CHAPTER XI."Still as of oldMan by himself is priced.For thirty pieces Judas soldHimself, not Christ."H.C.C.LLENT gave way to Easter, and Easter melted into the season, and Mrs. Courtenay gave a little dinner-party, at which John was one of the guests; and Madeleine was presented on her marriage; and Di had two new gowns, and renovated an old one, and nearly broke Lord Hemsworth's heart by refusing the box-seat on his drag at the meeting of the Four-in-hand; and Lord Hemsworth did not invest in thebay mare with the white stocking, but turned heaven and earth to find another with black points, and succeeded, only to drive in lonely bitterness to the meet. And John was to have been there also, but he had been so severely injured in a fire which broke out at his lodgings, in the room below his, three weeks before, that he was still lying helpless at the house in Park Lane, which he had lent to his aunt, Miss Fane, and whither he was at once taken, after the accident, to struggle slowly back to life and painful convalescence.For the last three weeks, since the fire, hardly any one had seen Colonel Tempest. The old horror had laid hold upon him like a mortal sickness. Sleep had left him. Remorse looked at him out of the eyes of the passers in the street. There was no refuge. He avoided his club. What might he not hear there! What might not have happened in the night! He could trust himself to gonowhere for fear of his face betraying him. He wandered aimlessly out in the evenings in the lonelier portions of the Park. Sometimes he would stop his loitering, to follow with momentary interest the children sailing their boats on the Round Pond, and then look up and see the veiled London sunset watching him from behind Kensington Palace, and turn away with a guilty sense of detection. The aimless days and waking ghosts of nights came and went, came and went, until his misery became greater than he could bear. The resolutions of the weak are as much the result of the period of feeble, apathetic inertia that precedes them, as the resolutions of the strong are the outcome of earnest reflection and mental travail."It will kill me if it goes on," he said to himself. There was one way, and one only, by means of which this intolerable weight might be shifted from his shoulders. Hehung back many days. He said he could not dothat, anything butthat—and then he did it.His heart beat painfully as he turned his steps towards Park Lane, and he hesitated many minutes before he mounted the steps and rang the bell at the familiar door of the Tempest town-house, where his father had lived during the session, where his mother had spent the last years of her life after his death.It was an old-fashioned house. The iron rings into which the links used to be thrust still flanked the ponderous doorway, together with the massive extinguisher.The servant informed him that Mr. Tempest had been out of danger for some days, but was not seeing any one at present."Ask if he will see me," said Colonel Tempest, hoarsely. "Say I am waiting."The man left him in the white stone hallwhere he and his brother Jack had played as boys. The dappled rocking-horse used to stand under the staircase, but it was no longer there: given away, no doubt, or broken up for firewood. John might have kept the poor old rocking-horse. Recollections that took the form of personal grievances were never far from Colonel Tempest's mind.In a few minutes the man returned, and said that Mr. Tempest would see him, and led the way upstairs. A solemn, melancholy-looking valet was waiting for him, who respectfully informed him that the doctor's orders were that his master should be kept very quiet, and should not be excited in any way. Colonel Tempest nodded unheeding, and was conscious of a door being opened, and his name announced.He went forward hesitatingly into a half-darkened room."Pull up the further blind, Marshall," said John's voice. The servant did so, and noiselessly left the room.Colonel Tempest's heart smote him.The young man lay quite motionless, his dark head hardly raised, his swathed hands stretched out beside him. His unshaved face had the tension of protracted suffering, and the grave steady eyes which met Colonel Tempest's were bright with suppressed pain. The eyes were the only things that moved. It seemed to Colonel Tempest that if they were closed—. He shuddered involuntarily. In his morbid fancy the prostrate figure seemed to have already taken the rigid lines of death, the winding-sheet to be even now drawn up round the young haggard face.Colonel Tempest was not gifted with imagination where he himself was not concerned. He was under the impression that the influenza, from which he occasionallysuffered, was the most excruciating form of mortal illness known to mankind. He never believed people were really ill until they were dead. Now he realized for the first time that John had been at death's door; that is to say, he realized what being at death's door was like, and he was fairly staggered!"Good God, John!" he said with a sort of groan. "I did not know it had been as bad as this.""Sit down," said John, as the nurse brought forward a chair to the bedside, and then withdrew, eyeing the new-comer suspiciously. "It is much better now. I receive callers. Hemsworth was here yesterday. I can shake hands a little; only be very gentle with me. I cry like a girl if I am more than touched."John feebly raised and held out a bandaged hand, of which the end of three fingers onlywere visible. Colonel Tempest, whose own feelings were invariably too deep to admit of his remembering those of others, pressed it spasmodically in his."It goes to my heart to see you like this, John," he said with a break in his voice.John withdrew his hand. His face twitched a little, and he bit his lip, but in a few moments he spoke again firmly enough."It is very good of you to come. Now that I have got round the corner, I shall be about again in no time.""Yes, yes," said Colonel Tempest, as if reassuring himself. "You will be all right again soon.""You look knocked up," said John, considering him attentively with his dark earnest gaze."Do I?" said Colonel Tempest. "I dare say I do. Yes, people may not notice it asa rule. I keep things to myself, always have done all my life, but—it will drag me into my grave if it goes on much longer, I know that.""If what goes on?"It is all very well for a nervous rider to look boldly at a hedge two fields away, but when he comes up with it, and feels his horse quicken his pace under him, he begins to wonder what the landing on the invisible other side will be like. There was a long silence, broken only by Lindo, John's Spanish poodle, who, ensconced in an armchair by the bedside, was putting an aristocratic and extended hind leg through an afternoon toilet by means of searching and sustained suction."I don't suppose there is a more wretched man in the world than I am, John," said Colonel Tempest at last."There is something on your mind, perhaps.""Night and day," said Colonel Tempest, wishing John would not watch him so closely. "I have not a moment's peace.""You are in money difficulties," said John, justly divining the only cause that was likely to permanently interfere with his uncle's peace of mind."Yes," said Colonel Tempest. "I am at my wit's end, and that is the truth."John's lips tightened a little, and he remained silent. That was why his uncle had come to see him then. His pride revolted against Colonel Tempest's want of it, against Archie's sponge-like absorption of all John would give him. He felt (and it was no idle fancy of a wealthy man) that he would have died rather than have asked for a shilling. A Tempest should be above begging, should scorn to run in debt. John's pride of race resented what was in his eyes a want of honour in the othermembers of the family of which he was the head.Colonel Tempest was in a position of too much delicacy not to feel hurt by John's silence. He reflected on the invariable meanness of rich men, with a momentary retrospect of how open-handed he had been himself in his youth, and even after his crippling marriage."I do not know the circumstances," said John at last."No one does," said Colonel Tempest."Neither have I any wish to know them," said John, with a touch of haughtiness, "except in so far as I can be of use to you."Colonel Tempest found himself very disagreeably placed. He would have instantly lost his temper if he had been a few weeks younger, but the memory of those last few weeks recurred to him like a douche of cold water. Self-interest would not allow himto throw away his last chance of escaping out of Swayne's clutches, and he had a secret conviction that no storming or passion of any kind would have any effect on that prostrate figure, with the stern feeble voice, and intense fixity of gaze.John had always felt a secret repulsion towards his uncle, though he invariably met him with grave, if distant civility. He had borne in a proud silence the gradual realization, as he grew old enough to understand it, that there was a slur upon his name, a shadow on his mother's memory. He believed, as did some others, that his uncle had originated the slanders, impossible to substantiate, in order to wrest his inheritance from him. How could this man, after trying to strip him of everything, even of his name, come to him now for money?John had a certain rigidity and tenacityof mind, an uprightness and severity, which come of an intense love of justice and rectitude, but which in an extreme degree, if not counterbalanced by other qualities, make a hard and unlovable character.His clear-eyed judgment made him look at Colonel Tempest with secret indignation and contempt. But with the harshness of youth other qualities, rarely joined, went hand in hand. A little knowledge of others is a dangerous thing. It shows itself in sweeping condemnations and severe judgments, and a complacent holding up to the light of the poor foibles and peccadilloes of humanity, which all who will can find. A greater knowledge shows itself in a greater tenderness towards others, the tenderness, as some suppose, of wilful ignorance of evil. When or how John had learnt it I know not, but certainly he had a rapid intuition of the feelings of others; he could put himselfin their place, and to do that is to be not harsh.He looked again at Colonel Tempest, and was ashamed of his passing, though righteous, anger. He realized how hard it must be for an older man to be obliged to ask a young one for money, and he had no wish to make it any harder. He looked at the weak, wretched face, with its tortured selfishness, and understood a little; perhaps only in part, but enough to make him speak again in a different tone."Do not tell me anything you do not wish; but I see something is troubling you very much. Sometimes things don't look so black when one has talked them over.""I can't talk it over, John," said Colonel Tempest, with incontestable veracity, softened by the kindness of his tone, "but the truth is," nervousness was shutting itseyes and making a rush, "I want—ten thousand pounds and no questions asked."John was startled. Colonel Tempest clutched his hat, and stared out of the window. He felt benumbed. He had actually done it, actually brought himself to ask for it. As his faculties slowly returned to him in the long silence which followed, he became conscious, that if John was too niggardly to pay his own ransom, he, Colonel Tempest, would not be the most to blame, if any casualty should hereafter occur.At last John spoke."You say you don't want any questions asked, but Imustask one or two. You want this money secretly. Would the want of it bring disgrace upon your—children?" He had nearly said your "daughter.""If it was found out it would," said Colonel Tempest, in a choked voice. Thedetection, which he always told himself was an impossibility, had, nevertheless, a horrible way of masquerading before him at intervals as an accomplished fact.John knit his brows."I can't pretend not to know what it is," he said. "It is a debt of honour. You have been betting.""Yes," said Colonel Tempest, faintly."I suppose you can't touch your capital. That is settled on your children.""No," said Colonel Tempest. "There were no settlements when I married. I had to do the best I could. I had twenty thousand pounds from my father, and my wife brought me a few thousands after her uncle's death; a very few, which her relations could not prevent her having. But there were the children, and one thing with another, and women are extravagant, and must have everything to their liking; andby the time I had settled up and sold everything after the break-up, it was all I could do to put Archie to school."