Diana Tempest Volume Iii Part 14

History repeats itself, and so does our little private history. Only when the same thing happens it finds us changed, and we look back at what we were last time, and remember our old young self with wonder. Was that indeed I?

Possibly to some an evening party may appear a small event, but to Di, as she stood in the same crowd as last year, in the same pictured rooms, it seemed to her that her whole life had turned on the pivot of that one evening a year ago.

The lights glared too much now. The babel dazed her. Noises had become sharp swords of late. Every one talked too loud. She chatted and smiled, and vaguely wondered that her friends recognized her. "I am not the same person," she said to herself, "but no one seems to see any difference."

Presently she found herself near the same arched window where she had stood with John last year. She moved for a moment to it and looked out.

There was a mist across the river. The lights struggled through blurred and feeble. It had been clear last year. She turned and went on talking, of she knew not what, to a very young man at her elbow, who was making laborious efforts to get on with her.

Her eyes looked back from the recess across the sea of faces and fringes, and bald and close-cropped heads. The men who were not John, but yet had a momentary resemblance to him, were the only people she distinctly saw. Tall fair men were beginning to complain of her unrecognizing manner.

Yes, history repeats itself.

Among the crowd in the distance she suddenly saw him. John's rugged profile and square head were easy to recognize. _He had said there was nothing between them._ Their last meeting rushed back upon her with a scathing recollection of how she had held him in her arms and pressed her face to his. Shame scorched her inmost soul.

She turned towards her companion with fuller attention than what she had previously accorded him.

As John walked through the rooms scanning the crowd, the possibility of meeting Di did not strike him. With a frightful clutch of the heart he caught sight of her. A man who instantly aroused his animosity was talking eagerly to her. Something in her appearance startled him. Was it the colour of her gown that made her look so pale, the intense light that gave her calm dignified face that peculiar worn expression? She had a faint fixed smile as she talked that John did not recognize, and that, why he knew not, cut him to the quick.

Was this Di? Could this be Di?

He knew she had seen him. He hesitated a moment and then went towards her. She received him without any change of countenance. The fixed smile was still on her lips as he spoke to her, but the lips had whitened.

Their eyes met for a moment. Oh! what had happened to Di's lovely eyes that used to be so grave and gay?

He stammered something--said he was looking for some one--and pa.s.sed on.

She turned to speak to some one else as he did so. He strangled the nameless emotion which was choking him, and made his way into the next room. He had a vague consciousness of being spoken to, and of making herculean efforts to grind out answers, and then of pouncing on the secretary of the man he was looking for, who told him his chief had suddenly and unexpectedly started for Paris that afternoon on affairs of importance.

John mechanically noted down his address in Paris and left the house.

The necessity of remembering where his feet were taking him recalled him somewhat to himself. He pulled himself together, and slackened his pace.

"I will go to Paris by the night express," he said to himself, the feverish longing for action increasing upon him as this new obstacle met him. He dared not remain in London. He knew for a certainty that if he did he should go and see Di. Neither could he write to Lord ---- all that he must tell him, or put into black and white the favour he had to ask of him--the first favour John had ever needed to ask, namely, to be helped by means of Lord ----'s interest to some post in which he could for the moment support himself and Mitty.

As he turned up St. James's Street, he remembered with irritation that he had not yet procured Colonel Tempest's and Archie's address. While he hesitated whether to go on, late as it was, to Brook Street for it, he remembered that he could probably obtain it much nearer at hand, namely, at Archie's rooms in Piccadilly. Archie, who was a person of much pink and monogrammed correspondence, would probably have left his address behind him, stuck in the gla.s.s of the mantelpiece, as his manner was.

The latch-key he had lent John in the autumn, when John had made use of his rooms, was still on his chain. He had forgotten to return it. He let himself in, went upstairs to the second floor, and opened the door of the little sitting-room.

"Here you are at last," said a woman's voice.

He went in quickly and shut the door behind him.

A small woman in shimmering evening dress, with diamonds in her hair, came towards him, and stopped short with a little scream.

It was Madeleine.

He looked at her in silence, standing with his back to the door. The smouldering fire in his eyes seemed to burn her, for she shrank away to the further end of the room. John observed that there was a fire and lamps, and knit his brows.

Some persons are unable to perceive when explanations are useless.

Madeleine began one--something about Archie's difficulties, money, etc.; but John cut her short.

"You are not accountable to me for your actions," he said. "Keep your explanations for your husband."

He looked again with perplexity at the fire and the lamps. He knew Archie had gone that morning on three days' leave to Brighton with his father.

"Let me go," she said, whimpering. "I won't stay here to be thought ill of, to have evil imputed to me."

"You will answer one question first," said John.

"You impute evil to me--I know you do," said Madeleine, beginning to cry; "but it is your own coa.r.s.e mind that sees wickedness in everything."

"Possibly," said John. "When do you expect Archie?"

"Any moment. I wish he was here, that he might tell you----"

"Thank you, that will do. You can go now."

He opened the door. She drew a long cloak over her shoulders and pa.s.sed him without speaking, looking like what she was--one of that cla.s.s whose very existence she professed to ignore, but whose ranks she had virtually joined when she announced her engagement to Sir Henry in the _Morning Post_. Perhaps, inasmuch as that, untempted, she had sold herself for diamonds and position, instead of, under strong temptation, for the bare necessities of life like her poorer sisters, she was more degraded than they; but fortunately for her, and many others in our midst, society upheld her.

John looked after her and then followed her. There was not a soul on the common staircase or in the hall. He pa.s.sed out just behind her, and they were in the street together.

"Take my arm," he said, and she took it mechanically.

He signalled a four-wheeler and helped her into it.

"Where do you wish to go?" he said.

"I don't know," she said feebly, apparently too much scared to remember what her arrangements had been.

John considered a moment.

"Where is Sir Henry?"

"Dining at Woolwich."

"Can't you go home?"

"No, no. It is much too early. I'm dressed for--I said I was going to ----, and I have left there already, and the carriage is waiting there still."

"You must go back there," said John. "Get your carriage and go home in it."

He gave the cabman the address and paid him. Then he returned to the cab door.

"Lady Verelst," he said less sternly, "believe me--Archie is not worth it."

"You don't understand," she tried to say, with an a.s.sumption of injured dignity. "It was only that I----"

"He is not worth it," said John with emphasis; and he shut to the door of the cab, and watched it drive away. Then he went back to Archie's room, and sat down to consider. A faint odour of scent hung about the room. He got up and flung open the window. Years afterwards, if a woman used that particular scent, the same loathing disgust returned upon him.