Diana Tempest Volume Iii Part 8

John had not wept a tear for himself, but he hid his face against the trunk of one of the trees that were not his, and sobbed aloud at the thought of Mitty.

And next day came a letter from Archie, saying that Colonel Tempest was at death's door in one of the London hospitals, owing to having accidentally shot himself with a revolver. John sent money, much more than was actually necessary, and drew breath. Nothing could be done until Colonel Tempest was either convalescent or dead. He was reprieved from telling Mitty anything for the moment.

And as the spring was just beginning to whisper to the sleeping earth, and the buds of the horse-chestnut to grow white and woolly beneath the nursery windows, as John had seen them many and many a time--how or why I know not, but with the waking of the year Mitty began to fail.

She had never been ill in John's recollection. She had had "a bone in her leg" occasionally, but excepting that mysterious ailment and a touch of rheumatism in later years, Mitty had always been quite well. She was not actually ill now, but----

It was useless to tell her not to "do" her nurseries herself, and to positively forbid her to wash his socks and handkerchiefs. Mitty worked exactly the same; and John with an ache at his heart came indoors every day in time for nursery tea, and Mitty made him b.u.t.tered toast, and was happy beyond words; but I think her eyesight must have begun to fail her, or she would have seen how grey and haggard the face of her "lamb"

became as the days went by.

Who shall say when a thought begins? Long before we see it, it was there, but our eyes were holden. "L'amour commence par l'ombre." So do many things besides love.

_The letters were destroyed._ When did John think of that first, or rather, when did he first hear it whispered? Why was his mind always going back to that?

He would not have burned them if he had taken time to consider, but the first impulse to do with them as their writer had herself intended, had been acted upon before he had even thought of their bearing upon himself and others.

At any rate they were gone--quite gone--sprinkled to the four winds of heaven.

_There was no other proof._

And his--no, not his father--Mr. Tempest, who knew all about him, had intended him to be his heir. He had left him his name and his place, with a solemn charge to do his duty by them.

"I have done it," said John to himself, "as those two would never have done. Shall I let all go to rack and ruin now? If I was not born a Tempest I have become one. I _am_ one, and if I marry one my children will be Tempests, and those two fools will not be suffered to pull Overleigh stone from stone, and drag a great name into the dust; as they would, as they a.s.suredly would."

Had not Mr. Tempest foreseen this when he exacted that solemn promise from John on his death-bed to uphold the honour of the family? Could he break that promise? And through the vain sophistries, upsetting them all, a mad cry rang, "Di loves me! She loves me at last! I cannot give her up!"

The challenge was thrown out into the darkness. No one took it up.

A fierce restlessness laid hold on John. He rushed up to London several times to hear how Colonel Tempest was going on. Each time he told himself that he was going to see Di. But although the first time he went to Colonel Tempest's lodgings the servant informed him that Di was with her father, he did not ask to see her. Each time he came back without having dared to go to the little house in Kensington. He could not meet those grave clear eyes with the new gentleness in them that went to his head like wine. He knew they would make him forget everything, everything except that he loved her, and would sell his very soul for her.

Time stopped. In all this enormous interval the buds of the horse-chestnut had not yet burst to green. It was ages since he had seen the first primrose, and yet to-day, as he walked in the woods on the day after his return from another futile journey to London, they were all out in the forest still.

And something stirred within him that had not deigned to take notice of all his feverish a.s.severations and wanderings, that had not rebuked him, that had not even listened when he had said repeatedly that he could not give up Di.

By an invisible hand the challenge was taken up, and John knew the time of conflict was at hand.

He walked on and on, not knowing where he went, past the forest and the meadowland, and away over the rolling moors, with only Lindo for his companion.

At last his newly returned strength failing him, he threw himself down in the dry windswept heather. He had not outstripped his thoughts. This was the appointed place. He knew it even as he flung himself down. His hour was come.

It was an April afternoon, pale and bleak. The late frost had come back, and had silenced the birds. One only deeply in love, somewhere near at hand, but invisible, repeated plaintively over and over again a small bird-name in the silence of the shrinking spring.

And John's heart said over and over again one little word--

"Di, Di, Di!"

There are some sacrifices which partake of the nature of self-mutilation. That is why principle often falls before the onslaught of a deep human pa.s.sion, which is nothing but the rebellion of human nature brought to bay, against the execution upon itself of that dread command of the spiritual nature, "If thy right hand offend thee, cut it off."