(Oh! Di, Di, cold in your grave these two and twenty years! Do you remember the little pile of account books that you wound up, and put in your writing-table drawer, that last morning in April, thinking that if anything happened, he would find them there—afterwards. He had always inveighed against the meanness of your economy before the servants, and against your extravagance in private. Do you remember the butcher's book, with thin blotting paper, that blotted tears as badly as ink sometimes, for meat was dear; and the milk bills? You were always proud of the milk bills, with the space for cream left blank, except when he was there. And the little book of sundries, where those quarter pounds of fresh butter and Frenchrolls, were entered, which Anne ran out to get if he came home suddenly, because he did not like the cheap butter from the Stores. Do you remember these things? He never knew, he never looked at the dumb reproach of that little row of books: but I cannot think, wherever you are, that you have quite forgotten them.)John was silent again. How could he deal with this man who roused in him such a vehement indignation? For several minutes he could not trust himself to speak."I think I had better go," said Colonel Tempest at last.John started violently."No, no," he said. "Wait. Let me think."The nurse and his aunt came into the room at that moment."Are not you feeling tired, sir?" the nurse inquired, warningly."Yes, John," said Miss Fane, grunting as her manner was. "Mustn't get tired.""I am not," he replied. "Colonel Tempest and I are discussing business matters which won't wait—which it would trouble me to leave unsettled. We have not quite finished, but he is more tired than I am. It is the hottest day we have had. Will you give him a cup of tea, Aunt Flo, and bring him back in half an hour."When he was left alone John turned his head painfully on the pillow, and slowly opened and shut one of the bandaged hands. This not altogether satisfactory form of exercise was the only substitute he had within his power for the old habit of pacing up and down while he thought.Ought he to give the money? He had no right to make a bad use of anything because he happened to have a good deal of it. This ten thousand would follow theprevious twenty thousand, as a matter of course.Giving it did not affect himself, inasmuch as he would hardly miss it. It was a generous action only in appearance, for he was very wealthy; even among the rich he was very rich. His long minority, and various legacies of younger branches, which had shown the Tempest peculiarity of dying out, and leaving their substance to the head of the family, had added to an already imposing income. In his present mode of life he did not spend a third of it.The thought flashed across his mind that if he had died three weeks ago, if the hinges of the door had held as firmly as the shot lock, and he had perished in that room in King Street like a rat in a trap, Colonel Tempest would at this very moment have been in possession of everything. He looked at his own death, and all it would have entailed, dispassionately.That improvident selfish man had been within an ace of immense wealth. And yet—John's heart smote him—his uncle had been genuinely grieved to see him so ill: had been really thankful to think he was out of danger. He had almost immediately afterwards reverted to himself and his own affairs; but that was natural to the man. He had nevertheless been unaffectedly overcome the moment before. The emotion had been genuine.John struggled hard against his strong personal dislike.Perhaps Colonel Tempest had become entangled in the money difficulty at the very time his—John's—life hung in the balance, when he took for granted he was about to inherit all. The speculation was heartless, perhaps, but pardonable. John saw no reason why Colonel Tempest should not have counted on his death. For ten daysit had been more than probable; and now he might live to a hundred. Perhaps the probability of his reaching old age was slenderer than he supposed.He lay a little while longer and then rang the bell near his hand, and directed his servant to bring him a locked feminine elegancy from a side-table which, until he could replace his burnt possessions, had evidently been lent him by his aunt to use as a despatch-box. He got out a cheque-book, and with clumsy fingers filled in and signed a cheque. Then he lay back panting and exhausted. The will was strong in him, but the suffering body was desperately weak.When Colonel Tempest returned, John held the cheque towards him in silence with a feeble smile.Colonel Tempest took it without speaking. His lips shook. He was more moved than he had been for years."God bless you, John," he said at last. "You are a good fellow, and I don't deserve it from you.""Good-bye," said John, in a more natural tone of voice than he had yet used towards him. "If you are at the polo match on Thursday, will you look in and tell me how it has gone? It would be a kindness to me. I know Archie and Hemsworth are playing." Colonel Tempest murmured something unintelligible, and went out.He did not go back at once to his rooms in Brook Street. Almost involuntarily his steps turned towards the Park. The world was changed for him. The weary ceaseless beat of the horses' hoofs on the wood pavement had a cheerful exhilarating ring. All the people looked glad. There was a confused rejoicing in the rustle of the trees, in the flying voices of the children playing and rolling in the grass. He wandered downtowards the Serpentine. Dogs were rushing in and out of the water. An elastic cockeared retriever, undepressed by its doubtful ancestry, was leaping and waving a wet tail at its master, giving the short sharp barks of youth and a light heart. An aristocratic pug in a belled collar was delicately sniffing the evening breeze across the water, watching the antics of the lower orders with protruding eyes like pieces of toffy rounded and glazed by suction. An equally aristocratic black poodle—Lindo out for a stroll with the valet—with more social tendencies, was hurrying up and down on the extreme verge, beckoning rapidly with its short tufted tail to the athletes in the water. The ducks bobbed on the ripples. The children sprawled and shouted and clambered. The low sun had laid a dancing, glancing pathway across the water. How glad it all was, how exceeding glad! Colonel Tempest pattedone of the children on the head and felt benevolent.As he turned away at last and sauntered homewards, he passed a little knot of people gathered round a gesticulating open-air preacher. Two girls, arm in arm, just in front of him, were lounging near, talking earnestly together."Sin no more lest a worse thing come unto thee," bawled the strident fanatic voice."I shall have mine trimmed with tulle, and a flower on the crown," said one of the girls.Colonel Tempest walked slowly on. Yes, yes; that was it.Sin no more lest a worse thing come unto thee.He had always dreaded that worse thing, and now that fear was all over. He translated the cry of the preacher into a message to himself, his first personal transaction with the Almighty. He felt awed. It was like a voice from anotherworld. Religion was becoming a reality to him at last. There are still persons for whom the Law and the Prophets are not enough—who require that one should rise from the dead to galvanize their superstition into momentary activity. Sin no more. No—never any more. He had done with sin. He would make a fresh start from to-day, and life would become easy and unembarrassed and enjoyable once again; no more nightmares and wakeful nights and nervous haunting terrors. They were all finished and put away. The tears came into his eyes. He regretted that he had not enjoyed these comfortable feelings earlier in life. The load was lifted from his heart, and the removal of the pain was like a solemn joy.CHAPTER XII."On entre, on crie,C'est la vie.On crie, on sort,C'est la mort."OON the paths of self-interest the grass is seldom allowed to grow under the feet. Colonel Tempest hurried. It would be tedious to follow the various steps feverishly taken which led to his finally unearthing the home address of Mr. Swayne. He procured it at last, not without expense, from an impoverished client of that gentleman who had lately been in correspondence with him. Mr. Swayne had always shown a decided reticence with regard to the localityof his domestic roof. Colonel Tempest was of course in possession of several addresses where letters would find him, but his experience of such addresses had been that, unless strictly connected with pecuniary advantage to Mr. Swayne, the letters did not seem to reach their destination. But now, even when Colonel Tempest wrote to say he would pay up, no answer came. Swayne did not rise even to that bait. Colonel Tempest, who was aware that Mr. Swayne's faith in human nature had in the course of his career sustained several severe shocks, came to the conclusion that Mr. Swayne did not attach importance to his statement—that indeed he regarded it only as a "blind" in order to obtain another interview.It was on a burning day in June that Colonel Tempest set forth to search out his tempter at Rosemont Villa, Iron Ferry, in the manufacturing town of Bilgewater. Thedirty smudged address was in his pocket-book, as was also the notice of his banker that ten thousand pounds had been placed to his credit a few days before.The London train took him to Worcester, and from thence the local line, after meandering through a desert of grime and chimneys, and after innumerable stoppages at one hideous nigger station after another, finally deposited him