Diana Tempest Volume Iii Part 4

The girl clung convulsively to the old woman, and the two went together to the nursery, and Mitty, after putting her guest into the rocking-chair by the fire, went down once more to ask for news. But there was no news. John was still unconscious, and the doctor would say nothing. Presently Mitty came tearfully back, and sat down on the other side of the fire. Lord Hemsworth, who was sitting up with Archie, had promised to come to the nursery the moment there was any change.

The nursery still bore traces of the little party that had broken up so disastrously, for Mitty had invited the _elite_ of the village ladies to view the carnival from the nursery windows. The "rock" buns for which Mitty was celebrated, and one of Mrs. Alc.o.c.k's best cakes, were still on the table, and Mitty's fluted silver teapot with a little nest of clean cups round it. Presently she got up, and, opening the corner cupboard, began to put them away; but the impulse of tidying was forgotten as she caught sight of John's robin mug on the top shelf. She took it down, and stood holding it in her old withered hands.

"I give it him myself," she said, "on his birthday when he was five years old; twenty-four years ago come June. I thought some of his mother's family would have remembered his birthday if his father didn't.

I thought something would have come by post. But there wasn't so much as a letter. And Mrs. Alc.o.c.k give him the tin plate with the soldier on it, but I never let him eat off it. And we had Barker's little nephew to tea as he was learning to shoemaykle, but n.o.body took no notice of his birthday except me and Mrs. Alc.o.c.k. And when he went to school I kep'

his mug and his toys. He never had a many toys, but what there was I have 'em. And his clothes, my dear, everything since he was born, from his little cambric shirts, I have 'em all, put away; with a bit of camphor to his velvet suit as I took him to York to be measured for, on purpose to make him look pretty to his papa when he come home from abroad. But he never took a bit of notice of him--never." Mitty sat down by the fire, still holding the mug. "And a lace collar he had with it--real lace, the best as money could buy. I might spend what I liked on him; but no one ever took no notice of him, not even in his first sailor's; and he with his pretty ways and his grave talk! Mrs. Alc.o.c.k and me has often cried over the things he'd say. There's his crib still in the night-nursery by my bed. I could not sleep without it was there; and the little blankets and sheets and piller-slips as belong, all put away, and not a iron mould upon 'em. Eh, dear miss, many's the time I've got 'em out and aired 'em, thinking maybe the day 'ud come when he would have a babby of his own, and I should hold it in my old arms before I died. And even if I was gone they'd be all ready, and the ba.s.sinet only wanting muslin to it. And now--oh, my lamb, my lamb! And they won't let his old Mitty go to him." And Mitty's grief broke into a paroxysm of sobbing.

Di looked at the old woman rocking herself backwards and forwards, and, rising unsteadily, she went and knelt down by her, putting her arms round her in silence. She had no comfort to give in words. It seemed as if her strong young heart were breaking; but she realized that Mitty's anguish for a love knit up into so many faithful years was greater than hers.

As she knelt, a step came along the creaking garret gallery with its uneven flooring.

It was Lord Hemsworth.

He stood in the doorway with the wan light of the morning behind him.

His face looked pinched and aged.

"He is better," he said. "He has recovered consciousness, and has spoken. The other doctor has arrived, and they think all will go well."

And the two women who loved John clung and sobbed together.

Lord Hemsworth looked fixedly at Di and went out.

CHAPTER IV.

"Toute pa.s.sion nuisible attire, comme le gouffre, par le vertige. La faiblesse de volonte amene la faiblesse de tete, et l'abime, malgre son horreur, fascine alors comme un asile."--AMIEL.

People said that John had a charmed life. The divergence of an eighth of an inch, of a hundredth part of an inch, of a hair's-breadth and the little bead that pa.s.sed right through his neck would have pierced the jugular artery, and John would have added one more to the long list of names in Overleigh Church. As it was, when once the direction of the bullet had been ascertained, he was p.r.o.nounced to be in little danger.

He rallied steadily, and without relapse.

