Diana Tempest Volume Iii Part 7

Di was glad not to be questioned upon the one subject that was never absent from her thoughts. As Mrs. Courtenay became convalescent she was able to leave her for an hour or two, and pace in the quieter parts of Kensington Gardens. Happiness, like sorrow, is easier to bear out-of-doors, and Di had a lurking feeling that would hardly bear being put into words, but was none the worse company for that, that the crocuses and the first bird-note in the trees and the pale sky knew her secret and rejoiced with her.

John would come to her. He was getting well, and the first day he could he would come to her, and tell her once more that he loved her. And she?

Impossible, incredible as it seemed, she should tell him that she loved him too. Imagination stopped short there. Everything after that was a complete blank. They would be engaged? They would be married? Other people who loved did so. Words, mere words, applicable to "other people," but not to her and John. Could such impossible happiness ever come about? Never, never. She must be mad to think of such a thing. It could not be. Yet it was so; it was coming, it was sure, this new, incomprehensible, dreaded happiness, of which, now that it was almost within her trembling hand, she hardly dared to think.

"Di," said Mrs. Courtenay one afternoon, as she came in from her walk, "there is a paragraph in the paper about John. He is going to contest ---- at the general election, in opposition to the present Radical member. Did he say anything about it while you were at Overleigh? It must have been arranged some time ago."

"No, granny, he did not mention it."

"I am glad he is taking part in politics at last. It is time. I may not live to see it, but he will make his mark."

"I am sure he will," said Di.

Mrs. Courtenay looked in some perplexity at her granddaughter. It seemed to her, from Di's account, that she had taken John's accident very placidly. She had not forgotten the girl's apparent callousness when his life had been endangered in the mine. It was very provoking to Mrs.

Courtenay that this beautiful creature, whom she had taken out for nearly four years, seemed to have too much heart to be willing to marry without love, and too little to fall genuinely in love.

Mrs. Courtenay had gone to considerable expense in providing her with a new and becoming morning-gown for that visit, and Di had managed to lose one of the lace handkerchiefs she had lent her, and had come back unengaged after all. Mrs. Courtenay, who had taken care to accept the invitation for her without consulting her, and had ordered the gown in spite of Di's remonstrances, felt keenly that if Di had refused John, she had gone to that social gathering under false pretences.

"Di," she said, "I seldom ask questions, but I have been wondering during the last few days whether you have anything to tell me or not."

Considering that this was not a question, it was certainly couched in a form conducive to eliciting information.

"I have, and I have not," said Di. "Of course I know what you expected, but it did not happen."

"You mean John did not propose to you?"

"No, granny."

Mrs. Courtenay was silent. She was prepared to be seriously annoyed with Di, and it seemed John was in fault after all. There is no relaxation for a natural irritability in being angry with a person a hundred miles off.

"I think he meant to," said Di, turning pink.

Mrs. Courtenay saw the change of colour with surprise.

"My dear," she said, "do you care for him?"

"Yes," said Di, looking straight at her grandmother.

"I am very thankful," said Mrs. Courtenay. "I have nothing left to wish for."

"I believe I have sometimes done you an injustice," she said tremulously, after wiping her spectacles. "I thought you valued your own freedom and independence too much to marry. It is difficult to advise the young to give their love if they don't want to. Yet, as one grows old, one sees that the very best things we women have lose all their virtue if we keep them to ourselves. Our love if we withhold it, our freedom if we retain it,--what are they later on in life but dead seed in our hands? Our best is ours only to give. Our part is to give it to some one who is worthy of it. I think John is worthy. I wish he had managed to speak, and that it were all settled."

"It is really settled," said Di. "Now and then I feel frightened, and think I may have made a mistake, but I know all the time that is foolish. I am certain he cares for me, and I am quite sure he knows I care for him. Granny"--blushing furiously--"I often wish now that I had not said quite so many idiotic things about love and marriage before I knew anything about them. Do you remember how I used to favour you with my views about them?"

"I don't think they were exactly idiotic. Only the elect hesitate to p.r.o.nounce opinions on subjects of which they are ignorant. I have heard extremely intelligent men say things quite as silly about housekeeping, and the rearing of infants. You, like them, spoke according to your lights, which were small. I don't know about charming men. There are not any nowadays. But it is always

'... a pity when charming women Talk of things that they don't understand.'"

"We should not have many subjects of conversation if we did not," said Di.

And the old woman and the young one embraced each other with tears in their eyes.

CHAPTER VII.

"Oh, well for him whose will is strong!"

TENNYSON.

There come times in our lives when the mind lies broken on the revolving wheel of our thought. "I am illegitimate." That was the one thought which made John's bed for him at night, which followed him throughout the spectral day until it brought him back to the spectral night again.

