Diana Tempest Volume I Part 15

"Yes, yes," said Colonel Tempest, as if rea.s.suring himself. "You will be all right again soon."

"You look knocked up," said John, considering him attentively with his dark earnest gaze.

"Do I?" said Colonel Tempest. "I dare say I do. Yes, people may not notice it as a rule. I keep things to myself, always have done all my life, but--it will drag me into my grave if it goes on much longer, I know that."

"If what goes on?"

It is all very well for a nervous rider to look boldly at a hedge two fields away, but when he comes up with it, and feels his horse quicken his pace under him, he begins to wonder what the landing on the invisible other side will be like. There was a long silence, broken only by Lindo, John's Spanish poodle, who, ensconced in an armchair by the bedside, was putting an aristocratic and extended hind leg through an afternoon toilet by means of searching and sustained suction.

"I don't suppose there is a more wretched man in the world than I am, John," said Colonel Tempest at last.

"There is something on your mind, perhaps."

"Night and day," said Colonel Tempest, wishing John would not watch him so closely. "I have not a moment's peace."

"You are in money difficulties," said John, justly divining the only cause that was likely to permanently interfere with his uncle's peace of mind.

"Yes," said Colonel Tempest. "I am at my wit's end, and that is the truth."

John's lips tightened a little, and he remained silent. That was why his uncle had come to see him then. His pride revolted against Colonel Tempest's want of it, against Archie's sponge-like absorption of all John would give him. He felt (and it was no idle fancy of a wealthy man) that he would have died rather than have asked for a shilling. A Tempest should be above begging, should scorn to run in debt. John's pride of race resented what was in his eyes a want of honour in the other members of the family of which he was the head.

Colonel Tempest was in a position of too much delicacy not to feel hurt by John's silence. He reflected on the invariable meanness of rich men, with a momentary retrospect of how open-handed he had been himself in his youth, and even after his crippling marriage.

"I do not know the circ.u.mstances," said John at last.

"No one does," said Colonel Tempest.

"Neither have I any wish to know them," said John, with a touch of haughtiness, "except in so far as I can be of use to you."

Colonel Tempest found himself very disagreeably placed. He would have instantly lost his temper if he had been a few weeks younger, but the memory of those last few weeks recurred to him like a douche of cold water. Self-interest would not allow him to throw away his last chance of escaping out of Swayne's clutches, and he had a secret conviction that no storming or pa.s.sion of any kind would have any effect on that prostrate figure, with the stern feeble voice, and intense fixity of gaze.

John had always felt a secret repulsion towards his uncle, though he invariably met him with grave, if distant civility. He had borne in a proud silence the gradual realization, as he grew old enough to understand it, that there was a slur upon his name, a shadow on his mother's memory. He believed, as did some others, that his uncle had originated the slanders, impossible to substantiate, in order to wrest his inheritance from him. How could this man, after trying to strip him of everything, even of his name, come to him now for money?

John had a certain rigidity and tenacity of mind, an uprightness and severity, which come of an intense love of justice and rect.i.tude, but which in an extreme degree, if not counterbalanced by other qualities, make a hard and unlovable character.

His clear-eyed judgment made him look at Colonel Tempest with secret indignation and contempt. But with the harshness of youth other qualities, rarely joined, went hand in hand. A little knowledge of others is a dangerous thing. It shows itself in sweeping condemnations and severe judgments, and a complacent holding up to the light of the poor foibles and peccadilloes of humanity, which all who will can find.

A greater knowledge shows itself in a greater tenderness towards others, the tenderness, as some suppose, of wilful ignorance of evil. When or how John had learnt it I know not, but certainly he had a rapid intuition of the feelings of others; he could put himself in their place, and to do that is to be not harsh.

He looked again at Colonel Tempest, and was ashamed of his pa.s.sing, though righteous, anger. He realized how hard it must be for an older man to be obliged to ask a young one for money, and he had no wish to make it any harder. He looked at the weak, wretched face, with its tortured selfishness, and understood a little; perhaps only in part, but enough to make him speak again in a different tone.

"Do not tell me anything you do not wish; but I see something is troubling you very much. Sometimes things don't look so black when one has talked them over."

"I can't talk it over, John," said Colonel Tempest, with incontestable veracity, softened by the kindness of his tone, "but the truth is,"

nervousness was shutting its eyes and making a rush, "I want--_ten thousand pounds and no questions asked_."

