beheld it, and the longing returned at intervals. It had returned +now. + +"Will you come and see it?" said John, looking away from her. It seemed +to him that he was playing a game in which he had staked heavily, +against some one who had staked nothing, who was not even conscious of +playing, and might inadvertently knock over the board at any moment. He +felt as if he had noiselessly pushed forward his piece, and as if +everything depended on the withdrawal of his hand from it unobserved. + +"I have wished to see Overleigh from a child," said Di, flushing a +little. "Think what you feel about it, and my father, and our +grandfather. Well--I am a Tempest too." + +John was vaguely relieved. He glanced from her to the Gainsborough in +the feathered hat that hung behind her. There was just a touch of +resemblance under the unlikeness, a look in the pose of the head, in its +curled and powdered wig that had reminded him of Di before. It reminded +him of her more than ever now. + +"Archie has been to Overleigh so constantly that I had not realized you +had never seen it," said John. "But I suppose you were not grown up in +those days; and since you grew up I have been abroad." + +"Shall you go abroad again?" + +"No. I have given up my secretaryship. I have come back to England for +good." + +"I am glad of that." + +"I have been away too long as it is." + +"Yes," said Di. "I have often thought so." + +"Why?" + +There was a pause. + +"We are not represented," said Di proudly. She was speaking to one of +her own family, and consequently she was not careful to choose her +words. She had evidently no fear of being misunderstood by John. "We +have always taken a place," she went on. "Not a particularly high one, +but one of some kind. There was Amyas Tempest the cavalier general, and +John who was with Charles of Bourbon at the sacking of Rome; and there +were judges and admirals. Not that that is much when one looks at other +families, the Cecils, for instance, but still they were always among the +men of the day. And then our great-grandfather who lies in Westminster +Abbey really was a great man. I was reading his life over again the +other day. I suppose his son only passed muster because he was his son, +and owing to his wife's ability. She amused old George IV., and made +herself a power, and pushed her husband." + +"My father never did anything," said John. + +"No. I have always heard he had brains, but that he let things go +because he was unhappy. Just the reason for holding on to them all the +tighter, I should have thought, wouldn't you?" + +"Not with some people. Some people can't do anything if there is no one +to be glad when they have done it. I partly understand the feeling." + +"I don't," said Di. "I mean, I do, but I don't understand giving in to +it, and letting a little bit of personal unhappiness, which will die +with one, prevent one's being a good useful link in a chain. One owes +that to the chain." + +"Yes," said John. "And yet I know he had a very strong feeling of +responsibility from what he said to me on his death-bed. I have often +thought about him since, and tried to piece together all the little +fragments I can remember of him; but I think there is no one I can +understand less than my own father. He seemed a hard cold man, and yet +that face is neither hard nor cold." + +John pointed to a picture behind her, and Di rose and turned to look at +it. + +It was an interesting refined face, destitute of any kind of good looks, +except those of high breeding. The eyes had a certain thoughtful +challenge in them. The lips were thin and firm. + +Both gazed in silence for a moment. + +"He looks as if he might have been one of those quiet equable people who +may be pushed into a corner," said Di, "and then become rather +dangerous. I can imagine his being a harsh man, and an unforgiving one +if life went wrong." + +"I am afraid he did become that," said John. "As he could not find room +for forgiveness, there was naturally no room for happiness either." + +"Was there some one whom he could not forgive?" asked Di, turning her +keen glance upon him. She evidently knew nothing of the feud of the last +generation. + +At this moment the rush of James the elephant-footed was heard, and he +announced that Mrs. Courtenay was getting into the carriage, and had +sent for Miss Tempest. + +"Good-bye," said Di, cordially, gathering up her gloves and parasol. "Go +to Overleigh and get strong. And--you will have so many other things to +think of--try not to forget about asking us." + +"I will remember," said John, as if he would make a point of burdening +his memory. + +He was holding aside the curtain for her to pass. + +"You see," said Di, looking back, "when we are on the move we can do +things, but once we get back to London we cannot go north again till +next year. We can't afford it." + +"I will be sure to remember," said John again. He was a little +crestfallen, and yet relieved that she should think he might forget. He +felt that he could trust his memory. + +She smiled gratefully and was gone. She had forgotten to shake hands +with him. He knew she had not been aware of the omission. She had been +thinking of something else at the moment. But it remained a grievous +fact all the same. + +He walked back absently into the drawing-room and stopped opposite the +tea-table. + +"Vinegar," he said to himself. "What can James have been about? I draw +the line at vinegar at five o'clock tea. I hope she did not see it." + +He took out the glass stopper. + +Not vinegar. No. There is but one name for that familiar, that searching +smell. + +"It's brandy," said John aloud, speaking to himself, while the past +unrolled itself like a map before his eyes. "Yes, look at it. Would you +like to smell it again? There is no need to be so surprised. You had +some of it not ten minutes ago, you poor deluded, blinded, bandaged +idiot." + + * * * * * + +"Whom do you think _I_ have seen?" said Di, as they drove away. + +Mrs. Courtenay made no attempt to guess, which was the more remarkable +because, when Miss Fane had ordered a cup of tea for Di, James had +volunteered the information that he had already taken tea to Mr. and +Miss Tempest. + +"Whom but John himself," continued Di. + +"I thought he was still invisible." + +"I am sure he ought to be. I never saw any one look so ill. We had tea +together. I really thought you were never going away at all, but I was +glad you were such a long time, because it was so pleasant seeing him +again. I like John; don't you? I have liked him from the first." + +"He is a sensible man, but I prefer people with easier manners myself." + +"He is more than sensible, I think." + +"We shall be too late for the pony races," said Mrs. Courtenay. "It is +nearly six now, and I told Lord Hemsworth we would be at the entrance at +half-past five." + +"He will survive it," said Di, archly. "And, granny, John is going to +ask us to Overleigh. I told him I had never seen it." + +"Good gracious!" exclaimed Mrs. Courtenay, and there was no doubt about +her interest this time. "You did not _suggest_ our going, did you?" + +"I am not sure I did not," said Di, unfurling her parasol. "Look, +granny, there is Mrs. Buller nodding to you, and you won't look at her. +Yes, I rather think I did. I can't remember exactly what I said, but he +promised he would not forget, and I told him we could only come when we +were on the move. I impressed that upon him." + +"Really, Di," said Mrs. Courtenay with asperity, "I wish you would +prevent your parasol catching in my bonnet, and not offer visits without +consulting me. It would have been quite time enough to have gone when he +had asked us." + +"He might not have asked us." + +Mrs. Courtenay, who had seen a good deal of John in the weeks that +preceded his accident, was perhaps of a different opinion; but she did +not express it. Neither did she mention her own previously fixed +intention of going to Overleigh somehow or other during the course of +her summer visits. + +"What is the use of near relations," continued Di, "if you can't tell +them anything of that kind? I believe John will be quite pleased to have +us now that he knows we wish to come; if only he remembers. Come, +granny, if I take you to Archelot to please you, you ought to take me to +Overleigh to please me. That's fair now, isn't it?" + +"It may be extremely inconvenient," said Mrs. Courtenay, still ruffled. +"And I had rheumatism last time I was there." + +"Think what rheumatism you always have at Archelot, which sits up to its +knees in mist every night in the middle of its moat; and yet you would +insist on going again. There is that nice Mr. Sinclair taking off his +hat. Won't you recognize him? You thought him so improved, you said, +since his elder brother's death." + +"My dear," said Mrs. Courtenay, "I am not so perpetually on the look out +for young men as you appear to be. All the same, you may put up my +parasol, for I can see nothing with the sun in my eyes." + + + + +CHAPTER III. + + "The moving Finger writes; and having writ, + Moves on: nor all your Piety nor Wit + Shall lure it back to cancel half a line, + Nor all your tears wash out a Word of it." + OMAR KHAYYÁM. + + +"What thou doest do quickly," has been advice which, in its melancholy +sarcasm, has been followed for eighteen hundred years when any special +evil has been afoot in the dark. And yet surely the words apply still +more urgently when the doing that is premeditated is good. What thou +doest do quickly, for even while we speak those to whom we feel tenderly +grow old and grey, and slip beyond the reach of human comfort. Even +while we dream of love, those whom we love are parted from us in an +early hour when we think not, without so much as a rose to take with +them, out of the garden of roses that were planted and fostered for them +alone. And even while we tardily forgive our friend, lo! the page is +turned and we see that there was no injury, as now there is no +compensation for our lack of trust. + +Colonel Tempest acted with promptitude, but though he was as expeditious +as he knew how to be, that was not saying much. His continual dread was +that others might be beforehand with him. He had at this time a dream +that recurred, or seemed to recur, over and over again--that he was +running blindly at night, and that unknown adversaries were coming +swiftly up behind him, were breathing close, and passing him in the +darkness, unseen, but felt. It haunted him in the daytime like a +reality. + +Superstition would not be superstition if it were amenable to reason. +Punishment hung over him like a sword in mid-air--it might fall at any +moment--what form of punishment it would be hard to say--something evil +to himself. If he struck down another might not the Almighty strike him +down? It seemed to him that God's hand was raised. + +"Sin no more." Wipe it out. Obliterate it. Expiate it. Quick, quick. + +He set to work in feverish haste to find out Larkin. But although he had +a certain knowledge of how to approach gentlemen of Swayne's class, he +could not at first unearth Larkin. The habitation of the wren is not +more secluded than that of some of our fellow-creatures. Colonel Tempest +went very quietly to work. He never went near the address given him; he +wrote anonymous letters repeatedly, suggesting a personal interview +which would be found greatly to Mr. Larkin's advantage. Mr. Larkin, +however, appeared to take a different view of his own advantage. It was +in vain that Colonel Tempest said he should be walking on the Thames +Embankment the following evening, and would be found at a given point at +a certain hour. No one found him there, or at any other of the places he +mentioned. He took a good deal of unnecessary exercise, or what appeared +so at the time. Still he persisted. While the quarry remained in London, +the hunter would probably remain there also. John had not gone yet. +Colonel Tempest went on every few days making appointments for meeting, +and keeping them rigorously himself. + +A fortnight passed. Larkin made no sign. + +At last Colonel Tempest heard that John was leaving town. He went to see +him, and came away heavy at heart. John was out; and the servant +informed him that Mr. Tempest was going to Overleigh the following +morning. Colonel Tempest had a presentiment that a stone would be +dropped between the points of the Great Northern. The train would come +to grief, somehow. It would all happen in a moment. There would be one +fierce thrust in the dark which he should not be able to parry. And if +John got safe to Overleigh he would be followed there. The shooting +season was coming on, and some one would load for him, and there would +be an _accident_. + +Colonel Tempest went back to his rooms in Brook Street, and stared at +the carpet. He did not know how long it was before he caught sight of a +batch of letters on the table. He looked carelessly at them; the +uppermost was from his tailor. The address of the next was written in +printed letters; he knew in an instant that it was from Larkin, without +the further confirmation of the heavy seal with its shilling impression. +His hands shook so much that he opened it with difficulty. The sheet +contained a somewhat guarded communication also written in laboriously +printed capitals. + + "_Yours of the 14th to hand. All right. Place and time you + say._ + + "_L._" + +The writer had been so very desirous to avoid publicity that he had even +taken the trouble to tear off the left inner side of the envelope on +which the maker's name is printed. + +That significant precaution gave Colonel Tempest a sickening qualm. It +suggested networks of other precautions in the background, snares which +he might not perceive till too late, subtleties for which he was no +match. He began to feel that it was physically impossible for him to +meet this man; that he must get out of the interview at any cost. The +maddening sense of being lured into a trap came upon him, and he flung +in the opposite direction. + +But the facts came and looked him in the face. He seldom allowed them to +do so, but they did it now in spite of him. Eyes that have been once +avoided are ever after difficult to meet. Nevertheless, he had to meet +them--the cold inexorable eyes of facts come up to the surface of his +mind to have justice done them, grimy but redoubtable, like miners on +strike. Cost what it might, he saw that he must capitulate; that he must +take this, his one--his last chance, or--hateful alternative--take +instead the consequences of neglecting it. + +He went over the old well-worn ground once again. Detection was +impossible. That nightmare of a murder, and of a voice that cried aloud, +while all the world stood still to hear: "_Thou art the man_:" was only +a nightmare after all. And this was the best way, the only way to get +rid of it. + +He tried to recall the time and place of meeting, but it was gone from +him. There had been so many. No, he had scrawled it down on the fly-leaf +of his pocket-book. Six o'clock. It was nearly five now. He had had the +money in readiness for the last fortnight. He had drawn one thousand of +the ten which John had placed to his credit. He got out the ten crisp +hundred pound notes, and put them carefully into his breast pocket. Then +he sat down and waited. When the half-hour chimed he went out. + + * * * * * + +There is a straight and quiet path behind Kensington Palace which the +lovers and nursery-maids of Kensington Gardens frequent but little. A +line of low-growing knotted trees separates it from the Broad Walk at a +little distance. A hedge and fence on the other side divides the Gardens +from a strip of meadow not yet covered by buildings. + +The public esteem this particular walk but lightly. Invalids in +bath-chairs toil down it sometimes; nurses with grown-up children, who +are children still, go there occasionally, where the uncouth gambols and +vacant bearded laugh of forty-five will not attract attention. + +But as a rule it is deserted. + +Colonel Tempest had it almost to himself for the first ten minutes, +except for a covey of little boys who fought and clambered and jumped on +some stacked timber at one end. He had not chosen the place without +forethought. It would be presumed that he would have a large sum of +money with him, and he had taken care on each occasion to select a +rendezvous where foul play would not be possible. He was within reach of +numbers of persons merely by raising his voice. + +An old man on the arm of a young one passed him slowly, absorbed in +earnest conversation. A girl in mourning sat down on one of the benches. +There was privacy enough for business, and not too much for safety. + +Colonel Tempest paced up and down, giving each face that passed a +furtive glance. He did not know what to expect. + +The three quarters struck. The girl got up and turned away. A stout, +shabby-looking man, whose approach Colonel Tempest had not noticed, was +sitting on one of the benches under a gnarled yew, staring vacantly in +front of him. The old man and the young one were coming down the walk +again. A check suit with six depressed, amber-eyed dachshunds in a leash +passed among the trees. + +A few more turns. + +The clock began to strike six. + +Colonel Tempest's pulse quickened. As he turned once more at the end of +the walk, he could see that the hunched-up figure, with the hat over the +eyes, was still sitting under the yew at the further end. He walked +slowly towards it. How should they recognize each other? Who would speak +first? + +A quietly-dressed man, walking rapidly in the opposite direction, +touched his hat respectfully as he passed him. Colonel Tempest +recognized John's valet, and slackened his pace, for he was approaching +the bench under the yew tree, and he did not care to be addressed while +any one was within earshot. He was opposite it now, and he looked hard +at the occupant. The latter stared vacantly, if not sleepily, back at +him, and made no sign. + +"He is shamming," said Colonel Tempest to himself. "Or else he is not +sure of me." And he took yet another turn. + +The man had moved a little when he came towards him again. He was +leaning back in the corner of the bench, with his head on his chest, and +his legs stretched out. An elderly lady, with curls, and an umbrella +clutched like a defensive weapon, was passing him with evident distrust, +calling to her side a fleecy little toy dog, which seemed to have left +its stand and wheels at home, and to be rather at a loss without them. +Colonel Tempest looked hard a second time at the figure on the bench, +when he came opposite him, and then stopped short. + +The man was sleeping the sleep of the just, or, to speak more correctly, +of the just inebriated. His under lip was thrust out. He breathed +stertorously. If it was a sham, it was very well done. + +Colonel Tempest stood a moment in perplexity, looking fixedly at him. +Should he wake him? Was he, perhaps, waiting to be waked? Was he really +asleep? He half put out his hand. + +"I think, sir," said a respectful voice behind him, "begging your +pardon, sir, the party is very intoxicated. Sometimes if woke sudden +they're vicious." + +Colonel Tempest wheeled round. + +It was Marshall, John's valet, who had spoken to him, and who was now +regarding the slumbering rough with the resigned melancholy of an +undertaker. + +The quarter struck. + +"Sorry to have kept you waiting, sir," said Marshall, after a pause, in +which Colonel Tempest wondered why he did not go. + +And then, at last, Colonel Tempest understood. + +He put his hand feebly to his head. + +"Oh, my God!" he said below his breath, and was silent. + +Marshall cleared his throat. + +There are situations in which, as Johnson has observed respecting the +routine of married life, little can be said, but much must be done. + +The slumbering backslider slid a little further back in his seat, and +gurgled something very low down about "jolly good fellows," until, his +voice suddenly going upstairs in the middle, he added in a high quaver, +"daylight does appear." + +The musical outburst recalled Colonel Tempest somewhat to himself. He +turned his eyes carefully away from Marshall, after that first long look +of mutual understanding. + +The man's apparent respectability, his smooth shaved face and quiet +dress, from his well-brushed hat and black silk cravat to the dark +dog-skin glove that held his irreproachable umbrella, set Colonel +Tempest's teeth on edge. + +He had not known what to expect, but--_this_! + +In a flash of memory he recalled the several occasions on which he had +seen Marshall in attendance on John, his attentive manner, and noiseless +tread. Once before John could move he had seen Marshall lift him +carefully into a more upright position. The remembrance of that helpless +figure in Marshall's arms came back to him with a shudder that could not +be repressed. Marshall, whose expressionless face had undergone no +change whatever, cleared his throat again and looked at his watch. + +"Begging your pardon, sir," he said, "it's nearly half-past six, and +Mr. Tempest dines early to-night." + +"Did you receive my other letters?" said Colonel Tempest, pulling +himself together, and beginning to walk slowly down the path. + +"Yes, sir. I'm sorry to have put you to the inconvenience of going to so +many places, 'specially as I saw for myself how regular you turned up at +'em. But I wanted to make sure you were in earnest before I showed. My +character is my livelihood, sir. There was a time when I was in trouble +and got into Mr. Johnson's hands, but before that I'd been in service in +'igh families, very 'igh, sir. Mr. Tempest took me on the recommendation +of the Earl of Carmian. I was with him two year." + +"Mr. Johnson," said Colonel Tempest, stopping short, and turning a shade +whiter than he had been before. "By ---- I don't know anything about a +Mr. Johnson. What do you mean?" + +The two men eyed each other as if each suspected treachery. + +"Did you write this?" said Marshall, producing Colonel Tempest's last +letter. + +"Yes." + +"Then it's all right," said Marshall, who had forgotten the _sir_. "He +had a sight of names. Johnson he was when he found I'd took up +your--your bet. But I wrote to him, I remember, at one place as +Crosbie." + +Colonel Tempest recalled the curate's mention of Swayne under the name +of Crosbie. + +"Swayne, or Crosbie, or Johnson, it's all one," he said hastily. "I want +a certain bit of paper you have in your possession, and I have ten Bank +of England notes, of a hundred each, in my pocket now to give you in +exchange. I suppose we understand each other. Have you got it on you?" + +"Yes." + +"Produce it." + +"Show up the notes, too, then." + +Unnoticed by either, the manner of both, as between gentleman and +servant, had merged into that of perfect equality. Love is not the only +leveller of disparities of rank and position. + +They were walking together side by side. There was not a soul in sight. +Each cautiously showed what he had brought. The dirty half-sheet of +common note-paper, with Colonel Tempest's signature, seemed hardly worth +the crisp notes, each one of which Colonel Tempest turned slowly over. + +"Ten," said Marshall. "All right." + +"Stop," said Colonel Tempest, hoarsely, the date on the ragged sheet he +had just seen suggesting a new idea. "You're too young. You're not five +and thirty. By ---- it's nearly sixteen years ago. You weren't in it. +You couldn't have been in it. How did you come by that? Whom did you +have it from?" + +"From one who'll tell no tales," returned Marshall. "He was sick of it. +He had tried twice, and he was near his end, and I took it off him just +before he died." + +"Did he die?" said Colonel Tempest. "I am not so sure of that." + +"I am," said the man; "or I'd never have had nothing to do with the +business." + +"How long have you been with Mr. Tempest?" + +"A matter of three months. He engaged me when he came back from Russia +in the spring." + +"You will leave at once. That, of course, is understood." + +"Yes. I will give warning to-night if----" and the man glanced at the +packet in Colonel Tempest's hand. + +Without another word they exchanged papers. Colonel Tempest did not tear +the document that had cost him so much into a thousand