on the platform of Bilgewater Junction. Colonel Tempest got out and looked about him. It was not a rural scene. Heaps of refuse and slag lay upon the blistered land thick as the good resolutions that pave a certain road. Low cottages crowded each other in knots near the high smoking factories. Black wheels turned slowly against the grey of the sky, which whitened upwards towards the ghost of the midsummer sun high in heaven. We are told that the sun shines equally on the justand on the unjust; but that was said before the first factory was built. At Bilgewater it is no longer so.Colonel Tempest inquired his way to Iron Ferry, and, vaguely surprised at Mr. Swayne's choice of locality for his country residence, set out along the baked wrinkles of the black high-road, winding between wastes of cottages, some inhabited and showing dreary signs of life, some empty and decrepit, some fallen down dead. The heat was intense. The steam and the smoke rose together into the air like some evil sacrifice. The pulses of the factories throbbed feverishly as he passed. The steam curled upwards from the surface of the livid pools and canals at their base. The very water seemed to sweat.Colonel Tempest reached Iron Ferry, being guided thither by the spire of the little tin church, which pointed unheeded towardsthe low steel sky, shut down over the battered convulsed country like a coffin lid over one who has died in torment.At Iron Ferry, which had a bridge and a wharf and a canal, and was everything except a ferry, he inquired again concerning Rosemont Villa, and was presently picking his way across a little patch of common towards a string of what had once been red brick houses, but which had long since embraced the universal colour of their surroundings. They were rather better looking houses if a sort of shabby gentility can be called anything except the worst. They were semi-detached. From out of one of them the strains were issuing faintly and continuously of the inevitable accordion, which for some occult reason is always found to consort with poverty and oyster-shells.At the open door of another a girl wasstanding tearing pieces with her teeth out of a chunk of something she held in her hand. She was surrounded by a meagre family of poultry who fought and pecked and trod each other down with almost human eagerness for the occasional morsels she threw to them. Something in her appearance and in the way she seemed to enjoy the greed and mutual revilings of her little dependents reminded Colonel Tempest—he hardly knew why—of Mr. Swayne.Another glance made the supposition a certainty. There were the small boot-buttons of eyes, the heavy mottled expressionless face, which Colonel Tempest had until now considered to be the exclusive property of Mr. Swayne. This slouching, tawdry down-at-heel arrow was no doubt one of that gentleman's quiverful.Mr. Swayne had always worn such very unmarried waistcoats and button holes that itwas a shock to Colonel Tempest to regard him as a domestic character."Is Mr. Swayne at home?" he asked, amid the cackling and flouncing of the poultry.The "arrow," her cheek "bulged with the unchewed piece," looked at him doubtfully for a moment, and then called over her shoulder—"Mother!"The voice as of a female who had never been held in subjection answered shrilly from within—"Well?""Here's a gent as wants to see father."There was a sound of some heavy vessel being set down, and a woman, large and swarthy, came to the door. She might have been good-looking once. She might perhaps have been "a fine figure of a woman" in the days when Swayne wooed and won her, and no doubt her savings, for his own. Butpossibly the society of Mr. Swayne may not in the long run have exerted an ennobling or even a soothing influence upon her. Her complexion was a fiery red, and her whole appearance bespoke a temperament to which the artificial stimulus of alcohol, though evidently unnecessary, was evidently not denied."Swayne's sick," she said, eyeing Colonel Tempest with distrust. "He can't see no one, and if he could, there's not a shilling in the house if you was to scrape the walls with a knife—so that's all about it. It's no manner of use coming pestering here for money.""I don't want money," said Colonel Tempest. "I want to pay, not to be paid."The woman shook her head incredulously, and put out her under lip, uttering the mystic word, "Walker!" It did not seem to bear upon the subject, but somebody, probably the accordion next door, laughed."I must see him!" said Colonel Tempest, vehemently. "I've had dealings with him which I want to settle and have done with. It's my own interest to pay up. He would see me directly if he knew I was here."The woman hesitated."Swayne is uncommon sick," she said, slowly. "If it's business I doubt he could scarce fettle at it now.""Do you mean he is not sober?""He's sober enough, poor fellow," said Mrs. Swayne, with momentary sympathy; "but he's mortal bad. He hasn't done nobbut but dithered with a bit of toast since Tuesday, and taking it out of hisself all the time with flouncing and swearing like a brute beast.""Is he—do you mean to say he isdying?" demanded Colonel Tempest in sudden panic."Doctor says he won't hang on above aday or two," said the girl nonchalantly. "Doctor says his works is clean wore out.""Let me go to him at once," said Colonel Tempest. "It is of great importance; I must see him at once."The women stared at each other undecidedly, and the girl nudged her mother."Lor, mother, what does it signify? If the gentleman 'ull make it worth while, show him up."Colonel Tempest hastily produced a sovereign, and in a few minutes was stumbling up the rickety stairs behind Mrs. Swayne. She pushed open a half-closed door, and noisily pulled back a bit of curtain which shaded the light—what poor dim light there was—from the bed, knocking over as she did so a tallow candle in the window-sill bent double by the heat.Colonel Tempest had followed her into the room and into an atmosphere resemblingthat of the monkey-house at the Zoo, stiffened with brandy."Oh, good gracious!" he ejaculated, as Mrs. Swayne drew back the curtain. "Oh dear, Mrs. Swayne! I ought to have been prepared. I had no idea—— What's the matter with him? What is he writing on the wall?"For Mr. Swayne was changed. He was within a measurable distance of being unrecognizable. That evidently would be the next alteration not for the better in him. Already he was slow to recognize others. He was sitting up in bed, swearing and scratching tearfully at the wall-paper. He looked stouter than ever, but as if he might collapse altogether at a pin prick, and shrivel down to a wrinkled nothing among the creases of his tumbled bedding.Mrs. Swayne regarded her prostrate lord with arms akimbo. Possibly she consideredthat her part of the agreement, to love and to cherish Mr. Swayne, and honour and obey Mr. Swayne, was now at an end, as death was so plainly about to part them. At any rate, she appeared indisposed to add any finishing touches to her part of the contract. Mr. Swayne had, in all probability, put in his finishing touches with such vigour, that possibly a remembrance of them accounted for a certain absence of solicitude on the part of his helpmeet."Who's this? Who's this? Who's this?" said Mr. Swayne in a rapid whisper, perceiving his visitor, and peering out of the gloom with a bloodshot furtive eye. "Dear, dear, dear! ... Mary ... I'm busy ... I'm pressed for time. Take him away. Quite away; quite away."Mr. Swayne had been a man of few and evil words when in health. His recording angel would now need a knowledge of shorthand. This sudden flow of language fairly staggered Colonel Tempest."I must have out those bonds," he went on, forgetting his visitor again instantly. "I can't lay my hand on 'em, but I've got 'em somewhere. Top left-hand drawer of the walnut escritoire. I know I have 'em. I'll make him bleed. Top left-hand. No, no, no. Where was it, then? Lock's stiff;—— the lock. Break it. I say I will have 'em."As he spoke he tore from under the pillow a little footstool, having the remnant of a frayed dog, in blue beads, worked upon it, a conjugal attention no doubt on the part of Mrs. Swayne, to raise the sick man's head.And Mr. Swayne, after endeavouring to unlock the dog's tail, smote savagely upon it, and sank back with chattering teeth."That's the way he goes on," said Mrs. Swayne. "Mornin', noon, and night. Never a bit of peace, except when he gets into hisprayin' fits. I expect he'll go off in one of them tantrums."It did not appear unlikely that he would "go off" then and there, but after a few moments a sort of ghastly life seemed to return. Even death did not appear to take to him. He opened his eyes, and looked round bewildered. Then his head fell forward."Now's yer time," said the woman. "Before he gets up steam for another of them rages. Parson comes and twitters a bit when he's in this way; and he'll pray very heavy while he recollects hisself, until he goes off again. He'll be better now for a spell," and she left the room, and creaked ponderously downstairs again. Colonel Tempest advanced a step nearer the lair on which poor Swayne was taking his last rest but one, and said faintly:"Swayne. I say, Swayne. Rouse up."The only things that roused up were Swayne's eyelids. These certainly trembled a little.In the next house the accordion was beginning a new tune, was designating Jerusalem as its ha-appy home.Apprehensive terror for himself as usual overcame other feelings. It overcame in this instance the unspeakable repugnance Colonel Tempest felt to approaching any nearer. He touched the prostrate man on the shoulder with the slender white hand which had served him so exclusively from boyhood upwards, which had never wavered in its fidelity to him to do a hand's turn for others, which shrinkingly did his bidding now."Wake up, Swayne," repeated Colonel Tempest, actually stooping over him. "Wake up, for——," he was going to add "heaven's sake;" but the thought of heavenin connection with Swayne seemed inappropriate; and he altered it to "for mercy's sake," which sounded just as well."Is it the parson?" asked Swayne feebly, in a more natural voice."No, no," said Colonel Tempest reassuringly. "It's only me, a friend. It's Colonel Tempest.""I wish itwasthe parson," repeated Swayne, seeming to emerge somewhat from his torpor. "He might have come and let off a few more prayers for me. He says it's all right if I repent, and I suppose he knows; but it don't seem likely. Don't seem as if Godcouldbe greened quite as easy as parson makes out. I should have liked to throw off a few more prayers so as to be on the safe side," and he began to mutter incoherently.As a man lives so, it is said, he generally dies. Swayne seemed to remain true to hisown interests, only his aspect of those interests had altered. He felt the awkwardness of going into court absolutely unprepared. Prayer was cheap if it could do what he wanted, and he had had professional advice as to its efficacy. A man who all his life can grovel before his fellow-creatures, may as well do a little grovelling before his Creator at the last, if anything is to be got by it.It is to the credit