CHAPTER IV."Toute passion nuisible attire, comme le gouffre, par le vertige. La faiblesse de volonté amène la faiblesse de tête, et l'abîme, malgré son horreur, fascine alors comme un asile."—Amiel.PPEOPLE 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 passed 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 pronounced to bein 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 associated 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 pronounced 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 passed 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 God!" when he assured 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 beexpected 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 acause célèbreby 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 hehad 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 class. 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 beafraid. 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 passed 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 lookingback at the receding figure with an access of shuddering horror.Another figure passed, 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 passed 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 beenthe 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 passed. 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 passed 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 theWorldthat he was to stand at the coming general election.Colonel Tempest became the prey of anidée 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 ithadhappened—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 havegone 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.More days passed.And gradually, among the totteringdébrisof a life undermined from its youth, one other thought began, mole-like, to delve and creep in the darkness.Truly the way of transgressors is hard.No one cared what he suffered, what he went through. This was the constant refrain of these latter days. He had paroxysms of angry tears of self-pity with his head in his hands, his heart rent to think of himself sitting bowed with anguish by his solitary fireside. Love holds the casting vote in the destinies of most of us. There is only one love which wrings the heart beyond human endurance—the love of self.And yet more days. The sun gave no light by day, neither the moon by night.To the severe cold of January a mild February had succeeded. March was close at hand. The hope and yearning of the spring was in the air already. Already in Kensington Gardens the silly birds had begun to sing, and the snowdrops and the little regiments of crocuses had come up in double file to listen.On this particular afternoon a pale London sun was shining like a new shilling in the sky, striking as many sparks as he could out of the Round Pond. There was quite a regatta at that Cowes of nursery shipping. The mild wind was just strong enough to take sailing-vessels across. The big man-of-war belonging to the big melancholy man who seemed open to an offer, the yachts and the little fishing-smacks, everything with asail, got over sooner or later. The tiny hollow boats with seats were being towed along the edge in leading-reins. A wooden doll with joints took advantage of its absence of costume to drop out of the boat in which it was being conveyed, and take a swim in the open. But it was recovered. An old gentleman with spectacles hooked it out with the end of his umbrella in a moment, quite pleased to be of use. The little boys shouted, the little girls tossed their manes, and careered round the pool on slender black legs. Solemn babies looked on from perambulators.The big man started the big man-of-war again, and the whole fleet came behind in its wake.Colonel Tempest was sitting on a seat near the landing-place, where the ship-owners had run to clutch their property a moment ago. His hand was clenched on something he held under his overcoat."When the big ship touches the edge," he said to himself.They came slowly across the pool in a flock. Every little boy shrieked to every other little boy of his acquaintance to observe how his particular craft was going. The big man alone was perfectly apathetic, though his priceless possession was the first, of course. He began walking slowly round. Half the children were at the landing before him, calling to their boats, and stretching out their hands towards them.The big one touched land."Not this time," said Colonel Tempest to himself; "next time."How often he had said that already! How often his hand had failed him when the moment which he and that other self had agreed upon had arrived! How often he had gone guiltily back to the rooms to which he had not intended to return, and had laindown once more in the bed which had become an accomplice to the torture of every hour of darkness!Between the horror of returning once again, and the horror of the step into another darkness, his soul oscillated with the feeble violence of despair.He remembered the going back of yesterday."I will not go back again," he said to himself, with the passion of a spoilt child. "I will not—I will not.""It is time to go home, Master Georgie," said a nursery-maid."Just once more, Bessie," pleaded the boy. "Just onesingleonce more.""Well, then, it must be the last time, mind," said the good-natured arbiter of fate, turning the perambulator, and pushing it along the edge, while the occupant of the same added to the hilarity of the occasionby beating a much-chewed musical rattle against the wheel."The last time." The chance words seized upon Colonel Tempest's shuddering panic-stricken mind, and held it as in a vice."Next time," he said over and over again to himself. "Next time shall really be the last time—really the last, the very last."The boats were coming across again, straggling wide of each other; how quick, yet what an eternity in coming! The top-heavy boat with the red sail would be the first. It had been started long before the others. The wind caught it near the edge. It would turn over. No, it righted itself. It neared, it bobbed in the ripple at the brink; it touched.Colonel Tempest's mind had become quite numb. He only knew that for some imperative reason which he had forgotten hemust pull the trigger. He half pulled it; then again more decidedly.There was a report. It stunned him back to a kind of consciousness of what he had done, but he felt