Diana Tempest Volume Iii Part 6

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 the _blue du roi_ Sevres tray, making them repeat one after 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 bal.u.s.trade 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 letters in the absence of Mitty, who was busy was.h.i.+ng 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 bra.s.s 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 gla.s.s standing in the central niche of the lac cabinet 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 gla.s.s in the centre of the niche, which, as in so many of its species, shut off a small enclosed s.p.a.ce between the tiers of drawers.

The gla.s.s door and its little pillars opened inwards, but not without difficulty. It was clogged with dust. The handle of the Venetian gla.s.s 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 found something 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 garment half 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 s.h.i.+rt, and that his mother had probably been making it for him and had not had time to finish it. John held the baby's s.h.i.+rt 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, Yorks.h.i.+re.

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 la.s.se,' 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 contained many 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 us apart.

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 pus.h.i.+ng 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 am sure 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d 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. G.o.d forgive you. I would too if I thought you cared whether I did or not. G.o.d forgive us both.--M."

John looked back at the cover of the packet. 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 without foundation, 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 pa.s.sages 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 of striking 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 p.r.o.nounced 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 G.o.d'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 borrow When life is fair?

'To-morrow.'"

GEORGE ELIOT.

On 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.