of human nature that, as a rule, men even of the lowest type feel the uselessness, the degradation, of trying to annul their past on their deathbeds. But to Swayne, who had never shone as a credit to human nature, a chance remained a chance. He was a gambler and a swindler, a man who had risked long odds, and had been made rich and poor by the drugging of a horse, or the forcing of a card. If, in his strict attention to never losing a chance, hehad inadvertently mislaid his soul, he was not likely to be aware of it. But achancewas a thing he had never so far failed to take advantage of. He was taking his last now.Colonel Tempest looked at him in horror. The interests of the two men clashed, and at a vital moment."For God's sake don't pray now, Swayne," said Colonel Tempest, appealingly, as Swayne began to mutter something more. "I've come to set wrong right, and that will be a great deal better than any prayers; do you more good in the end."Swayne did not seem to understand. He looked in a perplexed manner at Colonel Tempest."I don't appear to fetch it out right," he said. "But it's in the Prayer-book on the mantelpiece. That's what our parson reads out of. You get it, colonel; just get it quick,and pray 'em off one after another. It don't matter much which. They're all good.""Swayne," said Colonel Tempest, in utter desperation, "I'll do anything; I'll—pray as much as you like afterwards, if you will only give me up those papers you have against me—those bets.""What?" said Swayne, a gleam of the old professional interest flickering into his face. "You han't got the money?""Yes. Here, here!" and Colonel Tempest tore the banker's note out of his pocket-book, and held it before Swayne's eyes."I was to have had twenty-five per cent. commission," said Swayne, rallying perceptibly at the thought. "Twenty-five per cent. on each. I wouldn't let 'em go at less. Two thousand five hundred I should have made. But"—with a sudden restless relapse—"it's no use thinking of that now. Get down the book, colonel."But for once Colonel Tempest was firm.Perhaps his indignation against Swayne's egotism enabled him to be so. He made Swayne understand that business must in this instance come first, and prayers afterwards. It was a compact; not the first between the two."The papers," he repeated over and over again, frantic at the speed with which the last links of Swayne's memory seemed falling from him. "Where are they? You have them with you, of course? Tell me where they are?" and he grasped the dying man by the shoulder.Swayne was frightened back to some semblance of effort."I haven't got 'em," he gasped. "The—the—the chaps engaged in the business have 'em.""But you know who have got them?""Yes, of course. It's all written down somewhere.""Where?"But Swayne "did not rightly know." He had the addresses in cipher somewhere, but he could not put his hand upon them. Half wild with fear, Colonel Tempest searched the pockets of the clothes that lay about the room, holding up their contents for Swayne to look at. It was like some hideous game of hide-and-seek. But the latter only shook his head."I have 'em somewhere," he repeated, "and there was a change not so long ago. When was it? May. There's one of 'em written down in cipher in my pocket-book in May, I know that.""Here. This one?" said Colonel Tempest, holding out a greasy pocket-book."That's it," said Swayne. "Some time in May."Colonel Tempest turned to the month, and actually found a page with a faint pencil scrawl in cipher across it."That's him," said Swayne. "James Larkin," and he read out a complicated address without difficulty."Will that find him?" asked Colonel Tempest, his hand shaking so much that he could hardly write down Swayne's words."If it's to his advantage it will.""For certain?""Certain.""And the others?""There's one dead," said Swayne, his voice waxing feebler and feebler as the momentary galvanism of Colonel Tempest's terror lost its effect. "And there's two I had back the papers from; they were sick of it, and they said he had a charmed life. And one of 'em went to America, and married, and set up respectable. I have his paper too. And one of 'em's in quod, but he'll be out soon, I reckon, and he's good for another try. He precious near brought it off lasttime. There's a few left that's still biding their time! There! And now I won't hear nothin' more about it. Get to the prayers, Colonel, and be quick. Parson might have come again, damn him.""Stop a minute. Can I get at the others through Larkin?"Swayne had sunk back spent and livid. He looked at Colonel Tempest with fixed and glassy eyes."Yes," he said, with the ghost of an oath; "get to the prayers."Colonel Tempest was still trembling with the relief from that horrible nightmare of suspense as he opened the shiny new Prayer-book which the clergyman had left. He held the first link. He had now only to draw the whole chain through his hand, and break it to atoms; the chain that was dragging him down to hell. He hastily began to read.God has heard many prayers, but, perhaps, not many like those which ascended from that hideous tumbled death-bed, where kneeling self-interest halted through the supplication, and prostrate self-interest gasped out Amen.Oh! did He who first taught us how to pray, did He, raised high upon the cross of an apparent failure, look down the ages that were yet to come, and see how we should abuse that gift of prayer? Was that bitter cry which has echoed through eighteen hundred years wrung from Him even for our sakes also as well as those who stood around Him—"Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do"?Colonel Tempest was still on his knees when the door was softly opened, and a young, a very young, clergyman came in and knelt down beside him, clasping his thin hands over the collapsed feltsouffléewhichdid duty for a hat. After stumbling to the end of the prayer he was reading, Colonel Tempest put the book into his hand and escaped.He stole down the stairs and past the little sitting-room unobserved. He was out again in the open air, the live free air, which seemed freshness itself after the atmosphere of that sick-room. He held the clue. He had it, he held it, he was safe. God was on his side now, and was helping him to make restitution. At one despairing moment when he had been tearing even the linings out of the pockets of Swayne's check trousers he had feared that Providence had deserted him. Now that he had the pocket-book he regretted his want of faith. I do not think his mind reverted once to Swayne, for Swayne was no longer of any interest to him now that he was out of Swayne's power. Colonel Tempest did not exactly forget people, buthis mind was so constituted that everything with which it came in contact was wiped out the moment it had ceased to affect or group itself round himself. His imagination did not follow his colleague's last faltering steps upon that steep brink where each must one day stand. His mind turned instinctively to the most frivolous subjects, was back in London wondering what he would have had for dinner if he had dined with Archie as he had intended; was anxious to know how many cigarettes of that new brand he had put into his case before he left London that morning. Colonel Tempest stopped, and got out his cigarette-case and counted them.Those who had known Colonel Tempest best, those few who had misunderstood and loved him, had often pondered with grave anxiety, or with the wistful perplexity of wounded affection, as to what it was in him that being so impressionable was yet incapableof any real impression. His wife may or may not have mastered that expensive secret. At any rate, she had had opportunities of studying it. When first, a few weeks after her marriage, she had fallen ill, she, poor fool, had suffered agonies from the fear that because he hardly came into her sick-room after the first day, he had ceased to care for her. But when after a few days more she was feeling better and was pretty and interesting again in a pink wrapper on the sofa, she had found that he was as devoted to her as ever, and had confided her foolish dread to him with happy tears. Possibly she discovered at last that the secret lay not so much in the selfishness and self-indulgence of a character moth-eaten by idleness, as in the instant and invariable recoil of the mind from any subject that threatened to prove disagreeable, the determination to avoid everything irksome, wearisome, or reproachful.For a moment, while it was quite new, a sentiment might be indulged in. But as soon as a certain novelty and pleasure in emotion ceased the feeling itself was shirked, at whatever expense to others. Those who shirk are ill to live with, and lay up for themselves an increasing loneliness as life goes on.Colonel Tempest found it unpleasant to think about Swayne, so he thought of something else. He could always do that unless he himself was concerned. Then, indeed, as we have seen, it was a different thing. He was annoyed when, after slowly picking his way back to the station, he found the last passenger train had just gone; that even if he drove fifteen miles in to Worcester he should be too late to catch the last express to London; in fact, that there was nothing for it but a bed at the station inn. He found, however, that by making a very early startfrom Bilgewater the following morning he could reach London by noon, and so resigned himself to his lot with composure. He had hardly expected he should be able to go and return in one day.It was indeed early when he walked across to the station next morning, so early that there was a suspicion of freshness in the air, of colour in the eastern sky.On a heap of slag a motionless figure was sitting, black against the sky line, looking towards the east. It was the curate, who when he perceived Colonel Tempest, came crunching and flapping in his long coat tails down to the road below, raised his hat from a meagre clerical brow, and held out his hand. His face was thin and poor, suggestive of a starved mind and cold mutton and Pearson on the Creed, but the smile redeemed it."It is all over," he said; "half an hourago. Quite quietly at the last. I stayed with him through the night. I never left him. We prayed together without ceasing."Colonel Tempest did not know what to say."It was too late to go to bed," continued the young man impulsively, his face working. "So I came here. I often come and sit on that ash heap to see the sun rise. I'm so glad just to have seen you again. I longed to thank you for those prayers by poor Mr. Crosbie's bed. You know the Scripture: 'Where two or three are gathered together.' I felt it was so true. I have lost heart so of late. No one seems to care or think about these things down here. But your coming and praying like that has been such a help, such a reproach to me for my want of faith when I think that the seed falls on the rock. I shall take courage again now. Ah! You are going by this train? Good-bye, God bless you! Thank you again."
"Still as of oldMan by himself is priced.For thirty pieces Judas soldHimself, not Christ."H.C.C.
"Still as of oldMan by himself is priced.For thirty pieces Judas soldHimself, not Christ."H.C.C.