nothing.There was a great silence, and then a shrieking of terrified children, and a glimpse of agitated people close at hand, and others running towards him.The man with the big boat under his arm said, "By gum!"Colonel Tempest looked at him. He felt nothing. Had he failed?The smoke came curling out at his collar, and something dropped from his nerveless hand and lay gleaming on the grass. There was a sound of many waters in his ears."He might have spared the children," said a man's voice, tremulous with indignation."That is always the way. No one thinksofme," thought Colonel Tempest. And the Round Pond and the growing crowd, and the child nearest him with its convulsed face, all turned slowly before his eyes, slid up, and disappeared.CHAPTER V."Vous avez bien froid, la belle;Comment vous appelez-vous?Les amours et les yeux douxDe nos cercueils sont les clous.Je suis la morte, dit-elle.Cueillez la branche de houx."Victor Hugo.AAS John lay impatiently patient upon his bed in the round oak-panelled room at Overleigh during the weeks that followed his accident, his thoughts by day, and by night, varied no more than the notes of a chaffinch in the trees outside."Oh, let the solid earthNot fail beneath my feet,Before I too have foundWhat some have found so sweet!"That was the one constant refrain. The solid earth had nearly failed beneath his feet, nearly—nearly. If the world might but cohere together and not fly off into space; if body and soul might but hold together till he had seen Di once more, till he knew for certain from her own lips that she loved him! Unloved by any woman until now, wistfully ignorant of woman's tenderness, even of its first alphabet learned at a mother's knee, unread in all its later language,—in these days of convalescence a passionate craving was upon him to drink deep of that untasted cup which "some have found so sweet."He had Mitty, and Mitty at least was radiantly happy during these weeks, with John fast in bed, and in a condition to dispense with other nursing than hers. She sat with him by the hour together, mending his socks and shirts, for she would not sufferany one to touch his clothes except herself, and discoursing to him about Di—a subject which she soon perceived never failed to interest him."Miss Dinah," Mitty would say for the twentieth time, but without wearying her audience—"now, there's a fine upstanding lady for my lamb.""Lady Alice Fane is very pretty, too," John would remark, with the happy knack of self-concealment peculiar to the ostrich and the sterner sex."Hoots!" Mitty replied. "She's nothing beside Miss Dinah. If you have Lady Fane with her silly ways, and so snappy to her maid, you'll repent every hair of your head. You take Miss Dinah, my dear, as is only waiting to be asked. She wants you, my precious," Mitty never failed to add. "I tell you it's as plain as the nose on your face" (a simile the force of which couldnot fail to strike him). "It's not that Lord Hemstitch, for all his pretty looks. It'syou."And John told himself he was a fool, and then secretly felt under the pillow for a certain pencilled note which Di had left with the doctor on her hurried departure to London the morning after the ice carnival. It had been given to him when he was able to read letters. It was a short note. There was very little in it, and a great deal left out. It did not even go over the page. But nevertheless John was so very foolish as to keep it under his pillow, and when he was promoted to his clothes it followed into his pocket. Even the envelope had a certain value in his eyes. Had not her hand touched it, and written his name upon it?Lindo and Fritz, who had been consumed with ennui during John's illness, were almostas excited as their master when he hobbled, on Mitty's arm, into the morning-room for luncheon. Lindo was aweary of sediments of beef-tea and sticks of toast. Fritz, who had had a plethora of whites of poached eggs, sniffed anxiously at the luncheon-tray with its roast pheasant.There were tricks and Albert biscuits after luncheon, succeeded by heavy snoring on the hearthrug.John was almost as delighted as they were to leave his sick-room. It was the first step towards going to London. When should he wring permission from his doctor to go up on "urgent business"? Five days, seven days? Surely in a week at latest he would see Di again. He made a little journey round the room to show himself how robust he was becoming, and wound up the old watches lying in theblue du roiSèvres tray, making them repeat oneafter the other, because Di had once done so. Would Di make this her sitting-room? It was warm and sunny. Perhaps she would like the outlook across the bowling-green and low ivy-coloured balustrade away to the moors. It had been his mother's sitting-room. His poor mother. He looked up at the pretty vacant face that hung over the fireplace. He had looked at it so often that it had ceased to make any definite impression on him.He wondered vaguely whether the happy or the unhappy hours had preponderated in this room in which she was wont to sit, the very furniture of which remained the same as in her quickly finished day. And then he wondered whether, if she had lived, Di would have liked her; for it was still early in the afternoon, and he had positively nothing to do.He tried to write a few necessary lettersin the absence of Mitty, who was busy washing his handkerchiefs, but he soon gave up the attempt. The exertion made his head ache, as he had been warned it would, so he propelled himself across the room to his low chair by the window.What should he do till teatime? If only he had asked Mitty for a bit of wash-leather he might have polished up the brass slave-collar in the Satsuma dish. He took it up and turned it in his hands. It was a heavy collar enough, with the owner's name engraved thereon. "Roger Tempest, 1698.""It must have galled him," said John to himself; and he took up the gag next, and put it into his mouth, and then had considerable difficulty in getting it out again. What on earth should he do with himself till teatime?One of the bits of Venetian glass standing in the central niche of the laccabinet at his elbow had lost its handle. He got up to examine it, and, thinking the handle might have been put aside within, pushed back the glass in the centre of the niche, which, as in so many of its species, shut off a small enclosed space between the tiers of drawers. The glass door and