People said that he bore a charmed life, and they began to say something more, namely, that it was an object to somebody that it should be wiped out. Men are not shot at for nothing. John was not an Irish landlord.

Some one evidently bore him a grudge. Society instantly formed several more or less descreditable reasons to account for John's being the object of some one's revenge. Half-forgotten rumours of Archie's doings were revived with John's name affixed to them. Decidedly there had been some "entanglement," and John had brought his fate upon himself. Colonel Tempest, just returned from foreign travel, heard the matter discussed at his club. His opinion was asked as to the truth of the reports, but he only shrugged his shoulders, and it was supposed that he could not deny them. Di's, Lady Alice Fane's, and Miss Crupps' names were all equally a.s.sociated with John's in the different versions of the accident.

Colonel Tempest did not go to see his daughter. She had been telegraphed for the morning after the ice carnival by Mrs. Courtenay, who had actually developed with the thaw the bronchitis which she had dreaded throughout the frost. Di and Archie, whose leave was up, returned to town together for once.

Archie had experienced a distinct though shamed pang of disappointment when John's state was p.r.o.nounced to be favourable.

All night long, as he had sat waking and dozing beside the gallery fire opposite Lord Hemsworth's motionless, wakeful figure, visions of wealth pa.s.sed in spite of himself before his mind; visions of four-in-hands, and screaming champagne suppers, and smashing things he could afford to pay for, and running his own horses on the turf. He did not want John to die. He had been dreadfully shocked when he had first caught sight of the stony upturned face almost beneath his feet, and had strained every nerve in his body to overtake the murderer. He did not want John to go where he, Archie, would have been terrified to go himself. But--he wanted the things John had, which his father had often told him should by rights have been his, and they could not both have them at one and the same time.

He could not understand his father's fervent "Thank G.o.d!" when he a.s.sured him that John was out of danger.

"A miss is as good as a mile," said Archie, with his smallest grin. He was desperately short of money again by this time, and he had no one to apply to. He knew enough of John to be aware that nothing was to be expected from that quarter. Twenty-four hours ago he had thought--how could he help it?--that perhaps there would be no further trouble on that irksome, wearisome subject; for lack of money, and the annoyance entailed by procuring it, was the thorn in Archie's flesh. But now the annoyance was still there, beginning as it were all over again, owing to--John. Madeleine would lend him money, he knew, but he would be a cad to take it. He could not think of such a thing, he said to himself, as he turned it over in his mind.

The ice carnival and John's escape were a nine days' wonder. In ten days it was forgotten for a _cause celebre_ by every one except Colonel Tempest.

Colonel Tempest had had a fairly pleasant time abroad. While his small stock of ready money lasted, the remainder of the five hundred subtracted from the sum he had returned to John after his interview with Larkin, he had really almost enjoyed himself. He had picked up a few old companions of the hanger-on species at Baden and Homburg, and had given them dinners--he was always open-handed. He had the natural predilection for the society of his social inferiors which generally accompanies a predilection for being deferred to, and regarded as a person of importance. He was under the impression that he was the most liberal-minded of men in the choice of his companions, and without the social prejudices of his cla.s.s. He had won a little at "baccarat." His health also had improved. On his return in December to the lodgings which he had left in such a panic in July, he told himself that he had been in a morbid state of health, that he had taken things too much to heart, that he had been over-sensitive; that there was no need to be afraid. Five months had elapsed. It would be all right.

And it had been all right for about a month, and then----

If the distressing theory that virtue is its own reward has any truth, surely sin is its own punishment.

The old monotonous pains took Colonel Tempest.

It is a popular axiom among persons in robust health that others labouring long under a painful disease become accustomed to it. It is perhaps as true as all axioms, however freely laid down by persons in one state respecting the feelings of others in a state of which they are ignorant, can be.

The continual dropping of water wears away the stone. The stone ought, of course, to put up an umbrella--any one can see that--or shift its position. But it seldom does so.

There was a continual dropping of a slowly diluted torture on the crumbling sandstone of Colonel Tempest's heart. The few months of intermission only rendered more acute the agony of the inevitable recommencement.