To give up certain affections is with some natures to give up all possibility of the quickening into life of that latent maturer self that craves for existence in each one of us. It is to take, for better for worse, a more meagre form of life, dest.i.tute, not of happiness perhaps, but of those common joys and sorrows which most of all bind us in sympathy with our fellow-men. What marriage in itself is to the majority, the love of one fellow-creature, and one only, is to the few.

To a few, happily a very few, there is only one hand that can minister among the pressure of the crowd. There was none other woman in the world for John, save only Di. Sayings common to vulgarity, profaned by every breach of promise case, can yet be true sometimes.

"Di, Di, Di!" said John.

He tried to recall her face, but he could not. When they were together he had not seen her; he had only felt her presence, only trembled at each slight movement of her hands. He always watched them when he was talking to her. He knew every movement of those strong, slender hands by heart. She had a little way of opening and shutting her left hand as she talked. He smiled even now as he thought of it. And she had a certain wave in her hair just above the ear, that was not the same over the other ear. But her face--no, he could not see her face.

He tried again. They were sitting once again, he and she, not very near, nor very far apart, in the low entresol room at Overleigh. He could see her now. She was arranging the lilies of the valley, and he was saying to himself, as he watched her with his chin in his hands, "This is only the beginning. There will be many times like this, only dearer and sweeter than this."

Many times! That deep conviction had proved as false as all the rest--as false as everything else which he had trusted.

And all in a moment as he looked, as he remembered, was it endurance, was it principle, that seemed to snap?

He set his teeth and ground his heel into the earth. Agony had come upon him. Pa.s.sion, writhing in torment, rose gigantic without warning and seized him in a t.i.tan grip. It was a duel to the death.

John sat motionless in the solitude of the heather. The bird was silent.

On either hand the level moors met the level sky. Lindo walked in and out in semi and total eclipse near at hand, now emerging life-size upon a hillock, now visible only as an erect travelling tail amid the heather. The sun came faintly out. There was a little speech of bees, a little quivering among the poised spears of the tall bleached gra.s.ses against the sky.

Time pa.s.sed.

John's was not the easy faith which believes that in another world what has been given up in this will be restored a thousandfold. The hope of future reward had no more power to move him than the fear of future punishment. The heaven of rewards of which those speak who have authority, would be no heaven at all to many; a place from which the n.o.blest would turn away. Love worthy of the name, even down here, gives all, asking nothing back.

John did not try to define even to himself the faith by which he had lived so far; but as the veiled sun stooped near and nearer to the west, he began to see, as clearly as he saw the sword-gra.s.s shaking against the sky, that he was about to remain true to it, or be false to it for ever.

Perhaps that faith was more than anything else a stern allegiance to the Giver of that law within the heart which independent natures ever recognize as the only true authority; which John had early elected to obey, which he had obeyed with ease, till now. He had been condemned by many as a freethinker; for to be obedient to the divine prompting has ever been stigmatized as lawlessness by those who are obedient to a written code. John had no code.

Yet G.o.d, who made (if the tourists who cheaply move in flocks on beaten highways could only believe it) those solitary, isolated natures, knew what He was about. And to those to whom little human guidance is vouchsafed He adds courage, and that self-reliance which comes only of a deep-rooted faith in a G.o.d who will not keep silence, who will not leave the traveller journeying towards Him unpiloted upon a lonely sh.o.r.e, or ultimately suffer His least holy one to see corruption.

John looked wildly round him. Even nature seemed to have turned against him. It spoke of peace when there was no peace. For nature has no power to mitigate the bitterness of that cup of self-surrender which even Christ Himself, beneath the kindred stars of still Gethsemane, prayed might pa.s.s from Him.

John hid his convulsed face in his hands.

The crises of life have their hour of loneliness and prostration, their agony and b.l.o.o.d.y sweat. That cup which may not pa.s.s, how enn.o.bling it is to read of in the lives of others, how interesting to theorize upon in our own; how appalling in actual experience, when it is in our hands to drink or to refuse; refusing for ever with it, if we accept it not, the hand of Him who offers it!

The solemn world of grey earth and sky waited. The light in the west waited. How much longer were they to wait? How much longer would this bowed figure sway itself to and fro?

"I will do it!" said John suddenly, and with a harsh inarticulate cry he flung himself down on his face among the heather, clutching the soft earth; for the Hand of the G.o.d whom he would not deny was heavy on him.

CHAPTER VIII.

"The dead abide with us! Though stark and cold Earth seems to grip them, they are with us still.