pieces. He looked +at it, recognized that it was genuine, put it in his pocket, and +buttoned his coat over it. Then he got out a note-book and pencil. + +"And now," he said, "the others. How am I to get at them?" + +The man stared. "The others?" he repeated. "What others?" + +"You were one," said Colonel Tempest. "Now about the rest. I mean to pay +them all off. There were ten in it. Where are the nine?" + +Marshall stood stock still, as if he were realizing something +unperceived till now. Then he shook his fist. + +"That Johnson lied to me. I might have known. He took me in from first +to last. I never thought but that I was the--_the only one_. And all +I've spent, and the work I've been put to, when I might just as well +have let one of them others risk it. He never acted square. Damn him." + +Colonel Tempest looked at him horror-struck. The man's anger was +genuine. + +"Do you mean to say you don't _know_?" he said, in a harsh whisper, all +that was left of his voice. "Swayne, Johnson said you did. On his +death-bed he said so." + +"Know," retorted the man, his expressionless face having some meaning in +it at last. "Do you suppose if I'd _known_, I'd have---- But that's been +the line he has gone on from the first, you may depend upon it. He's let +each one think he was alone at the job to bring it round quicker; a +double-tongued, double-dealing devil. Each of them others is working for +himself now, single-handed. I wonder they haven't brought it off before. +Why _that fire_! We was both nearly done for that night. I slept just +above 'im, and it was precious near. If he had not run up hisself and +woke me--that fire----" + +Marshall stopped short. His mouth fell ajar. His mind was gradually +putting two and two together. There was no horror in his face, only a +malignant sense of having been duped. + +"By----," he said fiercely. "I see it all." + +A cold hand seemed to be laid on Colonel Tempest's heart, to press +closer and closer. The sweat burst from his brow. Swayne had been an +economizer of truth to the last. He had deliberately lied even on his +death-bed, in order to thrust away the distasteful subject to which +Colonel Tempest had so pertinaciously nailed him. The two men stood +staring at each other. A governess and three little girls, evidently out +for a stroll after tea, were coming towards them. The sight of the four +advancing figures seemed to shake the two men back in a moment, with a +gasp, to their former relations. + +Marshall drew himself up, and touched his hat. + +"I ought to be going, sir," he said, almost in his usual ordered tones. +"Mr. Tempest dines early to-night." + +Colonel Tempest nodded. He had forgotten for the moment how to speak. + +"And it's all right, sir, about--about me," rather anxiously. + +Colonel Tempest perceived that Marshall had not realized the possible +hold he might obtain over him by the mere fact of his knowledge of this +last revelation. He had been obtuse before. He was obtuse now. + +"As long as you are silent and leave at once," said Colonel Tempest, +commanding his tongue to articulate, "I will be silent too. Not a moment +longer." + +Marshall touched his hat again, and went. + +Colonel Tempest walked unsteadily to a bench under a twisted yew, a +little way from the path, and sat down heavily upon it. + +How cold it was, how bitterly cold! He shivered, and drew his hand +across his damp forehead. The tinkling of voices reached him at +intervals. Foolish birds were making choruses of small jokes in the +branches above his head. Some one laughed at a little distance. + +He alone was wretched beyond endurance. Perhaps he did not know what +endurance meant. Panic shook him like a leaf. + +And there was no refuge. He did not know how to live. Dared he die? die, +and struggle up the other side only to find an angry judge waiting on +the brink to strike him down to hell even while he put up supplicating +hands? But his hands were red with John's blood, so that even his +prayers convicted him of sin--were turned into sin. + +A feeling as near despair as his nature could approach to overwhelmed +him. + +One of the most fatal results of evil is that in the same measure that +it exists in ourselves, we imply it in others, and not less in God +Himself. Poor Colonel Tempest saw in his Creator only an omniscient +detective, an avenger, an executioner who had mocked at his endeavours +to propitiate Him, to escape out of His hand, who held him as in a +pillory, and would presently break him upon the wheel. + +Superstition has its uses, but, like most imitations, it does not wear +well--not much better, perhaps, than the brown paper boots in which the +English soldier goes forth to war. + +A cheap faith is an expensive experience. I believe Colonel Tempest +suffered horribly as he sat alone under that yew tree; underwent all +the throes which self-centred people do undergo, who, in saving their +life, see it slipping through their fingers; who in clutching at their +own interest and pleasure, find themselves sliding into a gulf; who in +sacrificing the happiness and welfare of those that love them to their +whim, their caprice, their shifting temper of the moment, find +themselves at last--alone--unloved. + +Are there many sorrows like this sorrow? There is perhaps only one +worse--namely, to realize what onlookers have seen from the first, what +has brought it about. This is hard. But Colonel Tempest was spared this +pain. Those for whom others can feel least compassion are, as a rule, +fortunately able to bestow most upon themselves. Colonel Tempest +belonged to the self-pitying class, and with him to suffer was to begin +at once to be sorry for himself. The tears ran slowly down his cheeks +and his lip quivered. Perhaps there is nothing quite so heartbreaking as +the tears of middle-age for itself. + +He saw himself sitting there, so lonely, so miserable, without a +creature in the world to turn to for comfort; entrapped into evil as all +are at times, for he was but human, he had never set up to be better +than his fellows; but to have striven so hard against evil--to have +tried, as not many would have done, to repair what had been wrong (and +the greatest wrong had not been with him) and yet to have been repulsed +by God Himself! Everybody had turned against him. And now God had turned +against him too. His last hope was gone. He should never find those +other men, never buy back those other bets. John would be killed sooner +or later, and he himself would _suffer_. + +That was the refrain, the key-note to which he always returned. _He +should suffer._ + +Natures like Colonel Tempest's go through the same paroxysms of blind +despairing grief as do those of children. They see only the present. The +maturer mind is sustained in its deeper anguish by the power of looking +beyond its pain. It has bought, perhaps dear, the chill experience that +all things pass, that sorrow endures but for a night, even as the joy +that comes in the morning endures but for a morning. But as a child +weeps and is disconsolate, and dries its eyes and forgets, so Colonel +Tempest would presently forget again--for a time. + +Indeed, he soon took the best means within his reach of doing so. He +felt that he was too wretched to remain in England. It was therefore +imperative that he should go abroad. Persons of his temperament have a +delightful confidence in the benign influences of the Continent. He +wrote to John, returning him £8,500 of the £10,000, saying that the +object for which it had been given had become so altered as to prevent +the application of the money. He did not mention that he had found a use +for one thousand, and that pressing personal expenses had obliged him to +retain another five hundred, but he was vaguely conscious of doing an +honourable action in returning the remainder. + +John wrote back at once, saying that he had given him the money, and +that as his uncle did not wish to keep it, he should invest it in his +name, and settle it on his daughter, while the interest at four per +cent. would be paid to Colonel Tempest during his lifetime. + +"Well," said Colonel Tempest to himself, after reading this letter, +"beggars can't be choosers, but if _I_ had been in John's place I _hope_ +I should not have shown such a grudging spirit. Eight thousand five +hundred! Out of all his wealth he might have made it ten thousand for +my poor penniless girl. No wonder he does not wish her to know about +it." + +And having a little ready money about him, Colonel Tempest took his +penniless girl, much to her surprise, a lapis-lazuli necklace when he +went to say good-bye to her. + +On the last evening before he left England he got out the paper Marshall +had given him, and having locked the door, spread it on the table before +him. He had done this secretly many times a day since he had obtained +possession of it. + +There it was, unmistakable in black and grime that had once been white. +The one thing of all others in this world that Colonel Tempest loathed +was to be obliged to face anything. Like Peer Gynt, he went round, or if +like Balaam he came to a narrow place where there was no turning room, +he struck furiously at the nearest sentient body. But a widower has no +beast of burden at hand to strike, and there was no power of going +round, no power of backing either, from before that sheet of crumpled +paper. When he first looked at it he had a kind of recollection that was +no recollection of having seen it before. + +The words were as distinct as a death-warrant. Perhaps they were one. +Colonel Tempest read them over once again. + +"I, Edward Tempest, lay one thousand pounds to one sovereign that I do +never inherit the property of Overleigh in Yorkshire." + +There was his own undeniable scrawling signature beneath Swayne's +crab-like characters. There below his own was the signature of that +obscure speculator, since dead, who had taken up the bet. + +If anything is forced upon the notice, which yet it is distasteful to +contemplate, the only remedy for avoiding present discomfort is to +close the eyes. + +Colonel Tempest struck a match, lit the paper, and dropped it into the +black July grate. It would not burn at first, but after a moment it +flared up and turned over. He watched it writhe under the little +chuckling flame. The word Overleigh came out distinctly for a second, +and then the flame went out, leaving a charred curled nothing behind. +One solitary spark flew swiftly up like a little soul released from an +evil body. Colonel Tempest rubbed the ashes with his foot, and once +again--closed his eyes. + + + + +CHAPTER IV. + + "I give thee sixpence! I will see thee d----d first." + CANNING. + + +Some one rejoiced exceedingly when, in those burning August days, John +came back to Overleigh. Mitty loved him. She was the only woman who as +yet had shown him any love at all, and his nature was not an unthankful +one. Mitty was bound up with all the little meagre happiness of his +childhood. She had given him his only glimpse of woman's tenderness. +There had never been a time when he had not read aloud to Mitty during +the holidays--when he had forgotten to write to her periodically from +school. When she had been discharged with the other servants at his +father's death, he had gone in person to one of his guardians to request +that she might remain, and had offered half his pocket-money annually +for that purpose, and a sum down in the shape of a collection of foreign +coins in a sock. Perhaps his guardian had a little boy of his own in +Eton jackets who collected coins. At any rate, something was arranged. +Mitty remained in the long low nurseries in the attic gallery. She was +waiting for him on the steps on that sultry August evening when he +returned. John saw her white cap twinkling under the stone archway as he +drove along the straight wide drive between the double rows of beeches +which approached the castle by the northern side. + +Some houses have the soothing influence of the presence of a friend. +Once established in the cool familiar rooms and strong air of his +native home, he regained his health by a succession of strides, which +contrasted curiously with the stumbling ups and downs and constant +relapses which in the earlier part of his recovery had puzzled his +doctors. + +For the first few days just to live was enough. John had no desire +beyond sitting in the shadow of the castle with Mitty, and feeling the +fresh heather-scented air from the moors upon his face and hands. Then +came the day when he went on Mr. Goodwin's arm down the grey lichened +steps to the Italian garden, and took one turn among the stone-edged +beds, under the high south wall. Gradually as the languor of weakness +passed he wandered further and further into the woods, and lay for hours +under the trees among the ling and fern. The irritation of weakness had +left him, the enforced inaction of slowly returning strength had not +yet begun to chafe. His mind urged nothing on him, required no +decisions of him, but, like a dear companion instead of a taskmaster, +rested and let him rest. He watched for hours the sunlight on the +bracken, listened for hours to the tiny dissensions and confabulations +of little creatures that crept in and out. + +There had been days and nights in London when the lamp of life had +burned exceeding low, when he had never thought to lie in his own dear +woods again, to see the squirrel swinging and chiding against the sky, +to hear the cry of the water-hen to its mate from the reeded pools +below. He had loved these things always, but to see them again after +toiling up from the gates of death is to find them transfigured. "The +light that never was on sea or land" gleams for a moment on wood and +wold for eyes that have looked but now into the darkness of the grave. +Almost it seems in such hours as if God had passed by that way, as if +the forest had knowledge of Him, as if the awed pines kept Him ever in +remembrance. Almost. Almost. + + * * * * * + +Di was never absent from John's thoughts for long together. His dawning +love for her had as yet no pain in it. It wandered still in glades of +hyacinth and asphodel. Truly-- + + "Love is bonny, a little while, while it is new." + +Its feet had not yet reached the stony desert places and the lands of +fierce heat and fiercer frost, through which all human love which does +not die in infancy must one day travel. The strain and stress were not +yet. + + * * * * * + +John was coming back one evening from a longer expedition than usual. +The violet dusk had gathered over the gardens. The massive flank and +towers of the castle were hardly visible against the sky. As he came +near he saw a light in the arched windows of the chapel, and through the +open lattice came the sound of the organ. Some one was playing within, +and the night listened from without; John stood and listened too. The +organ, so long dumb, was speaking in an audible voice--was telling of +many things that had lain long in its heart, and that now at last +trembled into speech. Some unknown touch was bringing all its pure +passionate soul to its lips. Its voice rose and fell, and the listening +night sighed in the ivy. + +John went noiselessly indoors by the postern, and up the short spiral +staircase in the thickness of the wall, into the chapel, an arched +Elizabethan chamber leading out of the dining-hall. He stopped short in +the doorway. + +The light of a solitary candle at the further end gave shadows to the +darkness. As by an artistic instinct, it just touched the nearest of the +pipes, and passing entirely over the prosaic footman, blowing in his +shirt-sleeves, lit up every feature of the fair exquisite face of the +player. Beauty remains beauty, when all has been said and done to +detract from it. Archie was very good to look upon. Even the footman, +who had been ruthlessly torn away from his supper to blow, thought so. +John thought so as he stood and looked at his cousin, who nodded to him, +and went on playing. The contrast between the two was rather a cruel +one, though John was unconscious of it. It was Archie who mentally made +the comparison whenever they were together. Ugliness would be no +disadvantage, and beauty would have no power, if they did not appear to +be the outward and visible signs of the inner and spiritual man. + +Archie was so fair-haired, he had such a perfect profile, such a clear +complexion, and such tender faithful eyes, that it was impossible to +believe that the virtues which clear complexions and lovely eyes so +plainly represent were not all packed with sardine-like regularity in +his heart. His very hair looked good. It was parted so beautifully, and +it had a little innocent wave on the temple which carried conviction +with it--to the young of the opposite sex. It was not because he was so +handsome that he was the object of a tender solicitude in many young +girls' hearts--at least, so they told themselves repeatedly--but because +there was so much good in him, because he was so misunderstood by +elders, so interesting, so unlike other young men. In short, Archie was +his father over again. + +Nature had been hard on John. Some ugly men look well, and their +ugliness does not matter. John's was not of that type dear to fiction. +His features were irregular and rough, his deep-set eyes did not redeem +the rest of his face. Nothing did. A certain gleam of nobility shining +dimly through its harsh setting would make him better-looking later in +life, when expression gets the mastery over features. But it was not so +yet. John looked hard and cold and forbidding, and though his face awoke +a certain interest by its very force, the interest itself was without +attraction. It must be inferred that John had hair, as he was not bald, +but no one had ever noticed it except his hair-cutter. It was short and +dark. In fact, it was hair, and that was all. Mitty was the only other +person who had any of it, in a lozenge-box; but who shall say in what +lockets and jewel-cases one of Archie's flaxen rings might not be +treasured? Archie was a collector of hair himself, and there is a +give-and-take in these things. He had a cigar-box full of locks of +different colours, which were occasionally spread out before his more +intimate friends, with little anecdotes respecting the acquisition of +each. A vain man has no reticence except on the subject of his rebuffs. +Bets were freely exchanged on the respective chances of the donors of +these samples of devotion, and their probable identity commented on. +"Three to one on the black." "Ten to one on the dyed amber." "Forty to +one on the lank and sandy, it's an heiress." + +Archie would listen in silence, and smile his small saintly smile. +Archie's smile suggested anthems and summer dawns and blanc-mange all +blent in one. And then he would gather up the landmarks of his +affections, and put them back into the cigar-box. They were called +"Tempest's scalps" in the regiment. + +Archie had sat for "Sir Galahad" to one of the principal painters of +the day. He might have sat for something very spiritual and elevating +now. What historic heroes and saints have played the organ? He would +have done beautifully for any one of them, or Dicksee might have worked +him up into a pendant to his "Harmony," with an angel blowing instead of +the footman. + +And just at the critical moment when the organ was arriving at a final +confession, and swelling towards a dominant seventh, the footman let the +wind out of her. There was a discord, and a wheeze, and a death-rattle. +Archie took off his hands with a shudder, and smiled a microscopic smile +at the perspiring footman. Archie never, never, never swore; not even +when he was alone, and when he cut himself shaving. He differed from his +father in that. He smiled instead. Sometimes, if things went very +wrong, the smile became a grin, but that was all. + +"That will do, thank you!" he said, rising. "Well, John, how are you? +Better? I did not wait dinner for you. I was too hungry, but I told them +to keep the soup and things hot till you came in." + +They had gone through the open double doors into the dining-hall. At the +further end a table was laid for one. + +"When did you arrive?" asked John. + +"By the seven-ten. I walked up and found you were missing. It is +distressing to see a man eat when one is not hungry one's self," +continued Archie plaintively as the servant brought in the "hot things" +which he had been recently devastating. "No, thanks, I won't sit +opposite you and watch you satisfying your country appetite. You don't +mind my smoking in here, I suppose? No womankind to grumble as yet." + +He lit his pipe, and began wandering slowly about the room, which was +lit with candles in silver sconces at intervals along the panelled +walls. + +John wondered how much money he wanted, and ate his cutlets in silence. +He had as few illusions about his fellow-creatures as the steward of a +Channel steamer, and it did not occur to him that Archie could have any +reason but one for coming to Overleigh out of the shooting season. + +Archie was evidently pensive. + +"It is a large sum," said John to himself. + +Presently he stopped short before the fireplace, and contemplated the +little silver figures standing in the niches of the highcarved +mantelshelf. They had always stood there in John's childhood, and when +he had come back from Russia in the spring he had looked for them in the +plate-room, and had put them back himself: the quaint-frilled courtier +beside the quaint-ruffed lady, and the little Cavalier in long boots +beside the Abbess. The dresses were of Charles I.'s date, and there was +a family legend to the effect that that victim of a progressive age had +given them to his devoted adherent Amyas Tempest the night before his +execution. It was extremely improbable that he had done anything of the +kind, but, at any rate, there they were, each in his little niche. +Archie lifted one down and examined it curiously. + +"Never saw that before," he said, keeping his teeth on the pipe, which +desecrated his profile. + +"Everything was put away when I was not regularly living here," said +John. "I dug out all the old things when I came home in the spring, and +Mitty and I put them all back in their places." + +"Barford had a sale the other day," continued Archie, speaking through +his teeth. "He was let in for a lot of money by his training stables, +and directly the old chap died he sold the library and half the +pictures, and a lot of stuff out of the house. I went to see them at +Christie's, and a very mouldy-looking assortment they were; but they +fetched a pile of money. Barford and I looked in when the sale of the +books was on, and you should have seen the roomful of Jews and the way +they bid. One book, a regular old fossil, went for three hundred while +we were there; it would have killed old Barford on the spot if he had +been there, so it was just as well he was dead already. And there were +two silver figures something like these, but not perfect. Barford said +he had no use for them, and they fetched a hundred apiece. He says +there's no place like home for raising a little money. Why, John, +Gunningham can't hold a candle to Overleigh. There must be a mint of +money in an old barrack stuffed full of gimcracks like this." + +"Yes, but they belong to the house." + +"Do they? Well, if I were in your place I should say they belonged to +the owner. What is the use of having anything if you can't do what you +like with it? If ever I wanted a hundred or two I would trot out one of +those little silver Johnnies in no time if they were mine." + +John did not answer. He was wondering what would have happened to the +dear old stately place if he had died a month ago, and it had fallen +into the hands of those two spendthrifts, Archie and his father. He +could see them in possession whittling it away to nothing, throwing its +substance from them with both hands. Easy-going, self-indulgent, weakly +violent, unstable as water, he saw them both in one lightning-flash of +prophetic imagination drinking in that very room, at that very table. +The physical pain of certain thoughts is almost unbearable. He rose +suddenly and went across to the deep bay window, on the stone sill of +which Amyas Tempest and Tom Fairfax, his friend, who