LLENT gave way to Easter, and Easter melted into the season, and Mrs. Courtenay gave a little dinner-party, at which John was one of the guests; and Madeleine was presented on her marriage; and Di had two new gowns, and renovated an old one, and nearly broke Lord Hemsworth's heart by refusing the box-seat on his drag at the meeting of the Four-in-hand; and Lord Hemsworth did not invest in thebay mare with the white stocking, but turned heaven and earth to find another with black points, and succeeded, only to drive in lonely bitterness to the meet. And John was to have been there also, but he had been so severely injured in a fire which broke out at his lodgings, in the room below his, three weeks before, that he was still lying helpless at the house in Park Lane, which he had lent to his aunt, Miss Fane, and whither he was at once taken, after the accident, to struggle slowly back to life and painful convalescence.
For the last three weeks, since the fire, hardly any one had seen Colonel Tempest. The old horror had laid hold upon him like a mortal sickness. Sleep had left him. Remorse looked at him out of the eyes of the passers in the street. There was no refuge. He avoided his club. What might he not hear there! What might not have happened in the night! He could trust himself to gonowhere for fear of his face betraying him. He wandered aimlessly out in the evenings in the lonelier portions of the Park. Sometimes he would stop his loitering, to follow with momentary interest the children sailing their boats on the Round Pond, and then look up and see the veiled London sunset watching him from behind Kensington Palace, and turn away with a guilty sense of detection. The aimless days and waking ghosts of nights came and went, came and went, until his misery became greater than he could bear. The resolutions of the weak are as much the result of the period of feeble, apathetic inertia that precedes them, as the resolutions of the strong are the outcome of earnest reflection and mental travail.
"It will kill me if it goes on," he said to himself. There was one way, and one only, by means of which this intolerable weight might be shifted from his shoulders. Hehung back many days. He said he could not dothat, anything butthat—and then he did it.
His heart beat painfully as he turned his steps towards Park Lane, and he hesitated many minutes before he mounted the steps and rang the bell at the familiar door of the Tempest town-house, where his father had lived during the session, where his mother had spent the last years of her life after his death.
It was an old-fashioned house. The iron rings into which the links used to be thrust still flanked the ponderous doorway, together with the massive extinguisher.
The servant informed him that Mr. Tempest had been out of danger for some days, but was not seeing any one at present.
"Ask if he will see me," said Colonel Tempest, hoarsely. "Say I am waiting."
The man left him in the white stone hallwhere he and his brother Jack had played as boys. The dappled rocking-horse used to stand under the staircase, but it was no longer there: given away, no doubt, or broken up for firewood. John might have kept the poor old rocking-horse. Recollections that took the form of personal grievances were never far from Colonel Tempest's mind.
In a few minutes the man returned, and said that Mr. Tempest would see him, and led the way upstairs. A solemn, melancholy-looking valet was waiting for him, who respectfully informed him that the doctor's orders were that his master should be kept very quiet, and should not be excited in any way. Colonel Tempest nodded unheeding, and was conscious of a door being opened, and his name announced.
He went forward hesitatingly into a half-darkened room.
"Pull up the further blind, Marshall," said John's voice. The servant did so, and noiselessly left the room.
Colonel Tempest's heart smote him.
The young man lay quite motionless, his dark head hardly raised, his swathed hands stretched out beside him. His unshaved face had the tension of protracted suffering, and the grave steady eyes which met Colonel Tempest's were bright with suppressed pain. The eyes were the only things that moved. It seemed to Colonel Tempest that if they were closed—. He shuddered involuntarily. In his morbid fancy the prostrate figure seemed to have already taken the rigid lines of death, the winding-sheet to be even now drawn up round the young haggard face.
Colonel Tempest was not gifted with imagination where he himself was not concerned. He was under the impression that the influenza, from which he occasionallysuffered, was the most excruciating form of mortal illness known to mankind. He never believed people were really ill until they were dead. Now he realized for the first time that John had been at death's door; that is to say, he realized what being at death's door was like, and he was fairly staggered!
"Good God, John!" he said with a sort of groan. "I did not know it had been as bad as this."
"Sit down," said John, as the nurse brought forward a chair to the bedside, and then withdrew, eyeing the new-comer suspiciously. "It is much better now. I receive callers. Hemsworth was here yesterday. I can shake hands a little; only be very gentle with me. I cry like a girl if I am more than touched."
John feebly raised and held out a bandaged hand, of which the end of three fingers onlywere visible. Colonel Tempest, whose own feelings were invariably too deep to admit of his remembering those of others, pressed it spasmodically in his.
"It goes to my heart to see you like this, John," he said with a break in his voice.
John withdrew his hand. His face twitched a little, and he bit his lip, but in a few moments he spoke again firmly enough.
"It is very good of you to come. Now that I have got round the corner, I shall be about again in no time."
"Yes, yes," said Colonel Tempest, as if reassuring himself. "You will be all right again soon."
"You look knocked up," said John, considering him attentively with his dark earnest gaze.
"Do I?" said Colonel Tempest. "I dare say I do. Yes, people may not notice it asa rule. I keep things to myself, always have done all my life, but—it will drag me into my grave if it goes on much longer, I know that."
"If what goes on?"
It is all very well for a nervous rider to look boldly at a hedge two fields away, but when he comes up with it, and feels his horse quicken his pace under him, he begins to wonder what the landing on the invisible other side will be like. There was a long silence, broken only by Lindo, John's Spanish poodle, who, ensconced in an armchair by the bedside, was putting an aristocratic and extended hind leg through an afternoon toilet by means of searching and sustained suction.
"I don't suppose there is a more wretched man in the world than I am, John," said Colonel Tempest at last.
"There is something on your mind, perhaps."
"Night and day," said Colonel Tempest, wishing John would not watch him so closely. "I have not a moment's peace."
"You are in money difficulties," said John, justly divining the only cause that was likely to permanently interfere with his uncle's peace of mind.
"Yes," said Colonel Tempest. "I am at my wit's end, and that is the truth."
John's lips tightened a little, and he remained silent. That was why his uncle had come to see him then. His pride revolted against Colonel Tempest's want of it, against Archie's sponge-like absorption of all John would give him. He felt (and it was no idle fancy of a wealthy man) that he would have died rather than have asked for a shilling. A Tempest should be above begging, should scorn to run in debt. John's pride of race resented what was in his eyes a want of honour in the othermembers of the family of which he was the head.
Colonel Tempest was in a position of too much delicacy not to feel hurt by John's silence. He reflected on the invariable meanness of rich men, with a momentary retrospect of how open-handed he had been himself in his youth, and even after his crippling marriage.
"I do not know the circumstances," said John at last.
"No one does," said Colonel Tempest.
"Neither have I any wish to know them," said John, with a touch of haughtiness, "except in so far as I can be of use to you."
Colonel Tempest found himself very disagreeably placed. He would have instantly lost his temper if he had been a few weeks younger, but the memory of those last few weeks recurred to him like a douche of cold water. Self-interest would not allow himto throw away his last chance of escaping out of Swayne's clutches, and he had a secret conviction that no storming or passion of any kind would have any effect on that prostrate figure, with the stern feeble voice, and intense fixity of gaze.
John had always felt a secret repulsion towards his uncle, though he invariably met him with grave, if distant civility. He had borne in a proud silence the gradual realization, as he grew old enough to understand it, that there was a slur upon his name, a shadow on his mother's memory. He believed, as did some others, that his uncle had originated the slanders, impossible to substantiate, in order to wrest his inheritance from him. How could this man, after trying to strip him of everything, even of his name, come to him now for money?
John had a certain rigidity and tenacityof mind, an uprightness and severity, which come of an intense love of justice and rectitude, but which in an extreme degree, if not counterbalanced by other qualities, make a hard and unlovable character.
His clear-eyed judgment made him look at Colonel Tempest with secret indignation and contempt. But with the harshness of youth other qualities, rarely joined, went hand in hand. A little knowledge of others is a dangerous thing. It shows itself in sweeping condemnations and severe judgments, and a complacent holding up to the light of the poor foibles and peccadilloes of humanity, which all who will can find. A greater knowledge shows itself in a greater tenderness towards others, the tenderness, as some suppose, of wilful ignorance of evil. When or how John had learnt it I know not, but certainly he had a rapid intuition of the feelings of others; he could put himselfin their place, and to do that is to be not harsh.
He looked again at Colonel Tempest, and was ashamed of his passing, though righteous, anger. He realized how hard it must be for an older man to be obliged to ask a young one for money, and he had no wish to make it any harder. He looked at the weak, wretched face, with its tortured selfishness, and understood a little; perhaps only in part, but enough to make him speak again in a different tone.
"Do not tell me anything you do not wish; but I see something is troubling you very much. Sometimes things don't look so black when one has talked them over."
"I can't talk it over, John," said Colonel Tempest, with incontestable veracity, softened by the kindness of his tone, "but the truth is," nervousness was shutting itseyes and making a rush, "I want—ten thousand pounds and no questions asked."
John was startled. Colonel Tempest clutched his hat, and stared out of the window. He felt benumbed. He had actually done it, actually brought himself to ask for it. As his faculties slowly returned to him in the long silence which followed, he became conscious, that if John was too niggardly to pay his own ransom, he, Colonel Tempest, would not be the most to blame, if any casualty should hereafter occur.
At last John spoke.