its little pillars opened inwards, but not without difficulty. It was clogged with dust. The handle of the Venetian glass was not inside. There was nothing inside but a little old, old, very old, glue-bottle, standing on an envelope, and a broken china cup beside it, with the broken bits in it. The hand that had put them away so carefully to mend, on a day that never came, was dust. They remained. John took out the cup. It matched one that stood in the picture-gallery. The pieces seemed to be all there. He began to fit them together with the pleased interest of a child. He had really foundsomething to do at last. At the bottom of the cup was a key. It was a very small key, with a large head, matching the twisted handles of the drawers.This was becoming interesting. John put down the cup, and fitted the key into the lock of one of the drawers. Yes, it was the right one. He became quite excited. Half the cabinets in the house were locked, and would not open; of some he had found the keys by diligent search, but the keys of others had never turned up. Here was evidently one.The key turned with difficulty, but still it did turn, and the drawer opened. The dust had crept over everything—over all the faded silks and bobbins and feminine gear, of which it was half full. John disturbed it, and then sneezed till he thought he should kill himself. But he survived to find among the tangle of work a tiny white garmenthalf made, with the rusted needle still in it. He took it out. What was it? Dolls' clothing? And then he realized that it was a little shirt, and that his mother had probably been making it for him and had not had time to finish it. John held the baby's shirt that he ought to have worn in a very reverent hand, and looked back at the picture. That bit of unfinished work, begun for him, seemed to bring her nearer to him than she had ever been before. Yes, it was hers. There was her ivory workbox, with her initials in silver and turquoise on it, and her small gold thimble had rolled into a corner of the drawer. John put back the little remnant of a love that had never reached him into the drawer with a clumsy gentleness, and locked it up. "I will show it Di some day," he said.The other drawers bore record. There were small relics of girlhood—ball cards,cotillon ribbons, a mug with "Marion Fane" inscribed in gold on it, a slim book on confirmation. "One of darling Spot's curls" was wrapped in tissue-paper. John did not even know who Spot was, except that from the appearance of the lock he had probably been a black retriever. Her childish little possessions touched John's heart. He looked at each one, and put it tenderly back.Some of the drawers were empty. In some were smart note-paper with faded networks of silver and blue initials on them. In another was an ornamental purse with money in it and a few unpaid bills. John wondered what his mother would have been like now if she had lived. Her sister, Miss Fane, had a weakness for gorgeous note-paper and smart work-baskets which he had often regarded with astonishment. It had never struck him that his mother might have had the same tastes.He opened another drawer. More fancy-work, a ball of silk half wound on a card, a roll of vari-coloured embroidery, and, thrust in among them, a half-opened packet of letters. The torn cover which still surrounded them was addressed to Mrs. Tempest, Overleigh Castle, Yorkshire.Inside the cover was a loose sheet which fell apart from the packet, tied up separately. On it was written, in a large cramped hand that John knew well—"I dare say you are wise in your generation to prefer to break with me. 'Tout lasse,' and then naturally 'on se range.' I return your letters as you wish it, and as you have been kind enough to burn mine already, I will ask you to commit this last effusion to the flames."The paper was without date or signature.John opened the packet, which containedmany letters, all in one handwriting, which he recognized as his mother's. He read them one by one, and, as he read, the pity in his face gave place to a white indignation. Poor foolish, foolish letters, to be read after a lapse of eight and twenty years. John realized how very silly his poor mother had been; how worldly wise and selfish some one else had been."We ought to have been married, darling," said one of the later letters, dated from Overleigh, evidently after her marriage with Mr. Tempest. "I see now we ought. You said you were too poor, and you could not bear to see me poor; but I would not have minded that one bit—did not I tell you so a hundred times? I would have learnt to cook and mend clothes and everything if only I might have been with you. It is much worse now, feeling my heart is breaking and yours too, and Fate keeping usapart. And you must not write to me any more now I am married, or me to you. It is not right. Mother would be vexed if she knew; I am quite sure she would. So this is the very last to my dearest darling Freddie, from poor Marion."Alas! there were many, many more from "poor Marion" after the very last; little vacillating, feeble, gilt-edged notes, with every other word under-dashed; some short and hurried, some long and reproachful; sad landmarks of each step of a blindfold wandering on the brink of the abyss, clinging to the hand that was pushing her over.The last letter was a very long one."You have no heart," wrote the pointed, slanting handwriting. "You do not care what I suffer. I do not believe now you ever cared. You say it would be an act of folly to tell my husband, but you know I was always silly. But it is not necessary. I amsure he knows. I feel it. He says nothing, but I know he knows. Oh, if I were only dead and in my grave, and if only the baby might die too, as I hope it will, as I pray to God it will! If I die and it lives, I don't know what will happen to it. Remember, if he casts it off, it is your child. Oh, Freddie, surely it can't be all quite a mistake. You were fond of me once, before you made me wicked, and when I am dead you won't feel so angry and impatient with me as you do now. And if the child lives and has no friend, you will remember it is yours, won't you? I am so miserable that I think God will surely let me die. And the child may come any day now. Last night I felt so ill that I dared not put off any longer, and this morning I burned all your letters to me, every one, even the first about the white violets. Do you remember that letter? It is so long ago now; no, you have forgotten.It is only I who remember, because it was only I who cared. And I burned the locket you gave me with your hair in it. It felt like dying to burn it. Everything is all quite gone. But I can't rest until you have sent me back my letters. I can't trust you to burn them. I know what trusting to you means. Send them all back to me, and I will burn them myself. Only be quick, be quick; there is so little time. If they come when I am ill, some one else may read them. I hope if I live I shall never see your face again; and if I die, I hope God will keep you away from me. Oh! I don't mean it, Freddie, I don't mean it; only I am so miserable that I don't know what I write. God forgive you. I would too if I thought you cared whether I did or not. God forgive us both.