together had held +Overleigh against the Roundheads, had cut their names. He looked out +into the latticed darkness, and longed fiercely, passionately for a son. + +Archie's light laugh recalled him to himself with a sense of shame. It +is irritating to be goaded into violent emotion by one who is feeling +nothing. + +"A penny for your thoughts," said Sir Galahad. + +There was something commonplace about the young warrior's manner of +expressing himself in daily life which accorded ill with the refined +beauty of his face. + +"They would be dear at the price," said John, still looking out. + +"Care killed a cat," said Archie. + +He had a stock of small sayings of that calibre. Sometimes they fitted +the occasion, and sometimes not. + +There was a short silence. + +"Quicksilver is lame," said Archie. + +"What have you been doing with her?" asked John, facing round. + +"Nothing in particular. I rode her in the Pierpoint steeplechase last +week, and she came down at the last fence, and lost me fifty pounds. I +came in third, but I should have been first to a dead certainty if she +had stood up." + +"Send her down here at once." + +"Yes, and thanks awfully and all that sort of thing for lending her, +don't you know. Very good of you, though of course you could not use her +yourself when you were laid up. I am going back to town first thing +to-morrow morning; only got a day's leave to run down here; thought I +ought to tell you about her. I'll send her off the day after to-morrow +if you like, but the truth is----" + +A good deal of circumlocution, that favourite attire of certain truths, +was necessary before the simple fact could be arrived at that +Quicksilver had been used as security for the modest sum of four hundred +and forty-five pounds, which it had been absolutely incumbent on Archie +to raise at a moment's notice. Heaven only knew what would not have been +involved if he had not had reluctant recourse to this obvious means of +averting dishonour. When Colonel Tempest and Archie began to talk about +their honour, which was invariably mixed up with debts of a dubious +nature, and an overdrawn banking account, and an unpaid tailor, John +always froze perceptibly. The Tempest honour was always having narrow +escapes, according to them. It required constant support. + +"I would not have done it if I could have helped it," explained Archie +in an easy attitude on the window-seat. "Your mare, not mine. I knew +that well enough. I felt that at the time; but I had to get the money +somehow, and positively the poor old gee was the only security I had to +give." + +Archie was not in the least ashamed. It was always John who was ashamed +on these occasions. + +There was a long silence. Archie contemplated his nails. + +"It's not the money I mind," said John at last, "you know that." + +"I know it isn't, old chap. It's my morals you're afraid of; you said so +in the spring." + +"Well, I'm not going to hold forth on morals again, as it seems to have +been of so little use. But look here, Archie, I've paid up a good many +times, and I'm getting tired of it. I would rather build an infants' +school or a home for cats, or something with a pretence of common sense, +with the money in future. It does you no manner of good. You only chuck +it away. You are the worse for having it, and so am I for being such a +fool as to give it you. It's nonsense telling you suddenly that I won't +go on paying when I've led you to expect I always shall because I always +have. Of course you think, as I'm well off, that you can draw on me for +ever and ever. Well, I'll pay up again this once. You promised me in +April it should be the last time you would run up bills. Now it is my +turn to say this is the last time I'll throw money away in paying +them." + +Archie raised his eyebrows. How very "close-fisted" John was becoming! +And as a boy at school, and afterwards at college, he had been +remarkably open-handed, even as a minor on a very moderate allowance. +Archie did not understand it. + +"I'll buy back my own horse," continued John, trying to swallow down a +sense of intense irritation; "and if there is anything else--I suppose +there is a new crop by this time--I'll settle them. You must start fair. +And I'll go on allowing you three hundred a year, and when you want to +marry I'll make a settlement on your wife, but, by ---- I'll never pay +another sixpence for your debts as long as I live." + +Archie smiled faintly, and stretched out his legs. John rarely "cut up +rough" like this. He had an uneasy suspicion that the present promptly +afforded assistance would hardly compensate for the opening vista of +discomfort in the future. And John's tone jarred upon him. There was +something fixed in it, and Archie's nebulous easy-going temperament had +an invincible repugnance to anything unpliable. He had as little power +to move John as a mist has to move a mountain. He had proved on many +occasions how little amenable John was to persuasion, and each recurring +occasion had filled him with momentary apprehension. He felt distinctly +uncomfortable after the two had parted for the night, until a train of +reasoning, the logic of which could not be questioned, soothed him into +his usual trustful calm. + +John, he said to himself, had been out of temper. He had eaten something +that had disagreed with him. That was why he had flown out. How +frightfully cross he himself was when he had indigestion! And he, +Archie, would never have grudged John a few pounds now and again if +their positions had been reversed. Therefore, it was not likely John +would either. And John had always been fond of him. He had nursed him +once at college through a tedious illness, unadorned on his side by +Christian patience and fortitude. Of course John was fond of him. +Everybody was fond of him. It had been an unlucky business about +Quicksilver. No wonder John had been annoyed. He would have been annoyed +himself in his place. But (oh, all-embracing phrase!) _it would be all +right_. He was eased of money difficulties for the moment, and John was +not such a bad fellow after all. He would not really "turn against" him. +He would be sure to come round in the future, as he had always done with +clock-like regularity in the past. + +Archie slept the sleep of the just, and went off in the best of spirits +and the most expensive of light overcoats next morning with a cheque in +his pocket. + +John went back into the dining-hall after his departure to finish his +breakfast, but apparently he was not hungry, for he forgot all about it. +He went and stood in the bay window, as he had a habit of doing when in +thought, and looked out. He did not see the purple pageant of the +thunderstorm sweeping up across the moor and valley and already +vibrating among the crests of the trees in the vivid sunshine below the +castle wall. He was thinking intently of those two men, his next-of-kin. + +Supposing he did not marry. Supposing he died childless. Overleigh and +the other vast Tempest properties were entailed, in default of himself +and his children, on Colonel Tempest and his children. Colonel Tempest +and Archie came next behind him; one slip, and they would be in +possession. + +And John had almost slipped several times, had several times touched +that narrow brink where two worlds meet. He had no fear of death, but +nevertheless Death had assumed larger proportions in his mind and in his +calculations than is usual with the young and the strong, simply because +he had seen him very near more than once, and had ceased to ignore his +reality. He might die. What then? + +John had an attachment which had the intensity of a passion and the +unreasoning faithfulness of an instinct for certain carved and pictured +rooms and lichened walls and forests and valleys and moors. He loved +Overleigh. His affections had been "planted under a north wall," and +like some hardy tenacious ivy they clung to that wall. Overleigh meant +much to him, had always meant much, more than was in the least +consistent with the rather advanced tenets which he, in common with +most young men of ability, had held at various times. Theories have +fortunately little to do with the affections. + +He could not bear to think of Overleigh passing out of his protecting +love to the careless hands and selfish heedlessness of Colonel Tempest +and Archie. There are persons for whom no income will suffice. John's +nearest relations were of this time-honoured stamp. As has been well +said, "In the midst of life they are in debt." + +John saw Archie in imagination "trotting out the silver Johnnies." The +miniatures, the pictures, the cameos, the old Tempest manuscripts, for +which America made periodic bids, the older plate--all, all would go, +would melt away from niche and wall and cabinet. Perhaps the books would +go first of all; the library to which he in his turn was even now +adding, as those who had gone before him had done. + +How they had loved the place, those who had gone before! How they must +have fought for it in the early days of ravages by Borderer and Scot! +How Amyas the Cavalier must have sworn to avenge those Roundhead +cannon-balls which crashed into his oak staircase, and had remained +imbedded in the stubborn wood to this day! Had any one of them loved it, +John wondered, with a greater love than his? + +He turned from the blaze outside, and looked back into the great +shadowed room, in the recesses of which a beautiful twilight ever +lingered. The sunlight filtered richly but dimly through the time-worn +splendour of its high windows of painted glass, touching here and there +inlaid panel and carved wainscoting, and laying a faint mosaic of varied +colour on the black polished floor. + +It was a room which long association had invested with a kind of halo in +John's eyes, far removed from the appreciative or ignorant admiration +of the stranger, who saw in it only an unique Elizabethan relic. + +Artists worshipped it whenever they got the chance, went wild over the +Tudor fan vaulting of the ceiling with its long pendants, and the quaint +inlaid frets on the oak chimney-piece; talked learnedly of the panels +above the wainscot, on which a series of genealogical trees were painted +representing each of the wapentakes into which Yorkshire was divided, +having shields on them with armorial bearings of the gentry of the +county entitled in Elizabeth's time to bear arms. + +Strangers took note of these things, and spelt out the rather apocryphal +marriages of the Tempests on the painted glass, or examined the date +below the dial in the southern window with the name of the artist +beneath it who had blazoned the arms.--_Bernard Diminckhoff fecit, +1585._ + +John knew every detail by heart, and saw them never, as a man in love +with a noble woman gradually ceases to see beauty or the absence of +beauty in brow and lip and eyelid, in adoration of the face itself which +means so much to him. + +John's deep-set steady eyes absently followed the slow travelling of the +coloured sunshine across the room. Overleigh had coloured his life as +its painted glass was colouring the sunshine. It was bound up with his +whole existence. The Tempest motto graven on the pane beside him, _Je le +feray durant ma vie_, was graven on John's heart as indelibly. Mr. +Tempest's dying words to him had never been forgotten. "It is an honour +to be a Tempest. You are the head of the family. Do your duty by it." +The words were sunk into the deep places of his mind. What the child had +promised, the man was resolved to keep. His responsibility in the great +position in which God had placed him, his duty, not only as a man, but +as a Tempest, were the backbone of his religion--if those can be called +religious who "trust high instincts more than all the creeds." The +family motto had become a part of his life. It was perhaps the only oath +of allegiance which John had ever taken. He turned towards the window +again, against which his dark head had been resting. + +The old thoughts and resolutions so inextricably intertwined with the +fibre of pride of birth, the old hopes and aspirations, matured during +three years' absence, temporarily dormant during these months of +illness, returned upon him with the unerring swiftness of swallows to +the eaves. + +He pressed his hand upon the pane. + +The thunderstorm wept hard against the glass. + +The sable Tempest lion rampant on a field argent surmounted the scroll +on which the motto was painted, legible still after three hundred years. + +John said the words aloud. + +_Je le feray durant ma vie._ + + + + +CHAPTER V. + + "There are many wonderful mixtures in the world which are all + alike called love."--GEORGE ELIOT. + + +"These are troublous times, granny," said Di to Mrs. Courtenay, coming +into her grandmother's room on a hot afternoon early in September. "I +can't get out, so you see I am reduced to coming and sitting with you." + +"And why are the times troublous, and why don't you go out-of-doors +again?" + +"I have been to reconnoitre," said Di, wrathfully, "and the coast is not +clear. He is sitting on the stairs again, as he did yesterday." + +"Lord Hemsworth?" + +"No, of course not. When does he ever do such things? The Infant." + +"Oh dear!" + +The Infant was Lord Hemsworth's younger brother. + +"And it is becoming so expensive, granny. I keep on losing things. His +complaint is complicated by kleptomania. He has got my two best evening +handkerchiefs and my white fan already; and I can't find one of the +gloves I wore at the picnic to-day. I dare not leave anything downstairs +now. It is really very inconvenient." + +"Poor boy!" said Mrs. Courtenay, reflectively. "How old _is_ he?" + +"Oh, he is quite sixteen, I believe. What with this anxiety, and the +suspense as to how my primrose cotton will wash, which I am counting on +to impress John with, I find life very wearing. Oh, granny, we ought +not to have come here at all, according to my ideas; but if we ever do +again, I do beg and pray it may not be in the holidays. I wish I had not +been so kind to him when we first arrived. I only wanted to show Lord +Hemsworth he need not be so unnecessarily elated at our coming here. I +wish I had not spent so many hours in the workshop with the boy and the +white rats. The white rats did it, granny. Interests in common are the +really dangerous things, as you have often observed. Love me, love my +rats." + +"Poor boy!" said Mrs. Courtenay again. "Make it as easy as you can for +him, Di. Don't wound his pride. We leave to-morrow, and the Verelsts are +coming to-day. That will create a diversion. I have never known +Madeleine allow any man, or boy, or creeping child attend to any one but +herself if she is present. She will do her best to relieve you of him. +How she will patronize you, Di, if she is anything like what she used +to be!" + +And in truth when Madeleine drove up to the house half an hour later it +was soon apparent that she was unaltered in essentials. Although she had +been married several months she was still the bride; the bride in every +fold of her pretty travelling gown, in her demure dignity and enjoyment +of the situation. + +It was her first visit to her cousin Lady Hemsworth since her marriage, +and her eyes brightened with real pleasure when that lady mentioned that +Di was in the house, whom she had not seen since her wedding day. She +was conscious that she had some of her best gowns with her. + +"I have always been so fond of Di," she said to Di's would-be +mother-in-law. "She was one of my bridesmaids. You remember Di, Henry?" +turning with a model gesture to her husband. + +Sir Henry sucked his tea noisily off his moustache, and said he +remembered Miss Tempest. + +"Now do tell me," said Madeleine, as she unfastened her hat in her room, +whither she had insisted on Di's accompanying her, "is there a large +party in the house? I always hate a large party to meet a bride." + +"There is really hardly any one," said Di. "I don't think you need be +alarmed. The Forresters left yesterday. There are Mr. Rivers and a +Captain Vivian, friends of Lord Hemsworth's, and Lord Hemsworth himself, +and a Mrs. Clifford, a widow. That is all. Oh, I had forgotten Mr. +Lumley, the comic man--he is here. You may remember him. He always comes +into a room either polkaing or walking lame, and beats himself all over +with a tambourine after dinner." + +"How droll!" said Madeleine. "Henry would like that. I must have him to +stay with us some time. One is so glad of really amusing people; they +make a party go off so much better. He does not black himself, does he? +That nice Mr. Carnegie, who imitated the pig being killed, always did. I +am glad it is a small party," she continued, reverting to the previous +topic, with a very moderate appearance of satisfaction. "It is very +thoughtful of Lady Hemsworth not to have a crowd to meet me. I dislike +so being stared at when I am sent out first; so embarrassing, every eye +upon one. And I always flush up so. And now tell me, you dear thing, all +about yourself. Fancy my not having seen you since my wedding. I don't +know how we missed each other in London in June. I know I called twice, +but Kensington is such miles away; and--and I have often longed to ask +you how you thought the wedding went off." + +"Perfectly." + +"And you thought I looked well--well for me, I mean?" + +"You looked particularly well." + +"I thought it so unkind of mother to cry. I would not let her come into +my room when I was dressing, or indeed all that morning, for fear of her +breaking down; but I had to go with her in the carriage, and she held my +hand and cried all the way. Poor mother always is so thoughtless. I did +not cry myself, but I quite feared at one time I should flush. I was not +flushed when I came in, was I?" + +"Not in the least. You looked your best." + +"Several of the papers said so," said Madeleine. "Remarks on personal +appearance are so vulgar, I think. 'The lovely bride,' one paper called +me. I dare say other girls don't mind that sort of thing being said, +but it is just the kind of thing I dislike. And there was a drawing of +me, in my wedding gown, in the _Lady's Pictorial_. They simply would +have it. I had to stand, ready dressed, the day before, while they did +it. And then my photograph was in one of the other papers. Did you see +it? I don't think it is _quite_ a nice idea, do you?--so public; but +they wrote so urgently. They said a photograph would oblige, and I had +to send one in the end. I sometimes think," she continued reflectively, +"that I did not choose part of my trousseau altogether wisely. I +_think_, with the summer before me, I might have ventured on rather +lighter colours. But, you see, I had to decide on everything in Lent, +when one's mind is turned to other things. I never wear any colour but +violet in Lent. I never have since I was confirmed, and it puts one out +for brighter colours. Things that look quite suitable after Easter seem +so gaudy before. I am not sure what I shall wear to-night." + +"Wear that mauve and silver," said Di, suddenly, and their eyes met. + +Madeleine looked away again instantly, and broke into a little laugh. + +"You dear thing," she said; "I wish I had your memory for clothes. I +remember now, though I had almost forgotten it, that the mauve brocade +was brought in the morning you came to hear about my engagement. And do +you remember, you quixotic old darling, how you wanted me to break it +off. You were quite excited about it." + +"I had not seen the diamonds then," interposed Di, with a faint blush at +the remembrance of her own useless emotion. "I am sure I never said +anything about breaking it off after I had seen the two tiaras, or even +hinted at throwing over that rivière." + +Madeleine looked puzzled. Whenever she did not quite understand what Di +meant, she assumed the tone of gentle authority, which persons, +conscious of a reserved front seat or possibly a leading part in the +orchestra in the next world, naturally do assume in conversation with +those whose future is less assured. + +"I think marriage is too solemn a thing to make a joke of," she said +softly. "And talking of marriage"--in a lowered tone--"you would hardly +believe, Di, the difference it makes, the way it widens one's influence. +With men now, such a responsibility. I always think a married woman can +help young men so much. I find it so much easier now than before I was +married to give conversation a graver turn, even at a ball. I feel I +know what people really are almost at once. I have had such earnest +talks in ball-rooms, Di, and at dinner parties. Haven't you?" + +"No," said Di. "I distrust a man who talks seriously over a pink ice the +first time I meet him. If he is genuine he is probably shallow, and the +odds are he is not genuine, or he would not do it. I don't like +religious flirtations, though I know they are the last new thing." + +"You always take a low view, Di," said Madeleine, regretfully. "You +always have, and I suppose you always will. It does not make me less +fond of you; but I am often sorry, when we talk together, to notice how +unrefined your ideas are. Your mind seems to run on flirtations. I see +things very differently. You wanted me to throw over Henry, though I had +given my solemn promise----" + +"And it had been in the papers," interposed Di; "don't forget that. +But"--she added, rising--"I _was_ wrong. I ought never to have said a +word on the subject; and there is the dressing-bell, so I will leave +you to prepare for victory. I warn you, Mrs. Clifford has one gown, a +Cresser, which is bad to beat--a lemon satin, with an emerald velvet +train; but she may not put it on." + +"I never vie with others in dress," said Madeleine. "I think it shows +such a want of good taste. Did she wear it last night?" + +"She did." + +"Oh! Then she won't wear it again." + +But Di had departed. + +"In change unchanged," Di said to herself, as she uncoiled her hair in +her own room. "I don't know what I expected of Madeleine, yet I thought +that somehow she would be different. But she isn't. How is it that some +people can do things that one would be ashamed one's self even to think +of, and yet keep a good opinion of themselves afterwards, and _feel_ +superior to others? It is the feeling superior that I envy. It must +make the world such an easy place to live in. People with a good opinion +of themselves have such an immense pull in being able to do the most +peculiar things without a qualm. It must be very pleasant to truly and +honestly consider one's self better than others, and to believe that +young men in white waistcoats hang upon one's words. Yes, Madeleine is +not changed, and I shall be late for dinner if I moralize any longer," +and Di brushed back her yellow hair, which was obliging enough to +arrange itself in the most interesting little waves and ripples of its +own accord, without any trouble on her part. Di's hair was perhaps the +thing of all others that womankind envied her most. It had the +brightness of colouring and easy fascination of a child's. Even the most +wily and painstaking curling-tongs could only produce on other +less-favoured heads a laboured imitation which was seen to be an +imitation. Madeleine, as she sailed into the drawing-room in mauve and +silver half an hour later, felt that her own rather colourless, +elaborate fringe was not redeemed from mediocrity even by the diamonds +mounting guard over it. The Infant would willingly have bartered his +immortal soul for one lock off Di's shining head. The hope that one +small lock might be conceded to a last wild appeal, possibly upon his +knees, sustained him throughout the evening, and he needed support. He +had a rooted conviction that if only his mother had allowed him a new +evening coat this half, if he had only been more obviously in tails, Di +might have smiled upon his devotion. He had been moderately fond of his +elder brother till now, but Lord Hemsworth's cable-patterned shooting +stockings and fair, well-defined moustache were in themselves enough to +rouse the hatred of one whose own upper lip had only reached the stage +when it suggested nothing so much as a reminiscence of treacle, and +whose only pair of heather stockings tarried long at the wash. But the +Infant had other grounds for nursing