"You say you don't want any questions asked, but Imustask one or two. You want this money secretly. Would the want of it bring disgrace upon your—children?" He had nearly said your "daughter."
"If it was found out it would," said Colonel Tempest, in a choked voice. Thedetection, which he always told himself was an impossibility, had, nevertheless, a horrible way of masquerading before him at intervals as an accomplished fact.
John knit his brows.
"I can't pretend not to know what it is," he said. "It is a debt of honour. You have been betting."
"Yes," said Colonel Tempest, faintly.
"I suppose you can't touch your capital. That is settled on your children."
"No," said Colonel Tempest. "There were no settlements when I married. I had to do the best I could. I had twenty thousand pounds from my father, and my wife brought me a few thousands after her uncle's death; a very few, which her relations could not prevent her having. But there were the children, and one thing with another, and women are extravagant, and must have everything to their liking; andby the time I had settled up and sold everything after the break-up, it was all I could do to put Archie to school."
(Oh! Di, Di, cold in your grave these two and twenty years! Do you remember the little pile of account books that you wound up, and put in your writing-table drawer, that last morning in April, thinking that if anything happened, he would find them there—afterwards. He had always inveighed against the meanness of your economy before the servants, and against your extravagance in private. Do you remember the butcher's book, with thin blotting paper, that blotted tears as badly as ink sometimes, for meat was dear; and the milk bills? You were always proud of the milk bills, with the space for cream left blank, except when he was there. And the little book of sundries, where those quarter pounds of fresh butter and Frenchrolls, were entered, which Anne ran out to get if he came home suddenly, because he did not like the cheap butter from the Stores. Do you remember these things? He never knew, he never looked at the dumb reproach of that little row of books: but I cannot think, wherever you are, that you have quite forgotten them.)
John was silent again. How could he deal with this man who roused in him such a vehement indignation? For several minutes he could not trust himself to speak.
"I think I had better go," said Colonel Tempest at last.
John started violently.
"No, no," he said. "Wait. Let me think."
The nurse and his aunt came into the room at that moment.
"Are not you feeling tired, sir?" the nurse inquired, warningly.
"Yes, John," said Miss Fane, grunting as her manner was. "Mustn't get tired."
"I am not," he replied. "Colonel Tempest and I are discussing business matters which won't wait—which it would trouble me to leave unsettled. We have not quite finished, but he is more tired than I am. It is the hottest day we have had. Will you give him a cup of tea, Aunt Flo, and bring him back in half an hour."
When he was left alone John turned his head painfully on the pillow, and slowly opened and shut one of the bandaged hands. This not altogether satisfactory form of exercise was the only substitute he had within his power for the old habit of pacing up and down while he thought.
Ought he to give the money? He had no right to make a bad use of anything because he happened to have a good deal of it. This ten thousand would follow theprevious twenty thousand, as a matter of course.
Giving it did not affect himself, inasmuch as he would hardly miss it. It was a generous action only in appearance, for he was very wealthy; even among the rich he was very rich. His long minority, and various legacies of younger branches, which had shown the Tempest peculiarity of dying out, and leaving their substance to the head of the family, had added to an already imposing income. In his present mode of life he did not spend a third of it.
The thought flashed across his mind that if he had died three weeks ago, if the hinges of the door had held as firmly as the shot lock, and he had perished in that room in King Street like a rat in a trap, Colonel Tempest would at this very moment have been in possession of everything. He looked at his own death, and all it would have entailed, dispassionately.
That improvident selfish man had been within an ace of immense wealth. And yet—John's heart smote him—his uncle had been genuinely grieved to see him so ill: had been really thankful to think he was out of danger. He had almost immediately afterwards reverted to himself and his own affairs; but that was natural to the man. He had nevertheless been unaffectedly overcome the moment before. The emotion had been genuine.
John struggled hard against his strong personal dislike.
Perhaps Colonel Tempest had become entangled in the money difficulty at the very time his—John's—life hung in the balance, when he took for granted he was about to inherit all. The speculation was heartless, perhaps, but pardonable. John saw no reason why Colonel Tempest should not have counted on his death. For ten daysit had been more than probable; and now he might live to a hundred. Perhaps the probability of his reaching old age was slenderer than he supposed.
He lay a little while longer and then rang the bell near his hand, and directed his servant to bring him a locked feminine elegancy from a side-table which, until he could replace his burnt possessions, had evidently been lent him by his aunt to use as a despatch-box. He got out a cheque-book, and with clumsy fingers filled in and signed a cheque. Then he lay back panting and exhausted. The will was strong in him, but the suffering body was desperately weak.
When Colonel Tempest returned, John held the cheque towards him in silence with a feeble smile.
Colonel Tempest took it without speaking. His lips shook. He was more moved than he had been for years.
"God bless you, John," he said at last. "You are a good fellow, and I don't deserve it from you."
"Good-bye," said John, in a more natural tone of voice than he had yet used towards him. "If you are at the polo match on Thursday, will you look in and tell me how it has gone? It would be a kindness to me. I know Archie and Hemsworth are playing." Colonel Tempest murmured something unintelligible, and went out.
He did not go back at once to his rooms in Brook Street. Almost involuntarily his steps turned towards the Park. The world was changed for him. The weary ceaseless beat of the horses' hoofs on the wood pavement had a cheerful exhilarating ring. All the people looked glad. There was a confused rejoicing in the rustle of the trees, in the flying voices of the children playing and rolling in the grass. He wandered downtowards the Serpentine. Dogs were rushing in and out of the water. An elastic cockeared retriever, undepressed by its doubtful ancestry, was leaping and waving a wet tail at its master, giving the short sharp barks of youth and a light heart. An aristocratic pug in a belled collar was delicately sniffing the evening breeze across the water, watching the antics of the lower orders with protruding eyes like pieces of toffy rounded and glazed by suction. An equally aristocratic black poodle—Lindo out for a stroll with the valet—with more social tendencies, was hurrying up and down on the extreme verge, beckoning rapidly with its short tufted tail to the athletes in the water. The ducks bobbed on the ripples. The children sprawled and shouted and clambered. The low sun had laid a dancing, glancing pathway across the water. How glad it all was, how exceeding glad! Colonel Tempest pattedone of the children on the head and felt benevolent.
As he turned away at last and sauntered homewards, he passed a little knot of people gathered round a gesticulating open-air preacher. Two girls, arm in arm, just in front of him, were lounging near, talking earnestly together.
"Sin no more lest a worse thing come unto thee," bawled the strident fanatic voice.
"I shall have mine trimmed with tulle, and a flower on the crown," said one of the girls.
Colonel Tempest walked slowly on. Yes, yes; that was it.Sin no more lest a worse thing come unto thee.He had always dreaded that worse thing, and now that fear was all over. He translated the cry of the preacher into a message to himself, his first personal transaction with the Almighty. He felt awed. It was like a voice from anotherworld. Religion was becoming a reality to him at last. There are still persons for whom the Law and the Prophets are not enough—who require that one should rise from the dead to galvanize their superstition into momentary activity. Sin no more. No—never any more. He had done with sin. He would make a fresh start from to-day, and life would become easy and unembarrassed and enjoyable once again; no more nightmares and wakeful nights and nervous haunting terrors. They were all finished and put away. The tears came into his eyes. He regretted that he had not enjoyed these comfortable feelings earlier in life. The load was lifted from his heart, and the removal of the pain was like a solemn joy.
"On entre, on crie,C'est la vie.On crie, on sort,C'est la mort."
"On entre, on crie,C'est la vie.On crie, on sort,C'est la mort."
OON the paths of self-interest the grass is seldom allowed to grow under the feet. Colonel Tempest hurried. It would be tedious to follow the various steps feverishly taken which led to his finally unearthing the home address of Mr. Swayne. He procured it at last, not without expense, from an impoverished client of that gentleman who had lately been in correspondence with him. Mr. Swayne had always shown a decided reticence with regard to the localityof his domestic roof. Colonel Tempest was of course in possession of several addresses where letters would find him, but his experience of such addresses had been that, unless strictly connected with pecuniary advantage to Mr. Swayne, the letters did not seem to reach their destination. But now, even when Colonel Tempest wrote to say he would pay up, no answer came. Swayne did not rise even to that bait. Colonel Tempest, who was aware that Mr. Swayne's faith in human nature had in the course of his career sustained several severe shocks, came to the conclusion that Mr. Swayne did not attach importance to his statement—that indeed he regarded it only as a "blind" in order to obtain another interview.
It was on a burning day in June that Colonel Tempest set forth to search out his tempter at Rosemont Villa, Iron Ferry, in the manufacturing town of Bilgewater. Thedirty smudged address was in his pocket-book, as was also the notice of his banker that ten thousand pounds had been placed to his credit a few days before.
The London train took him to Worcester, and from thence the local line, after meandering through a desert of grime and chimneys, and after innumerable stoppages at one hideous nigger station after another, finally deposited him on the platform of Bilgewater Junction. Colonel Tempest got out and looked about him. It was not a rural scene. Heaps of refuse and slag lay upon the blistered land thick as the good resolutions that pave a certain road. Low cottages crowded each other in knots near the high smoking factories. Black wheels turned slowly against the grey of the sky, which whitened upwards towards the ghost of the midsummer sun high in heaven. We are told that the sun shines equally on the justand on the unjust; but that was said before the first factory was built. At Bilgewater it is no longer so.