As he felt in July after the fire in John's lodgings, so he felt now; just the same again, all over again, only worse. The porous sandstone was wearing down.

He wandered like a ghost in the snowy places in the Park--for snow had followed the thaw--or paced for hours by the Serpentine, staring at the water. Once in a path across the Park he suddenly caught sight of John walking slowly in the direction of Kensington. The young man pa.s.sed within a couple of yards of him without seeing him, his head bent, and his eyes upon the ground.

"It is his ghost," said Colonel Tempest to himself, clutching the railing, and looking back at the receding figure with an access of shuddering horror.

Another figure pa.s.sed, a heavy man in an ulster.

"He is being followed," thought Colonel Tempest. "It is Swayne, and he is following him."

He rushed panting after the second figure, and overtook it at a meeting of the ways.

"Swayne!" he gasped; "for mercy's sake, Swayne, don't----"

A benevolent elderly face turned and peered at him in the twilight, and Colonel Tempest remembered that Swayne was dead.

"My name is Smith," said the man, and after waiting a moment pa.s.sed on.

In a flash of memory Colonel Tempest saw Swayne's huddled figure crouching in the disordered bed, and the check trousers over a chair, and the candle on the window-sill bent double by the heat. That had been the manner of Swayne's departure. How had he come to forget he was dead, and that John was laid up at Overleigh?

"I am going mad," he said to himself. "That will be the end. I shall go mad and tell everything."

The new idea haunted him. He could not shake it off. There was nothing in the wide world to turn to for a change of thought. If he fell asleep at night he was waked by the sound of his own voice, to find himself sitting up in bed talking loudly of he knew not what. Once he heard himself call Swayne's and John's names aloud into the listening darkness, and broke into a cold sweat at the thought that he might have been heard in the next room. Perhaps the other lodger, the young man with the red hair, cramming for the army, knew everything by this time.

Perhaps the lodging-house people had been listening at the door, and would give him in charge in the morning. Did he not at that very moment hear furtive steps and whispering on the landing? He rushed out to see the thin tabby cat, the walking funeral of the beetles and mice of the establishment, slip noiselessly downstairs, and he returned to his room shivering from head to foot, to toss and shudder until the morning, and then furtively eye the landlady and her daughter in curl-papers.

More days pa.s.sed. Colonel Tempest had had doubts at first, but gradually he became convinced that the people in the house knew. He was sure of it by the look in their faces if he pa.s.sed them on the stairs. It was merely a question of time. They were waiting to make certain before they informed against him. Perhaps they had written to John. There was no news of John, except a rumour in the _World_ that he was to stand at the coming general election.

Colonel Tempest became the prey of an _idee fixe_. When John came forward on the hustings he would be shot at and killed. He became as certain of it as if it had already happened. At times he believed it _had_ happened--that he had been present and had seen him fall forward; and it was he, Colonel Tempest, who had shot him, and had been taken red-handed with one of his old regimental pistols smoking in his hand.

Colonel Tempest had those pistols somewhere. One day he got them out and looked at them, and spent a long time rubbing them up. They used to hang crosswise under a photograph of himself in uniform in his wife's little drawing-room. He recollected, with the bitterness that accompanies the remembrance of the waste of lavished affections, how he had sat with his wife and child a whole wet afternoon polishing up those pistols, while another man in his place would have gone off to his club. (Colonel Tempest always knew what that other man would have done.) And Di had been gentle and affectionate, and had had a colour for once, and had played with her creeping child like a cat with its kitten. And they had had tea together afterwards, sitting on the sofa with the child asleep between them. Ah! if she had only been always like that, he thought, as he remembered the cloud that, owing to her uncertain temper, had gradually settled on his home-life.

An intense bitterness was springing afresh in Colonel Tempest's mind against his dead wife, against his dead brother, against Swayne, against his children who never came near him (Di was nursing Mrs. Courtenay in bronchitis, but that was of no account), against the world in general which did not care what became of him. No one cared.

"They will be sorry some day," he said to himself.

And still the waking nightmare remained of seeing John fall, and of finding he had shot him himself.