Diana Tempest Volume Ii Part 4

"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 doc.u.ment 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 b.u.t.toned 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. d.a.m.n 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 h.e.l.l 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 G.o.d 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.

Superst.i.tion 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 compa.s.sion are, as a rule, fortunately able to bestow most upon themselves. Colonel Tempest belonged to the self-pitying cla.s.s, 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 G.o.d Himself! Everybody had turned against him. And now G.o.d 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 pa.s.s, 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.