Diana Tempest Volume Ii Part 2

"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 gla.s.s 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 KHAYYaM.

"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 prompt.i.tude, 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 pa.s.sing him in the darkness, unseen, but felt. It haunted him in the daytime like a reality.

Superst.i.tion would not be superst.i.tion 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 G.o.d'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 cla.s.s, 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 pa.s.sed. 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.