—M."John looked back at the cover of thepacket. The Overleigh postmark was blurred but legible. June the 8th, and the year——.It was his birthday.Her lover had sent back her letters, then, with those few harsh lines telling her she was wise in her generation. Even the last he had returned. And they had reached her on the morning of the day her child was born. Had it been a sunny day, with no fire on the hearth before which Lindo and Fritz now lay stretched, into which she could have dropped that packet? Had she not had time even to burn them? She had glanced at them, evidently. Had she been interrupted, and had she thrust them for the moment with her work into that drawer?Futile inquiry. He should never know. And she had had her wish. She had been allowed to die, to hide herself away in the grave. John's heart swelled with sorrowing pity as at the sight of a child's suffering.She had been very little more. She should have her other wish, too.He gathered up the letters, and, stepping over the dogs, dropped them into the heart of the fire. They were in the safe keeping of the flames at last. They reached their destination at last, but, a little late—twenty-eight years too late.And suddenly, as he watched them burn, like a thunderbolt falling and tearing up the ground on which he stood, came the thought, "Then I am illegitimate."The minute-hand of the clock on the mantelpiece had made a complete circuit since John had dropped the letters into the fire, yet he had not stirred from the armchair into which he had staggered the moment afterwards.His fixed eyes looked straight in front of him. His lips moved at intervals."I am illegitimate," he said to himself, over and over again.But no, it was a nightmare, an hallucination of illness. How many delusions he had had during the last few weeks! He should wake up presently and find he had been torturing himself for nothing. If only Mitty would come back! He should laugh at himself presently.In the mean while, and as it were in spite of himself, certain facts were taking a new significance, were arranging themselves into an unexpected, horrible sequence. Link joined itself to link, and lengthened to a chain.He remembered his father's evident dislike of him; he remembered how Colonel Tempest had contested the succession when he died. As he had lost the case, John had supposed, when he came to an age to suppose anything, that the slander was withoutfoundation, especially as Mr. Tempest had recognized him as his son. He had known of its existence, of course, but, like the rest of the world, had half forgotten it. That Lord Frederick Fane (evidently the Freddie of the letters) was even his supposed father, had never crossed his mind. If he was like the Fanes, why should he not be so? He might as naturally resemble his mother's as his father's family. He recalled Colonel Tempest's inveterate dislike of him, Archie's thankless reception of anything and everything he did for him."I believe," said John, in astonished recollection of divers passages between himself and them—"I believe they think I know all the time, and am deliberately keeping them out."That, then, was the reason why Mr. Tempest had not discarded him. To recognize him as his son was his surest means ofstriking at the hated brother who came next in the entail."I was made use of," said John, grinding his teeth.It was no use fighting against it. This hideous, profane incredibility was the truth. Even without the letters to read over again he knew it was true."Remember, if he casts it out, it is your child." The long-dead lips still spoke. His mother had pronounced his doom herself."I am illegitimate," said John to himself. And he remembered Di and hid his face in his hands, while his mother simpered at him from the wall. The solid earth had failed beneath his feet.Let us beware how we sin, inasmuch as by God's decree we do not pay. We could almost conceive a right to do as we will, if we could keep the penalty to ourselves,and pay to the uttermost farthing. But not from us is the inevitable payment required. The young, the innocent, the unborn, smart for us, are made bankrupt for us; from them is exacted the deficit which we have left behind. The sins of the fathers are visited on the children heavily—heavily.CHAPTER VI."What name doth Joy most borrowWhen life is fair?'To-morrow.'"George Eliot.OON her hurried return to London the morning after the ice carnival, Di found Mrs. Courtenay in that condition of illness, not necessarily dangerous, in which the linseed poultice and the steam-kettle and the complexion of the beef-tea are the objects of an all-absorbing interest, to the exclusion of every other subject.Di was glad not to be questioned upon the one subject that was never absent from her thoughts. As Mrs. Courtenay becameconvalescent 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 herand 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'sremonstrances, 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 butdead 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 pronounce opinions on subjects of which they are ignorant. I have heard extremely intelligent men say things quite as silly about housekeeping, andthe 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
"Toute passion nuisible attire, comme le gouffre, par le vertige. La faiblesse de volonté amène la faiblesse de tête, et l'abîme, malgré son horreur, fascine alors comme un asile."—Amiel.
"Toute passion nuisible attire, comme le gouffre, par le vertige. La faiblesse de volonté amène la faiblesse de tête, et l'abîme, malgré son horreur, fascine alors comme un asile."—Amiel.