Colonel Tempest inquired his way to Iron Ferry, and, vaguely surprised at Mr. Swayne's choice of locality for his country residence, set out along the baked wrinkles of the black high-road, winding between wastes of cottages, some inhabited and showing dreary signs of life, some empty and decrepit, some fallen down dead. The heat was intense. The steam and the smoke rose together into the air like some evil sacrifice. The pulses of the factories throbbed feverishly as he passed. The steam curled upwards from the surface of the livid pools and canals at their base. The very water seemed to sweat.
Colonel Tempest reached Iron Ferry, being guided thither by the spire of the little tin church, which pointed unheeded towardsthe low steel sky, shut down over the battered convulsed country like a coffin lid over one who has died in torment.
At Iron Ferry, which had a bridge and a wharf and a canal, and was everything except a ferry, he inquired again concerning Rosemont Villa, and was presently picking his way across a little patch of common towards a string of what had once been red brick houses, but which had long since embraced the universal colour of their surroundings. They were rather better looking houses if a sort of shabby gentility can be called anything except the worst. They were semi-detached. From out of one of them the strains were issuing faintly and continuously of the inevitable accordion, which for some occult reason is always found to consort with poverty and oyster-shells.
At the open door of another a girl wasstanding tearing pieces with her teeth out of a chunk of something she held in her hand. She was surrounded by a meagre family of poultry who fought and pecked and trod each other down with almost human eagerness for the occasional morsels she threw to them. Something in her appearance and in the way she seemed to enjoy the greed and mutual revilings of her little dependents reminded Colonel Tempest—he hardly knew why—of Mr. Swayne.
Another glance made the supposition a certainty. There were the small boot-buttons of eyes, the heavy mottled expressionless face, which Colonel Tempest had until now considered to be the exclusive property of Mr. Swayne. This slouching, tawdry down-at-heel arrow was no doubt one of that gentleman's quiverful.
Mr. Swayne had always worn such very unmarried waistcoats and button holes that itwas a shock to Colonel Tempest to regard him as a domestic character.
"Is Mr. Swayne at home?" he asked, amid the cackling and flouncing of the poultry.
The "arrow," her cheek "bulged with the unchewed piece," looked at him doubtfully for a moment, and then called over her shoulder—
"Mother!"
The voice as of a female who had never been held in subjection answered shrilly from within—"Well?"
"Here's a gent as wants to see father."
There was a sound of some heavy vessel being set down, and a woman, large and swarthy, came to the door. She might have been good-looking once. She might perhaps have been "a fine figure of a woman" in the days when Swayne wooed and won her, and no doubt her savings, for his own. Butpossibly the society of Mr. Swayne may not in the long run have exerted an ennobling or even a soothing influence upon her. Her complexion was a fiery red, and her whole appearance bespoke a temperament to which the artificial stimulus of alcohol, though evidently unnecessary, was evidently not denied.
"Swayne's sick," she said, eyeing Colonel Tempest with distrust. "He can't see no one, and if he could, there's not a shilling in the house if you was to scrape the walls with a knife—so that's all about it. It's no manner of use coming pestering here for money."
"I don't want money," said Colonel Tempest. "I want to pay, not to be paid."
The woman shook her head incredulously, and put out her under lip, uttering the mystic word, "Walker!" It did not seem to bear upon the subject, but somebody, probably the accordion next door, laughed.
"I must see him!" said Colonel Tempest, vehemently. "I've had dealings with him which I want to settle and have done with. It's my own interest to pay up. He would see me directly if he knew I was here."
The woman hesitated.
"Swayne is uncommon sick," she said, slowly. "If it's business I doubt he could scarce fettle at it now."
"Do you mean he is not sober?"
"He's sober enough, poor fellow," said Mrs. Swayne, with momentary sympathy; "but he's mortal bad. He hasn't done nobbut but dithered with a bit of toast since Tuesday, and taking it out of hisself all the time with flouncing and swearing like a brute beast."
"Is he—do you mean to say he isdying?" demanded Colonel Tempest in sudden panic.
"Doctor says he won't hang on above aday or two," said the girl nonchalantly. "Doctor says his works is clean wore out."
"Let me go to him at once," said Colonel Tempest. "It is of great importance; I must see him at once."
The women stared at each other undecidedly, and the girl nudged her mother.
"Lor, mother, what does it signify? If the gentleman 'ull make it worth while, show him up."
Colonel Tempest hastily produced a sovereign, and in a few minutes was stumbling up the rickety stairs behind Mrs. Swayne. She pushed open a half-closed door, and noisily pulled back a bit of curtain which shaded the light—what poor dim light there was—from the bed, knocking over as she did so a tallow candle in the window-sill bent double by the heat.
Colonel Tempest had followed her into the room and into an atmosphere resemblingthat of the monkey-house at the Zoo, stiffened with brandy.
"Oh, good gracious!" he ejaculated, as Mrs. Swayne drew back the curtain. "Oh dear, Mrs. Swayne! I ought to have been prepared. I had no idea—— What's the matter with him? What is he writing on the wall?"
For Mr. Swayne was changed. He was within a measurable distance of being unrecognizable. That evidently would be the next alteration not for the better in him. Already he was slow to recognize others. He was sitting up in bed, swearing and scratching tearfully at the wall-paper. He looked stouter than ever, but as if he might collapse altogether at a pin prick, and shrivel down to a wrinkled nothing among the creases of his tumbled bedding.
Mrs. Swayne regarded her prostrate lord with arms akimbo. Possibly she consideredthat her part of the agreement, to love and to cherish Mr. Swayne, and honour and obey Mr. Swayne, was now at an end, as death was so plainly about to part them. At any rate, she appeared indisposed to add any finishing touches to her part of the contract. Mr. Swayne had, in all probability, put in his finishing touches with such vigour, that possibly a remembrance of them accounted for a certain absence of solicitude on the part of his helpmeet.
"Who's this? Who's this? Who's this?" said Mr. Swayne in a rapid whisper, perceiving his visitor, and peering out of the gloom with a bloodshot furtive eye. "Dear, dear, dear! ... Mary ... I'm busy ... I'm pressed for time. Take him away. Quite away; quite away."
Mr. Swayne had been a man of few and evil words when in health. His recording angel would now need a knowledge of shorthand. This sudden flow of language fairly staggered Colonel Tempest.
"I must have out those bonds," he went on, forgetting his visitor again instantly. "I can't lay my hand on 'em, but I've got 'em somewhere. Top left-hand drawer of the walnut escritoire. I know I have 'em. I'll make him bleed. Top left-hand. No, no, no. Where was it, then? Lock's stiff;—— the lock. Break it. I say I will have 'em."
As he spoke he tore from under the pillow a little footstool, having the remnant of a frayed dog, in blue beads, worked upon it, a conjugal attention no doubt on the part of Mrs. Swayne, to raise the sick man's head.
And Mr. Swayne, after endeavouring to unlock the dog's tail, smote savagely upon it, and sank back with chattering teeth.
"That's the way he goes on," said Mrs. Swayne. "Mornin', noon, and night. Never a bit of peace, except when he gets into hisprayin' fits. I expect he'll go off in one of them tantrums."
It did not appear unlikely that he would "go off" then and there, but after a few moments a sort of ghastly life seemed to return. Even death did not appear to take to him. He opened his eyes, and looked round bewildered. Then his head fell forward.
"Now's yer time," said the woman. "Before he gets up steam for another of them rages. Parson comes and twitters a bit when he's in this way; and he'll pray very heavy while he recollects hisself, until he goes off again. He'll be better now for a spell," and she left the room, and creaked ponderously downstairs again. Colonel Tempest advanced a step nearer the lair on which poor Swayne was taking his last rest but one, and said faintly:
"Swayne. I say, Swayne. Rouse up."
The only things that roused up were Swayne's eyelids. These certainly trembled a little.
In the next house the accordion was beginning a new tune, was designating Jerusalem as its ha-appy home.
Apprehensive terror for himself as usual overcame other feelings. It overcame in this instance the unspeakable repugnance Colonel Tempest felt to approaching any nearer. He touched the prostrate man on the shoulder with the slender white hand which had served him so exclusively from boyhood upwards, which had never wavered in its fidelity to him to do a hand's turn for others, which shrinkingly did his bidding now.
"Wake up, Swayne," repeated Colonel Tempest, actually stooping over him. "Wake up, for——," he was going to add "heaven's sake;" but the thought of heavenin connection with Swayne seemed inappropriate; and he altered it to "for mercy's sake," which sounded just as well.
"Is it the parson?" asked Swayne feebly, in a more natural voice.
"No, no," said Colonel Tempest reassuringly. "It's only me, a friend. It's Colonel Tempest."
"I wish itwasthe parson," repeated Swayne, seeming to emerge somewhat from his torpor. "He might have come and let off a few more prayers for me. He says it's all right if I repent, and I suppose he knows; but it don't seem likely. Don't seem as if Godcouldbe greened quite as easy as parson makes out. I should have liked to throw off a few more prayers so as to be on the safe side," and he began to mutter incoherently.
As a man lives so, it is said, he generally dies. Swayne seemed to remain true to hisown interests, only his aspect of those interests had altered. He felt the awkwardness of going into court absolutely unprepared. Prayer was cheap if it could do what he wanted, and he had had professional advice as to its efficacy. A man who all his life can grovel before his fellow-creatures, may as well do a little grovelling before his Creator at the last, if anything is to be got by it.