Cain-like sentiments towards his +rival. Had not Lord Hemsworth repeatedly called him in the actual +presence of the adored one by the nickname of "Trousers"! The Infant's +sobriquet among those of his contemporaries who valued him was "Bags," +but in ladies' society Lord Hemsworth was wont to soften the +unrefinement of the name by modifying it to Trousers. The Infant writhed +under the absolutely groundless suspicion that his brother already had +or might at any moment confide the original to Di. And even if he did +not, even if the horrible appellation never did transpire, Lord +Hemsworth's society term was almost as opprobrious. The name of Trousers +was a death-blow to young romance. Sentiment withered in its presence. +Years of devotion could not wipe out that odious word from her memory. +He could see that it had set her against him. The mere sight of him was +obviously painful to her sense of delicacy. She avoided him. She would +marry Lord Hemsworth. In short, she would be the bride of another. +Perhaps there was not within a radius of ten miles a more miserable +creature than the Infant, as he stood that evening before dinner, with +folded arms, alone, aloof, by a pillar, looking daggers at any one who +spoke to Di. + +After dinner things did not go much better. There were round games, in +which he joined with Byronic gloom in order to sit near Di. But Mr. +Lumley, the licensed buffoon of the party, dropped into his chair when +he left it for a moment to get Di a footstool, and, when sternly +requested to vacate it, only replied in fluent falsetto in the French +tongue, "Je voudrais si je coudrais, mais je ne cannais pas." + +The Infant controlled himself. He was outwardly calm, but there was +murder in his eye. + +Lord Hemsworth, sitting opposite shuffling the cards, looked up, and +seeing the boy's white face, said, good-naturedly-- + +"Come, Lumley, move up one. That is Trousers' place." + +"Oh, if Trousers wants it to press his suit," said Mr. Lumley, vaulting +into the next place. "Anything to oblige a fellow-sufferer." + +And Sir Henry neighed suddenly as his manner was when amused, and the +Infant, clenching his hands under the table, felt that there was nothing +left to live for in this world or the next save only revenge. + +As the last evening came to an end even Lord Hemsworth's cheerful +spirits flagged a little. He let the Infant press forward to light Di's +candle, and hardly touched her hand after the Infant had released his +spasmodic clutch upon it. His clear honest eyes met hers with the +wistful _chien soumis_ look in them which she had learned to dread. She +knew well enough, though she would _not_ have known it had she cared for +him, that he had only remained silent during the last few days because +he saw it was no good to speak. He had enough perception not to strike +at cold or lukewarm iron. + +"Why can't I like him?" she said to herself as she sat alone in her own +room. "I would rather like him than any one else. I do like him better, +much better than any one I know, and yet I don't care a bit about him. +When he is not there I always think I am going to care next time I see +him. I wonder if I should mind if he fell in love with some one else? I +dare say I should. I wish I could feel a little jealous. I tried to when +he talked the whole of one afternoon to that lovely Lady Kitty;--what a +little treasure that girl is! I would marry her if I were a man. But it +was no good. I knew he only did it because he was vexed with me about--I +forget what. + +"Well, to-morrow I shall be at Overleigh. I shall really see it at last +with my own eyes. Why, it is after twelve o'clock. It is to-morrow +already. It certainly does not pay to have a date in one's mind. Ever +since the end of July I have been waiting for September the third, and +it has not hurried up in consequence. Anyhow, here it is at last." + + + + +CHAPTER VI. + + "It's a deep mystery--the way the heart of man turns to one + woman out of all the rest he's seen i' the world, and makes it + easier for him to work seven year for _her_, like Jacob did for + Rachel, sooner than have any other woman for th' + asking."--GEORGE ELIOT. + + +Life has its crystal days, its rare hours of a stainless beauty, and a +joy so pure that we may dare to call in the flowers to rejoice with us, +and the language of the birds ceases to be an unknown tongue. Our real +life as we look back seems to have been lived in those days that memory +holds so tenderly. But it is not so in reality. Fortitude, +steadfastness, the makings of character, come not of rainbow-dawns and +quiet evenings, and the facile attainment of small desires. More +frequently they are the outcome of "the sleepless nights that mould +youth;" of hopes not dead, but run to seed; of the inadequate loves and +friendships that embitter early life, and warn off the young soul from +any more mistaking husks for bread. + +John had had many heavy days, and, latterly, many days and long-drawn +nights, when it had been uphill work to bear in silence, or bear at all, +the lessons of that expensive teacher physical pain. And now pain was +past and convalescence was past, and Fate smiled, and drew from out her +knotted medley of bright and sombre colours one thread of pure +untarnished gold for John, and worked it into the pattern of his life. + +Di was at Overleigh. Tall lilies had been ranged in the hall to welcome +her on her arrival. The dogs had been introduced to her at tea time. +Lindo had allowed himself to be patted, and after sniffing her dress +attentively with the air of a connoisseur, had retired with dignity to +his chair. Fritz, on the contrary, the amber-eyed dachshund, all +tail-wagging, and smiles, and saliva, had made himself cheap at once, +and had even turned over on his back, inviting friction where he valued +it most, before he had known Di five minutes. + +Di was really at Overleigh. Each morning John woke up incredulous that +such a thing could be, each morning listened for her light footfall on +the stairs, and saw her come into the dining-hall, an active living +presence, through the cedar and ebony doors. There were a few other +people in the house, the sort of chance collection which poor relations, +arriving with great expectations and their best clothes, consider to be +a party. There were his aunt, Miss Fane, and a young painter who was +making studies for an Elizabethan interior, and some one else--no, more +than one, two or three others, John never clearly remembered afterwards +who, or whether they were male or female. Perhaps they were friends of +his aunt's. Anyhow, Mrs. Courtenay, who had proposed herself at her own +time, was apparently quite content. Di seemed content also, with the +light-hearted joyous content of a life that has in it no regret, no +story, no past. + +John often wondered in these days whether there had ever been a time +when he had known what Di was like, what she looked like to other +people. He tried to recall her as he had seen her first at the +Speaker's; but that photograph of memory of a tall handsome girl was not +the least like Di. Di had become Di to John, not like anything or +anybody; Di in a shady hat sitting on the low wall of the bowling-green; +or Di riding with him through the forest, and up and away across the +opal moors; or, better still, Di singing ballads in the pictured +music-room in the evening, in her low small voice, that was not +considered good enough for general society, but which, in John's +opinion, was good enough for heaven itself. + +The painter used to leave the others in the gallery and stroll in on +these occasions. He was a gentle, elegant person, with the pensive, +regretful air often observable in an imaginative man who has married +young. He made a little sketch of Di. He said it would not interfere, as +John feared it might, with the prosecution of his larger work. + +Presently a wet morning came, and John took Di on an expedition to the +dungeons with torches, and afterwards over the castle. He showed her the +chapel, with its rose window and high altar, where the daughters of the +house had been married, where her namesake, Diana, had been wed to +Vernon of the Red Hand. He showed her the state-rooms with their +tapestried walls and painted ceilings. Di extorted a plaintive music +from the old spinet in the garret gallery where John's nurseries were. +Mitty came out to listen, and then it was her turn. She invited Di into +the nursery, which, in these later days, was resplendent with John's +gifts, the pride of Mitty's heart, the envy of the elect ladies of the +village. There were richly bound Bibles and church-services, and Russia +leather writing-cases, and inlaid tea-caddies, and china stands and +book-slides, and satin-lined workboxes bristling with cutlery, and +photograph frames and tea-sets--in fact, there was everything. There, +also, John's prizes were kept, for Mitty had taken charge of them for +him since the first holidays, when he had rushed up to the nursery to +dazzle her with the slim red volume, which he had not thought of showing +to his father; to which as time went on many others were added, and even +great volumes of Stuart Mill in calf and gold during the Oxford days. + +Mitty showed them to Di, showed her John's little high chair by the +fire, and his Noah's ark. She gave Di full particulars of all his most +unromantic illnesses, and produced photographs, taken at her own +expense, of her lamb in every stage of bullet-headed childhood; from an +open-mouthed face and two clutching hands set in a lather of white lace, +to a sturdy, frowning little boy in a black velvet suit leaning on a +bat. + +"There's the last," said Mitty, pointing with pride to a large steel +engraving of John in his heaviest expression, in a heavy gilt frame. +"That was done for the tenantry when Master John come of age." And +Mitty, in spite of a desperate attempt on John's part to divert the +conversation to other topics, went on to expatiate on that event until +John fairly bolted, leaving her in delighted possession of a new and +sympathetic listener. + +"And all the steps was covered with red cloth," continued Mitty to her +visitor, "and the crowd, Miss Dinah, you could have walked on their +heads. And Mr. John come down into the hall, and Mr. Goodwin was with +him, and he turns round to us, for we was all in the hall drawn up in +two rows, from Mrs. Alcock to the scullery-maid, and he says, 'Where is +Mrs. Emson?' Those were his very words, Miss Tempest, my dear; and I +says, 'Here, sir!' for I was along of Mrs. Alcock. And he says to +Parker, 'Open both the doors, Parker,' and then he says, quite quiet, +as if it was just every day, 'I have not many relations here,' for there +was not a soul of his own family, miss, and he did not ask his mother's +folk, 'but,' he says, 'I have my two best friends here, and that is +enough. Goodwin,' he says, 'will you stand on my right, and you must +stand on the other side, Mitty.'" + +"It took me here, miss," said Mitty, passing her hand over her +waistband. "And me in my cap and everything. I was all in a tremble. I +felt I could not go. But he just took me by the hand, and there we was, +miss, us three on the steps, and all the servants agathered round +behind, and a crowd such as never was in front. They trod down all the +flower-beds to nothing. Eh dear! when we come out, you should have heard +'em cheer, and when they seed me by him, I heard 'em saying, 'Who's +yon?' And they said, 'That's the old nuss as reared him from a babby,' +and they shouted till they was fit to crack, and called out, 'Three +cheers for the old nuss.' And Master John, he kept smilin' at me, and I +could do nothin' but roar, and there was Mrs. Alcock, I could hear her +crying behind, and Parker cried too, and he's not a man to show, isn't +Parker. But we'd known 'im, miss, since he was born, and there was no +one else there that did; only me and Parker, and Mrs. Alcock, and +Charles, as had been footman in the family, and come down special from +London at Master John's expense. And such a speech as my precious lamb +did make before them all, saying it was a day he should remember all his +life. Those were his very words. Eh! it was beautiful. And all the +presents as the deputations brought, one after another, and the cannon +fired off fit to break all the glass in the winders. And then in the +evening a hox roasted whole in the courtyard, and a bonfire such as +never was on Moat Hill. And when it got dark, you could see the bonfires +burning at Carley and Gilling, and Wet Waste, and right away to +Kenstone, all where his land is, bless him. Eh! dear me, Miss Tempest, +why was not some of you there?" + +"John!" said Di half an hour later, as he was showing her some +miniatures in the ebony cabinet in the picture-gallery, which Cardinal +Wolsey had given the Tempest of his day, "why were not some of us, +Archie or father, at your coming of age?" + +They were sitting in the deep window-seat, with the miniatures spread +out between them. + +"There was no question about their coming," said John. "Archie was going +in for his examination for the army that week, and your father would not +have come if he had been asked. I did invite our great-uncle, General +Hugh, but he was ill. He died soon afterwards. There was no one else to +ask. You and your father, and Archie and I are the only Tempests there +are." + +The miniatures were covered with dust. John's and Di's +pocket-handkerchiefs had an interest in common, which gradually +obliterated all difference between them. + +"Why would not father have come if you had asked him?" said Di +presently. "You are friends, aren't you?" + +"I suppose we are," said John, "if by friends one only means that we are +not enemies. But there is nothing more than civility between us. You +seem wonderfully well up in ancient family history, Di. Don't you know +the story of the last generation?" + +"No," said Di. "I don't know anything for certain. Granny hardly ever +mentions my mother even now. I know she is barely on speaking terms with +father. I hardly ever see him. When she took me, it was on condition +that father should have no claim on me." + +"You did not know, then," said John slowly, "that your mother was +engaged to my father at the very time that she ran away with his own +brother, Colonel Tempest?" + +Di shook her head. She coloured painfully. John looked at her in +silence, and then pulled out another drawer. + +"She was only seventeen," he said at last, with a gentleness that was +new to Di. "She was just old enough to wreck her own life and my poor +father's, but not old enough to be harshly judged. The heaviest blame +was not with _her_. There is a miniature of her here. I suppose my +father had it painted when she was engaged to him. I found it in the +corner of his writing-table drawer, as if he had been in the habit of +looking at it." + +He opened the case, and put it into her hand. + +Miniatures have generally a monotonous resemblance to one another in +their pink-and-white complexions and red lips and pencilled eyebrows. +This one possessed no marked peculiarity to distinguish it from those +already lying on Di's knee and on the window-seat. It was a lovely face +enough, oval, and pale and young, with dark hair, and still darker eyes. +It had a look of shy innocent dignity, which gave it a certain +individuality and charm. The miniature was set in diamonds, and at the +top the name "Diana" followed the oval in diamonds too. + +John and Di looked long at it together. + +"Do you think he cared for her very deeply?" said Di at last. + +"I am afraid he did." + +"Always?" + +"I think always. The miniature was in the drawer he used every day. I +don't think he would have kept it there unless he had cared." + +Di raised the lid of the case to close it, and as she did so a piece of +yellow paper which had adhered to the faded satin lining of the lid +became dislodged, and fell back over the miniature on which it had +evidently been originally laid. On the reverse side, now uppermost, was +written in a large firm hand the one word, "False." + +John started. + +"I never noticed that paper before," he said. + +"It stuck to the lining of the lid," she replied. + +"It must have been always there." + +The soft rain whispered at the lattice. In the silence, one of the +plants dropped a few faint petals on the polished floor. + +"Then he never forgave her," said Di at last, turning her full deep +glance upon her companion. + +"He did not readily forgive." + +"He must have been a hard man." + +"I do not think he was hard at first. He became so." + +"If he became so, he must have had it in him all the time. Trouble could +not have brought it out, unless it had been in his nature to start with. +Trouble only shows what spirit we are of. Even after she was dead he did +not forgive her. He put the miniature where he could look at it; he must +have often looked at it. And he left that bitter word always there. He +might have taken it away when she died. He might have taken it away when +he began to die himself." + +"I am afraid," said John, "there were shadows on his life even to the +very end." + +"The shadow of an unforgiving spirit." + +"Yes," said John gently, "but that is a deep one, Di. It numbs the +heart. He took it down with him to the grave. If it is true that we can +carry nothing away with us out of the world, I hope he left his +bitterness of spirit behind." + +Di did not answer. + +"That very unforgiveness and bitterness were in him only the seamy side +of constancy," said John at last. "He really loved your mother." + +"If he had really loved her, he would have forgiven her." + +"Not necessarily. A nobler nature would. But he had not a very noble +nature. That is just the sad part of it." + +There was a long silence. At last Di closed the case, and put it back in +the drawer. She held the little slip of paper in her hand, and looked up +at John rather wistfully. + +He took it from her, and, walking down the gallery, dropped it into the +wood fire burning at the further end. He came back and stood before her, +and their grave eyes met. The growing intimacy between them seemed to +have made a stride within the last half-hour, which left the +conversation of yesterday miles behind. + +"Thank you," she said. + + + + +CHAPTER VII. + + "Oh, the little more, and how much it is! + And the little less, and what worlds away!" + R. BROWNING. + + +Miss Fane, John's aunt, was one of those large, soft, fleecy persons who +act as tea-cosies to the domestic affections, and whom the perspicacity +of the nobler sex rarely allows to remain unmarried. That by some +inexplicable mischance she had so remained was, of course, a blessing to +her orphaned nephew which it would be hard to overrate. John was +supposed to be fortunate indeed to have such an aunt. He had been told +so from a child. She had certainly been kind to him in her way, and +perhaps he owed her more than he was fully aware of; for it is difficult +to feel an exalted degree of gratitude and affection towards a person +who journeys through life with a snort and a plush reticule, who is ever +seeking to eat some new thing, and who sleeps heavily in the morning +over a lapful of magenta crochet-work. + +On religious topics also little real sympathy existed between the aunt +and nephew. Miss Fane was one of those fortunate individuals who can +derive spiritual benefit and consolation from the conviction that they +belong to a lost tribe, and that John Bull was originally the Bull of +Bashan. + +Very wonderful are the dispensations of Providence respecting the +various forms in which religion appeals to different intellects. Miss +Fane derived the same peace of mind and support from her bull, and what +she called "its promises," as Madeleine did from the monster altar +candles which she had just introduced into the church at her new home, +candles which were really gas-burners--a pious fraud which it was to be +hoped a Deity so partial to wax candles, especially in the daytime, +would not detect. + +Miss Fane had an uneasy feeling, as years went by, that, in spite of the +floods of literature on the subject with which she kept him supplied, +John appeared to make little real progress towards Anglo-Israelitism. +Even the pamphlet which she had read aloud to him when he was ill, which +proved beyond a doubt that the unicorn of Ezekiel was the prototype of +the individual of that genus which now supports the royal arms,--even +that pamphlet, all-conclusive as it was, appeared to have made no +lasting impression on his mind. + +But if the desire to proselytize was her weak point, good nature was +her strong one. She was always ready, as on this occasion, to go to +Overleigh or to John's house in London, if her presence was required. If +she slept heavily amid his guests, it was only because "it was her +nature to." + +She slept more heavily than usual on this particular evening, for it was +chilly; and the ladies had congregated in the music-room after dinner, +where there was a fire, and a fire always reduced Miss Fane to a state +of coma. + +Mrs. Courtenay was bored almost to extinction--had been bored all day, +and all yesterday--but nevertheless her fine countenance expressed a +courteous interest in the rheumatic pains and Jäger underclothing of one +of the elder ladies. She asked appropriate questions from time to time, +bringing Miss Goodwin, who with her brother was dining at the Castle, +into the conversation whenever she could. + +Miss Goodwin, a gentle, placid woman of nine and twenty, clad in the +violent colours betokening small means and the want of taste of richer +relations, took but little part in the great Jäger question. Her pale +eyes under their white eyelashes followed Di rather wistfully as the +latter rose and left the room to fetch Mrs. Courtenay some wool. Between +women of the same class, and even of the same age, there is sometimes an +inequality as great as that between royalty and pauperism. + +Soon afterwards the men came in. Miss Fane regained a precarious +consciousness. The painter dropped into a low chair by Mrs. Courtenay, +some one else into a seat by Mary Goodwin; Mr. Goodwin addressed himself +indiscriminately to Miss Fane and the lady of the clandestine Jägers. +John, after a glance round the room, and a short sojourn on the +hearthrug, which proved too hot for him, seated himself on a strictly +neutral settee away from the fire, and took up _Punch_. Immediately +afterwards Di came back. + +She gave Mrs. Courtenay her wool, and then, instead of returning to her +former seat by the fire, gathered up her work, crossed the room, and sat +down on the settee by John. + +The blood rushed to his face. Her quiet unconcerned manner stung him to +the quick. She spoke to him, but he did not answer. Indeed, he did not +hear what she said. A moment before he had been wondering what excuse he +could make for getting up and going to her. He had been about to draw +her attention to the cartoon in a two-days-old _Punch_, for persons in +John's state of mind lose sight of the realities of life; and in the +presence of half a dozen people, she could calmly make her way to him, +and seat herself beside him, exactly as she might have done if he had +been her brother. He felt himself becoming paler and paler. An entirely +new idea was forcing itself upon him like a growing physical pain. But +there was not time to think of it now. He wondered whether there was any +noticeable difference in his face, and whether his voice would betray +him to Di if he spoke. He need not have been afraid. Di did not know the +meaning of a certain stolid look which John's countenance could +occasionally take. She was perfectly unconscious of what was going on a +couple of feet away from her, and picked up her stitches in a cheerful +silence. Mary Goodwin saw that he was vexed, and, not being versed in +the intricacies of love in its early stages, or, indeed, in any stages, +wondered why his face fell when his beautiful cousin came to sit by him. + +"Don't you sing?" she said, turning to Di. + +"I whisper a little sometimes with the soft pedal down," said Di. "But +not in public. There is a painful discrepancy between me and my voice. +It is several sizes too small for me." + +"Do whisper a little all the