PPEOPLE 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 passed 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 pronounced to bein 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 associated 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 pronounced 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 passed 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 God!" when he assured 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 beexpected 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 acause célèbreby 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 hehad 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 class. 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 beafraid. 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 passed 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 lookingback at the receding figure with an access of shuddering horror.
Another figure passed, 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 passed 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 beenthe 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 passed. 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 passed 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 theWorldthat he was to stand at the coming general election.
Colonel Tempest became the prey of anidée 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 ithadhappened—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 havegone 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.
More days passed.
And gradually, among the totteringdébrisof a life undermined from its youth, one other thought began, mole-like, to delve and creep in the darkness.
Truly the way of transgressors is hard.
No one cared what he suffered, what he went through. This was the constant refrain of these latter days. He had paroxysms of angry tears of self-pity with his head in his hands, his heart rent to think of himself sitting bowed with anguish by his solitary fireside. Love holds the casting vote in the destinies of most of us. There is only one love which wrings the heart beyond human endurance—the love of self.
And yet more days. The sun gave no light by day, neither the moon by night.
To the severe cold of January a mild February had succeeded. March was close at hand. The hope and yearning of the spring was in the air already. Already in Kensington Gardens the silly birds had begun to sing, and the snowdrops and the little regiments of crocuses had come up in double file to listen.
On this particular afternoon a pale London sun was shining like a new shilling in the sky, striking as many sparks as he could out of the Round Pond. There was quite a regatta at that Cowes of nursery shipping. The mild wind was just strong enough to take sailing-vessels across. The big man-of-war belonging to the big melancholy man who seemed open to an offer, the yachts and the little fishing-smacks, everything with asail, got over sooner or later. The tiny hollow boats with seats were being towed along the edge in leading-reins. A wooden doll with joints took advantage of its absence of costume to drop out of the boat in which it was being conveyed, and take a swim in the open. But it was recovered. An old gentleman with spectacles hooked it out with the end of his umbrella in a moment, quite pleased to be of use. The little boys shouted, the little girls tossed their manes, and careered round the pool on slender black legs. Solemn babies looked on from perambulators.
The big man started the big man-of-war again, and the whole fleet came behind in its wake.
Colonel Tempest was sitting on a seat near the landing-place, where the ship-owners had run to clutch their property a moment ago. His hand was clenched on something he held under his overcoat.
"When the big ship touches the edge," he said to himself.
They came slowly across the pool in a flock. Every little boy shrieked to every other little boy of his acquaintance to observe how his particular craft was going. The big man alone was perfectly apathetic, though his priceless possession was the first, of course. He began walking slowly round. Half the children were at the landing before him, calling to their boats, and stretching out their hands towards them.
The big one touched land.
"Not this time," said Colonel Tempest to himself; "next time."
How often he had said that already! How often his hand had failed him when the moment which he and that other self had agreed upon had arrived! How often he had gone guiltily back to the rooms to which he had not intended to return, and had laindown once more in the bed which had become an accomplice to the torture of every hour of darkness!
Between the horror of returning once again, and the horror of the step into another darkness, his soul oscillated with the feeble violence of despair.
He remembered the going back of yesterday.
"I will not go back again," he said to himself, with the passion of a spoilt child. "I will not—I will not."
"It is time to go home, Master Georgie," said a nursery-maid.
"Just once more, Bessie," pleaded the boy. "Just onesingleonce more."
"Well, then, it must be the last time, mind," said the good-natured arbiter of fate, turning the perambulator, and pushing it along the edge, while the occupant of the same added to the hilarity of the occasionby beating a much-chewed musical rattle against the wheel.
"The last time." The chance words seized upon Colonel Tempest's shuddering panic-stricken mind, and held it as in a vice.
"Next time," he said over and over again to himself. "Next time shall really be the last time—really the last, the very last."
The boats were coming across again, straggling wide of each other; how quick, yet what an eternity in coming! The top-heavy boat with the red sail would be the first. It had been started long before the others. The wind caught it near the edge. It would turn over. No, it righted itself. It neared, it bobbed in the ripple at the brink; it touched.
Colonel Tempest's mind had become quite numb. He only knew that for some imperative reason which he had forgotten hemust pull the trigger. He half pulled it; then again more decidedly.
There was a report. It stunned him back to a kind of consciousness of what he had done, but he felt nothing.
There was a great silence, and then a shrieking of terrified children, and a glimpse of agitated people close at hand, and others running towards him.
The man with the big boat under his arm said, "By gum!"
Colonel Tempest looked at him. He felt nothing. Had he failed?
The smoke came curling out at his collar, and something dropped from his nerveless hand and lay gleaming on the grass. There was a sound of many waters in his ears.
"He might have spared the children," said a man's voice, tremulous with indignation.
"That is always the way. No one thinksofme," thought Colonel Tempest. And the Round Pond and the growing crowd, and the child nearest him with its convulsed face, all turned slowly before his eyes, slid up, and disappeared.