John was startled. Colonel Tempest clutched his hat, and stared out of the window. He felt benumbed. He had actually done it, actually brought himself to ask for it. As his faculties slowly returned to him in the long silence which followed, he became conscious, that if John was too n.i.g.g.ardly to pay his own ransom, he, Colonel Tempest, would not be the most to blame, if any casualty should hereafter occur.

At last John spoke.

"You say you don't want any questions asked, but I _must_ ask one or two. You want this money secretly. Would the want of it bring disgrace upon your--children?" He had nearly said your "daughter."

"If it was found out it would," said Colonel Tempest, in a choked voice.

The detection, which he always told himself was an impossibility, had, nevertheless, a horrible way of masquerading before him at intervals as an accomplished fact.

John knit his brows.

"I can't pretend not to know what it is," he said. "It is a debt of honour. You have been betting."

"Yes," said Colonel Tempest, faintly.

"I suppose you can't touch your capital. That is settled on your children."

"No," said Colonel Tempest. "There were no settlements when I married. I had to do the best I could. I had twenty thousand pounds from my father, and my wife brought me a few thousands after her uncle's death; a very few, which her relations could not prevent her having. But there were the children, and one thing with another, and women are extravagant, and must have everything to their liking; and by the time I had settled up and sold everything after the break-up, it was all I could do to put Archie to school."

(Oh! Di, Di, cold in your grave these two and twenty years! Do you remember the little pile of account books that you wound up, and put in your writing-table drawer, that last morning in April, thinking that if anything happened, he would find them there--afterwards. He had always inveighed against the meanness of your economy before the servants, and against your extravagance in private. Do you remember the butcher's book, with thin blotting paper, that blotted tears as badly as ink sometimes, for meat was dear; and the milk bills? You were always proud of the milk bills, with the s.p.a.ce for cream left blank, except when he was there. And the little book of sundries, where those quarter pounds of fresh b.u.t.ter and French rolls, were entered, which Anne ran out to get if he came home suddenly, because he did not like the cheap b.u.t.ter from the Stores. Do you remember these things? He never knew, he never looked at the dumb reproach of that little row of books: but I cannot think, wherever you are, that you have quite forgotten them.)

John was silent again. How could he deal with this man who roused in him such a vehement indignation? For several minutes he could not trust himself to speak.

"I think I had better go," said Colonel Tempest at last.

John started violently.

"No, no," he said. "Wait. Let me think."

The nurse and his aunt came into the room at that moment.

"Are not you feeling tired, sir?" the nurse inquired, warningly.

"Yes, John," said Miss Fane, grunting as her manner was. "Mustn't get tired."

"I am not," he replied. "Colonel Tempest and I are discussing business matters which won't wait--which it would trouble me to leave unsettled.

We have not quite finished, but he is more tired than I am. It is the hottest day we have had. Will you give him a cup of tea, Aunt Flo, and bring him back in half an hour."

When he was left alone John turned his head painfully on the pillow, and slowly opened and shut one of the bandaged hands. This not altogether satisfactory form of exercise was the only subst.i.tute he had within his power for the old habit of pacing up and down while he thought.

Ought he to give the money? He had no right to make a bad use of anything because he happened to have a good deal of it. This ten thousand would follow the previous twenty thousand, as a matter of course.

Giving it did not affect himself, inasmuch as he would hardly miss it.

It was a generous action only in appearance, for he was very wealthy; even among the rich he was very rich. His long minority, and various legacies of younger branches, which had shown the Tempest peculiarity of dying out, and leaving their substance to the head of the family, had added to an already imposing income. In his present mode of life he did not spend a third of it.

The thought flashed across his mind that if he had died three weeks ago, if the hinges of the door had held as firmly as the shot lock, and he had perished in that room in King Street like a rat in a trap, Colonel Tempest would at this very moment have been in possession of everything.

He looked at his own death, and all it would have entailed, dispa.s.sionately.

That improvident selfish man had been within an ace of immense wealth.

And yet--John's heart smote him--his uncle had been genuinely grieved to see him so ill: had been really thankful to think he was out of danger.

He had almost immediately afterwards reverted to himself and his own affairs; but that was natural to the man. He had nevertheless been unaffectedly overcome the moment before. The emotion had been genuine.

John struggled hard against his strong personal dislike.