same," said the painter. + +"John," said Di, "I am afraid you do not observe that I am being pressed +to sing by two of your guests. Why don't you, in the language of the +_Quiver_, conduct me to the instrument?" + +The unreasoning, delighted pride with which John had until now listened +to the smallest of Di's remarks, whether addressed to himself or others, +had entirely left him. + +"Do sing," he said, without looking at her; and he rose to light the +candles on the piano. + +And Di sang. John sat down by Mary, and actually allowed the painter to +turn over. + +It was a very small voice, low and clear, which, while it disarmed +criticism, made one feel tenderly towards the singer. John, with his +hand over his eyes, watched Di intently. She seemed to have suddenly +receded from him to a great and impassable distance, at the very moment +when he had thought they were drawing nearer to each other. He took new +note of every line of form and feature. There was a growing tumult in +his mind, a glimpse of breakers ahead. The atmosphere of peace and +quietude of the familiar room, and the low voice singing in the +listening silence, seemed to his newly awakened consciousness to veil +some stern underlying reality, the features of which he could not see. + +Mary Goodwin, who had the music in her which those who possess a lesser +degree of it are often able more fluently to express, left John, and, +going to the piano, began to turn over Di's music. + +Presently she set up an old leather manuscript book before Di, who, +after a moment's hesitation, began to sing-- + + "Oh, broken heart of mine, + Death lays his lips to thine; + His draught of deadly wine + He proffereth to thee! + But listen! low and near, + In thy close-shrouded ear, + I whisper. Dost thou hear? + 'Arise and work with me.' + + "The death-weights on thine eyes + Shut out God's patient skies. + Cast off thy shroud and rise! + What dost thou mid the dead? + Thine idle hands and cold + Once more the plough must hold, + Must labour as of old. + Come forth, and earn thy bread." + +The voice ceased. The accompaniment echoed the stern sadness of the +last words, and then was suddenly silent. + +What is it in a voice that so mightily stirs the fibre of emotion in us? +It seemed to John that Di had taken his heart into the hollow of her +slender hands. + +"Thank you," said Mary Goodwin, after a pause; and one of the elder +ladies felt it was an opportune moment to express her preference for +cheerful songs. + +Di had risen from the piano, and was gathering up her music. +Involuntarily John crossed the room, and came and stood beside her. He +did not know he had done so till he found himself at her side. Mary +Goodwin turned to Miss Fane to say "Good night." + +Di slowly put one piece of music on another, absently turning them right +side upwards. He saw what was passing through her mind as clearly as if +it had been reflected in a glass. He stood by her watching her bend +over the piano. He was unable to speak to her or help her. Presently she +looked slowly up at him. He had no conception until he tried how +difficult it was to meet without flinching the quiet friendship of her +eyes. + +"John," she said, "my mother wrote that song. Do you remember what a +happy, innocent kind of look the miniature had? She was seventeen then, +and she was only four and twenty when she died. I don't know how to +express it, but somehow the miniature seems a very long way off from the +song. I am afraid there must have been a good deal of travelling +between-whiles, and not over easy country." + +John would have answered something, but the Goodwins were saying "Good +night;" and shortly afterwards the others dispersed for the night. But +John sat up late over the smoking-room fire, turning things over in his +mind, and vainly endeavouring to nail shadows to the wall. It seemed to +him as if, while straining towards a goal, he had suddenly discovered, +by the merest accident, that he was walking in a circle. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII. + + "Vous me quittez, n'ayant pu voir + Mon âme à travers mon silence." + VICTOR HUGO. + + +It was Saturday morning. The few guests had departed by an early train. +The painter cast a backward glance at Overleigh and the two figures +standing together in the sunshine on the grey green steps which, with +their wide hospitable balustrade, he had sketched so carefully. He was +returning to the chastened joys of domestic life in London lodgings; to +his pretty young jaded, fluffy wife, and fluffy, delicate child; to the +Irish stew, and the warm drinking-water, and the blistered gravy of his +home-life. Sordid surroundings have the sad power of making some lives +sordid too. It requires a rare nobility of character to rise permanently +above the dirty table-cloth, and ill-trimmed paraffin-lamp of poor +circumstances. Poverty demoralizes. A smell of cooking, and, why I know +not, but especially an aroma of boiled cabbage, can undermine the +dignity of existence. A reminiscence of yesterday on the morning fork +dims the ideals of youth. + +As he drove away between the double row of beeches, with a hand on his +boarded picture, the poor painter reflected that John was a fortunate +kind of person. The dogcart was full of grapes and peaches and game. +Perhaps the power to be generous is one of the most enviable attributes +of riches. + +"Poor fellow!" said John, as he and Di turned back into the cool gloom +of the white stone hall. + +"He has given granny the sketch of me," said Di. "He is a nice man, but +after the first few days he hardly spoke to me, which I consider a bad +sign in any one. It shows a want of discernment; don't you think so? +Alas! we are going away this afternoon. I wish, John, you would try and +look a little more moved at the prospect of losing us. It would be +gratifying to think of you creeping on all-fours under a sofa after our +departure, dissolved in tears." + +John winced, but the reflections of the night before had led to certain +conclusions, and he answered lightly--that is, lightly for him, for he +had not an airy manner at the best of times-- + +"I am afraid I could not rise to tears. Would a shriek from the +battlements do?" + +"I should prefer tears," said Di, who was in a foolish mood this +morning, in which high spirits take the form of nonsense, looking at +her cousin, whose sedate and rather impenetrable face stirred the latent +mischief in her. "Not idle tears, John, that 'I know not what they +mean,' you know, but large solemn drops, full man's size, sixty to a +teaspoonful. That's the measure by granny's medicine-glass." + +She looked very provoking as she stood poising herself on her slender +feet on the low edge of the hearthstone, with one hand holding the stone +paw of the ragged old Tempest lion carved on the chimney-piece. John +looked at her with amused irritation, and wished--there is a practical +form of repartee eminently satisfactory to the masculine mind which an +absurd conventionality forbids--wished, but what is the good of wishing? + +"I must go and pack," said Di, with a sigh; "and see how granny is +getting on. She is generally down before this. You won't go and get +lost, will you, and only turn up at luncheon?" + +"I will be about," said John. "If I am not in the library, look for me +under the drawing-room sofa." + +Di laughed, and went lightly away across the grey and white stone flags. +There was a lamentable discrepancy between his feelings and hers which +outraged John's sense of proportion. He went into the study and sat down +there, staring at the shelves of embodied thought and speculation and +aspiration with which at one time he had been content to live, which, +now that he had begun to live, seemed entirely beside the mark. + + * * * * * + +Mrs. Courtenay was a person of courage and endurance, but even her +powers had been sorely tried during the past week. She had been bored to +the verge of distraction by the people of whom she had taken such a +cordial leave the night before. There are persons who never, when out +visiting, wish to retire to their rooms to rest, who never have letters +to write, who never take up a book downstairs, who work for deep-sea +fishermen, and are always ready for conversation. Such had been the +departed. Miss Fane herself, for whom Mrs. Courtenay professed a certain +friendship, was a person with whom she would have had nothing in common, +whom she would hardly have tolerated, if it had not been for her nephew. +But for him she was willing to sacrifice herself even further. She had +seen undemonstrative men in love before now. Their actions had the same +bald significance for her as a string of molehills for a mole-catcher. +She was certain he was seriously attracted, and she was determined to +give him a fair field, and as much favour as possible. That Di had not +as yet the remotest suspicion of his intentions she regarded as little +short of providential, considering the irritating and impracticable turn +of that young lady's mind. + +Di entered her grandmother's room, and found that conspirator sitting up +in bed, looking with rueful interest at a boiled egg and untouched rack +of toast on a tray before her. Mrs. Courtenay always breakfasted in bed, +and could generally thank Providence for a very substantial meal. + +"Take the tray away, Brown," said Mrs. Courtenay, with an effort. + +"Why, you've not touched a single thing, ma'am," remarked Brown, +reproachfully. + +"I have drunk a little coffee," said Mrs. Courtenay, faintly. + +"Granny, aren't you well?" asked Di. + +Brown removed the tray, which Mrs. Courtenay's eyes followed regretfully +from the room. + +"I am not _very_ well, my love," she replied, adjusting her spectacles, +"but not positively ill. I had a threatening of one of those tiresome +spasms in the night. I dare say it will pass off in an hour or two." + +Di scrutinized her grandmother remorsefully. + +"I never noticed you were feeling ill when I came in before breakfast," +she said. + +"My dear, you are generally the first to observe how I am," returned +Mrs. Courtenay, hurriedly. "I was feeling better just then, but--and we +are due at Carmyan to-day. It is very provoking." + +Di looked perturbed. + +"The others are gone," she said; "even the painter has just driven off. +Do you think you will be able to travel by the afternoon, granny?" + +"I am afraid _not_," said Mrs. Courtenay, closing her eyes; "but I +think--I feel sure I could go to-morrow." + +"To-morrow is Sunday." + +"Dear me! so it is," said Mrs. Courtenay, with mild surprise. "To-day is +Saturday. It certainly is unfortunate. But after all," she continued, +"it could not have happened at a better place. Miss Fane is a +good-natured person and will quite understand, and John is a relation. +Perhaps you had better tell Miss Fane I am feeling unwell, and ask her +to come here; and before you go pull down the blinds half-way, and put +that sheaf of her 'lost tribes' and 'unicorns' and 'stone ages' on the +bed." + + * * * * * + +What induced John to spend the whole of Saturday afternoon and the +greater part of a valuable evening at a small colliery town some twenty +miles distant, it would be hard to say. The fact that some days ago he +had arranged to go there after the departure of his guests did not +account for it, for he had dismissed all thought of doing so directly +he heard that Di and Mrs. Courtenay were staying on. It was not +important. The following Saturday would do equally well to inspect a +reading-room he was building, and the new shaft of one of his mines, +about the safety of which he was not satisfied. Yet somehow or other, +when the afternoon came, John went. Up to the last moment after luncheon +he had intended to remain. Nevertheless, he went. The actions of persons +under a certain influence cannot be predicted or accounted for. They can +only be chronicled. + +John did not return to Overleigh till after ten o'clock. He told himself +most of the way home that Miss Fane and Di would be sure not to sit up +later than ten. He made up his mind that he should only arrive after +they had gone to bed. As he drove up through the semi-darkness he looked +eagerly for Di's window. There was a light in it. He perceived it with +sudden resentment. She _had_ gone to bed, then. He should not see her +till to-morrow. John had a vague impression that he was glad he had been +away all day, that he had somehow done rather a clever thing. But +apparently he was not much exhilarated by the achievement. It lost +somewhat in its complete success. + +And Mrs. Courtenay, who heard the wheels of his dogcart drive up just +after Di had wished her "Good night," said aloud in the darkness the one +word, "Idiot!" + + + + +CHAPTER IX. + + "Love, how it sells poor bliss + For proud despair!" + SHELLEY. + + +It was Sunday morning, and it was something more. There was a subtle +change in the air, a mystery in the sunshine. Autumn and summer were met +in tremulous wedlock. But the hand of the bride trembled in the +bridegroom's. In the rapture of bridal there was a prophesy of parting +and death. The birds knew it. In the songless silence the robin was +practising his autumn reverie. Joy and sadness were blent together in +the solemn beauty of transition. + +The voice of the brook was sunk to a whisper to-day. Through the still +air the tangled voices of the church bells came from the little grey +church in the valley. A rival service was going on in the rookery on +Moat Hill, in which the congregation joined with hoarse unanimity. + +Miss Fane did not go to church in the morning, so John and Di went +together down the steep path through the wood, across the park, over the +village beck, and up the low hollowed steps into the churchyard. +Overleigh was a primitive place. + +The little congregation was sitting on the wall, or standing about among +the tilted tombstones, according to custom, to see John and the +clergyman come in. And then there was a general clump and clatter after +them into church; the bells stopped, and the service began. + +Di and John sat at a little distance from each other in the carved +Tempest pew. The Tempests were an overbearing race. The little rough +stone church with its round Norman arches was a memorial of their race. + +"Lord, Thou hast been our Refuge from one generation to another," was +graven in the stones of the wall just before Di's eyes. Beneath was a +low arch surmounting the tomb of a knight in effigy. Beyond there were +more tombs and arches. The building was thronged with the sculptured +dead of one family--was a mortuary chapel in itself. Tattered flags hung +where pious hands, red with infidel blood, had fastened them. With a +simple confidence in their own importance, and the approval of their +Creator, the Tempests had raised their memorials and hung their battered +swords in the house of their God. The very sun himself smote, not +through the gaudy figures of Scripture story, but through the painted +arms of the Malbys; of the penniless, pious Malby who sold his land to +his clutching Tempest brother-in-law in order to get out to the +Crusades. + +Had God really been their Refuge from all those bygone generations to +this? Di wondered. In these latter days of millionaire cheesemongers who +dwell _h_-less in the feudal castles of the poor, what wonder if the +faith even of the strongest waxes cold? + +She looked fixedly at John as he went to the reading-desk and stood up +to read the First Lesson. It was difficult to believe the dead were not +listening too; that the Knight Templar lying in armour, with his drawn +sword beside him and broken hands joined, did not turn his head a +little, pillowed so uncomfortably on his helmet, to hear John's low +clear voice. + +And as John read, a feeling of pride in him, not unmixed with awe, arose +in Di's mind. All he did and said, even when in his gentlest mood--and +Di had not as yet seen him in any other--had a hint of power in it; +power restrained, perhaps, but existent. How strong his iron hand looked +touching the book! She could more easily imagine it grasping a +sword-hilt. He stood before her as the head of the race, his rugged +profile and heavy jaw silhouetted in all their native strength and +ugliness against the uncompromising light of the eastern window. + +She looked at him, and was glad. + +"He will do us honour," she said to herself. + +Some one else was watching John too. + +"I will arise and go to my Father," John read. And Mr. Goodwin closed +his eyes, and prayed the old worn prayer--our prayers for others are +mainly tacit reproaches to the Almighty--that God would touch John's +heart. + +Humanity has many sides, but perhaps none more incomprehensible than +that represented by the patient middle-aged man leaning back in his +corner and praying for John's soul; none more difficult to describe +without an appearance of ridicule; for certain aspects of character, +like some faces, lend themselves to caricature more readily than to a +portrait. + +Mr. Goodwin was one of that class of persons who belong so entirely to a +class that it is difficult to individualize them; whose peculiar object +in life it is to stick in clusters like limpets to existing, and +especially to superseded, forms of religion. Their whole constitution +and central ganglion consists of one adhesive organism. The quality of +that to which they adhere does not appear to affect them, provided it is +stationary. To their constitution movement is torture, uprootal is +death. It would be impossible to chip Mr. Goodwin from his rock, and +hold him up to the scrutiny of the reader, without distorting him to a +caricature, which is an insult to our common nature. Unless he is in the +full exercise of his adhesive muscle in company with large numbers of +his kind, he is nothing. And even then he is not much. + +_Not much?_ Ah, yes, he is! + +His class has played an important part in all crises of religious +history. It was instrumental in the crucifixion of Christ. It called a +new truth blasphemy as fiercely then as now. By its law truth, if new, +must ever be put to death. But when Christianity took form, this class +settled on it nevertheless; adhered to it as strictly as its forbears +had done to the Jewish ritual. It was this class which resisted and +would have burned out the Reformation, but when the Reformation gained +bulk enough for it to stick to, it spread itself upon its surface in due +course. As it still does to-day. + +Let who will sweat and agonize for the sake of a new truth, or a newer +and purer form of an old one. There will always be those who will stand +aside and coldly regard, if they cannot crush, the struggle and the +heartbreak of the pioneers, and then will enter into the fruit of their +labours, and complacently point in later years to the advance of thought +in their time, which they have done nothing to advance, but to which, +when sanctioned by time and custom and the populace, they will _adhere_. + +John shut the book, and Mr. Goodwin, taken up with his own mournful +reflections, heard no more of the service until he was wakened by the +shriek of the village choir-- + + "Before Jehovah's awful throne, + Ye nations bow-wow-wow with sacred joy." + +When the clergyman had blessed his flock, and the flock had hurried with +his blessing into the open air, Di and John remained behind to look at +the nibbled old stone font, engraved with tangled signs, and unknown +beasts with protruding unknown tongues, where little Tempests had +whimpered and protested against a Christianity they did not understand. +The aisle and chancel were paved with worn lettered stones, obliterated +memorials of forgotten Tempests who had passed at midnight with flaring +torches from their first home on the crag to their last in the valley. +The walls bore record too. John had put up a tablet to his predecessor. +It contained only the name, and date of birth and death, and underneath +the single sentence-- + +"Until the day break, and the shadows flee away." + +Di read the words in silence, and then turned the splendour of her deep +glance upon him. Since when had the bare fact of meeting her eyes become +so exceeding sharp and sweet, such an epoch in the day? John writhed +inwardly under their gentle scrutiny. + +"You are very loyal," she said. + +He felt a sudden furious irritation against her which took him by +surprise, and then turned to scornful anger against himself. He led the +way out of the church into the sad September sunshine, and talked of +indifferent subjects till they reached the Castle. And after luncheon +John went to the library and stared at the shelves again, and Miss Fane +ambled and grunted to church, and Di sat with her grandmother. + +There are some acts of self-sacrifice for which the performers will +never in this world obtain the credit they deserve. Mrs. Courtenay, who +was addicted to standing proxy for Providence, and was not afraid to +take upon herself responsibilities which belong to Omniscience alone, +had not hesitated to perform such an act, in the belief that the cause +justified the means. Indeed, in her eyes a good cause justified many +sorts and conditions of means. + +All Saturday and half Sunday she had repressed the pangs of a healthy +appetite, and had partaken only of the mutton-broth and splintered toast +of invalidism. With a not ill-grounded dread lest Di's quick eyes should +detect a subterfuge, she had gone so far as to take "heart-drops" three +times a day from the hand of her granddaughter, and had been careful to +have recourse to her tin of arrowroot biscuits only in the strictest +privacy. But now that Sunday afternoon had come, she felt that she could +safely relax into convalescence. The blinds were drawn up, and she was +established in an armchair by the window. + +"You seem really better," said Di. "I should hardly have known you had +had one of your attacks. You generally look so pale afterwards." + +"It has been very slight," said Mrs. Courtenay, blushing faintly. "I +took it in time. I shall be able to travel to-morrow. I suppose you and +Miss Fane went to church this morning?" + +"Miss Fane would not go, but John and I did." + +Mrs. Courtenay closed her eyes. Virtue may be its own reward, but it is +gratifying when it is not the only one. + +"Granny," said Di, suddenly, "I never knew, till John told me, that my +mother had been engaged to his father." + +"What has John been raking up those old stories for?" + +"I don't think he raked up anything. He seemed to think I knew all about +it. He was showing me my mother's miniature which he had found among his +father's papers. I always supposed that the reason you never would talk +about her was because you had felt her death too much." + +"I was glad when she died," said Mrs. Courtenay. + +"Was she unhappy, then? Father speaks of her rather sadly when he does +mention her, as if he had been devoted to her, but she had not cared +much for him, and had felt aggrieved at his being poor. He once said he +had many faults, but that was the one she could never forgive. And he +told me that when she died he was away on business, and she did not +leave so much as a note or a message for him." + +"It is quite true; she did not," said Mrs. Courtenay, in a suppressed +voice. "I have never talked to you about your mother, Di, because I knew +if I did I should prejudice you against your father, and I have no right +to do that." + +"I think," said Di, "that now I know a little you had better tell me the +rest, or I shall only imagine things were worse than the reality." + +So Mrs. Courtenay told her; told her of the little daughter who had been +born to her in the first desolation of her widowhood, round whom she had +wrapped in its entirety the love that many women divide between husband +and sons and daughters. + +She told Di of young Mr. Tempest, then just coming forward in political +life, between whom and herself a friendship had sprung up in the days +when he had been secretary to her brother, then in the Ministry. The +young man was constantly at her house. He was serious, earnest, +diffident, ambitious. Di reached the age of seventeen. Mrs. Courtenay +saw the probable result, and hoped for it. With some persons to hope for +anything is to remove obstacles from the path of its achievement. + +"And yet, Di," said Mrs. Courtenay, "I can't reproach myself. They +_were_ suited to each other. It is as clear to me now as it was then. +She did not love him, but I knew she would; and she had seen no one +else. And he worshipped her. I threw them together, but I did not press +her to accept him. She did accept him, and we went down to Overleigh +together. She had--this room. I remembered it directly I saw it again. +The engagement had not been formally given out, and the wedding was not +to have been till the following spring on account of her youth. I think +Mr. Tempest and I were the two happiest people in the world. I felt such +entire confidence in him, and I was thankful she should not run the +gauntlet of all that a beautiful girl is exposed to in society. She was +as innocent as a child of ten, and as unconscious of her beauty--which, +poor child! was very great. + +"And then he--your father--came to Overleigh. Ten days afterwards they +went away together, and I--I who had never been parted from her for a +night since her birth--I never saw her again, except once across a room +at a party, until four years afterwards, when her first child was born. +I went to her then. I tried not to go, for she did not send for me; but +she was the only child I had ever had, and I remembered my own +loneliness when she was born. And the pain of staying away became too +great, and I went. And--she was quite changed. She was not the least +like my child, except about the eyes; and she was taller. Mr. Tempest +never forgave her, because he loved her; but I forgave her at last, +because I loved her more than he did. I saw her often after that. She +used to tell me when your father would be away--and he was much +away--and then I went to her. I would not meet _him_. We never spoke of +her married life. It did not bear talking about, for she had really +loved him, and it took him a long time to break her of it. We talked of +the baby, and servants, and the price of things, for she was very poor. +She was loyal to her husband. She never spoke about him except once. I +remember that day. It was one of the last before she died. I found her +sitting by the fire reading 'Consuelo.' I sat down by her, and we +remained a long time without speaking. Often we sat in silence together. +You have not come to the places on the road, my dear, when somehow words +are no use any more, and the only poor comfort left is to be with some +one who understands and says nothing. When you do, you will find silence +one degree more bearable than speech. + +"At last she turned to the book, and pointed to a sentence in it. I can +see the page now, and the tall French print. 