"Vous avez bien froid, la belle;Comment vous appelez-vous?Les amours et les yeux douxDe nos cercueils sont les clous.Je suis la morte, dit-elle.Cueillez la branche de houx."Victor Hugo.
"Vous avez bien froid, la belle;Comment vous appelez-vous?Les amours et les yeux douxDe nos cercueils sont les clous.Je suis la morte, dit-elle.Cueillez la branche de houx."Victor Hugo.
AAS John lay impatiently patient upon his bed in the round oak-panelled room at Overleigh during the weeks that followed his accident, his thoughts by day, and by night, varied no more than the notes of a chaffinch in the trees outside.
"Oh, let the solid earthNot fail beneath my feet,Before I too have foundWhat some have found so sweet!"
"Oh, let the solid earthNot fail beneath my feet,Before I too have foundWhat some have found so sweet!"
That was the one constant refrain. The solid earth had nearly failed beneath his feet, nearly—nearly. If the world might but cohere together and not fly off into space; if body and soul might but hold together till he had seen Di once more, till he knew for certain from her own lips that she loved him! Unloved by any woman until now, wistfully ignorant of woman's tenderness, even of its first alphabet learned at a mother's knee, unread in all its later language,—in these days of convalescence a passionate craving was upon him to drink deep of that untasted cup which "some have found so sweet."
He had Mitty, and Mitty at least was radiantly happy during these weeks, with John fast in bed, and in a condition to dispense with other nursing than hers. She sat with him by the hour together, mending his socks and shirts, for she would not sufferany one to touch his clothes except herself, and discoursing to him about Di—a subject which she soon perceived never failed to interest him.
"Miss Dinah," Mitty would say for the twentieth time, but without wearying her audience—"now, there's a fine upstanding lady for my lamb."
"Lady Alice Fane is very pretty, too," John would remark, with the happy knack of self-concealment peculiar to the ostrich and the sterner sex.
"Hoots!" Mitty replied. "She's nothing beside Miss Dinah. If you have Lady Fane with her silly ways, and so snappy to her maid, you'll repent every hair of your head. You take Miss Dinah, my dear, as is only waiting to be asked. She wants you, my precious," Mitty never failed to add. "I tell you it's as plain as the nose on your face" (a simile the force of which couldnot fail to strike him). "It's not that Lord Hemstitch, for all his pretty looks. It'syou."
And John told himself he was a fool, and then secretly felt under the pillow for a certain pencilled note which Di had left with the doctor on her hurried departure to London the morning after the ice carnival. It had been given to him when he was able to read letters. It was a short note. There was very little in it, and a great deal left out. It did not even go over the page. But nevertheless John was so very foolish as to keep it under his pillow, and when he was promoted to his clothes it followed into his pocket. Even the envelope had a certain value in his eyes. Had not her hand touched it, and written his name upon it?
Lindo and Fritz, who had been consumed with ennui during John's illness, were almostas excited as their master when he hobbled, on Mitty's arm, into the morning-room for luncheon. Lindo was aweary of sediments of beef-tea and sticks of toast. Fritz, who had had a plethora of whites of poached eggs, sniffed anxiously at the luncheon-tray with its roast pheasant.
There were tricks and Albert biscuits after luncheon, succeeded by heavy snoring on the hearthrug.
John was almost as delighted as they were to leave his sick-room. It was the first step towards going to London. When should he wring permission from his doctor to go up on "urgent business"? Five days, seven days? Surely in a week at latest he would see Di again. He made a little journey round the room to show himself how robust he was becoming, and wound up the old watches lying in theblue du roiSèvres tray, making them repeat oneafter the other, because Di had once done so. Would Di make this her sitting-room? It was warm and sunny. Perhaps she would like the outlook across the bowling-green and low ivy-coloured balustrade away to the moors. It had been his mother's sitting-room. His poor mother. He looked up at the pretty vacant face that hung over the fireplace. He had looked at it so often that it had ceased to make any definite impression on him.
He wondered vaguely whether the happy or the unhappy hours had preponderated in this room in which she was wont to sit, the very furniture of which remained the same as in her quickly finished day. And then he wondered whether, if she had lived, Di would have liked her; for it was still early in the afternoon, and he had positively nothing to do.
He tried to write a few necessary lettersin the absence of Mitty, who was busy washing his handkerchiefs, but he soon gave up the attempt. The exertion made his head ache, as he had been warned it would, so he propelled himself across the room to his low chair by the window.
What should he do till teatime? If only he had asked Mitty for a bit of wash-leather he might have polished up the brass slave-collar in the Satsuma dish. He took it up and turned it in his hands. It was a heavy collar enough, with the owner's name engraved thereon. "Roger Tempest, 1698."
"It must have galled him," said John to himself; and he took up the gag next, and put it into his mouth, and then had considerable difficulty in getting it out again. What on earth should he do with himself till teatime?
