Diana Tempest Volume Iii Part 12

"I do not pretend to be better than other men," continued Lord Frederick. "Men and women are men and women; and if you persist in thinking them angels, especially the latter, you will pay for your mistake."

"I am paying," said John.

"Possibly. You seem to have sustained a shock. It is incredible to me that you did not know beforehand what the letters told you.

Wedding-rings don't make a greater resemblance between father and son than there is between you and me."

Lord Frederick looked at the stooping figure of the young man, leaning spent and motionless against the window, his arms hanging by his sides.

He held what he called his prudishness in contempt, but he respected an element in him which he would have termed "grit."

"You are stronger built than I am, John," he said, with a touch of pride, "and wider in the chest. Come, bygones are bygones. Shake hands."

"I can't," said John. "I don't know that I could on my account, but anyhow not on _hers_."

"H'm! And so this was the information which you rushed in without leave to spring upon me?"

"It was, together with the fact that of course I withdraw in favour of Colonel Tempest, the heir at law. I am going on to him from here."

Lord Frederick reared himself slowly in his bed, his brown hands clutching the bedclothes like eagles' talons.

"You are going to own your----"

"_My_ shame--yes; not yours. You need not be alarmed. Your name shall not be brought in. If I take the name of Fane, it will only be because it was my mother's."

"But you said you had burned the letters."

"I have. I don't see what difference that makes. The fact that they are burnt does not alter the fact that I am--n.o.body, and he is the legal heir."

"And you mean to tell him so?"

"I do."

"To commit suicide?"

"Social suicide--yes."

"Fool!" said Lord Frederick, in a voice which lost none of its force because it was barely above a whisper.

John did not answer.

"Leave the room," said the outraged parent, turning his face to the wall, the bedclothes and the tray trembling exceedingly. "I will have nothing more to do with you. You need not come to me when you are penniless. Do you hear? I disown you. Leave me. I will never speak to you again."

"I hope to G.o.d you never will," said John; and he took up his hat and went out.

He had settled his account with the first of the three people whom he had come to London to see. From Lord Frederick's chambers he went straight to Colonel Tempest's lodgings in Brook Street. But Colonel Tempest had that morning departed with his son to Brighton, and John, momentarily thrown off his line of action by that simple occurrence, stared blankly at the landlady, and then went to his club and sat down to write to him. There was no question of waiting. Like a man walking across Niagara on a tight rope, it was no time to think, to hesitate, to look round. John kept his eyes riveted to one point, and shut his ears to the roar of the torrent below him, in which a moment's giddiness would engulf him.

It was afternoon by this time. As he sat writing at a table in one of the bay windows, a familiar voice spoke to him. It was Lord Hemsworth.

They had not met since the night of the ice carnival. Lord Hemsworth's face had quite lost its boyish expression.

"I hope you are better, Tempest," he said, with obvious constraint, looking narrowly at him. Could Di's accepted lover wear so grey and stern a look as this?

John replied that he was well; and then, with sudden recollection of Mitty's account of Lord Hemsworth's conduct during that memorable night, began to thank him, and stopped short.

The room was empty.

"It was on _her_ account," said Lord Hemsworth.

John did not answer. It was that conviction which had pulled him up.

Lord Hemsworth waited some time for John to speak, and then he said--

"You know about me, Tempest, and why I was on the ice that night. Well, I have kept out of the way for three months under the belief that--I should hear any day that---- I am not such a fool as to pit myself against you--I don't want to be a nuisance to---- But it's three months.

For G.o.d's sake tell me; are you on or are you not?"

"I am not," said John.

"Then I will try my luck," said the other.

He went out, and John knew that he had gone to try it there and then; and sat motionless, with his hand across his mouth and his unfinished letter before him, until the servant came to close the shutters.

CHAPTER XI.

"We live together years and years, And leave unsounded still Each other's springs of hopes and fears, Each other's depths of will."

LORD HOUGHTON.

But still more bewildering is the way in which we live years and years with ourselves in an entire ignorance of the powers that lie dormant beneath the surface of character. The day comes when vital forces of which we know nothing arise within us, and break like gla.s.s the even tenor of our lives. The quiet hours, the regulated thoughts, the peaceful aspiration after things but little set above us, where are they? The angel with the sword drives us out of our Eden to s.h.i.+ver in the wilderness of an entirely changed existence, unrecognizable by ourselves, though perhaps lived in the same external groove, the same divisions of time, among the same faces as before.

Day succeeded day in Di's life, each day adding one more stone to the prison in which it seemed as if an inexorable hand were walling her up.

"I will not give in. I will turn my mind to other things," she said to herself. And--there were no other things. All lesser lights were blown out. The heart, when it is swept into the grasp of a great love, is ruthlessly torn from the hundred minute ties and interests that heretofore held it to life. The little fibres and tendrils of affections which have gradually grown round certain objects are snapped off from the roots. They cease to exist. The pang of love is that there is no escape from it. It has the same tension as sleeplessness.

Di struggled and was not defeated; but some victories are as sad as defeats. During the struggle she lost something--what was it--that had been to many her greatest charm? Women were unanimous in deploring how she had "gone off." There was a thinness in her cheek, and a blue line under her deep eyes. Her beauty remained, but it was not the same beauty. Mrs. Courtenay noticed with a pang that she was growing like her mother.

Easter came, and with it the wedding of Miss Crupps and the Honourable Augustus Lumley, youngest son of Lord Mortgage. Miss Crupps' young heart had long inclined towards Mr. Lumley; but on the occasion of seeing him blacked as a Christy Minstrel, she had finally succ.u.mbed into a state of giggling admiration, which plainly showed the state of her affections. So he cut the word "yes" out of a newspaper, and told her that was what she was to say to him, and amid a series of delighted cackles they were engaged. Di went to the wedding, looking so pale that it was whispered that Mr. Lumley and his tambourine had won her heart as well as that of his adoring bride.

On a sunny afternoon shortly afterwards, Di was sitting alone indoors, her grandmother having gone out driving with a friend. She told herself that she ought to go out, but she remained sitting with her hands in her lap. Every duty, every tiny decision, every small household matter, had become of late an intolerable burden. Even to put a handful of flowers into water required an effort of will which it was irksome to make.

She had stayed in to make an alteration in the gown she was to wear that night at the Speaker's. As she looked at the card to make sure it was the right evening, she remembered that it was at the Speaker's she had first met John, just a year ago. One year. How absurd! Five, ten, fifteen! She tried to recollect what her life could have been like before he had come into it; but it seemed to start from that point, and to have had no significance before.

"I must go out," she said again; and at that moment the door bell rang, and although Mrs. Courtenay was out, some one was admitted. The door opened, and Lord Hemsworth was announced.

There is, but men are fortunately not in a position to be aware of it, a lamentable uniformity in their manner of opening up certain subjects. Di knew in a moment from previous experience what he had come for. He wondered, as he stumbled through a labyrinth of plat.i.tudes about the weather, how he could broach the subject without alarming her. He did not know that he had done so by his manner of coming into the room, and that he had been refused before he had finished shaking hands.

Di was horribly sorry for him while he talked about--whatever he did talk about. Neither noticed what it was at the time, or remembered it afterwards. She was grateful to him for not alluding even in the most distant manner to their last meeting. She remembered that she had clung to him, and that he had called her by her Christian name, but she was too callous to be ashamed at the recollection. It was as nothing compared to another humiliation which had come upon her a little later.

"It is no good beating about the bush," said Lord Hemsworth at last, after he had beaten it till there was, so to speak, nothing left of it.