'Le caractère de cet homme +entraîne les actions de sa vie. Jamais tu ne le changeras.' + +"'I think that is true,' she said. 'Some characters seem to be settled +beforehand, like a weathercock with its leaded tail. They cannot really +change, because they are always changing. Nothing teaches them. +Happiness, trouble, love, and hate bring no experience. They swing round +to every wind that blows on one pivot always--themselves. There was a +time when I am afraid I tired God with one name. "Jamais tu ne le +changeras." No, never. One changes one's self. That is all. And now, +instead of reproaching others, I reproach myself--bitterly--bitterly.' + +"And she never begged my pardon. She once said, when I found her very +miserable, that it was right that one who had made others suffer should +suffer too. But those were the only times she alluded to the past, and +I never did. I did not go to her to reproach her. The kind of people who +are cut by reproaches have generally reproached themselves more harshly +than any one else can. She had, I know. It would have been better if she +had been less reserved, and if she could have taken more interest in +little things. But she did not seem able to. Some women, and they are +the happy ones, can comfort themselves in a loveless marriage with +pretty note-paper, and tying up the legs of chairs with blue ribbon. She +could not do that, and I think she suffered more in consequence. Those +little feminine instincts are not given us for nothing. + +"She never gave in until she knew she was dying. Then she tried to +speak, but she sank rapidly. She said something about you, and then +smiled when her voice failed her, and gave up the attempt. I think she +was so glad to go that she did not mind anything else much. They held +the baby to her as a last chance, and made it cry. Oh, Di, how you +cried! And she trembled very much just for a moment, and then did not +seem to take any more notice, though they put its little hand against +her face. I think the end came all the quicker. It seemed too good to be +true at first.... + +"Don't cry, my dear. Young people don't know where trouble lies. They +think it is in external calamity, and sickness and death. But one does +not find it so. The only real troubles are those which we cause each +other through the affections. Those whom we love chasten us. I never +shed a single tear for her when she died. There had been too many during +her life, for I loved her better than anything in the world except my +husband, who died when he was twenty-five and I was twenty-two. You +often remind me of him. You are a very dear child to me. She said she +hoped you would make up a little to me; and you have--not a little. I +have brought you up differently. I saw my mistake with her. I sheltered +her too much. I hope I have not run into the opposite extreme with you. +I have allowed you more liberty than is usual, and I have encouraged you +to look at life for yourself, and to think and act for yourself, and +learn by your own experience. And now go and bathe your eyes, and see if +you can find me Fitzgerald's 'Omar Khayyám.' I think I saw it last in +the morning-room. John and I were talking about it on Friday. I dare say +he will know where it is." + + + + +CHAPTER X. + + "Si tu ne m'aimes pas moi je t'aime." + + +It was the time of afternoon tea. Miss Fane rolled off the sofa, and +with the hydraulic sniff that can temporarily suspend the laws of +nature, proceeded to pour out tea. Presently John and the dogs came in, +and Di, who had found Mrs. Courtenay's book without his assistance, +followed. John had not the art of small-talk. Miss Fane, who was in the +habit of attempting the simultaneous absorption of liquid and +farinaceous nutriment with a perseverance not marked by success, was +necessarily silent, save when a carroway seed took the wrong turn. She +seldom spoke in the presence of food, any more than others do in church. +Few things apart from the Bull of Bashan commanded Miss Fane's undivided +homage, but food never failed to, though it was reserved for plovers' +eggs and the roe of the sturgeon to stir the latent emotion of her +nature to its depths. + +The dogs did their tricks. Lindo contrived to swallow all his own and +half Fritz's portion, but, fortunately for the cause of justice, during +a muffin-scattering choke on Lindo's part, Fritz's long red tongue was +able to glean together fragments of what he imagined he had lost sight +of for ever. + +Di inquired whether there were evening service. + +"Evening service at seven," said Miss Fane; "supper at quarter past +eight." + +"Do not go to church again," said John. "Come for a walk with me." + +Di readily agreed. It was very pleasant to her to be with John. She had +begun to feel that he and she were near akin. He was her only first +cousin. The nearness of their relationship, accounting as it did in her +mind for a growing intimacy, prevented any suspicion of that intimacy +having sprung from another source. + +They walked together through the forest in the still opal light of the +waning day. Through the enlacing fingers of the trees the western sun +made ladders of light. Breast-high among the bracken they went, +disturbing the deer; across the heather, under the whisper of the pines, +down to the steel-white reeded pools below. + +They sat down on the trunk of a fallen tree, and a faint air came across +the water from the trees on the further side, with a message to the +trees on this. Neither talked much. The lurking sadness in the air just +touched and soothed the lurking sadness in Di's mind. She did not notice +John's silence, for he was often silent. She wound a blade of grass +round her finger, and then unwound it again. John watched her do it. He +had noticed before, as a peculiarity of Di's, not observable in other +women, that whatever she did was interesting. She asked some question +about the lower pool gleaming before them through the trunks of the +trees, and he answered absently the reverse of what was true. + +"Then perhaps we had better be turning back," she said. + +He rose, and they went back another way, climbing slowly up and up by a +little winding track through steepest forest places. Many burrs left +their native stems to accompany them on their way. They showed to great +advantage on Di's primrose cotton gown. At last they reached the top of +the rocky ridge, and she sat down, out of breath, under a group of +silver firs, and, taking off her gloves, began idly to pick the burrs +one by one off the folds of her gown. + +There was no hurry. He sat down by her, and watched her hands. She put +the burrs on a stone near her. + +They were sitting on the topmost verge of the crag, and the forest fell +away in a shimmer of green beneath their feet to the pools below, and +then climbed the other side of the valley and melted into the purple of +the Overleigh and Oulston moors. Far away, the steep ridge of Hambleton +and the headland of Sutton Brow stood out against the evening sky. Some +Tempest of bygone days had dared to perpetrate a Greek temple in a +clearing among the silver firs where they were sitting, but time had +effaced that desecration of one of God's high places by transforming it +to a lichened ruin of scattered stones. It was on one of these +scattered stones that Di was raising a little cairn of burrs. + +"Forty-one," she said at last. "You have not even begun your toilet yet, +John." + +No answer. + +The sun was going down unseen behind a bar of cloud. A purple light was +on the hills. Their faces showed that they saw the glory, but the +twilight deepened over all the nearer land. Slowly the sun passed below +the leaden bar, and looked back once more in full heaven, and drowned +the world in light. Then with dying strength he smote the leaden bar to +one long line of quivering gold, and sank dimly, redly, to the +enshrouding west. All colour died. The hills were gone. The land lay +dark. But far across the sky, from north to south, the line of light +remained. + +Di had watched the sunset alone. John had not seen it. His eyes were +fixed on her calm face with the western glow upon it. She did not even +notice that he was looking at her. One of her ungloved hands lay on her +knee, so near to him yet so immeasurably far away. Could he stretch +across the gulf to touch it? His expressionless face took some meaning +at last. He leaned a little towards her, and laid his hand on hers. + +She started violently, and dropped her sunset thoughts like a surprised +child its flowers. Even a less vain man than John might have been cut to +the quick by the sudden horrified bewilderment of her face, and of the +dazzled light-blinded eyes which turned to peer at him with such +unseeing distress. + +"Oh, John!" she said, "not you;" and she put her other hand quickly for +one second on his. + +"Yes," he said, "that is just it." + +Her mouth quivered painfully. + +"I thought," she said, "we were--surely we _are_ friends." + +"No," said John, mastering the insane emotion which had leapt within him +at the touch of her hand. "We never were, and we never shall be. I will +have nothing to do with any friendship of yours. I'm not a beggar to be +shaken off with coppers. I want everything or nothing." + +Her manner changed. Her self-possession came back. + +"I am sorry it must be nothing," she said gently, and she tried quietly +but firmly to withdraw her hand. + +His grasp on it tightened ever so little, but in an unmistakable manner, +and she instantly gave up the attempt. + +A splendid colour mounted slowly to her face. She drew herself up. Her +lightning-bright intrepid eyes met his without flinching. They looked +hard at each other in the waning light. Once again they seemed to +measure swords as at the moment when they first met. Each felt the other +formidable. There was no slightest shred of disguise between them. + +There was a breathless silence. + +Di went through a frightful revulsion of mind. The sunset and the light +along the sky seemed to have betrayed her. These pleasant days had been +in league against her. And now, goaded by the grasp of his hand on hers, +her mind made one headlong rush at the goal towards which these +accomplices had been luring her. Where were they leading her? Glamour +dropped dead. Marriage remained. To become this man's wife; to merge her +life in his; to give up everything into the hand that still held hers, +the pressure of which was like a claim! He had only laid his hand upon +her hand, but it seemed to her that he had laid it upon her soul. Her +whole being rose up against him in sudden passionate antagonism horrible +to bear. And all the time she knew instinctively that he was stronger +than she. + +John saw and understood that mental struggle almost with compassion, yet +with an exultant sense of power over her. One conviction of the soul +ever remains unshaken, that whom we understand is ours to have and to +hold. + +He deliberately released her hand. She did not make the slightest +movement at regaining possession of it. + +John wrestled with his voice, and forced it back, harsh and unfamiliar, +to do his bidding. + +"Di," he said, "I believe in truth even between men and women. I know +what you are feeling about me at this moment. Well, that, even that, is +better than a mistake; and you were making one. You had not the +faintest suspicion of what has been the one object of my life since the +day I first met you. The fault was mine, not yours. You could not see +what was not on the surface to be seen. You would have gone on for the +remainder of your natural life liking me in a way I--I cannot tolerate, +if I had not--done as I did. I have not the power like some men of +showing their feelings. I can't say the little things and do the little +things that come to others by instinct. My instinct is to keep things to +myself. I always have--till now." + +Silence again; a silence which seemed to grow in a moment to such +colossal dimensions that it was hardly credible a voice would have power +to break it. + +The twilight had advanced suddenly upon them. The young pheasants crept +and called among the bracken. The night-birds passed swift and silent as +sudden thoughts. + +Di struggled with an unreasoning, furious anger, which, like a fiery +horse, took her whole strength to control. + +"I love you," said John, "and I shall go on loving you; and it is better +you should know it." + +And as he spoke she became aware that her anger was but a little thing +beside his. + +"What is the good of telling me," she said, "what I--what you know +I--don't wish to hear?" + +"What good?" said John, fiercely, his face working. "Great God! do you +imagine I have put myself through the torture of making myself +intolerable to you for no purpose? Do you think that you can dismiss me +with a few angry words? What good? The greatest good in the world, which +I would turn heaven and earth to win; which please God I will win." + +Di became as white as he. He was too strong, this man, with his set +face, and clenched trembling hand. She was horribly frightened, but she +kept a brave front. She turned towards him and would have spoken, but +her lips only moved. + +"You need not speak," he said more gently. "You cannot refuse what you +have not been asked for. I ask nothing of you. Do you understand? +_Nothing._ When I ask it will be time enough to refuse. It is getting +late. Let us go home." + + + + +CHAPTER XI. + + "Those who have called the world profane have succeeded in + making it so."--J. H. THOM. + + +The dreams of youth and love so frequently fade unfulfilled into "the +light of common day," that it is a pleasure to be able to record that +Madeleine saw the greater part of hers realized. She was received with +what she termed _éclat_ in her new neighbourhood. She remarked with +complacency that everybody made much too much of her; that she had been +quite touched by the enthusiasm of her reception. It was an ascertained +fact that she would open the hunt ball with the President--a point on +which her maiden meditation had been much exercised. The Duchess of +Southark was among the first to call upon her. If that lady's principal +motive in doing so was curiosity to see what kind of wife Sir Henry, or, +as he was called in his own county, "the Solicitor-General," had at +length procured, Madeleine was comfortably unaware of the fact. After +that single call, the duration of which was confined to nine minutes, +Madeleine spoke of the duchess as "kindness and cordiality itself." + +She was invited to stay at Alvery, and afterwards to fill her house for +a fancy ball, in October, in honour of the coming of age of Lord Elver, +the duke's eldest son and chief thorn in the flesh; a young man of great +promise "when you got to know him," as Madeleine averred, in which case +few shared that advantage with her. + +Other invitations poured in. The neighbourhood was really surprised at +the grace and beauty of the bride--_considering_. It was soon rumoured +that she was a saint as well; that she read prayers every morning at +Cantalupe, which the stablemen were expected to attend; and that she +taught in the Sunday school. The ardent young vicar of the parish, who +had hitherto languished unsupported and misunderstood at Sir Henry's +door, in the flapping draperies that so well become the Church militant, +was enthusiastic about her. She was what he called "a true woman." Those +who use this expression best know what it means. Processions, monster +candles, crucifixes, and other ingredients of the pharmacopoeia of +religion, swam before his mental vision. The little illegal side-altar, +to which his two "crosses," namely, the churchwardens, had objected, but +without which his soul could not rest in peace, was reinstated after a +conversation with Madeleine. A promise on that lady's part to embroider +an altar-cloth for the same was noised abroad. + +Sir Henry was jubilant at his wife's popularity, which lost nothing from +her own comments on it. Although nearly six months had elapsed since his +marriage, he was still in a state of blind adoration--an adoration so +blind that none of the ordinary events by which disillusion begins had +any power to affect him. + +He was not conscious that once or twice during the season in London he +had been duped; that the jealousy which had flamed up so suddenly +against Archie Tempest had more grounds than the single note he found in +his wife's pocket, when in a fit of clumsy fondness he had turned out +all its contents on her knee, solely to cogitate and wonder over them. +He had a habit which tried her more than his slow faculties had any +idea of, of examining Madeleine's belongings. His admiring curiosity had +no suspicion in it. He liked to look at them solely because they were +hers. + +One day, shortly after their arrival at Cantalupe, when he was sitting +in stolid inconvenient sympathy in her room, whither she had vainly +retreated from him on the plea of a headache, he occupied himself by +opening the drawers of her dressing-table one after the other, +investigating with aboriginal interest small boxes of hairpins, +curling-irons, and that various assortment of feminine gear which the +hairdresser elegantly designates as "toilet requisites." At last he +peeped into a box where, carefully arranged side by side, were the +dearest of curls on tortoiseshell combs which he had often seen on his +wife's head, and some smaller much becrimped bodies which filled him +with wondering dislike--hair caricatured--_frisettes_. + +"What _are_ you doing?" said Madeleine, faintly, lying on the sofa with +her back to him, holding her salts to her nose. Oh, if he would only go +away, this large dreadful man, and leave her half an hour in peace, +without hearing him clear his throat and sniff! On the contrary, he came +and sat down by her chuckling, holding the curls and frisettes in his +thick hands. She dropped her smelling-bottle and looked at them in an +outraged silence. Was there, then, no sanctity, no privacy, in married +life? Was everything about her to be made common and profane? She hated +Sir Henry at that moment. As long as he had remained an invoice +accompanying the arrival of coveted possessions, she had felt only a +vague uneasiness about him. Directly he became, after the wedding, a +heavy bill demanding cash payment "to account rendered," she had found +that the marriage market is not a very cheap one after all. + +Sir Henry was not the least chagrined at a discovery which might have +tried the devotion of a more romantic lover. + +"Why, Maddy," he said, "you are much too young and pretty to wear this +sort of toggery. Leave 'em to the old dowagers, my dear;" and he dropped +them into the fire. + +She saw them burn, but she made no sign. Presently, however, when he had +left her, she began to cry feebly; for even feminine fortitude has its +limits. She was in reality satisfied with her marriage on the whole, +though she was wiping away a few natural tears at this moment. But in +this class of union there is generally one item which is found almost +intolerable, namely, the husband. He really was the only drawback in +this case. The furniture, the house, the southern aspect of the +reception-rooms, everything else, was satisfactory. The park was +handsomer than she had expected. And she had not known there was a +silver dinner-service. It had been a love match as far as that was +concerned. If Henry himself had only been different, Madeleine often +reflected! If he had not been so red, and if he had had curly hair, or +any hair at all! But whose lot has not some secret sorrow? + +So Madeleine cried a little, and then wiped her eyes, and fell to +thinking of her gown for the fancy ball at Alvery next month. She called +to mind Di's height and regal figure with a pang. Perhaps, after all, +she had been unwise in asking her dear friend, whom it would be +difficult to eclipse, for this particular ball. Madeleine was under the +impression that she was "having Di" out of good nature. This was her +tame caged motive, kept for the inspection of others, especially of Di. +Nevertheless there were others which were none the less genuine because +they did not wait to have salt put on their tails, and invariably flew +away at the approach of strangers. + +Madeleine had not remembered to be good-natured until a certain obstacle +to the completion of her ball-party, as she intended it, had arisen. The +subject of young men was one which she had approached with the utmost +delicacy; for, according to Sir Henry, all young men--at least, all +good-looking ones--were fools and oafs whom he was not going to have +wounding _his_ birds. She agreed with him entirely, but reminded him of +the duchess's solemn injunction to bring a party of even numbers. + +Sir Henry at last gave in so far as to propose an elderly colonel. +Madeleine in turn suggested Lord Hemsworth, who was allowed to be "a +good sort," and was invited. + +"Then we ought to have Miss Di Tempest, if we have Hemsworth," said Sir +Henry, blowing like a grampus, as his manner was in moments of +inspiration. "I'm quite a matchmaker now I'm married myself. Ask her to +meet him, Maddy. She's your special pal, ain't she?" + +Madeleine felt that she required strength greater than her own to bear +with a person who says "ain't" and "a good sort," and designates a +lady-friend as a "pal." + +She pressed the silver knob of her pencil to her lips. There was, she +remarked, no one whom she would like to have so much as Di; but Mr. +Lumley was her next suggestion, and Sir Henry slapped himself on the +leg, and said he was the very thing. + +"We want one other man," said