One of the bits of Venetian glass standing in the central niche of the laccabinet at his elbow had lost its handle. He got up to examine it, and, thinking the handle might have been put aside within, pushed back the glass in the centre of the niche, which, as in so many of its species, shut off a small enclosed space between the tiers of drawers. The glass door and its little pillars opened inwards, but not without difficulty. It was clogged with dust. The handle of the Venetian glass was not inside. There was nothing inside but a little old, old, very old, glue-bottle, standing on an envelope, and a broken china cup beside it, with the broken bits in it. The hand that had put them away so carefully to mend, on a day that never came, was dust. They remained. John took out the cup. It matched one that stood in the picture-gallery. The pieces seemed to be all there. He began to fit them together with the pleased interest of a child. He had really foundsomething to do at last. At the bottom of the cup was a key. It was a very small key, with a large head, matching the twisted handles of the drawers.
This was becoming interesting. John put down the cup, and fitted the key into the lock of one of the drawers. Yes, it was the right one. He became quite excited. Half the cabinets in the house were locked, and would not open; of some he had found the keys by diligent search, but the keys of others had never turned up. Here was evidently one.
The key turned with difficulty, but still it did turn, and the drawer opened. The dust had crept over everything—over all the faded silks and bobbins and feminine gear, of which it was half full. John disturbed it, and then sneezed till he thought he should kill himself. But he survived to find among the tangle of work a tiny white garmenthalf made, with the rusted needle still in it. He took it out. What was it? Dolls' clothing? And then he realized that it was a little shirt, and that his mother had probably been making it for him and had not had time to finish it. John held the baby's shirt that he ought to have worn in a very reverent hand, and looked back at the picture. That bit of unfinished work, begun for him, seemed to bring her nearer to him than she had ever been before. Yes, it was hers. There was her ivory workbox, with her initials in silver and turquoise on it, and her small gold thimble had rolled into a corner of the drawer. John put back the little remnant of a love that had never reached him into the drawer with a clumsy gentleness, and locked it up. "I will show it Di some day," he said.
The other drawers bore record. There were small relics of girlhood—ball cards,cotillon ribbons, a mug with "Marion Fane" inscribed in gold on it, a slim book on confirmation. "One of darling Spot's curls" was wrapped in tissue-paper. John did not even know who Spot was, except that from the appearance of the lock he had probably been a black retriever. Her childish little possessions touched John's heart. He looked at each one, and put it tenderly back.
Some of the drawers were empty. In some were smart note-paper with faded networks of silver and blue initials on them. In another was an ornamental purse with money in it and a few unpaid bills. John wondered what his mother would have been like now if she had lived. Her sister, Miss Fane, had a weakness for gorgeous note-paper and smart work-baskets which he had often regarded with astonishment. It had never struck him that his mother might have had the same tastes.
He opened another drawer. More fancy-work, a ball of silk half wound on a card, a roll of vari-coloured embroidery, and, thrust in among them, a half-opened packet of letters. The torn cover which still surrounded them was addressed to Mrs. Tempest, Overleigh Castle, Yorkshire.
Inside the cover was a loose sheet which fell apart from the packet, tied up separately. On it was written, in a large cramped hand that John knew well—
"I dare say you are wise in your generation to prefer to break with me. 'Tout lasse,' and then naturally 'on se range.' I return your letters as you wish it, and as you have been kind enough to burn mine already, I will ask you to commit this last effusion to the flames."
The paper was without date or signature.
John opened the packet, which containedmany letters, all in one handwriting, which he recognized as his mother's. He read them one by one, and, as he read, the pity in his face gave place to a white indignation. Poor foolish, foolish letters, to be read after a lapse of eight and twenty years. John realized how very silly his poor mother had been; how worldly wise and selfish some one else had been.
"We ought to have been married, darling," said one of the later letters, dated from Overleigh, evidently after her marriage with Mr. Tempest. "I see now we ought. You said you were too poor, and you could not bear to see me poor; but I would not have minded that one bit—did not I tell you so a hundred times? I would have learnt to cook and mend clothes and everything if only I might have been with you. It is much worse now, feeling my heart is breaking and yours too, and Fate keeping usapart. And you must not write to me any more now I am married, or me to you. It is not right. Mother would be vexed if she knew; I am quite sure she would. So this is the very last to my dearest darling Freddie, from poor Marion."
Alas! there were many, many more from "poor Marion" after the very last; little vacillating, feeble, gilt-edged notes, with every other word under-dashed; some short and hurried, some long and reproachful; sad landmarks of each step of a blindfold wandering on the brink of the abyss, clinging to the hand that was pushing her over.
The last letter was a very long one.
