Diana Tempest Volume Ii Part 8

"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. Fort.i.tude, 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 st.u.r.dy, 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. Alc.o.c.k 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. Alc.o.c.k. 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, pa.s.sing 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. Alc.o.c.k, 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. Alc.o.c.k, 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 gla.s.s 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."