Madeleine, reflectively, after a few more +had passed through the needle's eye of Sir Henry's criticism. "Let me +see. Oh, there's Captain Tempest. He dances well." + +"I won't have him," said Sir Henry at once, his eyes assuming their most +prawnlike expression. "You may have his cousin if you like, the owl with +the jowl, as Lumley calls him--Tempest of Overleigh." + +"He is sure to be asked to the house itself, being a relation," said +Madeleine, dropping the subject of Archie instantly. She did not recur +to it again. But after their return home from the visit to the +Hemsworths', at which she had met Di, she told her husband she had +invited Di for the fancy ball, as he had wished her to do. + +"Me?" said Sir Henry, reddening. "Lord bless me, what do I want with +her?" And it was some time before he could be made to recollect what he +had said nearly a month ago about asking Di to meet Lord Hemsworth. + +"You forget your own wishes more quickly than I do," she said, putting +her hand in his. + +He did, by Jove, he did; and he bent over the little hand and kissed it, +while she noticed how red the back of his neck was. When he became +unusually apoplectic in appearance, as at this moment, Madeleine always +caught a glimpse of herself as a young widow, and the idea softened her +towards him. If he were once really gone, without any possibility of +return, she felt that she could have said, "Poor Henry!" + +"The only awkward part about having asked Di," said Madeleine, after a +pause, "is that Mrs. Courtenay does not allow her to visit alone." + +"Well, my dear, ask Mrs. Courtenay. I like her. She has always been very +civil to me." + +She had indeed. + +"I don't like her very much myself," said Madeleine. "She is so worldly; +and I think she has made Di so. And she would be the only older person. +You know you decided it should be a _young_ party this time. It is very +awkward Di not being able to come alone, at her age. She evidently +wanted me to ask her brother to bring her, who, she almost told me, was +anxious to meet Miss Crupps, the carpet heiress; but I did not quite +like to ask him without your leave." + +"Ask him by all means," said Sir Henry, entirely oblivious of his former +refusal. "After that poor little girl, is he? Well, we'll sit out +together, and watch the lovemaking, eh?" + +Madeleine experienced a tremor wholly unmixed with compunction at +gaining her point. She would have been aware, if she had read it in a +book, that any one who had acted as she had done, had departed from the +truth in suggesting that Di could not visit alone. She would have felt +also that it was reprehensible in the extreme to invite to her house a +man who had secretly, though not without provocation, made love to her +since her marriage. + +But just in the same way that what we regret as conceit in others we +perceive to be a legitimate self-respect in ourselves, so Madeleine, as +on previous occasions, "saw things very differently." + +She was incapable of what she called "a low view." She had often +"frankly" told herself that she took a deep interest in Archie. She had +put his initials against some of her favourite passages in her morocco +manual. She prayed for him on his birthday, and sometimes, when she woke +up and looked at her luminous cross at night. She believed that she had +a great influence for good over him which it was her duty to use. She +was sincere in her wish to proselytize, but the sincerity of an +insincere nature is like the kernel of a deaf nut; a mere shred of +undeveloped fibre. What Madeleine wished to believe became a reality to +her. Gratification of a very common form of vanity was a religious duty. +She wrote to Archie with a clear conscience, and, when he accepted, had +a box of autumn hats down from London. + + + + +CHAPTER XII. + + "Oh, Love's but a dance, + Where Time plays the fiddle! + See the couples advance,-- + Oh, Love's but a dance! + A whisper, a glance,-- + 'Shall we twirl down the middle?' + Oh, Love's but a dance, + Where Time plays the fiddle!" + AUSTIN DOBSON. + + +It was the night of the fancy dress ball. + +The carriages were already at the door, and could be heard crunching +round and round upon the gravel. Sir Henry, all yeomanry red and gold, +was having the bursting hooks and eyes at his throat altered in his +wife's room. Something had to be done to his belt, too. At last he went +blushing downstairs before the cluster of maids with his sword under his +arm. The guests, who had gone up to dress after an early dinner, were +reappearing by degrees. Lord Hemsworth, in claret-coloured coat and long +Georgian waistcoat and tie-wig, came down, handsome and quiet as usual, +with his young sister, whose imagination had stopped short at +cotton-wool snowflakes on a tulle skirt. An impecunious young man in a +red hunt coat rushed in, hooted on the stairs by Mr. Lumley for having +come without a wedding garment. Madeleine sailed down in Watteau +costume. Two married ladies followed in Elizabethan ones. Presently +Archie made his appearance, a dream of beauty in white satin from head +to foot, as the Earl of Leicester, his curling hair, fair to whiteness, +looking like the wig which it was not. Every one, men and women alike, +turned to look at him; and Mr. Lumley, following in harlequin costume, +was quite overlooked, until he turned a somersault, saying, "Here we are +again!" whereat Sir Henry instantly lost a hook and eye in a cackle of +admiration. + +"We ought to be starting," said Madeleine. "We are all down now." + +"Not quite all," said Mr. Lumley, sinking on one knee, as Di came in +crowned and sceptred, in a green and silver gown edged with ermine. + +Lord Hemsworth drew in his breath. Madeleine's face fell. + +"Good gracious, Di!" she said, with a very thin laugh. "This is dressing +up indeed!" + +The party, already late, got under way, Mr. Lumley, of course, calling +in falsetto to each carriage in turn not to go without him, and then +refusing to enter any vehicle in which, as he expressed it, Miss +Tempest was not already an ornamental fixture. + +"This is getting beyond a joke," said Lord Hemsworth, as a burst of song +issued from the carriage leaving the door, and the lamp inside showed +Di's crowned head, Sir Henry's violet complexion, and the gutta-percha +face of the warbling Mr. Lumley. + +Di sat very silent in her corner, and after a time, as the drive was a +long one, the desultory conversation dropped, and Sir Henry fell into a +nasal slumber, from which, as Madeleine was in another carriage, no one +attempted to rouse him. + +Di shut her eyes as a safeguard against being spoken to, and her mind +went back to the subject which had been occupying much of her thoughts +since the previous evening, namely, the fact that she should meet John +at the ball. She knew he would be there, for she had seen him get out +of the train at Alvery station the afternoon before. + +As she had found on a previous occasion, when they had suddenly been +confronted with each other at Doncaster races, to meet John had ceased +to be easy to her--became more difficult every time. + +Possibly John had found it as difficult to speak to Di as she had found +it to receive him. But however that may have been, it would certainly +have been impossible to divine that he was awaiting the arrival of any +one to-night with the faintest degree of interest. He did not take his +stand where it would be obvious that he could command a view of the door +through which the guests entered. He had seen others do that on previous +occasions, and had observed that the effect was not happy. Nevertheless, +from the bay window where he was watching the dancing, the guests as +they arrived were visible to him. + +"He! he!" said Lord Frederick, joining him. "Such a row in the men's +cloak-room! Young Talbot has come as Little Bo-Peep, and the men would +not have him in their room; said it was improper, and tried to hustle +him into the ladies' room. He is still swearing in his ulster in the +passage. Why aren't you dancing?" + +"I can't. My left arm is weak since I burned it in the spring." + +"Well," rejoined Lord Frederick, who as a French marquis, with cane and +snuff-box, was one of the best-dressed figures in the room, "you don't +miss much. Onlookers see most of the game. Look at that fairy twirling +with the little man in the kilt. Their skirts are just the same length. +The worst part of this species of entertainment is that one cuts one's +dearest friends. Some one asked me just now whether the 'Mauvaise +Langue' was here to-night. Did not recognize the wolf in sheep's +clothing. More arrivals. A Turk and a Norwegian peasant, and a man in a +smock frock. And--now--what on earth is the creature in blue and red, +with a female to match?" + +"Otter-hounds," suggested John. + +"Is it possible? Never saw it before. There goes Freemantle as a private +in the Blues, saluting as he is introduced, instead of bowing. What a +fund of humour the youth of the present day possess! Who is that +bleached earwig he is dancing with?" + +"I think it is Miss Crupps, the heiress." + +"H'm! Might have known it. That is the sort of little pill that no one +takes unless it is very much gilt. Here comes the Verelst party at last. +Lady Verelst has put herself together well. I would not mind buying her +at my valuation and selling her at her own. She hates me, that little +painted saint. I always cultivate a genuine saint. I make a point of +it. They may look deuced dowdy down here--they generally do, though I +believe it is only their wings under their clothes; but they will +probably form the aristocracy up yonder, and it is as well to know them +beforehand. But Lady Verelst is a sham, and I hate shams. I am a sham +myself. He! he! When last I met her she talked pious, and implied +intimacy with the Almighty, till at last I told her that it was the +vulgarest thing in life to be always dragging in your swell +acquaintance. He! he! I shall go and speak to her directly she has done +introducing her party. Mrs. Dundas--and--I don't know the other woman. +Who is the girl in white?" + +"Miss Everard." + +"What! Hemsworth's sister? Then he will be here too, probably. I like +Hemsworth. There's no more harm in that young man than there is in a +tablet of Pears' soap. A crowned head next. Why, it's Di Tempest. By +---- she is handsomer every time I see her! If that girl knew how to +advertise herself, she might become a professional beauty." + +"Heaven forbid!" said John, involuntarily, watching Di with the intense +concentration of one who has long pored over memory's dim portrait, and +now corrects it by the original. + +Lord Frederick did not see the look. For once something escaped him. He +too was watching Di, who with the remainder of the Verelst party was +being drifted towards them by a strong current of fresh arrivals in +their wake. + +The usual general recognition and non-recognition peculiar to fancy +balls ensued, in which old acquaintances looked blankly at each other, +gasped each other's names, and then shook hands effusively; amid which +one small greeting between two people who had seen and recognized each +other from the first instant took place, and was over in a moment. + +"I cannot recognize any one," said Di, her head held a shade higher than +usual, looking round the room, and saying to herself, "He would not have +spoken to me if he could have helped it." + +"Some of the people are unrecognizable," said John, with originality +equal to hers, and stung by the conviction that she had tried to avoid +shaking hands with him. + +The music struck up suddenly as if it were a new idea. + +"Are you engaged for this dance?" said Mr. Lumley, flying to her side. + +"Yes," said Di with decision. + +"So am I," said he, and was gone again. + +"Dance?" said a _Sporting Times_, rushing up in turn, and shooting out +the one word like a pea from a pop-gun. + +"Thanks, I should like to, but I am not allowed," said Di. "My +grandmother is very particular. If you had been the _Sunday at Home_ I +should have been charmed." + +The "Pink 'un" expostulated vehemently, and said he would have come as +the _Church Times_ if he had only known; but Di remained firm. + +John walked away, pricking himself with his little dagger, the sheath of +which had somehow got lost, and watched the knot of men who gradually +gathered round Di. Presently she moved away with Lord Frederick in the +direction of Madeleine, who had installed herself at the further end of +the room among the _fenders_, as our latter-day youth gracefully +designates the tiaras of the chaperones. + +John was seized upon and introduced to an elderly minister with an +order, who told him he had known his father, and began to sound him as +to his political views. John, who was inured to this form of address, +answered somewhat vaguely, for at that moment Di began to dance. She had +a partner worthy of her in the shape of a sedate young Russian, +resplendent in the white-and-gold uniform of the imperial _Gardes à +cheval_. + +Lord Frederick gravitated back to John. No young man among the former's +large acquaintance was given the benefit of his experience more +liberally than John. Lord Frederick took an interest in him which was +neither returned nor repelled. + +"Elver is down at last," he said. "It seems he had to wait till his +mother's maid could be spared to sew him into his clothes. It is a pity +you are not dancing, John. You might dance with your cousin. She and +Prince Blazinski made a splendid couple. What a crowd of moths round +that candle! I hope you are not one of them. It is not the candle that +gets singed. Another set of arrivals. Look at Carruthers coming in with +a bouquet. Cox of the _Monarch_ still, I suppose. He can't dance with +it; no, he has given it to his father to hold. Supper at last. I must go +and take some one in." + +John took Miss Everard in to supper. In spite of her brother's and Di's +efforts, she had not danced much. She did not find him so formidable as +she expected, and before supper was over had told him all about her +doves, and how the grey one sat on her shoulder, and how she loved +poetry better than anything in the world, except "Donovan." John proved +a sympathetic listener. He in his turn confided to her his difficulty in +conveying soup over the edge of his ruff; and after providing her with a +pink cream, judging with intuition unusual to his sex that a pink cream +is ever more acceptable to young ladyhood than a white one, he took her +back to the ball-room. The crowd had thinned. The kilt and the fairy and +a few other couples were careering wildly in open space. John looked +round in vain for Madeleine, to whom he could deliver up his snowflake, +and catching sight of Mrs. Dundas on the chaperon's dais, made in her +direction. Di, who was sitting with Mrs. Dundas, suddenly perceived them +coming up the room together. What was it, what could it be, that +indescribable feeling that went through her like a knife as she saw Miss +Everard on John's arm, smiling at something he was saying to her? Had +they been at supper together all this long time? + +"What a striking face your cousin has!" said Mrs. Dundas. "I do not +wonder that people ask who he is. I used to think him rather alarming, +but Miss Everard does not seem to find him so." + +"He can be alarming," said Di, lightly. "You should see him when he is +discussing his country's weal, or welcoming his guests." + +"Why did I say that?" she asked herself the moment the words were out of +her mouth. "It's ill-natured and it's not true. Why did I say it?" + +Mrs. Dundas laughed. + +"It's the old story," she said. "One never sees the virtues of one's +relations. Now, as he is not _my_ first cousin, I am able to perceive +that he is a very remarkable person, with a jaw that means business. +There is tenacity and strength of purpose in his face. He would be a +terrible person to oppose." + +Di laughed, but she quailed inwardly. + +"I am told he is immensely run after," continued Mrs. Dundas. "I dare +say you know," in a whisper, "that the duchess wants him for Lady +Alice, and they _say_ he has given her encouragement, but I don't +believe it. Anyhow, her mother is making her read up political economy +and Bain, poor girl. It must be an appalling fate to marry a great +intellect. I am thankful to say Charlie only had two ideas in his head; +one was chemical manures, and the other was to marry me. Well, Miss +Everard. Lady Verelst is at supper, but I will extend a wing over you +till she returns. Here comes a crowd from the supper-room. Now, Miss +Tempest, do go in. You owned you were hungry a minute ago, though you +refused the tragic entreaties of the Turk and the stage villain." + +"I was afraid," said Di; "for though the villain is my esteemed friend +in private life, I know his wide hat or the turban of the infidel would +catch in my crown and drag it from my head. I wish I had not come so +regally. I enjoyed sewing penny rubies into my crown, and making the +ermine out of an old black muff and some rabbit-fur; but--uneasy is the +head that wears a crown." + +"I am very harmless and inaggressive," said John, in his most level +voice. "The only person I prick with my little dagger is myself. If you +are hungry, I think you may safely go in to supper with me." + +"Very well," said Di, rising and taking his offered arm. "I am too +famished to refuse." + +"She is taller than he is," said Miss Everard, as they went together +down the rapidly filling room. + +"No, my dear; it is only her crown. They are exactly the same height." + + * * * * * + +No one is more useful in everyday life than the man, seldom a rich man, +who can command two sixpences, and can in an emergency produce a +threepenny bit and some coppers. The capitalist with his halfcrown is +nowhere--for the time. + +In conversation, small change is everything. Who does not know the look +of the clever man in society, conscious of a large banking account, but +uncomfortably conscious also that, like Goldsmith, he has not a sixpence +of ready money? And who has not envied the fool jingling his few +halfpence on a tombstone or anywhere, to the satisfaction of himself and +every one else? + +Thrice-blessed is small-talk. + +But between some persons it is an impossibility, though each may have a +very respectable stock of his own. Like different coinages, they will +not amalgamate. Di and John had not wanted any in talking to each +other--till now. And now, in their hour of need, to the alarm of both, +they found they were destitute. After a short mental struggle they +succumbed into the abyss of the commonplace, the only neutral ground on +which those who have once been open and sincere with each other can +still meet--to the certain exasperation of both. + +John was dutifully attentive. He procured a fresh bottle of champagne +for her, and an unnibbled roll, and made suitable remarks at intervals; +but her sense of irritation increased. Something in his manner annoyed +her. And yet it was only the same courteous, rather expressionless +manner that she remembered was habitual to him towards others. Now that +it was gone she realized that there had once been a subtle difference in +his voice and bearing to herself. She felt defrauded of she knew not +what, and the wing of cold pheasant before her loomed larger and larger, +till it seemed to stretch over the whole plate. Why on earth had she +said she was hungry? And why had he brought her to the large table, +where there was so much light and noise, and where she was elbowed by an +enormous hairy Buffalo Bill, when she had seen as she came in that one +of the little tables for two was at that instant vacant? She forgot that +when she first caught sight of it she had said within herself that she +would never forgive him if he had the bad taste to entrap her into a +_tête-à-tête_ by taking her there. + +But he had shown at once that he had no such intention. Was this +dignified, formal man, with his air of distinction, and his harsh +immobile face, and his black velvet dress,--was this stranger really the +John with whom she had been on such easy terms six weeks ago; the John +who, pale and determined, had measured swords with her in the dusk of a +September evening? + +And as she sat beside him in the brilliant light, amid the Babel of +tongues, a voice in her heart said suddenly, "That was not the end; that +was only the beginning--only the beginning." + +Her eyes met his, fixed inquiringly upon her. He was only offering her +some grapes, but it appeared to her that he must have heard the words, +and a sense of impotent terror seized her, as the terror of one who, +wrestling for his life, finds at the first throw that he is overmatched. + +She rose hastily, and asked to go back to the ball-room. He complied at +once, but did not speak. They went, a grave and silent couple, through +the hall and down the gallery. + +"Have I annoyed you?" he said at last, as they neared the ball-room. + +She did not answer. + +"I mean, have I done anything more that has annoyed you?" + +"Nothing more, thanks." + +"I am glad," said John. "I feared I had. Of course, I would not have +asked you to go in to supper with me if Mrs. Dundas had not obliged me. +I intended to ask you to do so, when you could have made some excuse for +refusing if you did not wish it. I was sorry to force your hand." + +"You will never do that," said Di, to her own astonishment. It seemed to +her that she was constrained by a power stronger than herself to defy +him. + +She felt him start. + +"We will take another turn," he said instantly; and before she had the +presence of mind to resist, they had turned and were walking slowly down +the gallery again between the rows of life-size figures of knights and +chargers in armour, which loomed gigantic in the feeble light. A wave of +music broke in the distance, and the few couples sitting in recesses +rose and passed them on their way back to the ball-room, leaving the +gallery deserted. + +A peering moon had laid a faint criss-cross whiteness on the floor. + +The place took a new significance. + +Each was at first too acutely conscious of being alone with the other to +speak. She wondered if he could feel how her hand trembled on his arm, +and he whether it was possible she did not hear the loud hammering of +his heart. Either would have died rather than have betrayed their +emotion to the other. + +"You tell me I shall never force your hand," he repeated slowly at last. +"No, indeed, I trust I never shall. But when, may I ask, have I shown +any intention of doing so?" + +Di had put herself so palpably and irretrievably in the wrong, that she +had no refuge left but silence. She was horror-struck by his repetition +of the words which her lips, but surely not she herself, had spoken. + +"If you ever marry me," said John, "it will be of your own accord. If +you don't, we shall both miss happiness--you as well as I, for we are +meant for each other. Most people are so constituted that they can marry +whom they please, but you and I have no choice. We have a claim upon +each other. I recognize yours, with thankfulness. I did not know life +held anything so good. You ignore mine, and wilfully turn away from it. +I don't wonder. I am not a man whom any woman would choose, much less +_you_. It is natural on your part to dislike me--at first. In the mean +while you need not distress yourself by telling me so. I am under no +delusion on that point." + +His voice was firm and gentle. If it had been cold, Di's pride would +have flamed up in a moment. As it was, its gentleness, under great and +undeserved provocation, made her writhe with shame. She spoke +impulsively. + +"But I _am_ distressed, I can't help being so, at having spoken so +harshly; no--_worse_ than harshly, so unpardonably." + +"There is no question of pardon between you and me," said John, turning +to look at her with the grave smile that seemed for a moment to bring +back her old friend to her; but only for a moment. His eyes contradicted +it. "I know you have never forgiven me for telling you that I loved you, +but nevertheless you see I have not asked pardon yet, though I had not +intended to annoy you by speaking of it again--at present." + +"No," said Di, eagerly. "But that is just it. It was my own fault this +time. I