"You have no heart," wrote the pointed, slanting handwriting. "You do not care what I suffer. I do not believe now you ever cared. You say it would be an act of folly to tell my husband, but you know I was always silly. But it is not necessary. I amsure he knows. I feel it. He says nothing, but I know he knows. Oh, if I were only dead and in my grave, and if only the baby might die too, as I hope it will, as I pray to God it will! If I die and it lives, I don't know what will happen to it. Remember, if he casts it off, it is your child. Oh, Freddie, surely it can't be all quite a mistake. You were fond of me once, before you made me wicked, and when I am dead you won't feel so angry and impatient with me as you do now. And if the child lives and has no friend, you will remember it is yours, won't you? I am so miserable that I think God will surely let me die. And the child may come any day now. Last night I felt so ill that I dared not put off any longer, and this morning I burned all your letters to me, every one, even the first about the white violets. Do you remember that letter? It is so long ago now; no, you have forgotten.It is only I who remember, because it was only I who cared. And I burned the locket you gave me with your hair in it. It felt like dying to burn it. Everything is all quite gone. But I can't rest until you have sent me back my letters. I can't trust you to burn them. I know what trusting to you means. Send them all back to me, and I will burn them myself. Only be quick, be quick; there is so little time. If they come when I am ill, some one else may read them. I hope if I live I shall never see your face again; and if I die, I hope God will keep you away from me. Oh! I don't mean it, Freddie, I don't mean it; only I am so miserable that I don't know what I write. God forgive you. I would too if I thought you cared whether I did or not. God forgive us both.—M."
John looked back at the cover of thepacket. The Overleigh postmark was blurred but legible. June the 8th, and the year——.It was his birthday.
Her lover had sent back her letters, then, with those few harsh lines telling her she was wise in her generation. Even the last he had returned. And they had reached her on the morning of the day her child was born. Had it been a sunny day, with no fire on the hearth before which Lindo and Fritz now lay stretched, into which she could have dropped that packet? Had she not had time even to burn them? She had glanced at them, evidently. Had she been interrupted, and had she thrust them for the moment with her work into that drawer?
Futile inquiry. He should never know. And she had had her wish. She had been allowed to die, to hide herself away in the grave. John's heart swelled with sorrowing pity as at the sight of a child's suffering.She had been very little more. She should have her other wish, too.
He gathered up the letters, and, stepping over the dogs, dropped them into the heart of the fire. They were in the safe keeping of the flames at last. They reached their destination at last, but, a little late—twenty-eight years too late.
And suddenly, as he watched them burn, like a thunderbolt falling and tearing up the ground on which he stood, came the thought, "Then I am illegitimate."
The minute-hand of the clock on the mantelpiece had made a complete circuit since John had dropped the letters into the fire, yet he had not stirred from the armchair into which he had staggered the moment afterwards.
His fixed eyes looked straight in front of him. His lips moved at intervals.
"I am illegitimate," he said to himself, over and over again.
But no, it was a nightmare, an hallucination of illness. How many delusions he had had during the last few weeks! He should wake up presently and find he had been torturing himself for nothing. If only Mitty would come back! He should laugh at himself presently.
In the mean while, and as it were in spite of himself, certain facts were taking a new significance, were arranging themselves into an unexpected, horrible sequence. Link joined itself to link, and lengthened to a chain.
He remembered his father's evident dislike of him; he remembered how Colonel Tempest had contested the succession when he died. As he had lost the case, John had supposed, when he came to an age to suppose anything, that the slander was withoutfoundation, especially as Mr. Tempest had recognized him as his son. He had known of its existence, of course, but, like the rest of the world, had half forgotten it. That Lord Frederick Fane (evidently the Freddie of the letters) was even his supposed father, had never crossed his mind. If he was like the Fanes, why should he not be so? He might as naturally resemble his mother's as his father's family. He recalled Colonel Tempest's inveterate dislike of him, Archie's thankless reception of anything and everything he did for him.
"I believe," said John, in astonished recollection of divers passages between himself and them—"I believe they think I know all the time, and am deliberately keeping them out."
That, then, was the reason why Mr. Tempest had not discarded him. To recognize him as his son was his surest means ofstriking at the hated brother who came next in the entail.
"I was made use of," said John, grinding his teeth.
It was no use fighting against it. This hideous, profane incredibility was the truth. Even without the letters to read over again he knew it was true.
"Remember, if he casts it out, it is your child." The long-dead lips still spoke. His mother had pronounced his doom herself.
"I am illegitimate," said John to himself. And he remembered Di and hid his face in his hands, while his mother simpered at him from the wall. The solid earth had failed beneath his feet.
Let us beware how we sin, inasmuch as by God's decree we do not pay. We could almost conceive a right to do as we will, if we could keep the penalty to ourselves,and pay to the uttermost farthing. But not from us is the inevitable payment required. The young, the innocent, the unborn, smart for us, are made bankrupt for us; from them is exacted the deficit which we have left behind. The sins of the fathers are visited on the children heavily—heavily.
"What name doth Joy most borrowWhen life is fair?'To-morrow.'"George Eliot.
"What name doth Joy most borrowWhen life is fair?'To-morrow.'"George Eliot.
OON her hurried return to London the morning after the ice carnival, Di found Mrs. Courtenay in that condition of illness, not necessarily dangerous, in which the linseed poultice and the steam-kettle and the complexion of the beef-tea are the objects of an all-absorbing interest, to the exclusion of every other subject.
Di was glad not to be questioned upon the one subject that was never absent from her thoughts. As Mrs. Courtenay becameconvalescent 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 herand 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'sremonstrances, 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 butdead 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 pronounce opinions on subjects of which they are ignorant. I have heard extremely intelligent men say things quite as silly about housekeeping, andthe 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