It was a quiver in which were many poisoned arrows. Because the first that struck him was well-nigh unbearable, the others did not fail to reach their mark.

If he were nameless and penniless, he could not marry Di. That was the first arrow. Such marriages are possible only in books and in that sacred profession which, in spite of numerous instances to the contrary, believes that "the Lord will provide." Di would not be allowed to marry him, even if she were willing to do so. And after a time--a long time, perhaps--she would marry some one else, possibly Lord Hemsworth.

John writhed. He had set his heart on this woman. He had bent her strong will to love him as a proud woman only can. She had been hard to win, but she was his as much as if they were already married; his by right, as the living Galatea was by right the sculptor's, who gave her marble heart the throbbing life and love of his own.

"She is mine--I cannot give her up," he said aloud.

There was no voice, nor any that answered.

Strange how the ploughshare turns up little tags and ends of forgotten rubbish buried by the mould of a few years' dust.

One utterance of Archie's, absolutely forgotten till now, was continually recurring to John's mind. Its barbed point rankled.

"There must be a mint of money in an old barrack stuffed full of gimcracks like this. If ever I wanted a hundred or two, I would trot out one of those little silver Johnnies in no time if they were mine."

And he would. If the thought of what Colonel Tempest and Archie would achieve after his own death had stung John as Archie said that, how should he bear to stand by and _see_ them do it? The books, the pictures, the family ma.n.u.scripts which he was even then arranging, the jewels, the renowned diamond necklace that the Spanish government had offered to buy from his grandfather, which he had hoped one day to clasp on Di's neck--all the possessions of the past but almost regal state of a great name, which he had kept with such a reverent hand--he should live to see them cast right and left, lost, sold, squandered, stolen. Archie would give the diamonds to the first actress who asked for them. Colonel Tempest would be equally "open-handed."

As the days went on, John shut his eyes to the pictures in the gallery as he pa.s.sed through it. A mute suspense and reproach seemed to hang about the whole place. The Velasquez and the t.i.tian peered at him.

Tempest of the Red Hand clutched his sword-hilt uneasily. Mieris' old Dutch-woman seemed to have lost her interest in selling her marvellous string of onions to the little boy. Ribalta's Spanish Jesuit fingered the red cross of Santiago embroidered on his breast, and looked askance at John.

John turned back many times from the library door. The new books which he had had bound in exact reproduction of a beautiful old missal of the Tempest collection, and for the arrival of which he had been eagerly waiting, remained untouched in their packing-cases. He could not look at them.

Once he went into the dining-hall, unused when he was alone, and opened one of the ponderous shutters. The rich light pierced the solemn gloom, catching the silver sconces on the wall and the silver figures standing in the carved niches above the fireplace.

"You will not give us up," they seemed to say; and the little cavalier turned to his lady with a shake of his head.

As John closed the shutter his eyes fell on the Tempest motto on the pane, "Je le feray durant ma vie;" and it stabbed him like a knife.

He went out into the open air like one pursued, and paced in the dead forest waiting for the spring. All he had held so sacred meant nothing then--nothing, nothing, nothing. The Tempest motto, round which he had bound his life, round which his most solemn convictions and aspirations had grown up, had nothing to do with him. He had been mocked. He, a nameless b.a.s.t.a.r.d, the offspring of a mere common intrigue, had been fooled into believing that he was John Tempest, the head of one of the greatest families in England; that Overleigh belonged to him and he to it as entirely as--nay, more than--his own hands and feet and eyes.

It was as if he had been acting a serious part to the best of his ability on a stage with many others, and suddenly they had all dropped their masks and were grinning at him with satyr faces in grotesque att.i.tudes, and he found that he alone had mistaken a screaming farce, of which he was the b.u.t.t, for a drama of which he had imagined himself one of the princ.i.p.al figures.

John laughed a harsh wild laugh under the solemn overarching trees.

Everything, himself included, had undergone a hideous distortion. His whole life was dislocated. His faith in G.o.d and man wavered. The key-stone of his existence was gone from the arch, and the stones struck him as they fell round him. The confusion was so great that for the first few days he was incapable of action, incapable of reflection, incapable of anything.

_Mitty!_ That thought came next. That stung. He had nothing in the wide world which he could call his own; no roof for Mitty, no fire to warm her by. He was absolutely without means. His mother's small fortune he had sunk in an annuity for Mr. Goodwin. What would become of Mitty? How would she survive being uprooted from her little nest in the garret gallery? How would she bear to see her lamb turned adrift upon the world? Mitty was growing old, and her faithful love for him would make the last years sorrowful which were so happy now. Oh, if he could only wait till Mitty died!