brought it on myself. But--but I can't help knowing--I feel +directly I see you that you are still thinking of it. And then I become +angry, and say dreadful things like----" + +"Exactly," said John, nodding. + +"Because I--not only because I am ill-tempered, but because though I do +like being liked, still I don't want you or any one to make a mistake, +or go on making it. It doesn't seem fair." + +"Not if it really is a mistake." + +"It is in this instance." + +"Not on my part." + +There was a short silence. Di felt as if she had walked up against a +stone wall. + +"John," she said with decision. "Believe me. I sometimes mean what I +say, and I mean it now. I really and truly am a person who knows my own +mind." + +"So do I," said John. + +Rather a longer silence. + +"And--and oh, John! Don't you see how wretched, how foolish it is, our +being on these absurd formal terms? Have you forgotten what friends we +used to be? I have not. It makes me angry still when I think how you +have taken yourself away for nothing, and how all the pleasure is gone +out of meeting you or talking to you. I don't think you half knew how +much I liked you." + +"Di," said John, stopping short, and facing her with indignation in his +eyes, "I desire that you will never again tell me you _like_ me. I +really cannot stand it. Let us go back to the ball-room." + + + + +CHAPTER XIII. + + "Ah, man's pride + Or woman's--which is greatest?" + E. B. BROWNING. + + +"Di," said Archie, sauntering up to her on the terrace at Cantalupe, +where she was sitting the morning after the ball, and planting himself +in front of her, as he had a habit of doing before all women, so as to +spare them the trouble of turning round to look at him, "I can't swallow +little Crupps." + +"No one wants you to," said Di. "If you don't like her, you had better +leave her alone." + +"Women are not meant to be let alone," said Archie, yawning, "except the +ugly ones." + +"Well, Miss Crupps is not pretty." + +"No, but she is gilt up to the eyes. Poor eyes, too, and light +eyelashes. I could not marry light eyelashes." + +"I am glad to hear it." + +"Oh! I know you don't care a straw whether I settle well or not. You +never have cared. Women are all alike. There's not a woman in the world, +or a man either, who cares a straw what becomes of me." + +"Or you what becomes of them." + +"John's just as bad as the rest," continued the victim of a worldly age. +"And John and I were great chums in old days. But it is the way of the +world." + +Men who attract by a certain charm of manner which the character is +unable to bear out, who make unconscious promises to the _hope_ of +others without ability to keep them, are ever those who complain most +loudly of the fickleness of women, of the uncertainty of friendship, of +their loveless lot. + +Di did not answer. Any allusion to John, even the bare mention of his +name, had become of moment to her. She never by any chance spoke of him, +neither did she ever miss a word that was said about him in her +presence; and often raged inwardly at the ruthless judgments and +superficial criticisms that were freely passed upon him by his +contemporaries, and especially his kinsfolk. From a very early date in +this world's history, ability has been felt to be distressing in its own +country, especially in the country. If a clever man would preserve +unflawed the amulet of humility, let him at intervals visit among his +country cousins. John had not many of these invaluable relations; but, +happily for him, he had contemporaries who did just as well--men who, +when he was mentioned with praise in their hearing, could always break +in that they had known him at Eton, and relate how he had over-eaten +himself at the sock-shop. + +"One thing I am determined I won't do," continued Archie, "and that is +marry poverty, like the poor old governor. He has often talked about it, +and what a grind it was, with the tears in his eyes." + +"What has turned your mind to marriage on this particular morning, of +all others?" + +"I don't know, unless it is the vision of little Crupps. I suppose I +shall come to something of that kind some day. If it isn't her it will +be something like her. One must live. You are on the look out for money, +too, Di, so you need not be so disdainful. You can't marry a poor man." + +"They don't often ask me," said Di. "I fancy I look more expensive to +keep up than I really am." + +"Ah! here comes Lady Verelst," said Archie, patronizingly. "I'd marry +_her_, now, if she were a rich widow. I would indeed. She is putting up +her red parasol. Quite right. She has not your complexion, Di, nor mine +either." + +Archie got up as Madeleine came towards them, and offered her his chair. +Archie had several cheap effects. To offer a chair with a glance and a +smile was one of them. Perhaps he could not help it if the glance +suggested unbounded homage, if the smile conveyed an admiration as +concentrated as Liebig's extract. His faithful, tender eyes could wear +the sweetest, the saddest, or the most reproachful expression to order. +Every slight passing feeling was magnified by the beauty of the face +that reflected it into a great emotion. He felt almost nothing, but he +appeared to feel a great deal. A man who possesses this talisman is very +dangerous. + +Poor Madeleine, confident of her appearance in her new Cresser garment, +with its gold-flowered waistcoat, firmly believed, as Archie silently +pushed forward the chair, that she had inspired--had been so unfortunate +as to inspire--"une grande passion malheureuse." Almost all Archie's +lovemaking, and that is saying a good deal, was speechless. He could +look unutterable things, but he had not, as he himself expressed it, +"the gift of the gab." + +Madeleine was sorry for him, but she could not allow him to remain +enraptured beside her in full view of Sir Henry's study windows. + +"How delicious it is here!" she said, after dismissing him to the +billiard-room. "I never lie in bed after a ball, do you, Di? I seem to +crave for the sunshine and the face of nature after all the glitter and +the worldliness of a ball-room." + +"I don't find ball-rooms more worldly than other places--than this +bench, for instance." + +"Now, how strange that is of you, Di! This spot is quite sacred to _me_. +I come and read here." + +Madeleine had, by degrees, sanctified all the seats in the garden; had +taken the impious chill even off the iron ones, by reading her little +manuals on each in turn. + +"It was here," continued Madeleine, "that I persuaded dear Fred to go +into the Church. It was settled he was to be a clergyman ever since he +had that slight stroke as a boy; but when he went to college he must +have got into a bad set, for he said he did not think he had a vocation. +And mother--you know what mother is--did not like to press it, and the +whole thing was slipping through, when I had him to stay here, and +talked to him very seriously, and explained that a living in the family +_was_ the call." + +"Madeleine," said Di, rising precipitately, "it is getting late. I must +fly and pack." + +If she stayed another moment she knew she should inevitably say +something that would scandalize Madeleine. + +"And I did not say it," she said with modest triumph that evening, as +she sat in her grandmother's room before going to bed; having rejoined +her at Garstone, a relation's house, whither Mrs. Courtenay had preceded +her. "I refrained even from bad words. Granny, you know everything: why +is it that the people who shock me so dreadfully, like Madeleine, are +just the very ones who are shocked at me? You are not. All the really +good earnest people I know are not. But _they_ are. What is the matter +with them?" + +"Oh, my dear, what is the matter with all insincere people? It is only +one of the symptoms of an incurable disease." + +"But the being shocked is genuine. They really feel it. There is +something wrong somewhere, but I don't know where it is." + +"It is not hard to find, Di," said Mrs. Courtenay, sadly; "and it is not +worth growing hot about. You are only running a little tilt against +religiosity. Most young persons do. But it is not worth powder and shot. +Keep your ammunition for a nobler enemy. There is plenty of sin in the +world. Strike at that whenever you can, but don't pop away at shadows." + +"Ah! but, granny, these people do such harm. They bring such discredit +on religion. That is what enrages me." + +"My dear, you are wrong; they bring discredit upon nothing but their own +lamentable caricatures of holy things. These people are solemn +warnings--danger-signals on the broad paths of religiosity, which, +remember, are very easy walking. There's no life so easy. The religious +life is hard enough, God knows. Providence put those people there to +make their creed hideous, and they do it. Upon my word, I think your +indignation against them is positively unpardonable." + +Di was silent. + +"You don't mind being disliked by these creatures, do you, Di?" + +"Yes, granny, I think I do. I believe, if I only knew the truth about +myself, I want every one to like me; and it ruffles me because they make +round eyes, and don't like me when their superiors often do." + +"Mere pride and love of admiration on your part, my dear. You have no +business with them. To be liked and admired by certain persons is a +stigma in itself. Look at the kind of mediocrity and feebleness they set +on pedestals, and be thankful you don't fit into their mutual admiration +societies. That 'like cleaves to like,' is a saying we seldom get to the +bottom of. These unfortunates find blots, faults, evil, in everything, +especially everything original, because they are sensitive to blots and +faults. They commit themselves out of their own mouths. 'Those that seek +shall find,' is especially true of the fault-finders. The truth and +beauty which others receptive of truth and beauty perceive, escape them. +Good nature sees good in others. The reverent impute reverence. This +false reverence finds irreverence, as a mean nature takes for granted a +low motive in its fellow. Oh dear me, Di! Have I expended on you for +years the wisdom of a Socrates and a Solomon, that at one and twenty you +should need to be taught your alphabet? Go to bed and pray for wisdom, +instead of complaining of the lack of it in others." + +Di had had but little leisure lately, and the unbounded leisure of her +long visit at Garstone came as a relief. + +"I shall have time to think here," she said to herself, as she looked +out the first morning over the grey park and lake distorted by the +little panes of old glass of her low window. + +Two very old people lived at Garstone, who regarded their niece, Mrs. +Courtenay, as still quite a young person, in spite of her tall +granddaughter. Time seemed to have forgotten the dear old couple, and +they in turn had forgotten it. It never mattered what time of day it +was. Nothing depended on the hour. In the course of the morning the +butler would open both the folding doors at the end of the long +"parlour" leading to the chapel, and would announce, "Prayers are +served." Long prayers they were. Long meals were served too, with long +intervals between them, during which, in spite of a week of heavy rain, +Di escaped regularly into the gardens and so away to the park. The house +oppressed her. She was restless and ill at ease. She was never missed +because she was never wanted; and she wandered for hours in the park, +listening to the low cry of the deer, standing on the bridge over the +artificial 1745 lake, or pacing mile on mile a sheltered path under the +park wall. The thinking for which she had such ample opportunity did not +come off. It shirked regularly. A certain vague trouble of soul was upon +her, like the unrest of nature at the spring of the year. And day after +day she watched the autumn leaves drop from the trees into the water, +and there was a great silence in her heart, and underneath the silence a +fear--or was it a hope? She knew not. + +There was one subject to which Di's thoughts returned, and ever +returned, in spite of herself. John was that subject. Gradually, as the +days wore on, her shamed remorse at having wounded him gave place to the +old animosity against him. She had never been angry with any of her +numerous lovers before. She had, on the contrary, been rather sorry for +them. But she was desperately angry with John. It seemed to her--why she +would have been at a loss to explain--that he had taken a very great +liberty in venturing to love her, and in daring to assert that they were +suited to other. + +She went through silent paroxysms of rage against him, sitting on a +fallen tree among the bracken with clenched hands. Her sense of his +growing power over her, over her thought, over her will, was +intolerable. Why so fierce? why such a fool? she asked herself over and +over again. He could not marry her against her will. Indeed, he had said +he did not want to. Why, then, all this silly indignation about nothing? +There was no answer until one day Mrs. Courtenay happened to mention to +Mrs. Garstone, in her presence, the probability of John's eventually +marrying Lady Alice Fane--"a very charming and suitable person," etc. + +Then suddenly it became clear to Di that, though she would never marry +him herself, the possibility of his marrying any one else was not to be +borne for a moment. John, of course, was to--was to remain unmarried all +his life. Her sense of the ludicrous showed her in a lightning-flash +where she stood. + +To discover a new world is all very well for people like Columbus, who +want to find one. But to discover a new world by mistake when quite +content with the old one, and to be swept towards it uncertain of your +reception by the natives assembling on the beach, is another thing +altogether. For the second time in her life Di was frightened. + +"Then all these horrible feelings are being in love," she said to +herself, with a sense of stupefaction. "This is what other people have +felt for me, and I treated it as of little consequence. This is what I +have read about, and sung about, and always rather wished to feel. I am +in love with John. Oh, I hope to God he will never find it out!" + +Probably no man will ever understand the agonies of humiliation, of +furious unreasoning antagonism, which a proud woman goes through when +she becomes aware that she is falling in love. Pride and love go as ill +together in the beginning as they go exceeding well together later on. +To be loved is incense at first, until the sense of justice--fortunately +rare in women--is aroused. "Shall I take all, and give nothing?" + +Pride, often a very tender pride for the lover himself, asks that +question. Directly it is asked the battle begins. + +"I will not give less than all. How _can_ I give all?" The very young +are spared the conflict, because the future husband is regarded only as +the favoured ball-partner, the perpetual admirer of a new existence. But +women who know something of life--of the great demands of marriage--of +the absolute sacrifice of individual existence which it involves--when +they begin to tremble beneath the sway of a deep human passion suffer +much, fear greatly until the perfect love comes that casts out fear. + +Some natures, and very lovable they are, give all, counting not the +cost. Others, a very few, count the cost and then give all. + +Di was one of these. + + + + +CHAPTER XIV. + + "Austerity in women is sometimes the accompaniment of a rare + power of loving. And when it is so their attachment is strong + as death; their fidelity as resisting as the diamond."--AMIEL. + + +The newspapers arrived at tea-time at Garstone. Every afternoon Mrs. +Garstone and Mrs. Courtenay drove out along the straight high-road to +D---- to fetch the papers and post the letters; four miles in and four +miles out; the grey pair one day and the bays the next, in the old +yellow chariot. It was the rule of the house. And after tea and rusks, +and a poached egg under a cover for Mr. Garstone, that gentleman read +the papers aloud in a voice that trembled and halted like the spinnet +in the southern parlour. + +"Is Parliament prorogued yet?" Mrs. Garstone asked regularly every +afternoon. + +Mr. Garstone, without answering, struck his key-note at the births, and +quavered slowly through the marriages and deaths. Before he had arrived +on this particular afternoon at the fact that Princess Beatrice had +walked with Prince Henry of Battenberg, Mrs. Garstone was already +nodding between her little rows of white curls. Mrs. Courtenay was +awake, but she looked too solemnly attentive to continue in one stay. + +"The remains of the Dean of Gloucester," continued Mr. Garstone, "will +be interred at Gloucester Cathedral on Friday next." + +The information was received, like most sedatives, without comment. + +Latest intelligence. Colliery explosion at Snarley. + +"Di, has not John coal-pits at Snarley?" asked Mrs. Courtenay, becoming +suddenly wide awake. + +"Yes," said Di. + +"Explosion of fire-damp," continued Mr. Garstone, slower than ever. "No +particulars known. Great loss of life apprehended. Mr. Tempest of +Overleigh, to whom the mine belonged, instantly left Godalmington Court, +where he was the guest of Lord Carradock, and proceeded at once to the +spot, where he organized a rescue party led by himself. Mr. Tempest was +the first to descend the shaft. The gravest anxiety was felt respecting +the fate of the rescuing party. Vast crowds assembled at the pit's +mouth. No further news obtainable up to date of going to press." + +Mrs. Courtenay looked at Di. + +"He must be mad to have gone down himself," she said agitatedly. "What +could he possibly do there?" + +"His duty," said Di; and she got up and left the room. How could any one +exist in that hot close atmosphere? She was suffocating. + +The hall was cold enough. She shivered as she crossed it, and went up +the white shallow stairs to her own room, where a newly lit fire was +spluttering. She knelt down before it and pushed a burning stick further +between the bars, blackening her fingers. It would catch the paper at +the side now.--John had gone down the shaft.--Yes, it would catch. The +paper stretched itself and flared up. She went and stood by the window. + +"John has gone down," she said, half aloud. Her heart was quite numb. +Only her body seemed to care. Her limbs trembled, and she sat down on +the narrow window seat, her hands clutching the dragon hasp of the +window, her eyes looking absently out. + +There was a fire in the west. Upon the dreaming land the dreaming mist +lay pale. The sentinel trees stood motionless and dark, each folded in +his mantle of grey. Only the water waked and knew its God. And far +across the sleeping land, in the long lines of flooded meadow, the fire +trembled on the upturned face of the water, like the reflection of the +divine glory in a passionate human soul. + +It passed. The light throbbed and died, but Di did not stir. And as she +sat motionless, her mind slipped sharp and keen out of its lethargy and +restlessness, like a sword from its scabbard. + +"Now, at this moment, is he alive or dead?" + +And at the thought of death, that holiest minister who waits on life, +all the rebellious anger, all the nameless fierce resentment against her +lover--because he _was_ her lover--fell from her like a garment, died +down like Peter's lies at the glance of Christ. + +The evening deepened its mourning for the dead day. One star shook in +the empty sky, above the shadow and the mist. + +"Love the gift is Love the debt." Di perceived that at last. A great +shame fell upon her for the divided feelings, the unconscious struggle +with her own heart, of the last few weeks. It appeared to her now +ignoble, as all elementary phases of feeling, all sheaths of deep +affections must appear, in the moment when that which they enfolded and +protected grows beyond the narrow confines which it no longer needs. + +_If he is dead?_ Di twisted her hands. + +Who, one of two that have loved and stood apart has escaped that pang, +if death intervene? A moment ago and the world was full of messengers +waiting to speed between them at the slightest bidding. A penny stamp +could do it. But there was no bidding. A moment more and all +communication is cut off. No Armada can cross that sea. + +"Perhaps he is dying; and I sit here," she said. "I would give my life +for him, and I cannot do a hand's turn." And she rocked herself to and +fro. + +For the first time in her life Di dashed herself blindly against one of +God's boundaries; and the shock that a first realization of our +helplessness always brings, struck her like a blow. She could do +nothing. + +Many impulsive people, under the intolerable pressure of their own +impotence, make a feverish pretence of action, and turn stones and +pebbles, as they cannot turn heaven and earth; but Di was not impulsive. + +And the gong sounded, first far away in the western wing, and then at +the foot of the staircase. + +Many things fail us in this world; youth, love, friendship, take to +themselves wings; but meals are not among our migratory joys. Amid the +shifting quicksands of life they stand fast as milestones. + +Di dressed and went downstairs. It seemed years since she had last seen +the "parlour," and old Mr. Garstone standing alone before the fire. + +He did not appear aged. + +"It's later than it was," he remarked; and she had a dim recollection +that in some misty bygone time he invariably used to say those +particular words every evening, and that she used to smile and nod and +say, "Yes, Uncle George." + +And so she smiled now, and repeated like a parrot, "Yes, Uncle George." + +And he said, "Yes, Diana, yes." + + * * * * * + +Breakfast was later than usual next morning. It always is when one has +lain awake all night. But it ended at last, and Di was at last at +liberty to rush up to her room, pull on an old waterproof and felt hat, +and dart out unobserved into the rain. + +The white mist closed in upon her, and directly she was out of sight of +the house she began to run. There were no aimless wanderings and pacings +to-day. Oh, the relief of rapid movement after the long inertia of the +night, the joy of feeling the rain sweeping against her face! She did +not know the way to D----, but she could not miss it. It was only four +miles off. It was eleven now. The morning papers would be in by this +time. If she walked hard she would be back by luncheon-time. + +And, in truth, a few minutes before two Di emerged from her room in the +neatest and driest of blue serge gowns. Only her hair, which curled more +crisply than usual, showed that she had been out in the damp. She had +come home dead beat and wet to the skin, but she had hardly known it. A +new climbing agitated joy pulsated in her heart, in the presence of +which cold and fatigue could not exist; in the presence of which no +other feeling can exist--for the time. + +"Are you glad John is out of danger?" said Mrs. Courtenay that evening +as they went upstairs together, after Mr. Garstone had read of John's +narrow escape--John had been one of the few among the rescuing party who +had returned. + +"Very glad," said Di; and she was on the point of telling her +grandmother of her expedition to D---- that morning, when a sudden novel +sensation of shyness seized her, and she stopped short. + +Mrs. Courtenay sighed as she settled herself for her nap before dinner. + +"Has she inherited her father's heartlessness as well as his yellow +hair?" she asked herself. + +Mrs. Courtenay had lived long enough to know how few and far between are +those among our fellow-creatures whose hearts are not entirely engrossed +by the function of their own circulation. Youth believes in universal +warmth of heart. It is as common as rhubarb in April. Later on we +discern that easily touched feelings, youth's dearest toys, are but +toys; shaped stones that look like bread. Later on we discern how +fragile is the woof of sentiment to bear the wear and tear of life. +Later still, when sorrow chills us, we learn on how few amid the many +hearths where we are welcome guests a fire burns to which we may stretch +our cold hands and find warmth and comfort. + +END OF VOL. 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