It is to the credit of human nature that, as a rule, men even of the lowest type feel the uselessness, the degradation, of trying to annul their past on their deathbeds. But to Swayne, who had never shone as a credit to human nature, a chance remained a chance. He was a gambler and a swindler, a man who had risked long odds, and had been made rich and poor by the drugging of a horse, or the forcing of a card. If, in his strict attention to never losing a chance, hehad inadvertently mislaid his soul, he was not likely to be aware of it. But achancewas a thing he had never so far failed to take advantage of. He was taking his last now.
Colonel Tempest looked at him in horror. The interests of the two men clashed, and at a vital moment.
"For God's sake don't pray now, Swayne," said Colonel Tempest, appealingly, as Swayne began to mutter something more. "I've come to set wrong right, and that will be a great deal better than any prayers; do you more good in the end."
Swayne did not seem to understand. He looked in a perplexed manner at Colonel Tempest.
"I don't appear to fetch it out right," he said. "But it's in the Prayer-book on the mantelpiece. That's what our parson reads out of. You get it, colonel; just get it quick,and pray 'em off one after another. It don't matter much which. They're all good."
"Swayne," said Colonel Tempest, in utter desperation, "I'll do anything; I'll—pray as much as you like afterwards, if you will only give me up those papers you have against me—those bets."
"What?" said Swayne, a gleam of the old professional interest flickering into his face. "You han't got the money?"
"Yes. Here, here!" and Colonel Tempest tore the banker's note out of his pocket-book, and held it before Swayne's eyes.
"I was to have had twenty-five per cent. commission," said Swayne, rallying perceptibly at the thought. "Twenty-five per cent. on each. I wouldn't let 'em go at less. Two thousand five hundred I should have made. But"—with a sudden restless relapse—"it's no use thinking of that now. Get down the book, colonel."
But for once Colonel Tempest was firm.
Perhaps his indignation against Swayne's egotism enabled him to be so. He made Swayne understand that business must in this instance come first, and prayers afterwards. It was a compact; not the first between the two.
"The papers," he repeated over and over again, frantic at the speed with which the last links of Swayne's memory seemed falling from him. "Where are they? You have them with you, of course? Tell me where they are?" and he grasped the dying man by the shoulder.
Swayne was frightened back to some semblance of effort.
"I haven't got 'em," he gasped. "The—the—the chaps engaged in the business have 'em."
"But you know who have got them?"
"Yes, of course. It's all written down somewhere."
"Where?"
But Swayne "did not rightly know." He had the addresses in cipher somewhere, but he could not put his hand upon them. Half wild with fear, Colonel Tempest searched the pockets of the clothes that lay about the room, holding up their contents for Swayne to look at. It was like some hideous game of hide-and-seek. But the latter only shook his head.
"I have 'em somewhere," he repeated, "and there was a change not so long ago. When was it? May. There's one of 'em written down in cipher in my pocket-book in May, I know that."
"Here. This one?" said Colonel Tempest, holding out a greasy pocket-book.
"That's it," said Swayne. "Some time in May."
Colonel Tempest turned to the month, and actually found a page with a faint pencil scrawl in cipher across it.
"That's him," said Swayne. "James Larkin," and he read out a complicated address without difficulty.
"Will that find him?" asked Colonel Tempest, his hand shaking so much that he could hardly write down Swayne's words.
"If it's to his advantage it will."
"For certain?"
"Certain."
"And the others?"
"There's one dead," said Swayne, his voice waxing feebler and feebler as the momentary galvanism of Colonel Tempest's terror lost its effect. "And there's two I had back the papers from; they were sick of it, and they said he had a charmed life. And one of 'em went to America, and married, and set up respectable. I have his paper too. And one of 'em's in quod, but he'll be out soon, I reckon, and he's good for another try. He precious near brought it off lasttime. There's a few left that's still biding their time! There! And now I won't hear nothin' more about it. Get to the prayers, Colonel, and be quick. Parson might have come again, damn him."
"Stop a minute. Can I get at the others through Larkin?"
Swayne had sunk back spent and livid. He looked at Colonel Tempest with fixed and glassy eyes.
"Yes," he said, with the ghost of an oath; "get to the prayers."
Colonel Tempest was still trembling with the relief from that horrible nightmare of suspense as he opened the shiny new Prayer-book which the clergyman had left. He held the first link. He had now only to draw the whole chain through his hand, and break it to atoms; the chain that was dragging him down to hell. He hastily began to read.
God has heard many prayers, but, perhaps, not many like those which ascended from that hideous tumbled death-bed, where kneeling self-interest halted through the supplication, and prostrate self-interest gasped out Amen.
Oh! did He who first taught us how to pray, did He, raised high upon the cross of an apparent failure, look down the ages that were yet to come, and see how we should abuse that gift of prayer? Was that bitter cry which has echoed through eighteen hundred years wrung from Him even for our sakes also as well as those who stood around Him—"Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do"?
Colonel Tempest was still on his knees when the door was softly opened, and a young, a very young, clergyman came in and knelt down beside him, clasping his thin hands over the collapsed feltsouffléewhichdid duty for a hat. After stumbling to the end of the prayer he was reading, Colonel Tempest put the book into his hand and escaped.
He stole down the stairs and past the little sitting-room unobserved. He was out again in the open air, the live free air, which seemed freshness itself after the atmosphere of that sick-room. He held the clue. He had it, he held it, he was safe. God was on his side now, and was helping him to make restitution. At one despairing moment when he had been tearing even the linings out of the pockets of Swayne's check trousers he had feared that Providence had deserted him. Now that he had the pocket-book he regretted his want of faith. I do not think his mind reverted once to Swayne, for Swayne was no longer of any interest to him now that he was out of Swayne's power. Colonel Tempest did not exactly forget people, buthis mind was so constituted that everything with which it came in contact was wiped out the moment it had ceased to affect or group itself round himself. His imagination did not follow his colleague's last faltering steps upon that steep brink where each must one day stand. His mind turned instinctively to the most frivolous subjects, was back in London wondering what he would have had for dinner if he had dined with Archie as he had intended; was anxious to know how many cigarettes of that new brand he had put into his case before he left London that morning. Colonel Tempest stopped, and got out his cigarette-case and counted them.
Those who had known Colonel Tempest best, those few who had misunderstood and loved him, had often pondered with grave anxiety, or with the wistful perplexity of wounded affection, as to what it was in him that being so impressionable was yet incapableof any real impression. His wife may or may not have mastered that expensive secret. At any rate, she had had opportunities of studying it. When first, a few weeks after her marriage, she had fallen ill, she, poor fool, had suffered agonies from the fear that because he hardly came into her sick-room after the first day, he had ceased to care for her. But when after a few days more she was feeling better and was pretty and interesting again in a pink wrapper on the sofa, she had found that he was as devoted to her as ever, and had confided her foolish dread to him with happy tears. Possibly she discovered at last that the secret lay not so much in the selfishness and self-indulgence of a character moth-eaten by idleness, as in the instant and invariable recoil of the mind from any subject that threatened to prove disagreeable, the determination to avoid everything irksome, wearisome, or reproachful.For a moment, while it was quite new, a sentiment might be indulged in. But as soon as a certain novelty and pleasure in emotion ceased the feeling itself was shirked, at whatever expense to others. Those who shirk are ill to live with, and lay up for themselves an increasing loneliness as life goes on.
Colonel Tempest found it unpleasant to think about Swayne, so he thought of something else. He could always do that unless he himself was concerned. Then, indeed, as we have seen, it was a different thing. He was annoyed when, after slowly picking his way back to the station, he found the last passenger train had just gone; that even if he drove fifteen miles in to Worcester he should be too late to catch the last express to London; in fact, that there was nothing for it but a bed at the station inn. He found, however, that by making a very early startfrom Bilgewater the following morning he could reach London by noon, and so resigned himself to his lot with composure. He had hardly expected he should be able to go and return in one day.
It was indeed early when he walked across to the station next morning, so early that there was a suspicion of freshness in the air, of colour in the eastern sky.
On a heap of slag a motionless figure was sitting, black against the sky line, looking towards the east. It was the curate, who when he perceived Colonel Tempest, came crunching and flapping in his long coat tails down to the road below, raised his hat from a meagre clerical brow, and held out his hand. His face was thin and poor, suggestive of a starved mind and cold mutton and Pearson on the Creed, but the smile redeemed it.
"It is all over," he said; "half an hourago. Quite quietly at the last. I stayed with him through the night. I never left him. We prayed together without ceasing."
Colonel Tempest did not know what to say.
"It was too late to go to bed," continued the young man impulsively, his face working. "So I came here. I often come and sit on that ash heap to see the sun rise. I'm so glad just to have seen you again. I longed to thank you for those prayers by poor Mr. Crosbie's bed. You know the Scripture: 'Where two or three are gathered together.' I felt it was so true. I have lost heart so of late. No one seems to care or think about these things down here. But your coming and praying like that has been such a help, such a reproach to me for my want of faith when I think that the seed falls on the rock. I shall take courage again now. Ah! You are going by this train? Good-bye, God bless you! Thank you again."