Diana Tempest Volume Iii Part 10

At last Mitty said defiantly, "And I shall take your morroccy shoes, and your little chair as I give you myself. I don't care what anybody says, I shall take 'em. And the old horse and the Noey's ark."

"It will be all right," said John, getting slowly to his feet. "n.o.body will want to have them, or anything of mine;" and he kissed her, and went out.

He went to the library and sat down by the fire.

The resolution and aspiration of a few hours ago--where were they now?

He felt broken in body and soul.

Lindo came in, nibbled John's elbow, and scrutinized the fire. John scratched him absently on the top of his back between the tufts.

"Lindo," he said, "the world is a hard place to live in."

But Lindo, bulging with an unusual allowance of tea-cake, and winnowing the air with an appreciative hind leg, did not think so.

CHAPTER IX.

"Et souvent au moment ou l'on croyait tenir Une esperance, on voit que c'est un souvenir."

VICTOR HUGO.

When Colonel Tempest lay in a precarious condition owing to the unexpected explosion of a revolver which he was taking to his gun-maker, and which he believed to be unloaded--when this fatality occurred, Mrs.

Courtenay somewhat relaxed the stringency of her usual demeanour to him, and allowed his daughter to be with him constantly in the hospital to which he was first conveyed, and afterwards in his rooms in Brook Street when he was sufficiently convalescent to be conveyed thither.

Colonel Tempest was a trying patient; in one sense he was not a patient at all; melting into querulous tears when denied a sardine on toast for which his soul thirsted, the application of which would infallibly have separated his soul from his body; and bemoaning continually, when consciousness was vouchsafed to him, the neglect of his children and the callousness of his friends. Di bore it with equanimity. It is only true accusations which one feels obliged to contradict. She did not love her father, and his continual appeals to her pity and filial devotion touched her but little. Colonel Tempest confided to his nurse in the night-watches that he was the parent of heartless children, and when Di took her place in the daytime, reviled the nurse's greed, who, whether he was suffering or not, could eat a large meal in the middle of the night.

"I hate nurses," he would say. "Your poor mother had such a horrid nurse when Archie was born. I could not bear her, always making difficulties and restrictions, and locking the door, and then complaining to the doctor because I rattled the lock. I urged your mother to part with her whenever she was not in the room. But she only cried, and said she could not do without her, and that she was kind to her. That was your mother all over. She always sided against me. I must say she knew the value of tears, did your poor mother. She cried herself into hysterics when I rang the front door bell at four in the morning because I had gone out without a latch-key. I suppose she expected me to sit all night on the step. And first the nurse and then the doctor spoke to me about agitating her, and said it was doing her harm; so I just walked straight out of the house, and never set foot in it again for a month till they had both cleared out. They overreached themselves that time."

Archie, who looked in once a day for the s.p.a.ce of ten seconds, came in for the largest share of Colonel Tempest's reproaches.

"I don't like sick people," that young gentleman was wont to remark.

"Don't understand 'em. No use. Nursing not in my line. Better out of the way."

So, with the consideration of his kind, he was so good as to keep out of it, while Colonel Tempest wept salt tears into his already too salt beef-tea (it was always too salt or not salt enough), and remarked with bitterness that he could have fancied a sardine, and that other people's sons nursed their parents when they were at death's door. Young Grandcourt had never left _his_ father's bedside for three weeks when he had pneumonia; but Archie, it seemed, was different.

"My children are not much comfort to me," he told the doctor as regularly as he put out his tongue.

"John might have come," he said one day to Di. "He got out of it by sending a cheque, but I think he might have taken the trouble just to come and see whether I was alive or dead."

"John is ill himself," said Di.

"John is always ill," said Colonel Tempest, fretfully, with the half-memory of convalescence--"always ailing and coddling himself; and yet he has twice my physique. John grows coa.r.s.e-looking--very coa.r.s.e. I fancy he is a large eater. I remember he was ill in the summer. I went to see him. I was always sitting with him; and there did not seem to be much the matter with him. I think he gives way."

"Perhaps it is a family failing," said Di, who was beginning to discover what a continual bottling up and corking down of effervescent irritation is comprised under the name of patience.

How many weeks was it after Di's return to London when a cloud no larger than a man's hand arose on the clear horizon of that secret happiness which no amount of querulousness on Colonel Tempest's part could effectually dim? It was a very small cloud. It took the shape of a card with John's name on it, who had come to Brook Street to inquire after his uncle.

"He is in London. He will call this afternoon," said Di to herself; and as Colonel Tempest happened to be too sleepy to wish to be read to, she left him early in the afternoon, and hurried home. And she and Mrs.

Courtenay sat indoors all that afternoon, though they had been lent a carriage, and they waited to make tea till after the time; and whenever the door bell rang, Mrs. Courtenay's hands shook quite as much as Di's.

And aimless, foolish persons called, but John did not call.

"He is ill," said Mrs. Courtenay in the dusk, "or he has been prevented coming. There is some reason. He will write."

"Yes," said Di, "he will come when he can." But nevertheless a little shiver of doubt crept into her heart for the first time. "If I had been in his place," she said to herself, "I should have come ill or well, and I should _not_ have been prevented."

She put the thought aside instantly as unreasonable, but the shy dread she had previously felt of meeting him changed to a restless longing just to see him, just to be rea.s.sured.

To be loved by one we love is, after all, so incredible a revelation that it is not wonderful that human nature seeks after a sign. Only a great self-esteem finds love easy to believe in.

The days pa.s.sed, and linked themselves to weeks. Was it fancy, or did Mrs. Courtenay become graver day by day? and Di remembered with misgiving a certain note which she had written to John the morning she left Overleigh. The little cloud grew.

One afternoon Di came in rather later than usual, and after a glance round the room, which had become habitual to her, sat down by her grandmother, and poured out tea.

"Any callers, granny?"

"One--Archie."

Di sighed. Coming home had always the possibility in it of finding some one sitting in the drawing-room, or a note on the hall table. Yet neither possibility happened.

"Archie came to say that the doctor thinks your father does not gain ground, and that he might be moved to the seaside with advantage. He wanted to know whether you could go with him. He can't get leave himself for more than a couple of days. I said I would allow you to do so, if he took your father down himself, and got him settled. He can do that in two days, and he ought to take his share. He has left everything to you so far. He mentioned," continued Mrs. Courtenay with an effort, "that he had met John at the Carlton yesterday, and that he was all right, and able to go about again as usual. He went back to Overleigh to-day."

There was a long silence.

"What do you think, granny?" said Di at last.

"How long is it since you were at Overleigh?"

"Two months."

"When you were there did you allow John to see that you had changed your mind, or were you friendly with him, as you used to be? Nothing discourages men so much as that."

"No; I tried to be, but I could not. I don't know what I was, except very uncomfortable."

"Had he any real opportunity of speaking to you without interruption?"

Di remembered the half-hour in the entresol sitting-room. It had never occurred to her till that moment that certainly, if he had wished to do so, he could have spoken to her then.

"Yes," she said, "he had; and," she added, "I am sure he knew I liked him. If he did not know it then, I am quite sure he knows it now. I wrote a note."

"What kind of note?"

"Oh, granny, that is just it. I don't know what kind it was. It seemed natural at the time. I can't remember exactly what I said. I've tried to, often. It was written in such a hurry, for you telegraphed for me, and I had been up all night waiting to hear whether he was to live or die, and it was so dreadful to have to go away without a word."

Mrs. Courtenay leaned back in her chair. She seemed tired.